Dragonslayer
Getting Noticed By Management
Now as I've been more closely following the developments in wrestling for a little while again now, and as I've also gotten more and more of my information from Internet sites, since wrestling on TV is rather limited for me hereabouts right now, I still see many of the same phrases, the same complaints, the same suggestions and the same thoughts rise up again and again every once in awhile.
There you here that "this superstar can't cut it on the mic", that "that superstar lacks charisma", that "this superstar's delivery is poor", that "that superstar's character doesn't entertain". And many a time people will in basically much the same sentence bring up the subject of how glorious our much beloved Attitude-Era was, how great the Monday Night Wars were, and how much better everything just used to me. But looking at how much the wrestling product has changed over the years, from being an oversized fairground attraction in the 1980ies, over gathering mainstream attention and becoming a "grown-up" product with a much greater target audience, to turning into a huge, nigh-monopoly business institution in the form of WWE with again a somewhat tilted target audience, and which now probably has more "representative" factor than ever before; I cannot put away the notion that sometimes I have to ask myself if we're asking too much.
If we're demanding too much. If we're expecting too much.
Agreed, there was this great "Attitude" era. But why was it great? There was novelty; there were new, great characters that were more down-to-earth; there were storylines; there were angles that no one would ever have thought possible in the 1980ies era; there was a handful of surprisingly talented guys, both in- and outside of the ring. But as we all know - times pass and eras end, and so did this arguably greatest time in professional wrestling history.
And now, as we have ventured into a new era, with a new generation, a new breed of superstars that seek to be our heroes, we find ourselves a bit disoriented. For gone are the edgy, take-no-bs characters from the Attitude days; there is no Rock, there is no Steve Austin, there is no Nation of Domination, there is no Mick Foley around anymore. Instead, there are those new kids on the block, and we just do not seem to know what we're expecting, or what to do with them.
Do we want the Attitude era to return? Do we want a new incarnation of that time? And what it ultimately comes down to would be the question: How could this possibly be achieved, and can the wrestlers pull it off?
And this is where I want to direct my question: Are we expecting too much from the boys?
For we want them to be wrestlers, first and foremost. We want them to have trained physiques, we want them to perform moves that require a lot of strength, a lot of training; we want them to fly, we want them to fall, we want them to beat and get beaten. And we want that every day of the week, all throughout the year.
But we do not stop there. When wrestling became that hybrid of (non-competitive) sports and soap-opera; when characters and stories became easily as important as matches, our needs and demands also changed - and only grew bigger over time. Now we want them to fly farther and fall harder; we want them to perform new and more moves that take our breath away - but now, we also want them not only to be wrestlers, but also to be actors. We want them to play their roles, their "gimmicks" much more elaborately than we used to; I feel our demands as audience have grown to very high levels in that respect.
For as said - all too often we hear people complain about how we "don't buy that character", how that guy's "delivery is off" - but my question is: Can we truly demand all that we demand?
Can we ask of athletes - which is what pro wrestler essentially are - to not only be that, but also be actors? But also be entertainers, in a more mainstream media type of way, instead of those over-the-top, comic-like characters they used to be? Can we demand the proverbial award-winning performances, along with stellar physical deliveries inside the squared circle?
Think back to the glory days of Hulkamania - when a 6-foot-something guy with a weird haircut started eating his bandana, shaking all over before plunging into a shouting rant with the words "Well lemme tell you something, Mean Gene...!" - that was not exactly great acting. But we bought it, and it worked for the time. Now, we blame people like Vickie Guerrero and Mike Adamle for having too little acting talent. We talk of people like Mr Kennedy "growing stale", talk about "no one on the horizon to fill the shoes of The Rock and Steve Austin" - but is that really so? Is there no one to follow and continue the legacy of the kind of wrestling, of sports entertainment, that was created in the Attitude Era? And if so - why? Why are we not satisfied? What are our demands, what do we expect? And once again - Can we really expect it?
Or is it just the booking that doesn't work? Agreed - pretty much every storyline and every angle have been done now. We get the same concepts in slightly altered versions in regular periods; but then again - there is only so much you can do. Even WWE has already been pushing it's boundaries of taste and piety with things like incest-angles and death-angles - and still we're not to be satisfied anymore. So what do we expect?!
Is it not enough to have the "old" angles with new faces anymore? But if so - what can be done?
Or would even old stories be good if done by the best performers? If so (and look to the current HBK - Jericho feud first), then I still ask: Can only top-notch performers who have been in the business for many years still deliver marginally at that level that we seem to expect from EVERYONE nowadays, no matter if they've been in the business for one year, five years, or over a decade?
And now I ask your opinion on these more or less random thoughts: Do we expect too much from "our" boys? Or are our high expectations justified considering the paychecks the guys earn? Is it a fault of the bookers, the storyline writers, the creative teams that we are not satisfied with current products anymore? Or is it only the wrestlers that just are not able to deliver at the level we want them to?
Fire away.
There you here that "this superstar can't cut it on the mic", that "that superstar lacks charisma", that "this superstar's delivery is poor", that "that superstar's character doesn't entertain". And many a time people will in basically much the same sentence bring up the subject of how glorious our much beloved Attitude-Era was, how great the Monday Night Wars were, and how much better everything just used to me. But looking at how much the wrestling product has changed over the years, from being an oversized fairground attraction in the 1980ies, over gathering mainstream attention and becoming a "grown-up" product with a much greater target audience, to turning into a huge, nigh-monopoly business institution in the form of WWE with again a somewhat tilted target audience, and which now probably has more "representative" factor than ever before; I cannot put away the notion that sometimes I have to ask myself if we're asking too much.
If we're demanding too much. If we're expecting too much.
Agreed, there was this great "Attitude" era. But why was it great? There was novelty; there were new, great characters that were more down-to-earth; there were storylines; there were angles that no one would ever have thought possible in the 1980ies era; there was a handful of surprisingly talented guys, both in- and outside of the ring. But as we all know - times pass and eras end, and so did this arguably greatest time in professional wrestling history.
And now, as we have ventured into a new era, with a new generation, a new breed of superstars that seek to be our heroes, we find ourselves a bit disoriented. For gone are the edgy, take-no-bs characters from the Attitude days; there is no Rock, there is no Steve Austin, there is no Nation of Domination, there is no Mick Foley around anymore. Instead, there are those new kids on the block, and we just do not seem to know what we're expecting, or what to do with them.
Do we want the Attitude era to return? Do we want a new incarnation of that time? And what it ultimately comes down to would be the question: How could this possibly be achieved, and can the wrestlers pull it off?
And this is where I want to direct my question: Are we expecting too much from the boys?
For we want them to be wrestlers, first and foremost. We want them to have trained physiques, we want them to perform moves that require a lot of strength, a lot of training; we want them to fly, we want them to fall, we want them to beat and get beaten. And we want that every day of the week, all throughout the year.
But we do not stop there. When wrestling became that hybrid of (non-competitive) sports and soap-opera; when characters and stories became easily as important as matches, our needs and demands also changed - and only grew bigger over time. Now we want them to fly farther and fall harder; we want them to perform new and more moves that take our breath away - but now, we also want them not only to be wrestlers, but also to be actors. We want them to play their roles, their "gimmicks" much more elaborately than we used to; I feel our demands as audience have grown to very high levels in that respect.
For as said - all too often we hear people complain about how we "don't buy that character", how that guy's "delivery is off" - but my question is: Can we truly demand all that we demand?
Can we ask of athletes - which is what pro wrestler essentially are - to not only be that, but also be actors? But also be entertainers, in a more mainstream media type of way, instead of those over-the-top, comic-like characters they used to be? Can we demand the proverbial award-winning performances, along with stellar physical deliveries inside the squared circle?
Think back to the glory days of Hulkamania - when a 6-foot-something guy with a weird haircut started eating his bandana, shaking all over before plunging into a shouting rant with the words "Well lemme tell you something, Mean Gene...!" - that was not exactly great acting. But we bought it, and it worked for the time. Now, we blame people like Vickie Guerrero and Mike Adamle for having too little acting talent. We talk of people like Mr Kennedy "growing stale", talk about "no one on the horizon to fill the shoes of The Rock and Steve Austin" - but is that really so? Is there no one to follow and continue the legacy of the kind of wrestling, of sports entertainment, that was created in the Attitude Era? And if so - why? Why are we not satisfied? What are our demands, what do we expect? And once again - Can we really expect it?
Or is it just the booking that doesn't work? Agreed - pretty much every storyline and every angle have been done now. We get the same concepts in slightly altered versions in regular periods; but then again - there is only so much you can do. Even WWE has already been pushing it's boundaries of taste and piety with things like incest-angles and death-angles - and still we're not to be satisfied anymore. So what do we expect?!
Is it not enough to have the "old" angles with new faces anymore? But if so - what can be done?
Or would even old stories be good if done by the best performers? If so (and look to the current HBK - Jericho feud first), then I still ask: Can only top-notch performers who have been in the business for many years still deliver marginally at that level that we seem to expect from EVERYONE nowadays, no matter if they've been in the business for one year, five years, or over a decade?
And now I ask your opinion on these more or less random thoughts: Do we expect too much from "our" boys? Or are our high expectations justified considering the paychecks the guys earn? Is it a fault of the bookers, the storyline writers, the creative teams that we are not satisfied with current products anymore? Or is it only the wrestlers that just are not able to deliver at the level we want them to?
Fire away.
