The World of Professional Wrestling

It’s Show Business

To be real with you guys, I’m a huge wrestling fan.

No, I’m not that kid from school who doesn’t know that professional wrestling is scripted.

Well in turn, the only reason I love it so much is because I know it is scripted.

Things like the promos are ‘scripted’, story lines are ‘written’, the show is ‘planned’ and all the moves are ‘rehearsed’ between wrestlers before they come to the ring to actually ‘wrestle’.

It is similar to watching a movie, you know the actors are acting and everything is planned but you always want to see how it ends.

While some of you might shrug off saying that you watch WWE TV !?

To them, I would say yes sometimes, but I’m more of an AEW, NJPW, Lucha Underground, Ring Of Honour (ROH) kind of guy.

what’s the difference you ask, let us begin!

Case for Wrestling

Do you know that former US President, Donald Trump is in the WWE Hall of Fame?

OR

Hollywood actor, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson was an active WWE wrestler before his acting career took off and has a family lineage of Sports entertainers.

OR

Did you ever read in class that Abraham Lincoln was a professional wrestler in his youth?

Do you even know that WWE has 100+ million subscribers on YouTube and is the only 3rd channel from The United States to be in the Top 10 most subscribed channels in the world?

Last year, WWE merged with the UFC to form the TKO Group Holdings with a total market valuation of over $21.4 billion at that time!

AEW ALL IN: London 2023 sold 81,035 tickets at Wembley Stadium, the largest paid crowd in wrestling history, and had an actual turnstile attendance of 72,265 for a single show.

The market for wrestling is crazy and I can go on & on about how great the business is from Television rights, TV shows, Merchandise, Pay-Per-Views (PPVs), Live Events, Live Appearances, Brand deals, etc.

Those who were a bit skeptical at first can begin to notice that it is a legitimate business that is on par and at most times performs better in some aspects than most ‘real’ sports leagues of the world, think of NBA, NFL, IPL, English Premier League, etc.

Understanding the Business

The wrestling business is quite similar to how our movies, soaps, and operas are structured.

You have guys who are liked by the audience called Faces in the wrestling business, someone like John Cena and You have guys who are disliked by the crowd called Heels, an example being Randy Orton during his initial years of the Legend Killer gimmick.

All of the story lines are written so that the Faces (good guys) keep losing to Heels (bad guys) until at last they finally beat them and avenge their previous losses.

That’s the entire business.

Now other things are involved like Body Building, Acting (Selling), Being Entertaining, Cutting great Promos, Remembering specific move sequences during matches (spots), having great matches (5-star matches), Doing high flying / Hardcore spots, Bleeding, Getting Heat (making the audience hate you), Kayfabe, etc.

But those are things what wrestlers do daily.

Now, There are different styles of wrestling like ‘High Flying Lucha Libre’ style popular in Mexico, ‘Strong Style’ wrestling popular in Japan, ‘Hardcore Blood and Violence’ popular in promotions like GCW, etc.

Tough Business to Get into and Tough Business to stay in

Behind the glamour of Wrestlemanias and All-Ins, it is easier to forget that not all wrestlers get to see themselves perform at the biggest stage.

Many give in to drug abuse, steroids, painkillers, depressants, etc. Although the industry has improved significantly in recent decades, it is important to remember that these Wrestlers are not unionized yet.

Wrestling Companies often end up taking advantage of these wrestlers and keep a majority of those profits to themselves and many of these wrestlers die early due to years of abuse inflicted on their bodies due to wrestling.

Although Wrestling is often presented as a scripted show, everything from falling inside the 4-sided ring (taking a bump) to taking high-flying risks on a glass top hurts and they get hurt & bleed for real.

Much more than a scripted sports

Wrestling is best when it is presented as something larger than life. Something which the late Great Muhammad Ali learned early on in his career.

Muhammad Ali was often labeled as a “big-mouth and a bragger”, someone who would talk down his opponents and destroy them with his poetry which he often did so well on national television.

He writes in his autobiography ‘The Greatest: My Own Story’, how he was inspired to trash talk by professional wrestler “Gorgeous George” Wagner after he saw George’s talking ability attract huge crowds to events.

What News Media & Politicians borrowed from Pro-wrestling

If you see the news media and politicians today, you see how they rattle the audience by talking about topics that would make you angry, anxious, and disturbed.

The reason is that once they have rattled the audience, people usually will stick around to see the end, lose their sense of common sense & reasoning and they’ll become invested in their story either in terms of time or money.

Even when there is no end in sight, People will give up their time to find a good ending based on their prejudices.

“…it doesn’t matter if people love you or hate you, as long as they feel strongly one way or the other (business will be good!). The worst place you can be is in the middle.”

― Eric Bischoff, former WCW Executive President and Author of Book ‘Controversy Creates Cash’

Best in the Business

Here are the Top 5 wrestlers in the World right now:

1. The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega (The Elite)
2. “The Phenomenal” AJ Styles
3. “Switchblade” Jay White
4. “The Rainmaker” Kazuchika Okada
5. Will Ospreay

A List of must watch matches for a Noobie

• AJ Styles vs Samoa Joe vs Christopher Daniels (Turning Point 2009)
• Kenny Omega & Adam Page Vs. Young Bucks (AEW Revolution 2020)
• FTR vs. Jay White & Juice Robinson (AEW Collision)
• Orange Cassidy Vs Pac (Revolution 2020)
• Orange Cassidy vs Will Ospreay (Forbidden Door 2022)
• AJ Styles vs Shinsuke Nakamura (Wrestle Kingdom 10)
• Christian Cage vs AJ Styles vs Booker T (Bound For Glory 2008)
• AJ Styles Vs Roman Reigns (Extreme Rules 2016)
• Brock Lesner Vs AJ Styles (Survivor Series 2017)