"The Irish Whip"

Nate DaMac

Fuck erbody but me
It seems that one of the most frequent complaints from professional wrestling fans today is the lack of realism. Whether it's the unrealistic story-lines, the unbelievable characters, or the actual affects from a wrestling move, they all seem determined that realism is what's going to make the product today as good as it was when they were younger. I call bullshit.

When you were younger, suspending your disbelief came naturally to you. Most of us watched a lot of cartoons when we we're younger, Santa Claus flew all around the world and gave presents to everyone in one night, and of course, wrestling was real fighting. Then, at a certain age, cynicism kicks in and you get to a point where you understand the confines of reality. I still remember being about 9 years old and asking my Grandpa, "Why does he run back to him when he throws him into the ropes?" I still haven't gotten an answer.

At that point, I had been watching wrestling for 3 years and I had never had that question. I didn't care, I just wanted to see my guy beat up the other guy. I watched The Undertaker Leg Drop somebody for a 2 count one day and watched Hulk Hogan beat the best guys in the world with the same move a week later and think nothing of it. Then I started watching it with my dad and he, being the cynical asshole that he was, pretty much thrashed the whole idea of wrestling to me. Every time anyone did something that looked painful, he'd be right there to explain how they do it whether I asked him or not. Discovering internet dirt sheets didn't help. I found a whole world of people who felt how I did and just sat around bitch about it all the time.

Why did we keep watching it? Because we liked it when we were younger and we want it to be that real again. But what was so real about it? When I was younger, the Attitude Era was all the rage. We had a dead guy and his fully burnt brother who could summon fire and lighting in closed arenas, we had a guy who would repeatedly assault his boss with no ramifications, and we had a guy who would literally just use a simple elbow drop after bouncing off the ropes on either side of the ring to beat top level stars. Totally realistic, right?

Realizing the unrealistic aspects of professional wrestling, as well as the unrealistic aspects of movies, TV shows, etc. is a product of aging. We say we want a more realistic product, but at the end of the day, we're watching a show where in an athletic competition, if one man flings another wrestler into the ring ropes halfway across the ring, he will always bounce off the ropes and come running right back to them. As long as we can accept that, we really have nothing else to complain about.
 
Wrestling is entertainment. I see it coz I liked it as a kid and then my interest in it branched out even when I realized it wasn't real but all the stories, backstage rumblings, knowing the difference between a promo and a segment, somehow even if the little kid who thought all this was reall grew up an older kid who actually started looking at the more technical aspects of it, is alive and well today.


I remember having an arguement with my cousin who loved watching soap operas, which I detested. Anyway, one night whilst she was watching one of her soaps I came in and I changed the channel to Football and she screamed at me for it. I said " Why do you watch that crap?", to which she asked "Why do you watch football?". I bluntly replied "Coz it's a sport and its entertaining." "Well thats entertaining to me" was her final reply and with the thump on my head the clicker was back in her hand.

We are just entertained by the product. SO many people, so many kids would watch wrestling religiously during the Attitude Era when we were in school and yet I am probably one who watches it more than anyone else does. When I'm questioned by my parents or friends that when will I stop watching, all I can say is I still find it entertaining. I still love to hear the crowd roar, and real-life refs being dropped or seeing an old-timer from my time make a return.
 
But what was so real about it? When I was younger, the Attitude Era was all the rage.
And that's probably why you're asking the question. The Attitude Era was one of the worst things to happen to pro wrestling. I've said it many times before and I'll continue to say it. It provided a huge temporary boost, but the business is still trying to recover, even nearly 10 years later.

The fact is there have always been a few unrealistic aspects of pro wrestling, but it used to be the other aspects covered for it. Wrestling used to have a lot more realism, even in the late 80s and early 90s. Guys weren't running around like chickens with their heads cut off, getting hit with a chair or a title was basically the end of the match, they didn't kick out of 15 finishers in a row...you know, all things which aren't true today.

When you watch a Hulk Hogan match from the early 90s today, you might think the "Hulking Up" routine is a little bit unrealistic, and perhaps it may be. However, we can overlook that because the rest of the match is not. Hogan's offense was always very realistic and not the silly stuff you see from a lot of guys today. The heels weren't doing a bunch of flips and crazy somersaults, they were getting Hogan on the ground and keeping him on the ground. They put him in submission holds to keep him down. So when Hogan looked like he was going to finally be beaten by the bad guy who had beaten him up so badly, we overlook how unrealistic the "Hulking Up" routine is because we're so excited to see that the good guy isn't done yet.

Even the Irish Whip, the title of your thread, can be considered realistic, if the rest of your match is. Why do wrestlers bounce off the rope with so much force it makes them run back to the guy who threw them? Because the guy who threw them is a monster of a man with huge muscles, much larger than the average man. So when someone that big and strong throws you in the ropes, which only have a little give, it makes sense it will hurtle a wrestler back to his original position. Why doesn't it happen in real life? Because we're not as strong as these professional wrestlers (which was far more true before the mid 90s).

The problem with wrestling today is realism, but the problem with obtaining realism is the lack of patience. TV viewers today have no attention span, no patience. They don't want to see two guys "working" a match, they just want as much action as possible before they turn their attention to something else. This is why wrestling is the way it is today, and it's also why the wrestlers today aren't nearly as good as they once were. They are more focused on doing a bunch of moves, and less focused on working the audience, telling the story of the match through their moves.

This isn't an aging problem. If it was, then when I watch older matches, I'd be just as bored/critical of them as I am of many of today's matches. This is a problem of wrestlers simply changing the way they deliver the product to accommodate the fans, and not for the better.
 
I think that aging could be the problem. To start with aging, I'd say that when I was younger and when I had found out that wrestling was fake, I used to live in a state of denial and tried to concoct various explanations when somebody pointed out why wrestling was fake. I tried to explain Hulk getting a pin via a leg drop and Big Show not being able to get the same as something that was possible because of Hulk practising the move more than Show. The irish whip problem was explained, like Sly says, due to the large body mass of the wrestlers and them thereby possessing more momentum. But now we are older and wrestling has stayed more or less the same, a form of entertainment for children and hence I guess it is just more natural for us to be cynical towards it, as we have seen a number of adults do when we were children.

Sly also raises an interesting point that older matches should appear uninteresting to us now but they do not do so but that could just as well be a case of us glorifying our own childhood, a happier time by a longshot, more than anything else. That is what most of the Attitude Era, except the biggest stars like Austin and Rock, etc, appears to me now anyway.
 
From the day I started watching All American Wrestling on the USA Network every Sunday, my parents made sure that me and my brothers knew it wasn't real, that it was just pretend just like the other TV shows. Yet, here I am, almost 30 years later, and I am still just as fascinated by pro wrestling as I was then. Hell, my mom used to watch it with us, and we would all try to figure out the storylines together.

I guess I never had that period of disillusionment, because I never thought of it as anything but fantasy in the first place. It's probably also one of the reasons that I sometimes snicker at people who whine about so and so "deserving" the title, and which belt is the most meaningful, etc, as I look at the whole thing as TV, with belts serving as a prop. Wrestlers are merely actors playing a role in an athletic play, nothing more.

It doesn't really matter to me if it's realistic or not, as long as I am entertained by it. I enjoy sci-fi, comedies, dramas, sports, and other genres of programming on TV, regardless of how realistic it is. Why should I hold wrestling up to a higher standard of realism than I would Battlestar Galactica?

Sometimes you just gotta sit back with a bowl of popcorn, and enjoy it without nitpicking every little detail.
 

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