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/wrestling /guests /Pitbull3 |
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/wrestling /guests /Pitbull3 |
| Guest Columns | Pitbull 3 |
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HOW ECW COULD FAIL I am a huge ECW fan. I go way back with them, even to the point where I remember them when they were using the old ECW logo - Eastern Championship Wrestling. My screen name comes from the former ECW champs, the Pitbulls. My being from Texas makes it all the more surreal. On my first trip to Philly, I located the ECW Arena. On my second trip, I went to November to Remember ‘96. I hope they succeed, and prosper like I always dreamed they would. I used to be happy if I could get a clear reception on my satellite dish when 1:30 a.m. on a Thursday night/Friday morning rolled around. And now, they are going national. Boy, I am proud of ECW, the workers, and Paul Heyman. But there is one fear I have about ECW that could hold them down. If there was any one aspect about the product that would be able to cause it to reach a glass ceiling and then stagnate is the over abundance of "shoots." There are those that argue that the violence or the cursing or the general attitude of the fans could keep it down, but I disagree. Those are the things that could propel ECW to much higher places than ever before. If edited properly, those are aspects of the product that could make people want to buy the PPVs or go to the house shows to see. But back to my original point. In wrestling, there are two types of "shoots," the ones that are done for a story-line (shoot-ish works) and shoots done just to do it. In ECW, the perfect example of the first kind of shoot was actually the first step in ECW's storied history. It was the night that Shane Douglas threw down and denounced the NWA World Title Belt. I'll go into that more in a moment, but the other kind of shoot is (basically) Taz's entire character. Shane Douglas was, at the time, a great wrestler and a greatly underappreciated interview. He won the NWA Title and proceeded to give a long lineage of the belt, listing great men, great wrestlers, who had held that belt in its long history. As he drew nearer to the present, he got to some of the current greats, and eventually stopped having left off one name, one name above all : Ric Flair. He paused for a second, mentioned Flair, and then threw the belt down shouting, "And they can all kiss my ass!" What happened next is the foundation for what ECW has become. Their mission statement of "Join the Revolution," sparked from this. Douglas began shooting on Flair, and on the NWA. He proclaimed the ECW Title a world title and distanced ECW from every other wrestling promotion out there. And to this day, ECW is still all about not being the other guys. They are better and more hardcore and more of a complete package, etc. This, I think, is where the problem lies. Over the years, ECW has built some beautiful things on that foundation. Foremost in my mind is the Guerrero-Malenko feud from 1995. (-note : it is hard to believe that they have been in WCW for 4 years) But, with all the great things that ECW has, it seems that too often, they go back and say, "Look at how great our foundation is." Instead of focusing on their product, sometimes they focus too much on how they are not the other guys, and sometimes, they just focus too much on what is not even part of the show. Taz is a character who thinks that wrestling is real. The foil for this is the fact that it isn't, just that he does not want to live by that rule since he is such a bad ass. And that is fine. Taz is a character who does not think that he would lose in a fight to Duane Johnson or Steve Williams or Terry Bollea. Maybe Pete (Taz) can whip them if they got in a real fight. But can Taz beat Hogan or The Rock or Austin? In ECW, probably. Anywhere else in the world, maybe (even probably) not. But Taz thinks he can because he is real, and everyone else is fake. There is an inherent problem to this kind of wrestling product. Exactly that it is fake. There is a huge majority of fans out there that truly believe that what they see is what there is. And there is probably a segment of people that think that the Undertaker isn't really an undead creature that can throw lightening. But then again, neither is his brother, Kane. Along the same lines are the Dudley Boys. I like that team. I like Buh Buh as the crazy heel, even more than I liked the idiot Buh Buh that stuttered. On one hand, you have Joey Styles saying that the "insult the crowd" bit is "over the line," "not part of the show," and generally a function of the people, not the characters. But at the same time, it is not the people who are doing these things, but the character Buh Buh Ray and his half-brother D-Von. And any minute now, their other half-brother is going to come out and fight them and defend the honor of the crowd (or something like that). It is that blurring of the lines that confuses people. This is entertainment. And, if looked at as such, wrestling needs more than just pure athleticism to remain popular. We have to all believe, or suspend our belief in reality and get involved with the characters and identify with them. If we really love the character and care about what happens to them, then we can appreciate what they are doing and the stories that go along with that. But, if we look at someone like Chris Benoit and we love what he can do in the ring, but pay no attention to what his character is (partly because the writer's don't know) then we don't pay attention to what the stories he is involved in are. And (as I did before the current story) we lose interest. I read CRZ and see him barely even touch on a great match because he has no interest in the two guys fighting. And I skim past it without a thought for the same reason. It is sad because these guys are out there putting on a great athletic display. The thing that sets wrestling apart from every other sports-related event is drama. Sure, this year's NHL Finals had tons of drama. The Stars (yeah Dallas!) squeezed by the Sabres in overtime in the last game. And the Spurs (yeah San Antonio!) Hit a last minute shot to go up on the Knicks with a few remaining moments for New York to get in one last shot only to fall short. Those are dramatic moments. The goal of wrestling is to create that feeling of drama many times during a two-hour period every week. There is hype and build-up and maybe even some suspense in mainstream sports, but there is often little drama. So, lets take the example of a soap opera. If Erica Kane (from All My Children) is cheating one of the other characters, I think it would really kill the moment for someone to say that Susan Lucci (the actress who plays Erica) is such a bad woman and taking this Erica Kane thing way too far by cheating this other actor. Now, while I am sure this would intrigue many, it would turn off a large portion of the audience. Above all, this is what I fear ECW will do. They will continue this crusade of how much better they are compared to WCW and the WWF, and they will do so under a banner of reality. I think there is an audience for that, just not one that is as vast as the average fan who would watch them otherwise. I hope they realize this and cut these parts out. The quality of the company is more than enough to make them a viable contender for the number 2 promotion, and possibly (down the road) a contender for the top spot in North America. Pitbull 3 freelance Mail the Author |
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