In the opening moments of both of the WWE’s weekly flagship programs, there’s a montage of great figures in pro-wrestling history, from Andre the Giant and Hulk Hogan to Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock, and it successfully emphasizes what a force pro wrestling has been in pop culture for a long time. Although wrestlers like John Cena and Kane and former WWE stars like Austin and The Rock are pursuing acting careers to varying degrees of success, the most news the sports/entertainment hybrid makes in the mainstream these days is for tragedy. The death of wrestler Chris Benoit following his killing of his wife and son became a media circus briefly in June, and reports of former wrestlers dying at young ages have been fairly common in recent years.
Not that you would know any of this tuning in to the five hours of weekly WWE programming, which continue the generally nutty and campy mix of athleticism and cartoonish storytelling that has been pro wrestling’s stock in trade for years. In a way, that’s understandable, since what we’re watching is essentially fiction, but the players put far more of their physical (and, it appears, mental) health on the line for this peculiar art than traditional actors do, and yet all of that is downplayed in favor of soap opera-style plotting and admittedly impressive stunt work.
Given their frequency and length, the three weekly shows—Raw (USA, Mondays, 9 p.m.), ECW (Sci Fi, Tuesdays, 10 p.m.) and Smackdown (The CW, Fridays, 8 p.m.)—function a lot like daytime soaps, with big chunks of time given over to recapping what’s happened the previous day and previewing what’s happening soon (in the case of the week of shows I watched, the upcoming Summerslam pay-per-view). Actual plot development happens at a rather glacial pace. The big current storyline in the WWE—chairman Vince McMahon trying to find his illegitimate son, a WWE wrestler—is a soap-opera staple. Since the WWE tours around the country, performing for packed arenas and broadcasting their shows live, what they do is a bit like putting on The Young and the Restless for screaming fans.
In that sense, it’s hard not to have respect for the performers, whose acting skills vary wildly but all of whom must stay in character while executing complex stunts. The wrestling is more like something you’d see performed at an amusement park than it is like a real sport, but that doesn’t make it any less difficult or impressive.
The big, lumbering giants in the tradition of Andre aren’t usually all that impressive, but the more wiry, agile wrestlers, while still bulky, can move in surprising and astounding ways. The matches themselves are often repetitive, though, with the difficulty of pleasing both connoisseurs of athleticism and fans hungry for outrageous plot twists readily apparent.
The WWE also has a history of gobbling up its rivals (ECW is an in-name-only revival of a former competitor), but its one actual bit of competition, TNA Impact (Spike TV, Thursdays, 9 p.m.), is practically indistinguishable from the WWE itself. Its plotting is just as inane, if a little more fast-paced, and other than the smaller crowds and six-sided ring, there’s nothing to set it apart from its competition. Without much in the way of innovation, both Impact and the WWE point toward a fairly anachronistic and borderline irrelevant future for pro wrestling on TV.