Wrestling techniques and competitive practices

Wrestling

Perhaps even in the days of the true Greco-Roman wrestling the event walked the line between sports and entertainment. Professional wrestling is known by those that both love or hate it as merely an entertainment. Certainly an amount of strength and talent is necessary to participate, but the outcomes of the event and the events themselves are highly theatrical, scripted and staged. In fact it has been called be some a "parody of sport" (Twitchell 235)

Making the true connotative nature of sport a moot point in this genre. However that does not diminish the popularity and attention that professional wrestling receives worldwide. Perhaps it is more akin to watching an action/adventure movie then a sport, but its appeal is certainly undeniable.

Professional wrestling has smashed its way into American popular culture. Surveys show the magnitude of its appeal as ratings and revenues have risen to unexpected heights…Although the appeal of professional wrestling is not limited to any one demographic audience, reports show its strong appeal to adolescent viewers. According to year-end 2002-2003 Nielsen ratings, on average, 483,000 children ages 2 through 11 watch Raw and 822,000 watch Smackdown every week. The numbers are even larger for children 9 through 14, with an average of 627,000 weekly for Raw and 847,000 for Smackdown. (Tamborini et al. 202)

Looking at Wrestling from a historical epic standpoint wrestling is compared to the jousting events and perhaps event the Roman coliseum's circuses as a spectator sport or high entertainment. "In a sense, professional wrestling, one of the central cartoons of television, is a bizarre variation on the medieval tournament with its own pomp and circumstance." (Twitchell 250)

Regarding Roland Barthes "Wrestling" essay the author certainly analyzes the event from many angles. Comparing it to boxing and concluding that three is no comparison. He states that, "One can bet on the outcome of a boxing-match: with wrestling, it would make no sense." (Barthes 15)

In other words, wrestling is a sum of spectacles, of which no single one is a function: each moment imposes the total knowledge of a passion which raised erect and alone, without ever extending to the crowning moment of a result. (Barthes 16)

However, Barthes also believes that the spectacle is somewhat akin to mythology and literary classics as it relates to the archetypal framework of good and evil, crime vs. justice and so on. There is a somehow a grander scale of mythological proportions present here than may at first meet the eye of the spectator. Barthes believes that what really gets onlookers going is the cheating and less than heroic behavior such as grabbing the ropes to accomplish something that their talent cannot, even though grabbing the ropes is allowed by the rules. Al the referee comes into question and is an archetype himself. The referees in some sense represents the blindness of justice is the worst way as participants cheat behind his back, weakening the "goodguy opponent" the audience sees the truth and become outraged by it as justice, the referee, has a blind eye. (Dart) Some aspects of wrestling entertainment have remained unchanged for decades. Barthes states that wrestling shows were a "spectacle of excess." Yet they also deal with issues of suffering, defeat and justice. (Barthes 19)

But what of the performers/athletes, what is their own feeling about it and their participation in it? In the Movie, "The Wrestler" this question is certainly addressed. Darren Aronofsky's film gives the audience a more in depth look into the participants of the sport. The main character is Randy "the Ram" Robinson, as portrayed by Mickey Rourke. He was a sensation in the 80's, which he often dwells both musically and stylistically, but in the present is now a "has been" in most respects. He has no money and his health is fading, the only gigs he can find is local school auditoriums holding bush league matches, all completely staged of course, but, at least he is allowed to win these. We also see some young participants in the local towns as well of other, like the Ram, going to wrestling conventions and making money signing autographs and hamming it up for the fans.

The grand expanse of good and evil is certainly exaggerated in the wrestling arena, and just as entertaining writers do they create stereotypical characters that can represent the extreme of both of these, God and the Devil and so on throughout time have represented the internal moral dilemma between our own internal conflict of good and evil. "the Ram" is essentially one of the god guys and is constantly defending himself from the forces of evil. In the microcosm of his world, however, he has fallen far from grace it would seem.