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MMA and Professional Wrestling are not the same
By Zach Arnold | February 5, 2006
By Zach Arnold
If you are not a pro-wrestling fan, then this post is probably not for you. If you’re a pro-wrestling fan who follows MMA, stick with me here.
Jack Encarnacao (who has written articles for The Boston Globe) wrote a piece titled How MMA’s popularity is already changing pro wrestling. Far be it from me to write a rebuttal to his article, but after reading it I couldn’t resist.
Quotes from Jack’s article will be in italics, with my response underneath each one.
When Edge locked John Cena in a guillotine choke this past Monday night on RAW, it was interesting to hear Joey Styles and Jerry Lawler struggle with the call.
“Front face lock and body scissors,” Styles said, undoubtedly knowing in the back of his mind that it was a guillotine choke.
“What that does is cut off all the oxygen to your brain . . . Better watch the choke, watch out here,” Lawler said, hinting that the ref should break the hold if it becomes a choke.
Then, Coach shouted “Choke him out!”
I thought choking was supposed to be illegal in pro wrestling?
For starters, using a sleeper hold has been done since the days of Johnny Weaver. And if you were a kid who grew up on WWF programming during the 80s, you certainly remember Gorilla Monsoon & Jesse Ventura pontificating about Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake and how his sleeper hold was designed to cut the oxygen to the brain to put opponents to sleep. Second, we’ve heard the front face lock called many times in pro-wrestling. Hell, Tony Schiavone in WCW used to call it a front chancery just to change the call up.
In pro-wrestling’s past, acknowledging sleeper holds as “chokes” was not done if the guy using the hold was a babyface. However, it was always done with a *wink* *wink* in mind. Everyone who ever tried to emulate a sleeperhold on their brother or sister in the backyard certainly understood that it was a choke.
Up and coming wrestlers are changing the American working style by incorporating mixed martial arts technique into their matches. But the promotions they work for seem a bit puzzled about how to regard these techniques. Many of the holds, for decades, have never had a devastating effect in American wrestling rings. Now, they’re finishers. Well, sometimes.
On Smackdown, Tazz refers to Randy Orton’s sleeper hold as a rear naked choke. It’s never won Orton a match, and Orton’s opponent bounces back after sitting in the hold for minutes. In TNA, Samoa Joe applies a rear naked choke, and his opponents tap immediately.
You can go back further than the modern day to look at the ties of martial arts in wrestling. You look at Taz(z) using the katahajime (choke sleeper) as a finisher. There’s no question that American wrestlers are marks for MMA, but that’s nothing new nor is it a revelation. Many American wrestlers before matches practice on submissions and other drills. In Japan, Liger and the Jr. Heavyweights have been notorious on being MMA marks and doing drills before matches.
There is a legitimate question about how the promotions address it. Obviously TNA has no problem with it. WWE, on the other hand, does business the way they want to. Undertaker is an MMA mark for sure. That stated, there’s not much of a cross-over fan base between WWE and UFC. That’s because the promoters have loudly drawn a line in the sand between what’s real and what’s fake or entertainment.
What’s an American pro wrestling fan to believe?
They believe what they want to believe, and they either buy into what a promoter tells them or not. Just because a wrestler uses a cool new “shoot” move doesn’t mean that the fans at home are automatically thinking about ultimate fighting.
This may seem like a quaint question, but there are new factors in play. The UFC is on free television now (as is Pride), and after more than 10 years of UFCs, we now know what works and what doesn’t in a real fight. We know what happens when a guy gets hit in the jaw without putting his hands up. He goes down, and stays down. We know what happens when a guy is caught in a chokehold. He passes out. And he doesn’t rally back to his feet when the crowd starts to cheer him on, or the second his hand is about to drop to the canvas for a third time.
WWE could brush aside the growing visibility of shoot fighting in this country and be just fine. A miniscule percentage of WWE’s fans think what they’re watching is real. But to suggest that realism doesn’t matter to American pro wrestling fans is wrong.
People who watch pro-wrestling appreciate it for what it is, just like MMA fans do the same with their sport. It’s apples and oranges. Fans can recognize the difference. If WWE is entertaining with good booking, then fans of WWE’s product will watch it for that – not because there’s an influx or an integration of “shoot” moves.
There’s a larger (and unaddressed) point to be made here. The point is that there are certain people who have made it a mission to try to sell people that MMA and wrestling are the same. They’ll mention MMA guys in the same breath as wrestlers and then be shocked (shocked!) that pro-wrestling fans reject that notion. Emelianenko Fedor and Shawn Michaels are not in the same line of work. Masato and Kurt Angle do not perform the same tasks in a ring. There’s a generation of people in their 20s, some in their young 30s who have been misled or somehow told that there’s a natural cross-over between the two industries. It’s not necessarily the case at all.
On the Puroresu Power site, I made the slogan very clear over there. I tell people that the site is a bridge between MMA and pro-wrestling. There’s a reason for that. They’re entirely different entities. Now, I see some crossover in one regard, which is that younger fans are more willing to watch both MMA and pro-wrestling. However, make no mistake, there will never be marketplace confusion about the two industries in North America like there is in Japan.
Go to Japanese fans and talk to them about pro-wrestling and MMA. They view MMA as a broader version of the fight game. Pro-wrestling is just a discipline or a field of the whole scene. Same as boxing. All of those sports are lumped into one in Japan. The lines have always been blurred in Japan. They will never be in America.
As a decades-long wrestling fan, I have mastered suspension of disbelief. But as an MMA fan watching pro wrestling in 2006, I find myself more and more cognizant that suspension of disbelief is what I’m engaged in. And that makes it harder. Suspending disbelief should be easy. If it requires effort, somebody isn’t doing their job.
Perhaps no American promotion makes suspension of disbelief easier than Ring of Honor. ROH attracts a much smaller crowd than WWE, granted, but you’d be hard pressed to find an American more engrossed in what’s going on in the ring. TNA is somewhere in between ROH and WWE, but it knows that it’s key to carving a niche nationally is the more realistic X-Division style.
I’ll keep my thoughts short and sweet – read this.
We’ve been through this in Japan. Mixed martial arts has lapped past pro wrestling in popularity there, and pro wrestling has struggled to catch up. Shoot fights dismantled the myth that, when push came to shove, the elite pro wrestlers were the toughest guys on the planet. So now we’ve got Kazayuki Fujita dozing through New Japan because he’s one of the few successful Japanese shoot fighters that will get into the pro wrestling ring.
Fans en masse have not really taken to Fujita putting the stomp on their pro wrestlers, constantly reminding them of the difference between work and shoot. Fans seem to prefer (or, at least, buy tickets for) the traditional Pro Wrestling NOAH shows. NOAH is the hottest wrestling company in Japan. But it is made up of a fanbase who already know what they want to see in wrestling. They will go away some day. What about potential fans who don’t yet know what they want to see? Is it a given that they will pick action and drama over realism?
First off, martial arts have always been a big integral part of the Japanese culture. Much longer than they have ever have been in America. There’s a reason why MMA and other forms of martial arts (karate, kickboxing, etc.) are much more meaningful in Japanese society than they are in American society.
The fans who paid to watch Fujita in Japan wanted to see Fujita the wrestler. They did not pay to see Fujita the MMA machine. They respect the fact that he tried to integate some MMA moves into his matches, but the reason the fans didn’t buy into him is because the promotion booked him in a certain manner. They booked him as a machine, which was fine. But he was an uncharismatic machine, a machine that often looked confused in the wrestling ring. This often led to bad matches (or what the Japanese fans call “salty” because it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth). His match with Kawada in the G-1 2005 semi-finals was deplorable, but it had great heat and the fans bought it into it. When Chono went over on Fujita, the place erupted. The fans didn’t buy into Fujita because he was never a character other than an MMA gimmick. It takes a whole lot more than just knowing MMA moves to be a draw in Japan.
The Japanese fans haven’t given up on pro-wrestling. They still love the industry. They just don’t like what’s being given to them now. It was Antonio Inoki who lost faith in New Japan as a pro-wrestling company and wanted to get into MMA because it was where the money was at. It was the vehicle that he could use to put himself over. It was the way he could personally make money for himself and get on television. Marketing his image trumped everything else.
In regards to NOAH being the one solid player, it’s fine for the time being. If New Japan collapses or All Japan folds, it seems (based on recent news reports) that NOAH is ready to operate a second league. NOAH is the one company that has believed in the true value of pro-wrestling since day one, and that is why they are the most consistent product. Maybe not the most entertaining, but the most consistent at what they do. You know what you are getting from them, and at a time where there is absolutely no stability in the wrestling business in Japan, that’s why NOAH works (for what they are).
Most of the NOAH fans are not MMA fans. Let’s make that clear. NOAH fans are pro-wrestling fans. They may like to watch PRIDE, but it’s apples and oranges to them. Same with PRIDE fans about pro-wrestling. That stated, Takada was the foundation for PRIDE. It was the pro-wrestling base that helped PRIDE become what it did under KRS and then DSE (with Momose and Morishita). To ignore pro-wrestling’s role in the fight game in Japan would be ignorant.
It must be said that there are certain limitations comparing Japan to America, but I think if UFC takes off in America to the level Pride has in Japan, it would take a similar toll on WWE. You’ve probably heard it before: pro wrestling in America is always 5-10 years behind Japan.
I don’t think shoot fighting is going to destroy pro wrestling. There will always be a market for manipulated drama. But shoot fighting is going to change pro wrestling, sooner than you might think and perhaps to the point where it’ll be hard to tell the difference. Right now, though, we’re in the first stages of a transition that’s manifested by tongue-tied announcers who can’t call a choke a choke.
There are vast limitations in regard to comparing Japan to America. It all starts with the financing and the history of the two countries in terms of how business operates. Japan used to be the gold standard in the 90s. It used to be what the future was. Japan is no longer in that role. In fact, I would say in the last 5 years, it’s been Japan that’s been trying to take cues from WWE and other companies to try to figure out what needs to be done.
I don’t want to sound mean here, but Jack doesn’t sound like he’s avidly kept up with the situation with Japan’s pro-wrestling industry lately.
The major difference with UFC & PRIDE is that UFC billed itself as real fighting and real sport in an era in which Vince McMahon has openly admitted pro-wrestling is fake and scripted. DSE built it’s operations in 1996-1997 under the base of pro-wrestling with Takada vs. Rickson as the main feud. The two MMA companies chose vastly different paths and that is why the direction of those two will always remain different.
There’s a reason why DSE paid $4-5 million USD for Naoya Ogawa (marketed as a PRO-WRESTLER) vs. Hidehiko Yoshida as the main event of their Man Festival 3 show on 12/31/05 at Saitama Super Arena. Because there is still a certain level of respect for pro-wrestling in Japan amongst the fight fans. In America, the crossover appeal of pro-wrestling to MMA fans is, realistically, minimal. (See: Sherdog readers talking about Kurt Angle.)
Topics: All Topics, Japan, MMA, Pro-Wrestling, UFC, Zach Arnold | 6 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Zach:
I think you’re missing the point a bit here. I stopped watching wrestling on a regular basis about 4 years ago. Equally because I prefered WCW to WWF/E and that watching MMA led me to find wrestling to be silly.
I happened to catch the Edge v Cena this past Monday. I turned on the TV right after the introductions. Cena used a Judo toss on Edge and the guillotine was pure MMA. I immediatley thought to myself that WWE has been influenced by MMA and is trying to make the product more believable. You are right on about Martial Arts influencing Wrestling in the past and that it’s not brand new. I think we may be about to see a style of wrestling that utilizes chokes, throws and joint manipulations commonly seen in MMA w/ power moves such as suplexes and slams as finishes. The new style may shy away from such standards as a fighter in a choke having his arm dropped three times by the ref and instead require a fighter to manuever out of the choke by turning into it or attacking the arm below the throat or use a rope break. Wrestling will likely start to resemble old Lou Thesz matches and the brand of wrestling seen in the 1950’s and 60’s with an emphasis on holds and reversals. Modern MMA in many ways is what wrestling of the 1920’s was when people really believed wrestling was real.
Pro Wrestling I’m sure will always invlove bizarre angles and blood feuds. That’s part of its appeal. The ongoing drama and months long engagements between personalities are what keep fans tuned in. But within that framework there is room for a more realistic style of fighting that resembles MMA. If you’re a fan of Martial Arts movies you can see the same thing happening in the latest work from Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung called “Saat Po Long” and Tony Jaa’s “Tom Yum Goon”. Saat Po Long is your typical fare. A mob boss hires an assassin to kill detectives who are closing in on him. But the fighting involves Judo, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Tae Kwon Do and is realistic in nature.
The real point here is that the general public, many of whom do not fight and do not train in the Martial Arts are learing what works in fights from MMA. That in turn is educating them to see many of the moves in Wrestling and Martial Arts movies to be “make beleive” and that breaks the suspension of disbelief that Wrestling and Martial Arts movies require the audience to have. In turn Wrestling & Movies are turning to a more realistic fighting style to keep the audience engrossed in the product.
Kudos. That was well written. I couldn’t have written that rebuttal. Good job Roadblock.
Personally I think Zach’s analysis is pretty spot on. Some wrestlers may be influenced by MMA and incorporate some MMA holds in their matches, but I highly doubt that American wrestling will start to resemble old Lou Thesz matches while WWE dominates the industry. The McMahons only know one way of promoting wrestling, their way, which is flashy sports entertainment and that’s not going to change. Vince’s brand of wrestling, whether it was Hogan hulking up or Shawn Michaels tuning up the band or The Rock doing the People’s elbow or John Cena doing the five knuckle shuffle always needed a lot of suspension of disbelief and that isn’t going to change.
I’d also add that it’s pretty obvious that Jack Encarnacao’s views are heavily influenced by Terry Funk’s views about the future of American wrestling in his autobiography, which was in my opinion the weakest part of the book. Vince McMahon, successful MMA promoter, please.
Great article 🙂
Mr. Roadblock, isn’t the type of match you described shoot-style wrestling as seen in promotions like the early RINGS, later UWF, UWF-i, PWFG, U-Style, etc. (don’t really count the early UWF or Inoki/Maeda ‘free fight’ matches being ‘real’ shoot style, just the original derivation of the style that it grew into) as it was more Pro Wrestling trying to simulate real fighting?
To be honest, I don’t see the interest in such contests actually carrying over to the United States, mainly because the general Wrestling population has been trained in the last 20 or so years towards a ‘Go go go!’ attitude where working over a toe hold for 2-3 minutes will get chants of ‘Boring! boring!’ even if there is particularly good selling of the attack by the victim or even failed counter attempts. And although a particularly amazing mat wizard like Volk Han may get some crowd heat/attention in the US as he could quickly transition holds and do some decent striking, I doubt most fans in the US would care for the matwork taking up the majority of the match and would expect stand up, stiff matches mainly (just like many UFC fans chant ‘Boring!’ when the fight is on the ground too long/nothing happens for a short while).
Even some of the more technically oriented matches in recent WWE history (such as the Benoit/Regal match on Velocity (?)) had a decent amount of spotfu/filler placed in to get crowd heat/interest. And considering that trying to go against the crowd intentionally often is a kiss of death in the Wrestling world, I doubt we’ll see matches like Volk Han-Kiyoshi Tamura & Tsuyoshi Kohsaka-Kiyoshi Tamura anytime soon in the United States. It’s a niche area, simply put, just like Garbage or all-aerial.
[…] A few days ago, I wrote a rebuttal to a Jack Encarnacao article about the similarities (or lack thereof) between the MMA & pro-wrestling industries. Well, Jack is back… with more. So am I. […]