OO Column: The Obtuse Angle by Jeb Lund (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, S

THE OBTUSE ANGLE
A Matter of Enduring
July 22, 2004

by Jeb Tennyson Lund
OnlineOnslaught.com/CitizenScholar.net

I'd be lying if I told you that I wasn't stoked, pumped, geeked and generally frothing at the mouth at the prospect of next Monday's Iron Man match between Chris Benoit and Triple H. All the same, I don't like it. Not the match itself, mind you. No, that should be great. Rather, it bugs me that the sudden appearance of an Iron Man match seems like a natural thing. Now, I'm no wrestling prude. I don't think that Iron Man matches and Hells in Cells (what is the plural of "Hell in a Cell," anyway?) should be kept under lock, key and retina scan for use only once per decade. But somehow wrestling's impulse to one-up itself has led to a general expectation of gimmickry, so much so that even the most unique matches have an air of inevitability to them, when they don't have an air of place-keeping. Part of that is the fault of overuse. Part of that is the fault of one-upmanship storytelling.
Hell in a Cell may be the biggest marquee offender in eroding the importance of "big gimmick matches" and the biggest victim of over- (and mis-) use. While many Cell matches have been great fun to watch, many have also made the Cell very unnecessary.
Ideally, the Cell should be a kind of ultimate test — not of technical ability, but of fortitude, pain, and passion. If you go into it as a man who is not known for handling extreme pain, then you should compensate for that by going in as a man with an extreme thirst for vengeance or destruction: in short, you should have a mental desire or goal that trumps your susceptibility to being hurt. Really, something pretty special should be happening to you, as a person, if you're not willing to have much happen to your person. Sadly, many Cell matches have been glorified no-DQ matches with a big cage around them. Lesnar v. Undertaker, Jericho v. Triple H, Nash v. Triple H and Michaels v. Triple H did so little with the Cell structure and concept that there was no reason to make them Hell in a Cell matches. Apart from "raking the forehead on the chain-link fencing" spots, all the participants did was bleed at each other. They were showcases for blood and no disqualification, which essentially made them indistinguishable from I Quit matches, Last Man Standing matches, Cage Matches or a generic No-DQ match. The only substantive difference is that I Quit and Last Man Standing matches have fairly unique endings. Cell matches only need a normal pinfall: they just need it with lots of gore. Hell in a Cell can be singled out for critique because of its ubiquity, but the thing is, it isn't really the problem. The real problem is the climate that makes it seem like the necessary or natural thing to do. That climate is the expectation that a more conventional match decides nothing (at least insofar as the main event is concerned), or that no one would watch such a match without a cage or a gimmick surrounding it. The fact is that most of the time, any first match outcome isn't decisive; often the second match's outcome isn't decisive either. Moreover, the invalidity of these match's outcomes sometimes has nothing to do with bad refereeing, or cheating competitors or unwanted interference. Sometimes, someone wins fair and square, but that simply won't do. And sometimes, that's fine; that makes sense. Wrestlers are stubborn, and feuds happen. The cleanest match often means diddly squat to a wronged hero or villain. What doesn't make sense, however, is the assumption that no rematch is worth watching without dozens of bells and whistles. Hence, Hell in a Cell, Cage, Submission, Last Man Standing, I Quit, Falls Count Anywhere, Eat This Haddock and Burn a Hat matches. Yet, all too often, a rematch is oversold by attaching needless gimmickry to it. "The Rematch" becomes "The Cage Match." And, because maybe one wrestler is no good at Cage matches, he can demand a re-rematch, in something he is good at. Thus we have more gimmickry, and less interest in the people involved. To cite a sort-of related example, does anyone else remember the early and mid-1990s, when television witnessed an epidemic of "very special" episodes? Nearly every commercial featured, "Wednesday, on a very special Blossom" or Roseanne, 90210, Party of Five or ER. Then those types of episodes would feature pregnancy, birth, miscarriage, marriage, divorce, separation, engagement, AIDS, any form of cancer, someone being "outed," someone dying, a robbery, a rape, a murder, etc. Two problems cropped up as a result. One, shows without any of the above-mentioned acts started to seem dull. That's why ER now has episodes where a man nearly burns while handcuffed to a bed, while a husband nearly dies from a puncture wound, even though he got that wound because he didn't get on the helicopter that spun out of control and fell off the top of the building onto the Chief of Medicine (who had his arm cut off by a helicopter blade during the previous season), whose death spared a new doctor's career, because the Chief of Medicine caught him smoking a joint earlier. (And, yes, before you ask, that all happening in one episode last season.) Because shows like that started happening, any regular show that focused on character or good writing and conventional stories implicitly became boring. That sort of idea fed into problem number two: when a show wasn't billed as a very special show, it no longer seemed like something to bother watching. Viewers unconsciously questioned why it wasn't a very special show. Honestly, if it isn't "very special," then what is it? Plodding and mundane? About what you expected? The same-old same-old? An insipid and unoriginal piece of schlock? The fact is that wrestling is beset by the same sorts of qualifications as network sit-coms and dramas. Perhaps more. Consider: • If it doesn't happen on TV, it didn't happen. • If it's a non-title match, it probably doesn't matter. • If it's a title match on TV, it probably doesn't matter, will not end cleanly, or will only lead to something else which might matter later. • If it's the first one-on-one clash on pay-per-view, it ultimately doesn't matter, since it probably will not be the match that settles the issue. • If the pay-per-view match involves the World (or WWE) Title and two comparable talents, the match could be the first of two, three, four or five confrontations. Given all those qualifications, it's hard for WWE writers and performers to avoid the stigma that lots of matches are not "very special." It's also very hard for an audience to avoid understanding that and spending their money accordingly. For instance, when we knew SummerSlam was coming up — and that Eugene would likely interfere in Triple H and Benoit's Vengeance match — a lot of us might have considered saving our money for the "clean" match, or the "very special" match at the bigger pay-per-view, rather than throw it away on the first Benoit v. Triple H match. These expectations and patterns contribute to the depreciation of the conventional match and the special match. The first time two equals clash for the belt becomes almost mundane, since we know they will clash again. Worse, the "special" match that follows also becomes mundane, because we know a special match must follow. How can it be special when it's a certainty? Triple H v. Shawn Michaels was a textbook negative example of this. Each match promised finality, but I doubt any veteran wrestling fan expected it. Each match escalated gimmickry and the profusion of blood for a "final" result that most fans still consider suspect and less than final. When the two had met for a Two-out-of-Three Falls match, an Elimination Chamber match and a Last Man Standing match, the notion that a Hell in a Cell would linger down the road didn't seem far-fetched and may instead have been expected. Any conventional one-on-one clash they had was obviously going to end in disqualification or inconsequence, because we all knew the "big match" would come at a pay-per-view, or the next pay-per-view, or the next. Now we have Triple H v. Benoit. They have had two Triple Threat matches and a one-on-one match with interference. Next week, they will have an Iron Man match. This is a match that tests technical skill and endurance. It is a special match, used for the fourth time in eight years. Yet, in a way, it isn't as special as it could be. On one hand, it isn't special because we knew that they had to have some kind of "special" match. The writers and management simply chose this one. They could have chosen anything. Fine. One the other hand, we also know that something else "special" will happen at SummerSlam. Maybe something "special" will happen after that. How "special" are any of those matches, then? As said, the Iron Man match promises to be excellent in terms of wrestling skill. It's unique because it's on live TV. Nonetheless, some of the drama of it is undercut because it's not the final word. Another shoe (one of an infinite supply) will drop at the upcoming pay-per-view. It's this sort of expectation that dulls or minimizes the import of matches, rather than heightening them. In a way, a lot of us cannot muster as much interest in a plain ol' one-on-one title match anymore, because we know that it will be inconclusive or repeated down the road. We know that the special match will follow. And that makes a normal confrontation less special — just as the certainty that a unique type of match will eventually be booked also makes that "unique" match less unique. How extraordinary can the pre-ordained be? I have no problem with the Iron Man match as a type of match for Benoit v. Triple H. The fact is that it could have been a Hell in a Cell, a Last Man Standing or an I Quit match — it could have been a lot of things — and I still would have enjoyed watching the match. What disappoints me though, is that this match, whatever its style, is largely flash: a bright but almost instantly receding light. The Iron Man may be a trial of endurance (and the memory of the match may endure for decades), but its import will be snuffed the moment talk returns to SummerSlam. Because, ultimately, SummerSlam will offer the decisive victory to one person or the other, or even someone else. It will offer something else that's special or unique, some new qualification or challenge. Because Summerslam will be "decisive" (until the next pay-per-view), it will make the Iron Man match less decisive. In doing so, it will lessen the Iron Man match's majesty and its patina of excellence — if rampant interference and overbooking doesn't do that first. The Iron Man match's full importance lasts only until the next pay-per-view. After that, it lives on, in fractional importance, in J.R.'s references, in video packages, DVDs and nostalgia. This is how episodic television erodes its own worth, by spiking interest in the must-see week after week, only to re-write the importance and consequences week after week. If there aren't just a few things that matter now and forever, then next week doesn't matter as much because there will be a week after it. And the week after next doesn't matter because there is another week, a month and even years after it. Because wrestling is impermanence, because glory is so easily manipulated into farce, there is no consistency or guarantee for today's story or characters. Funnily enough, if WWE wanted to promote a truly unique and must-see confrontation, they would book next week's match as having a guarantee of no interference, no time limit and no foreign objects: just two men wrestling, in a ring, for as long as it takes for one of them to win cleanly. (They could call it a "Match Match.") If you think about it, that's the rarest match of all, these days, and it's still a type of match that Triple H and a champion Benoit haven't had. WWE can't promote that, though. If they sold a battle as "a normal, honest and real wrestling match," they'd have a hard time explaining what they show for all the other weeks of the year. Because all those other very special matches wouldn't seem so special if we suddenly admitted that they often become the rule — the inevitable — rather than the exceptional. As wonderful as it will be to watch this Iron Man match, it's a shame that the WWE climate of one-upmanship makes spectacle like this almost seem expected.

E-MAIL JEB LUND
BROWSE JEB'S ARCHIVE

Jeb Tennyson Lund is the Pope of Online Onslaught. If you want to read his sadly less wrestling-oriented columns, go to www.citizenscholar.net.

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