OO Column: Crashing the Boards (Pro Wrestling News, Analysis, and Commentary... WWE, WWF, WCW, ECW, The Rock, Brock Lesnar, Triple H, Rob Van Dam, Hulk Hogan, Undertaker, Trish Stratus, Lita, Stacy Keibler, Divas, RAW, SmackDown, WrestleMania

CRASHING THE BOARDS: SPOTLIGHT
Point/Counterpoint: Arguing the
"David Arquette Principle"
May 2, 2003

The Title is the Story
by Tony Kowalski

To paraphrase, Vince Russo once referred to the titles in professional wrestling as meaningless props. It gives me great satisfaction to be given this forum to refute that sanctimonious prick.

The WWE purports to exhibit "Sports Entertainment." We are all familiar with the "entertainment" aspect of their shows. We laud and lambaste the storylines week in and week out at the water coolers and message boards that we cohabitate with other wrestling fans. But sometimes we forget about the "sports" part of that equation. Since wrestling is scripted, it ranks slightly above boxing and slightly below synchronized swimming as a "sport."

But anything remotely qualified as a "sport," scripted or otherwise, implies competition. Competition implies a goal that the competitors are striving to achieve. The titles are that goal. Are they props? Definitely. Are they meaningless? Absolutely not. The titles should not be considered secondary compared to the stories in a wrestling ring. On the contrary, the titles are the ultimate driving force behind any story that unfolds in a wrestling ring, and should be given recognition as such.

The reason this comes up is the recent role of the Raw brand title. Since the returns of the Rock and Steve Austin and the arrival of Goldberg, Triple H and his title seem hard pressed to get mentioned in the second hour of the program. Professional wrestling may be a soap opera for men, but to allow the title and the chase for it to be pushed to the wayside in the way it has in recent months takes luster away from the belt and those involved in the chase.

The Rock and Steve Austin have a long standing issue that they want to settle? Fine. But do it before the championship of their brand is settled. Goldberg wants to earn his stripes by demolishing jobbers? Cool. But do it before the champ gets run out of Canada. By making the title picture a curtain jerk for these men and their issues, it makes it seem as though the Rock, Austin and Goldberg are bigger than the title. If a wrestler is big enough to appear that way, then he should be fighting for the title. To do otherwise makes the champion appear weak and his challengers appear weaker.

When the WWE is trying to establish Booker T as a main event presence, it doesn't do him any favors to have him chasing a title that the Rock and Goldberg don't care about enough to even think of. When the WWE is trying to legitimize a title that it handed to Triple H, it doesn't do Triple H or the title any good when Goldberg doesn't appear to be aware of them. These guys appear to be saying "I have bigger fish than the title to fry." Then, when they go off and "fry" the Hurricane and Christian, we are left to deduce that those two are "bigger fish" than the title.

Huh?

The title is supposed to represent the reason every wrestler got into the business. It is the peak of the mountain that each man is trying to climb. But what's the point of trying to climb that mountain when certain individuals seem to be spending the majority of their time fooling around on some different, higher mountain? Why not climb the other mountain instead? If Goldberg is being represented as "the man" on Raw and gets featured in the main event more often than the champ, Triple H, then why would anyone believably want to fight Triple H? Wouldn't it be more prestigious to beat the guy who is seen as the best rather than the guy who might have a belt? Also, if the belt is meaningless, why would Triple H want it?

On top of that, if wrestlers aren't fighting each other to gain position to ultimately attain the title, then why are they fighting? Sure, two guys can find some esoteric reason to come into conflict with one another. They can then play out that conflict in amazingly entertaining ways. But when that particular conflict is resolved, where do they go? What have they ultimately accomplished other than the temporary superiority of one over the other? Are we to expect them to find some new and even more unique reason to fight someone else?

To find new stories that explain conflicts causes two problems. The first is that pretty much every story has been done in some way shape or form. To try to be new and unique will again lead to necrophilia in the wrestling world. The second is that wrestling is meant to be enjoyed on a very simplistic level. To have the stories drive the wrestling world would require constantly new and innovative plots to keep from doing the same thing over and over again or confusing the fans. But the title is a simplistic and widely accepted motivational force that can never be overused or misunderstood. Even the most casual fan can understand that wrestlers want to be champion, and that is why they are fighting.

Without the title, wrestling and its stories would be like sketch comedy; entertaining but with no real sense of continuity to tie things together from show to show. The title hunt is what drives the men into the conflicts that tell great stories. It is the unifying force around which the wrestling world revolves. If you look closely, most feuds can be traced to the desire to be champion. The Rock and Austin had their conflict based in their title matches of years past. Goldberg wants to earn his stripes so that he can viably challenge for the title. The Dudleys were acting as hired guns for Chief Morley so that they could get reinstated and fight for the tag gold. Since the title is what drives these great and entertaining stories, it shouldn't be given second billing to them. It obviously has meaning. Without it, wrestling is just a bunch of guys fighting with no continual rhyme or reason behind it. We might as well be watching "Barfights: LIVE".

I wonder if anyone has pitched that idea to FOX.

Stories Make the Title
by Eoghann Irving

Vince Russo's comments caused quite an upset at the time, and rightly so. That said, there is more than a grain of truth in his comment. Given the nature of wrestling, I think we can all agree that the Title Belts are props. The issue is what meaning those props actually have.

Wrestling is modeled after various sports, but perhaps boxing most of all. Boxing has a number of titles, including more than one world title — a situation that might sound rather similar to the current WWE setup. Those titles clearly are at the pinnacle of the Boxing industry, for the simple reason that you will get paid more, if nothing else. They have a long and well-documented history that also adds to their prestige.

Logic then dictates that the same should be true for wrestling, yes? No. While wrestling is modeled after sport, when all is said and done it's scripted entertainment with the results chosen to produce the greatest interest. It is a form of entertainment that has a high fan turnover. The vast majority of current wrestling fans have little sense of the sport's history.

On top of that with the various mergers, shifts, removals and weird twists of fate that tend to occur in the wrestling world the actual title histories are pretty murky. Is the World Heavyweight Belt, which HHH currently holds, to be considered the WCW belt or not? Nobody really knows. Does the newly returned IC belt carry the legacy of the old belt or should it be considered a new start? Nobody really knows that either.

Nor can money be a logical reason for wrestlers wanting the belt. We know roughly how the pay system works in the WWE. It's connected to both your place in the show and how popular the WWE thought you were when they made the contract. Holding the belt itself has nothing to do with it.

So all of the obvious reasons to make the title belts important are thrown right out the window. What does that leave? Just one thing: stories. We are long past the days of kayfabe. Everyone knows what wrestling is. We know its fake, and we are happy to play along. It is the same willing suspension of disbelief that we apply when watching a movie.

We know that wrestlers do not really need the belt in the way other athletes might, but if they give us a story to explain why wrestlers want that belt, we will go along with it. We just need them to give us a reason. The better the reason, the more we will like it and the more emphasis our minds will put on the title.

Now when I say a story, it does not have to involve ass cream or running over dogs. It could be just as simple as someone wanting to earn respect, and being the titleholder would give him that respect. Sometimes stories can be very simple. However, without the story, there is no emotion. Why should I even care who carries the belt if they themselves show no real emotion about it?

Now logically, having established a title, you would want it to be one of the pre-eminent goals of your wrestlers. Why else bother to have a title? However, realistically, you cannot have all your wrestler's pushing for the title all the time. So, you put them in other storylines. You have to do something with them after all.

Does this weaken the title's position in fans minds? Only if those other storylines are more interesting than the title. Tony mentions the recent Rock/Austin and Rock/Goldberg feuds. They did indeed take time away from the title matches, and they probably did devalue the title a bit. But not because they were given top billing: because they were more entertaining, plain and simple.

There are really only two things that stick in people's minds a week after a show. The bad stuff and the good stuff. Everything else just fades. Booker/HHH was not a bad storyline, but it was not exactly compelling either. Rock/Austin on the other hand built up wonderfully. Is it any surprise that that is the one we remember? They could have had Rock/Austin on first each Raw and at WrestleMania, and it would still have looked bigger than HHH/Booker.

For another example of how bad storylines devalue a title, let's look at the returning IC belt. Why did it go away? Because it meant nothing. It had become a thoroughly meaningless bit of metal. We all know what it was supposed to do "build up the new wrestlers before they were ready for a title run... blah... blah... blah." But it was not. It was just an excuse for a match every week. It changed hands every month (if not more often), and just about every wrestler on the roster seemed to have won it at one point.

By taking it away for a good length of time and then bringing it back (in a storyline, you notice) the title has already regained some worth. Well, perhaps not the great title it once was; at least it's not the "jobber of the week" title anymore.

Everything in wrestling is about the stories. They give us a reason to cheer or boo the wrestlers. They give us a reason to keep watching (well, they are supposed to), and they give us reasons why things are or are not important. Without good stories, the titles are nothing. With them, they are everything.

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