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« | Home | »

The Lost Generation

By Sheldon Goldberg | January 15, 2006

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By Sheldon Goldberg

I was reading a recent interview with Ricky Steamboat from the Monday Night Mayhem internet radio show where he was talking about the role of road agents in the WWE and he brought up a point worth taking note of.

“He (Steamboat) went back to when he wrestled, and how 90% of the locker rooms were seasoned, well-worked wrestlers — with only a few rookies. He says the percentage now is 70% of people still learning in the business, while the other 30% is the Triple H’s, Shawn Michaels’, Chris Benoit’s, and Kurt Angle’s.”

There is a lost generation of veterans and veteran values in professional wrestling and it is a big reason why the business is in the state that it’s in.

As the old territory system disappeared, the number of “seasoned, well-worked wrestlers” as Steamboat calls them, began to dwindle. For a fair period of time in the 80’s and early 90’s, there were a considerable number of veterans making their way through the independent circuits across the country.

Here in the Northeast (America), there were few companies that ran what could truly be called “promotions,” meaning consistent shows with a consistent roster using continuous angles to get from one event to the next. The independent promoters, who were just running shows here and there, as opposed to running a regular office, only booked one or two name talents on top, leaving the rest of the card to local trainees. This formula worked like a charm in this area for close to 10 years.

In 2006, the seasoned veteran is an altogether different animal. It used to be that a “veteran” was someone who worked for a major office (or offices) for a significant length of time. Today, a “veteran” is any guy who ever had a WWE dark match or was used as an “enhancement talent” (a/k/a job guy).

Wrestling schools, which are plentiful in the Northeast, continue to turn out wrestlers who can easily find work in the multitude of promotions that spring up around them. The quality of this talent varies widely. In New England, we have something that I like to call “the Kowalski effect.” After retiring from active wrestling in 1977, the legendary Walter “Killer” Kowalski opened up the first pro wrestling school in the Boston area that was widely publicized. Some of Kowalski’s students went on to be great stars such as Big John Studd, Perry Saturn, John Kronus, A-Train, Chyna, and of course, Triple H. Others had very good careers in the territory era, such as Misty Blue Simms, Sean O’Reilly, “Bruiser” Jeff Costa, Bryan Walsh and others. Some graduates, seeing the money Kowalski made on his students, started schools of their own that in turn put out a crop of local talent. Then some of those students started their own schools and what you end up with is three and more generations removed from the original. Not to say that the spin-off schools all turned out lesser performers, because there are many bright talents that can be pointed to who would disprove that. Still, the standards have loosened as entry into pro wrestling becomes more and more accessible.

The more I promote wrestling on a regional level, the more convinced I am that the answers to wrestling’s current and future problems lie in the philosophies of its past. Fortunately, we have lots of tape from the tail end of the territorial era and now books by its top stars and personalities to give us insight into that time. Let’s hope that more promoters and wrestlers find that lost generation of veterans and values, because professional wrestling in this country (and Japan, too, but that’s a subject for another column) could still be a thriving business for more than just the WWE.

Sheldon Goldberg is the owner of New England Championship Wrestling.

Topics: All Topics, Pro-Wrestling, Sheldon Goldberg, TNA, WWE | 1 Comment » | Permalink | Trackback |

One Response to “The Lost Generation”

  1. Tradition Rules says:

    What a great write up. I had actually missed the author’s name at the top of the article, but as I read on, I had a feeling it was Sheldon Goldberg,…and I was right.

    Even Vince DicMahon has admitted that killing off the territories was a mistake and that he should have offered them a working agreement with the then “WWF” back in the 1980s and early 1990s. Be it a “membership” like the NWA at the time, or as a developmental/working relationship deal.

    Another part of the problem is the fact that so many (but not all) fans are de-sensitized to what they see and DON’T expect to see a story told in the ring. The just expect to see random, out off place and over used high spots w/ no selling, or seeing someone get a chair broken over someone’s head. And for get about submissions,…the fans just have no concept of how much actual technique is required for that. They find it boring, but even worse, they have no desire to understand the technique or even how a submission hold hurts.

    But that is all for another great write up. Back to the main topic at hand…

    Enhancement talent was a necessary thing in the past, but one thing that DID need to evolve was for the really good enhancement talent to at least move up to mid-card status with an occational big win, but they would still be able to elevate young up and coming talent as well. NITRO, RAW, SMACKDOWN and even (for a short time) THUNDER would have never enjoyed the level of success (if any) if we had seen “jobbers” get their ass kicked for 90% of the shows. This is why Japan has been such a big market for pro wrestling, because they didn’t feature beatings on TV week after week. So, as to where some things would have been better left as they were some thing NEEDED to grow and evolve.

    T.R!

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