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| I love you, D-Bry, but you're wrong here Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Your job isn't to be a good wrestler, it is to be a good entertainer. If fans wanted to see good wrestling they'd watch amateur wrestling.— Angry Wrestling Vet (@AngryWrestleVet) April 8, 2013
I don’t consider [WWE] wrestling. I’ve done wrestling. Everywhere. And just by being a good wrestler you can become popular. But not here. It’s more important to be entertaining than it is to be a great wrestler. It’s fascinating to me. Some things just stick. Why it happens, I have no idea. -- Daniel BryanI don't know who's behind that Angry Wrestling Vet account, but they seem to have their intentions in the right place most of the time. Everyone who reads this blog or who has read it even for a little bit knows that I think the world Daniel Bryan. However, pardon me, but I think both are full of shit here. People come to see good wrestling when they go to a wrestling show. What WWE puts out is wrestling. To pretend otherwise is to shortchange the artform.
There has been so much parsing over the term wrestling in wrestling, thanks to one Vince McMahon, who somehow is afraid of the thing that brought him to the dance. I understand not wanting to be associated with a word that seems dirty to public at large, even if I think it's fucking stupid to distance oneself from a reputation you helped create. However, the people who do watch RAW, Impact, ROH TV, local televised wrestling shows, DVDs want to be entertained, yes, but they want to be entertained by wrestling.
Wrestling is entertainment, sure. Like any other form of art or sport, we watch in order to keep ourselves occupied with happy distractions, something that has been made eminently clear in the wake of yesterday's awful bombing attacks in Boston. Wrestlers are entertainers, sure. But what the fuck does that actually mean? Is the title entertainer exclusive alone to people who put on spandex (or in John Cena's case, jorts) to play fight in front of crowds of varying size? No. Singers, actors, jugglers, Cirque du Soleil performers, stand-up comedians, and basically anyone else in the business of entertaining is an entertainer. It is literally the vaguest, broadest appellation that a wrestler can use for him or herself.
The emphasis on entertainment not only denies what the wrestlers are, but it denies the truth of what brings people into the building. The name on the marquee says wrestling, so of course people want to go in and see wrestling. It's not amateur wrestling, of course. If people wanted to see that, they'd go to their high school and college gyms to watch meets. No one is going to confuse Ricky Steamboat vs. Randy Savage at WrestleMania III for Aleksandr Karelin vs. Rulon Gardner, but there are scads of people who will regard it as a great wrestling match between two great wrestlers. People who just want to be "entertained" have a billion options in front of them. Those who choose to go to a WWE/TNA/ROH/Chikara/Whatever show choose to go to see wrestling. There's a reason why the biggest stars are who they are. Hulk Hogan is a good wrestler, not in the sense that some among the meta-fan community think. However, he wasn't just a star because he was a good orator. The same goes for The Rock, Ric Flair, Steve Austin, and anyone else who drew a goddamn penny in history. Sorry, @AngryWrestleVet, your analogy is awful, and you should feel bad for using it.
Bryan's denial of what WWE is is equally disheartening because it plays on the rift between WWE and every other wrestling company. I know he kinda has to say it because he's probably feeling pressure from above him, but at the same time, it makes me sad to see people agree with him. The bread and butter of any WWE show is still going to be what goes on in the ring. Just because they have more of a variety feel to them doesn't strip their soul of the wrestling they were built upon. Yes, I've seen Bryan grow as an overall performer. Yes, his Dr. Shelby skits were amazing and saved many a RAW at the end of last year. Yes, he's right in that you need to do more than just be a great "wrestler" (or worker to many of you out there) to make it in WWE.
But to frame the argument as "wrestling" being distilled "technical" style and entertainment as everything else to me is such an awful, awful premise. I've long said that professional wrestling is the greatest artform in the entire world because it literally can be anything you want it to be and draws from EVERY form of entertainment that is available, and it manifests in and around a ring. To marginalize it by compartmentalizing it into wrestling and entertainment boxes is bad. To misname it by saying it's completely entertainment while flat out saying people who want "good wrestling" should go to an amateur meet is even worse. Everyone, in and out of the business, needs to stop running from the label. Wrestling is wrestling, and that's not a bad thing, I promise.