John Cena and JBL car stunt

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Dot Net Reader Blog: "Realism in Pro Wrestling Today" with thoughts on the John Cena and JBL car stunt and its similarities to other popular angles that weren't panned by critics
Jul 26, 2008 - 11:43 AM

The following blog was posted by Boris Milman (a/k/a Glide316) in the Dot Net Members' blog area. For $5 per month, Dot Net Members have the ability to write their own blogs, which can be read and commented on by others. For $5 membership, check out the Dot Net Members' Signup Page.

The John Cena and JBL car angle from Raw last week, which was immediately bashed all over the internet, made me think about a problem I've had with wrestling commentary on the internet for years. The bulk of the criticism of the angle was that the situation was not realistic and thus ruined the viewer's suspension of disbelief.

People pointed out the presence of cameramen in all the right places as well as the fact that Cena escaped unscathed from a situation that would have killed any real person. People also argued that in real life, other fighters, like boxers or MMA fighters, would never try to kill one another before the big fight.

While I do acknowledge that the angle was silly and not the best work the WWE has done in recent weeks, I strongly disagree with the specific criticisms mentioned above as well as with the general idea that the problem with the angle was its lack of realism. As a general rule, I believe that complaints about realism in pro wrestling are almost never valid and I will try to explain why in this post.

The problem is somewhat difficult to articulate but I will try my best. Those people who follow the wrestling business closely on the internet know better than anyone that what they see on television every week is not real in any way. They can enjoy a good match or an entertaining promo but they never really suspend their disbelief in any real way while watching. Thus, their perspective is completely different from that of the more casual fans who constitute the vast majority of WWE's television, pay-per-view and live audience.

Having been to a few WWE shows in the New York and Boston areas over the past couple of years, I can definitively state that most of the fans who show up to the live shows have no trouble suspending their disbelief for even the most preposterously illogical angles, provided the angles involve characters that the audience has a strong connection to and that those characters act in ways that is at least somewhat consistent with the way they have been portrayed on television.

The internet fans and journalists argue that the Cena and JBL angle was bad for business because it ruined most fans' suspension of disbelief. In criticizing angles for their lack of realism, the internet wrestling fans and media are speaking for an audience that cares about realism in professional wrestling, and that audience doesn't really exist. Those people who follow the business closely already understand that everything they see is fake. There is no point to making wrestling more realistic to please them, because they will never see it as real anyway.

In this particular case, the "smart" fans know full well that JBL isn't trying to kill John Cena but they are criticizing the WWE for presenting the angle because they claim it ruins the viewing experience for the vast majority of fans. These fans theoretically get angry at the nonsense on their television screens and refuse to buy PPVs or watch Raw or go to live shows.

However, in reality those casual fans don't even think about wrestling deeply enough to give much thought to the question of whether JBL is trying to kill Cena. To them, Cena and JBL are in the middle of a feud, and within the context of that feud, the two of them should do all kinds of terrible things to one another. I have a friend who watches wrestling casually and his response to the angle on Raw was that it was "cheesy but pretty cool." He wasn't complaining that Cena should be dead or that JBL was not arrested for attempted murder because that would "make sense."

He also did not complain about the cameras being present to record the whole scene. The reason for this is that he has no reason to worry about these silly details and there is no point for the "smart" fans and journalists to worry on his behalf. Even the most naive fan knows that if everything goes according to plan, no one will get hurt during a wrestling show and that everything they see is entertainment.

The main point I am trying to make is that criticizing professional wrestling in 2008 for its lack of realism is intellectually lazy. Literally every single second of what is on WWE or TNA television today could easily be broken down and shown not to make sense on some level.

So why do people even bother to waste their time looking at professional wrestling and judging as if it is presenting the same product as UFC? No one who watches a UFC show needs to be convinced that what they are seeing is real; that is taken for granted. The reverse is true for pro wrestling, where everyone already knows that what they are seeing is fake and willingly and consciously accept this basic and undisguised fact.

Professional wrestling in 2008 simply cannot be presented as a real sport; no one over the age of six will accept it. In fact, I don't even think that it is possible, or desirable, to present it in the same way as a TV show like "Lost" or "24," where the viewer is asked to accept a preposterous premise but is then rewarded by stories that usually make perfect internal sense if the initial premise is accepted.

Professional wrestling rarely provides the tremendous detail work of a great movie or TV show but that's okay. The great appeal of wrestling for me is that it is completely unlike anything else on television. It is not a sport in any meaningful way and it is not really similar to any regular television show. Good professional wrestling does not depend solely on great wrestling, great promos or even great booking, though all these things are important.

More than anything else, successful wrestling is built on entertaining, larger-than-life characters interacting with one another. If you have great characters who people enjoy watching, it doesn't matter if their storylines "make sense" or if their matches "look like fights." This is true for both internet and casual fans. If internet fans and critics get behind a certain character or a certain storyline because it is entertaining, they will never criticize it for being unrealistic.

As long as fans are entertained by what they see, they will not bother to think about whether or not what they see makes sense. To demonstrate this point, I want to use the phenomenal Vickie Guerrero and Edge wedding storyline from last Friday's Smackdown.

Edge and Vickie got married and the whole show was billed as their wedding reception. From a logical standpoint, the whole show, from beginning to end, was ridiculous. First, Edge randomly decides to insult Finlay and Hornswoggle, who he has no issues with whatsoever, for being cheaters, and decides to screw them by booking Zach Ryder and Curt Hawkins, who are in their tuxedos and obviously not ready to wrestle, against Finlay and Horny with himself as the referee.

Why? Who cares. Then, you get a random match between the Hardys, who apparently have to fight each other just because Vicky tells them to. Why can't Matt and Jeff just say screw you to Vicky and Edge, turn around, and walk out of the ring, resulting in a double countout? Finally, you get the completely preposterous reveal of Triple H showing the video of Edge and the wedding planner making out.

The only way that part of the story makes sense is if we believe that Triple H has psychic powers. He somehow knew exactly where Edge's hotel room is, knew that Edge liked the wedding planner and knew the exact moment when the two of them would hook up. He also managed to somehow get a video camera into the room which happened to catch the whole affair perfectly.

The whole angle was not realistic in the slightest and yet I have yet to see anyone criticize it for its lack of realism. Why? Because it was funny, entertaining and generally awesome. No one cares whether it makes sense or not because we were all too busy being entertained by Edge and Vickie's great characters to care whether or not what we are seeing would ever happen in the real world. The key is for the story to generally make sense in the context of Vicky and Edge's characters and, from that perspective, the wedding succeeded.

In the case of JBL trying to run over Cena, I would be willing to bet that if one took a poll of most of the people watching Raw, a majority would say that it was pretty entertaining. To them, it was a cartoonish but exciting development in the Cena vs. JBL feud. On the other hand, most internet fans, myself included, did not like it because it was just another in a long line of unoriginal WWE stunts, designed to hype a feud we were not particularly interested in to begin with.

If Cena and JBL were Hulk Hogan and The Rock circa 2002, there would have been a lot less complaining about the lack of realism. In fact, if my memory serves me right Hogan and Rock were involved in an almost identical angle in the build up to their match at Wrestlemania XVIII and fan interest in that match was not hurt at all by the lack of realism in the build-up.

Ultimately, the point is not for a storyline to be realistic in a real-life sense, but for it to fit the characters within the context of the very strange world of professional wrestling, where we are happily willing to enjoy preposterous things like Hulk Hogan "hulking up," Steve Austin attacking an injured Vince McMahon in a hospital with a bed pan, or 140 pound Floyd Mayweather winning a fight against the 450 pound Big Show.

So here's my advice to those internet fans and writers who are obsessed with realism in professional wrestling: relax, chill out and enjoy the show. If you can't enjoy it because the silliness bothers you too much, find something else to watch because WWE will never be the NFL or UFC, nor will it be "Lost" or "House" or "24."

As far as WWE is concerned, they should not be worried about whether or not the storylines make sense but about whether or not compelling characters are being developed and fans are being entertained.

Source: http://www.prowrestling.net