Disclaimer: I've been a wrestling fan for most of the last 40 years. Just so you know.
Professional Wrestling is a unique form of entertainment. Loosely based upon an ancient sport in the same way that a Jumbo is based on a kite, Pro Wrestling is part soap-opera, part morality-play, part stunt-show and these days, part self-aware pastiche of itself.
This does mean that Wrestling has it's own set of "rules" and tropes that make sense only within context.
Or to put it another way: Stuff happens in pro-Wrestling that only makes sense if you accept that it's wrestling and roll with it. Here's a few.
1. Employers have no control whatsoever over their employees.
Most other places one or more employees running riot, refusing to play the game and literally kicking their employers in the balls would be met with a p45 and doubling the security force. Wrestling? Nope.
In what will become a definite pattern, the only way for say, Vince McMahon, to deal with one of his workforce playing up is to have one of his other workers (try) to beat him up. This rarely works.
2. Rules? What rules?
Winning a match by twatting your opponent with a chair is bad but for some reason, doing it in front of 20,000 people and a TV audience of millions has no repercussions whatsoever. Cricket will spend 15 minutes going over camera footage to see if a toe was an inch over a chalk-line but the WWE will show the footage of (insert babyface here) getting coldcocked by a rival manager and go "Meh. what can you do." *Shrug*
Of course the babyface might get a chance to face the villain again, in which case exactly the same thing will happen again.
3. The Good, The Bad and the Good Again.
In theory babyfaces are the heroic good guys while heels are cheating, dastardly villains. The weird part is, when a good guy turns bad, they will wrestle in the exact same way, using the exact same moves and usually wearing the exact same outfit. They might insult the audience a bit in promos but other than that, what's the actual difference? And anyway, wrestlers dance back and forth across the line so often that you need a crib sheet to remember if he's supposed to be cheered or not.
Don't even get me started on "babyfaces" that get booed or "Heels" that are adored by the crowd.
4. Sucker Punches Do More Damage.
Picture the scene. Our hero is walking down the corridor backstage when out of nowhere a big, nasty bastard lunges out of the shadows and starts kicking his head in. Three minutes later our boy is lying flat on his back and not moving. He may even be in no fit state to wrestle tonight. The Horror.
Except... the exact same two people had a match last week where they beat the living shit out of each other: punches, kicks, hitting each other with bits of wood, crashing through tables, piledrivers and suplexes and powerbombs, oh my.
It took thirty frigging minutes of violence and the bad guy still couldn't put the good guy away. How come he's now out cold after a rabbit punch and boot in the ribs?
5. You wait right there so I can hurt you some more.
Because modern wrestling is so dependent on flashy moves these days, it can look a bit odd when one man is down and stunned but instead of, you know pinning his ass, the other wrestler decides to climb on the top rope, pose a bit then hit their flippy, spinny dive-y thing.
Extra silly points if the prone opponent recovers and gets out of the way.
Double extra-silly points if they visibly shuffle into position.
Any spot which involves a table or any kind of prop is so much worse because it means the target has to lie there looking vaguely silly while hoping the flyboy doesn't slip off the top rope.
6. All Of You wait right there so I can hurt you some more.
CM Punk recently pointed out that one of today's common "spots" - the one where a cluster of wrestlers stand there waiting for somebody else to dive out of the ring onto them - looks a bit silly. I really can't argue with this. It's almost like they're hanging around to catch him or something...
7. Everything gets settled in the ring. Everything.
Courts?..Police?.. Child protection?...HR? Hah! Pro Wrestling has no need of such things. The only way to settle any kind of dispute, up to and including attempted murder, is for two men to step inside the squared circle and beat each other up using the standard moves.
Impact wrestling did a storyline last year where one girl got stabbed in the throat and the fallout from this was... a wrestling match. Because apparently getting pinned is such a fitting punishment for fucking killing somebody.
Not even the weirdest part of that whole saga.
That's all I've got for now but I bet there's others that come to mind. What great examples of pro Wrestling Logic have you seen lately?
That's All folks.
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