by Rocky Swift
OnlineOnslaught.com/CitizenScholar.net 

As we anchor ourselves to the sofa and stare fixedly at basic cable on Monday and Thursday nights, we occasionally attract derision about our obsession from passerby. You've heard it all before:

• "Why's that Mexican doing the flippy thing? Is that supposed to hurt?"
• "Why do they run back when they get tossed into the ropes? They're just running into more punishment."
• "Aren't you supposed to be at work right now? Do you even have a job anymore?"

The cruel comments from these individuals may make you want to pour Tabasco sauce into their urethra. But as for me, I feel pity more than anything else. These poor fools are so cynical, they are incapable of trust. Aside from blaspheming the sacred sport, they are also likely to imply that President Bush stole the election and that there's no real cheese in Doritos.
           
And yet, one must admit that their verbal barbs do sometimes cause doubt to spring forth in our minds. One should not fear these questions, for it is the freedom of open minds that has led to the greatest human achievements, such as the Great Wall of China, Microsoft Windows and Pokémon.
           
As long as we remain in our faith that good-hearted wrestling promoters would never lie to us, we may feel free to ponder the mysteriously aberrant laws of physics within the wrestling ring (and occasionally the surrounding locker rooms, parking lots and concession stands).
           
To that end, this article will attempt to address and explain some of the physical phenomena in wrestling that don't otherwise jive with the laws that govern the rest of nature.
 

Irish Whip           
One of the most common moves in wrestling is also one of its most counterintuitive. In an Irish whip, one wrestler (A) grabs the left hand of his opponent (B) and slings him into one of the four sets of ring ropes that encircle the mat. As B comes near the ropes, he turns around 180 degrees and hits the ropes with his back and then runs back at approximately the same speed towards wrestler A, who usually is prepared to wallop him but good.
           
The first question one might ask is why A runs at all. Why does he not fall down or just stop on the middle of the ring? This problem is easily addressed by Newton's Law that states that an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by another force. In the case of the Irish whip, the other force is the ring ropes, which redirect the momentum of the initial sling. Wrestler B is helpless to resist these laws of physics. If not acted upon by wrestler A, B would bounce around for quite a while until a combination of wind resistance and drag from the mat would eventually bring him to a stop.
           
A second, more difficult question is why wrestler B does a turn to run back in the opposite direction. One might expect him to run into the ropes and be slung backwards onto his back. To understand why this doesn't happen we have to understand the force of gravity. Along with the strong and weak atomic force and electromagnetivity, gravity is one of the four forces at work in the universe. All massive bodies are drawn together by the force of gravity, and wrestlers are no exception.
           
Though the Earth and Moon are drawn together by gravity, the moon's orbital momentum keeps it from crashing into the Earth. However, the Earth's gravitational force ensures that the same side of the moon is always facing us. Similarly, a wrestler may exert momentum on his opponent, but their bodies' inherent attraction for each other will ensure that they will almost always be facing each other. A further question may be why gravity forces wrestlers to face each other's fronts, i.e. why is it face to face and not ass to ass?

On this, I am not completely clear, but I believe that perhaps the nexus of a wrestlers gravitational power lies within the nose. Based on that, Hunter Hearst Helmsley may be the most attractive wrestler there is.

 
Turnbuckle Attacks           
One of the most common forms of attack in professional wrestling is when one wrestler bashes the head of his opponent into one of the ring's turnbuckles. The victim of this move almost always comes away from it with a dazed expression (except for Samoans, upon whom head attacks are futile).
           
More than one smart aleck has noted that being rammed into a padded turnbuckle seems about as painful as repeatedly head-butting a throw cushion. Those people clearly are idiots, but their observation is worth consideration.
           
What makes this attack so effective is the slingshot effect of the ring ropes attached to the turnbuckle. When the victim's head is slammed into the turnbuckle, he also gets a ricochet shot as the turnbuckle bounces back into his head.
           
And while the turnbuckle is indeed padded, this only increases the area of the total force on the victim's head, thereby increasing the degree of brain jostle. When talking about boxing, doctors frequently note that it's actually more damaging to hit someone with a gloved hand rather than a bare fist, because the greater surface area of the former transfers the concussive force to the brain, whereas the latter tends to cause only superficial damage.
           
Though more research needs to be done, it is theorized that exactly 10 head shots into the turnbuckle achieves a sort of harmonic vibration around the brain causing extreme disorientation.

 
Table Attacks
Jeff Hardy stands perched on the arena entranceway and gazes down upon his stunned opponent below. The opponent lies on a standard folding table approximately 2 1/2 feet from the ground, and Jeff Hardy stands a further 10 feet above that. Hardy gestures to the crowd then dives headfirst at his opponent, tucking his head at the last millisecond and smashing into the man's mid-section. The table instantly shatters and the two men lie in an unconscious heap on the arena's sticky floor.
           
It is a spectacular scene, but if the aim is to do maximum damage to one's opponent, the table would seem to be a hindrance towards that end, according to the laws of physics. You see, blunt physical trauma — the most common sort of punishment visited upon a pro wrestler — is the result of mass and velocity. This is true for a fist flying through the air toward an opponent's face or a body falling through space toward another prone body. In any case, the key is the speed of the blow.
           
In our example, the blunt object is Jeff Hardy's body jumping off a ladder. His body falls with the force of gravity at his opponent approximately 7 1/2 feet below him. Using the formula v2 = v02 + 2(ad), where v2 = (0)2 + 2 (32 feet/sec² X 7.5). The result is Jeff Hardy hitting his opponent at a velocity of 21.9 feet per second, or around 15 m.p.h. However, if the opponent were lying on the ground, then Hardy would have an additional 2 1/2 feet through which he could accelerate and thus transfer more force onto his opponent. In this situation, Hardy would be traveling at 25.3 feet per second or about 17.5 m.p.h.
           
Yet the anecdotal evidence given by wrestling tells us that the so-called physical "laws" are wrong. Since part of the object of professional wrestling is to do as much damage to one's opponent as possible, it simply doesn't follow that wrestlers would set up tables in order to lessen the pain inflicted on their opponent. So clearly the tables must somehow increase the receiver's resultant injuries. But how?
           
An answer may be found by looking at the properties of some modern steel alloys. Under stress, the molecules of these alloys realign into interlocking patterns making the length of steel more resistant to the direction of the stress force.
           
I suggest that a similar reaction is at work with these folding tables (shown in a resting state in Figure 1).

Their particle board construction could also react in an anti-stress alignment fashion, strengthening with each millisecond from the pressure exerted by the wrestlers' bodies until the hardness of the table is multiplied many times (see figure 2). 

But eventually, even the particle realignment strength of the table reaches its limit, and the table will shatter.
           
And there begins the second part of this masterful formula of pain. A wrestler instinctually tenses his body upon the point of impact to minimize his physical trauma. Upon the first crash with the table, his body will begin to relax, but a fraction of a second later comes another impact for which he is unprepared. Also, the broken table folds the victim's body into a V-shape, thereby concentrating the impact on one part of the person's spine instead of displacing it throughout the whole body. This works on the same principle as log splitting using a sledgehammer and wedge. The wedge redirects the blunt force of the sledgehammer to small point, at which the log breaks easily. Similarly when Hardy and his opponent smash through the table, all that force is concentrated on just a few vertebrae as upon the final impact of the arena floor.
           
Clearly, Jeff Hardy is a genius.

           
Piledrivers, DDTs and Other Head Attacks           
The center of our consciousness, our window to the world and perhaps even our actual soul all reside within the confines of our skull. So it is reasonable why wrestlers spend so much time trying to bash in each other's heads. An extraordinary number of maneuvers exist whose intention is to cause extensive trauma to the victim's head, thereby making him incapable of further aggression. Some critics mention that if these moves were done "for real" they would indeed make the victim incapable of further life.
           
Piledrivers, DDT, powerbombs, X-factors and the like are indeed quite devastating attacks, but the mystery is why they are not more so. The recipient of a piledriver tends to lie on the mat in agony or unconsciousness (that is, except for Road Warrior Hawk), but within a minute or so, he seems back to 100 percent. How can this be?
           
The answer, simply enough, is conditioning. Repeated blows to the head have made the average professional nigh invulnerable to those kinds of attacks. The natural world is full examples of extreme occipital strength. During their mating season, longhorn rams crack their heads together so hard that the noise can be heard for miles. Some types of woodpeckers bash their heads against trees at a velocity that puts pressure on their brains equal to nine times the force of gravity. Compared with that, a mere Tornado DDT onto a steel chair must be reminiscent of a gust of summer wind as it gently musses one's hair.

 
Belly Attacks           
Whenever you choose to hit someone with a weapon, it's only natural to pick an object that is dense, blunt, sharp or spiky. If you're in a room full of garden implements, your first choice of weapon probably would not be the bag of mulch.
           
Similarly, when you employ your own body as a weapon, you naturally use the parts of your body that are dense, blunt, sharp or spiky, i.e. your fists, skull, teeth or elbows. So why on earth would a combatant use his stomach — on most people, the softest and most vulnerable part of their body — to attack another person? And yet the pantheon of professional wrestling maneuvers is full of these belly attacks.
           
So far, I've relied on tried-and-true laws of physics to explain the stranger situations that take place within the squared circle, but on this one, I must venture briefly into metaphysics. Though rarely acknowledged by Western science, Eastern societies have long expounded on the existence of a life force they call "ki." Ki can be strengthened, modified or focused through intense meditation, and the locus of this energy is the stomach. The ritual suicide known as harakiri literally means "stomach cut," and the aim is for the samurai to cut out his own soul. And those Japanese can make some pretty mean electronics, so I'd trust what they say about the belly.
           
Though the average untrained combatant would probably try to attack using his fists, knees or elbows, wrestlers are trained in numerous fighting arts and know that a tightly-focused ki is a much more potent weapon. A practiced pro wrestler meditates for hours before each match focusing all his bodily energies into his special area. By game time, that special place is harder than a steel diamond! And when he slams it into his opponent, it is an indomitable force.
           
One of the most prodigious users of stomach attacks, Rob Van Dam frequently has a yin yang symbol stenciled on his tights. This no doubt amplifies the power of his ki attacks.
 

The People's Elbow
Your felled opponent is lying prone on the mat, and perhaps one more move will put him away for the victory. Dropping the point of your elbow on the man's sternum may indeed take away enough of his breath to get the 1-2-3... or will it?
           
The Rock has shown us that many a match can be won by running from one end of the ring to another before adding the final elbow drop. But one may wonder what additional effect all that running has to offer towards the final blow.
           
There are many wrestling maneuvers that have what seems to be unnecessary movement. Some top rope moves have extra forward or backward flips. Some kicks involve extra "loading up," wherein the wrestler stomps the ground for no apparent reason before attacking. The unbeliever may state that these incidents are clear evidence that wrestling is not totally on the level. They are fools! Clearly those people have never heard of a little something called Non-Euclidean Geometry.

You see, old Euclid was pretty smart when he was drawing up his old geometrical laws back in ancient Greece, but one of those laws wasn't all correct. According to Euclid, one can draw only one line to connect two points. But that's only true in the simple two dimensional world of Euclid's drawings in the sand. That all changes in the three-dimensional world of Non-Euclidean Geometry.

Imagine the distance between the two ends of a toilet paper tube. Pretty short, huh? But tearing the tube along its seam, the distance between each end doubles. Perhaps that initial line wasn't so short after all, huh? The bottom line is that in our three-dimensional world, the distance traveled between two points is extremely fluid.
           
Legendary martial artist Bruce Lee took advantage of non-Euclidean geometry with his famous "One Inch Punch." With his fist poised just an inch from his opponent's chest, Lee could deliver a punch powerful enough to send a large man flying over six feet. The trick was that Lee spiraled his body and arm towards his opponent, thereby increasing the total distance traveled by his fist, allowing it to build up tremendous force before impact.
           
Brilliant minds like the Rock and Dusty Rhodes understand how to maximize the force of their elbow strikes by preceding them with complicated movements in three-dimensional space. Sure, Dusty's "Flip, Flop and Fly" gyrations looked a little ridiculous, but the Bionic Elbow that followed was nothing to laugh at. So powerful was the Bionic Elbow that it knocked the all that godless, Communist crap out of the head of Nikita Koloff, who went on to create the Super Powers tag team with Rhodes. God bless America and Non-Euclidean Geometry!
 

Conclusion
A lot of strange things happen in the world of wrestling that stretch the bounds of believability. People may be badly-burned, mute freaks one day and partying, beer-drinking, corpse lovers the next. The weekly physics lab that takes place in the ring can spawn the sneaking snakes of doubt within our minds.
           
Doubt is not a bad thing. It protects us from all sorts of potential dangers, such as the discounted tuna salad at the Piggly Wiggly or the overly-friendly choirmaster. But the question we have to ask ourselves is what do the good folks in the wrestling world have to gain by lying to us? Sure, they may get a paltry $39.95 from thousands of us every month, but is that sum enough that they would sell their honor and good name? I don't think so. With the starting point that wrestlers and wrestling promoters are telling the truth, we have only to think through those apparent logical inconsistencies and physics aberrations. In the words of a great wrestler and philosopher, the Ultimate Warrior, "Always Believe."

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Rocky Swift is a columnist for www.CitizenScholar.net, and a teacher of English in Japan.

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