Why charisma > skill ?

[mojmass]

Other than the fact that a more charismatic character is more entertaining and people want to see him more and thus it means more money coming out of that guy what are the other reasons that makes a character charisma so much more important than his skill.
I mean a perfectly good ring skill is so entertaining itself why should bookers give credit to charisma so much more than skill?
I know some of you guys may say why not have them both but most of the time you can't have all good things in world together.
and i think it's a little mean because charisma is something that you have inside you but ring skill is something that you have to earn. what would you say?

 

[Alex]

You've pretty much answered your own question.

A guy with charisma can make people care about what he does. It's all well and good being a great wrestler, but if people don't give two shits about you what's the point. Sure they'd wow audiences with their skill and moves but at the end of the day that's not going to be enough to get the majority of people to come back.

Wrestling is physical theatre and theatre requires the people performing to have an emotional connection with the audience. Having all the technical ability in the world isn't going to do that

 

[Fire Marshall Bill]

Because people need a reason to care about the wrestler. Sure, someone can go out to the ring, have a great, entertaining match and leave. What's next? Do you think that's all people need to care about to invest in a character? If that were true, your current main eventers would include Tyson Kidd, Sin Cara (when he doesn't screw stuff up. This name is included solely because his different style), Yoshi Tatsu, John Morrison, among many others that no one currently gives a crap about. And guess what? Two of those guys don't even speak english. Can't generate a whole lot of charisma if you can't speak for crap. That includes poor mic skills and not just the ability to speak english. No ones going to have a reason to care about you. The exception is if you can stand out significantly in another way. And having a good match is not standing out in the wrestling business, because several people can do that.

 

[ABMorales787]

I mean a perfectly good ring skill is so entertaining itself why should bookers give credit to charisma so much more than skill?

I don't know? Why was Dean Malenko never anything above the midcard while Ultimate Warrior was a part of a major historic moment and World Champion? Like you said, money dear boy. You could be more sound than anyone, but if you can't get people to care about you there is no way a promoter could give you any providence without pushing people away. At the end of the day, it's charisma what makes people like you and your wrestling skills are simply a compliment to it.

 

[Mustang Sally]

I mean a perfectly good ring skill is so entertaining itself why should bookers give credit to charisma so much more than skill?

The skills aren't entertaining to everyone. Many, many people who buy the tickets and merchandise couldn't give a damn about skill; look how many people you see at ringside on your TV screen that aren't even bothering to watch what's going on in the ring right before them. They want to be at the event so they can be doing the same thing with as many people as possible .....yet they don't care much about wrestling. Still, their dollars spent on the product are as good as everyone else's, so pro wrestling organizations are smart enough to realize it takes more than performers with wrestling skills to fill an arena.

Take Daniel Bryan. He's as skilled as they come, yet he didn't truly catch on as an attraction until he started incorporating some personality into his act. Often, that personality has taken the form of acting the fool, but the longer people want to watch him acting like a billy goat, the longer his employment will last.

Sad?.....maybe, but true.

 

[Spinebreaker]

It's the same with a lot of entertainment...

Brad Pitt, as far as I'm concerned, is about as below average an actoor as possible to get away with putting in a movie. But, the guy has presence and looks. He sells movie tickets.

Early Punk bands were renowned for lack of musical skill, but had attitude and passion, and it carried them. You can see a fully fledged maestro, with all the technical skill in the world, but if they're not putting on a performance, or have no stage presence then it'll be boring.

Wrestling has a few nuances of it's own.

Eric Yound is over on almosst pure crowd reaction. People love the guy. It's ignored in the most part that he's actually pretty technically talented. Tommy Dreamer got a *little* more over than Dean Milenko, He was average in the ring, he was average on the mic... But, he had passion, heart... He obviously cared about what he was doing...

CM Punk has buckets of both talent and charisma, but WWE seem to want to push him on his charisma.

It's simultaneously an easy and difficult question...

 

[DirtyD79]

It's because pro-wrestling and shoot wrestling have two vastly different goals. In a shoot wrestling match you're trying to defeat your opponent within the rules of the game. In pro-wrestling you're trying to entertain an audience. Obviously a more charismatic wrestler is going to be much more entertaining than a non-charismatic one.

Fans need a reason to identify with a wrestler. They need to be able to emotionally invest in the characters. In addition to being able to get behind a wrestler, they need to be able to feel like the holds their wrestler is being put in are doing damage and causing pain. Now some take it to a hysterical extreme and start flopping like a fish or twitching like they got ants in their tights. That makes it funny and that's good too if funny is what you're aiming for. Which leads me to another thing, You need the right kind of charisma for the situation. It would be pretty hard for fans to take a moment like Shawn Michaels turning on Marty Jannetty seriously if Marty started flopping like a fish after getting superkicked through that window. Or even worse he could have went the Teddy Hart route and did a zillion backflips despite the fact he's supposed to be seriously injured.

 

[Spinebreaker]

Plus the entire dual nature of Pro-Wrestling...

A lot of people talk about 'casual' fans, But casual fans don't buy a CM Punk Ice Cream. Casual Fans don't buy every PPV EVERY Year.

However the non-casual fans (ie, 'us'!) are constantly watching on 2 levels.

A 7 year old in the crowd is gonna cheer Cena and Boo Ziggler 'cause one's 'nice' and the other's 'naughty'. Most of the rest of the crowd will be watching Ziggler selling and judging him on that.

The 'work', and moreso the fact that most of the audience KNOW the 'work' makes any discussion like this REALLY confusing for a 'casual' fan, or someone with no interest at all.

How d'you explain that Dean Milenko was a little bit popular 'cause he was really good at pretending to fight, but didn't get REALLY popular because he wasn't as good at pretending to entertain, while he was pretending to fight...

You'll get much the same blank look you get when trying to explain that everyone pretends the Undertaker's a zombie, they all act like he has realy come back from the dead, and has suupernatural powers... But also, he's often the hero.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

The single most important task a pro wrestler has to accomplish is to make the fans care about him. Fans have to want to be invested in what a wrestler is doing in order to want to spend money on his merchandise, to see him wrestle live, to watch ppvs he's working, etc.

Stone Cold Steve Austin said something on Tough Enough a few years back, I can't remember exactly how he put it, but it went something along the lines of "There are a million mechanics in this business". What that means is that wrestling is chock full of wrestlers who can go in there and wrestle matches. But what ultimately makes you a star is your ability to set yourself apart from the rest of the pack in a way that makes fans believe in you and want to invest their interest in you.

Ric Flair wouldn't have been nearly as big as he ultimately became if he wasn't loaded down with charisma. Same goes for Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Stone Cold, The Rock, HBK, Triple H, Chris Jericho, CM Punk, etc. Charisma can also be something like you see with The Undertaker. He has a presence with his character and has continuously made people care about him for more than 20 years. It's not the same sort of charisma you see in The Rock, but it's just as effective.

It doesn't matter if you have a great body, are near superhumanly athletic, have an amateur wrestling background to be worthy of envy, if you can flip & flop all over the place or how many high spots you can hit if the fans don't care.

 

[FlairFan2003]

You answered your own question. Why do I watch Raw ? Charismatic, entertaining characters. You watch for the promos, you are entertained by schtick that a wrestler does. Why do you watch a match ? Because of the storyline, and you need charismatic, entertaining characters to make the storyline compelling enough to make you want to see the match. Wrestling is a soap opera, the actual matches are small part of the act, albeit the final act, kind of like the season finale or big storyline arc of soap or continuing drama. If the ongoing storyline doesnt interest you then you wont care about the finale. Who Shot JR wasnt the biggest TV story simply because JR got shot, it was because of everything storyline wise that went into developing the mystery of who the shooter was and how compelling it was for the audience.

Wrestlers who lack charisma, who dont have that excitement factor, they dont get people to watch, if you are not entertained by the performer then why watch the match ?

Certainly, there are moments when in ring performance meets charismatic entertainers and you get epics like Austin-Rock, Taker-HHH, Taker-HBK, Flair-Rhodes, Savage-DiBiase, great characters with limited skills see their matches elevated in the eyes of fans like Hogan's tilts vs Piper, Savage, & Flair.

Take two guys who have no build, no storyline, and you have no fan interest, even if one of them is a major name who is popular and established with the audience. A great example of this was the 1998 match on Nitro between Brett Hart (in his prime, a regular performer on the show, a 5 time World Champion, headlined numerous PPV) & the wrestler originally known as Van Hammer, a failed gimmick that left it's portrayer mired in the mid card. There was no build, no promos, no story between them to make anyone care about the bout's outcome. The two had an excellent match, taking up a half hour of air time, fast paced, multiple near falls, it was one of Hart's best bouts all year. It was the lowest rated segments of the show with a clear pattern of audience shift to Raw. It was a far superior match than Goldberg's Nitro tilts vs DDP & Hogan but didnt come close to generating the audience. It also was a an actual match, unlike Flair's confrontations with Eric Bischoff when he returned which included no wrestling. Guess what drew better ratings ? In fact, it wasnt close.

If you cant entertain me, create an interest in me to watch you perform, then I wont follow your story and I wont be inclined to watch your big match. Its that simple.

 

[Brocky maivia]

World wrestling entertainment. Simple. I didnt care about skill when i was younder. I always use to fast forward the Chris Benoit Kurt Angle match from WMx7. It bored me. The Rock was my favourite wrestler. Like people say you coukd be a million bucks in the ring but if you cant speak for shit or make the audience care who gives a crap. At the end of the day its a art and the entertainment aspect is a lot more important then technical ability. Charisma equals dollars. Chain wrestlug equals roh.

 

[FlairFan2003]

Plus the entire dual nature of Pro-Wrestling...

A lot of people talk about 'casual' fans, But casual fans don't buy a CM Punk Ice Cream. Casual Fans don't buy every PPV EVERY Year.

However the non-casual fans (ie, 'us'!) are constantly watching on 2 levels.

A 7 year old in the crowd is gonna cheer Cena and Boo Ziggler 'cause one's 'nice' and the other's 'naughty'. Most of the rest of the crowd will be watching Ziggler selling and judging him on that.

The 'work', and moreso the fact that most of the audience KNOW the 'work' makes any discussion like this REALLY confusing for a 'casual' fan, or someone with no interest at all.

How d'you explain that Dean Milenko was a little bit popular 'cause he was really good at pretending to fight, but didn't get REALLY popular because he wasn't as good at pretending to entertain, while he was pretending to fight...

You'll get much the same blank look you get when trying to explain that everyone pretends the Undertaker's a zombie, they all act like he has realy come back from the dead, and has suupernatural powers... But also, he's often the hero.

The problem is that casual fans do buy some PPV, particularly the Big 4 (R-Rumble, WM, S-Slam, S-Series). We dont buy every piece of merchandise but we may buy something. The die hard fans who are evaluating the work of Jack Swagger instead of being entertained (or not) by the storyline, you make a small (albeit loyal) part of the audience, and there aint enough of ya to keep WWE in the black my friend.

 

[Spinebreaker]

The problem is that casual fans do buy some PPV, particularly the Big 4 (R-Rumble, WM, S-Slam, S-Series). We dont buy every piece of merchandise but we may buy something. The die hard fans who are evaluating the work of Jack Swagger instead of being entertained (or not) by the storyline, you make a small (albeit loyal) part of the audience, and there aint enough of ya to keep WWE in the black my friend.

Definitely not; I'd buy an AJ Styles T-Shirt before I'd buy any WWE merchandise ;-)

While I agree with 90% of what you say... It's entirely possible to be both entertained and evaluate at the same time. I do it with movies all the time. It's part of what makes Wrestling so entertaining for me.

On the surface, you see Kurt Angle delivering German suplexes to someone who's been evading him for months and it's great TV. But it's also cool to be thinking about what the different possibilities coming out of the match are, based upon the 'insider' knowledge we have (Whether it's accurate or not!). You don't get that with ANY other form of entertainment.

I'd be interested to see actual figure for casual/loyal fans. I think you're bang on about the big four WWE shows, plus I know a lot of casual fans checkout BFG and Lockdown. Wrestlemania probably has enough prestige that there's a shedload of minor celbrities and political figure attending, just 'cause they got offered some tickets. But an average episode of SD!? Or Impact!? I wouldn't be surprised if the loyal fans are the majority there.

Anyway, back to the subject... Charisma is a weird thing. Jeff Hardy has it, and is a poor, poor mic performer. Goldberg had shedloads of Charisma, but for about a year or so he never even spoke. Punk's got it, and seemingly ALL from his tremendous mic ability. Angle has it, and somehow, some of Angle's charisma is BECAUSE of his in-ring ability. It's undefineable.

 

[lowandmighty]

The main reason apart from that charisma makes for a more entertaining character and makes more money, to me is a couple of things:

Wrestling or "sports entertainment" as they call it now is as much as a soap opera as well as an athletic performance.

You could have someone who was an expert in every kind of combat there is and that would be great but if that person was so boring that they couldn't even give interviews or be able to recognise high spots in the ring and interact properly in segments that involved talking then the story could not move along and come to a satisfying or clear conclusion.

As fans we have to have some kind of an emotional or empathetical connection to the performer. We cant just do chains of moves ourselves (well I can't) so its just not that interesting if thats all we see.

Even Kane when he didn't talk still had a heap of charisma and we could connect with him through his back story.

You need to know a wrestlers agenda in order to be for or against. More importantly if a wrestler has no charisma and is just a grappling machine then they can't get the crowd going like in a Rock match. Dean Malenko for example was a great wrestler and he did have charisma so don't get me wrong but he didn't have enough to make any serious fans or money by his own name. He was the man of "1000" holds, we just don't have time to see 1000 holds basically.

Theres a good example directly underneath this comment. He's not the youngest or the best player anymore but they still put him on center court just because of his charisma and its something he had long before he was ever a champion of anything.