The Greatest Argument In The Business: Sports Entertainment Or Professional Wrestling

[James Steele]

I recently watched a tape of RAW, the one with the infamous "Beer Bath", which was 6 days before WrestleMania XV. I saw it and truly realized just how damn different the WWE, and the business as whole aswell is today. No match had to be longer than say 6 minutes. While the segments took 20 minutes (the beer bath took around 30-40 minutes!) Only a few matches had a winner. I know this is also because it was the final build-up to WrestleMania XV, but you could still tell a huge difference in the booking, and the overall attitude of the show.

It really sparked the great debate in my head, Sports Entertainment or Pro Wrestling? I would make a poll, but I think that this is much broader that just "A or B?" so please explain why you enjoy one over the other, or if you like a equal balance, etc.


So here is my answer to the great debate:

I personally perfer pro wrestling over sports entertainment. Especially since I became a "smark" and focused on the matches instead of the angles. I fell in love with what went on in the ring. I have become a fan of technical wrestling especially. While I can enjoy a ladder match or the spot-fests. I would rather watch Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle in an ironman match.

I have grown to appreciate what I used to switch from Nitro to RAW from. I also saw a tape of WCW Nitro: Spring Breakout 1999. I fast-forwarded through most of it, until it came to a really good PSCHOLOGICAL match. Chris Benoit/Dean Malenko v. Raven (and later-on in the match) Perry Saturn. It was a complete beatdown by Malenko/Benoit on Raven.

Which brings me to another point of Pro Wrestling over Sports Entertainement. Ring Psychology. It is hard to find a wrestler with great ring psychology. Raven and Jake The Snake may not have been Bret Harts (who also had a great ring psychology) but during that 4Horsemen/Raven match. I almost forgot I was in 2004. I got sucked into the story they were telling. I wanted to see what would happen on Thunder. Today, people rely on angles and storylines to tell the story instead of where it should be told... the ring. Now, I know that angles and stuff are a necessity (Pro wrestling does not mean NO ANGLES WHATSOEVER, to me atleast), but they can't be the WHOLE story, or even MAJORITY of the story. This is why I am not a fan of deathmatches, because the weapons ARE THE STORY instead of a PART OF THE STORY. Pro Wrestling is a lost art in the world of Vince McMahon. Yes, the WWE and the indistry as a whole are going back to Pro Wrestling (ROH being a pime example, which I've never seen BTW) it is still angle-dependent to get the strory across. So I plead all of you to pull out those old tapes, or the recent DVD's that have come out, and fall in love with the lost art that is Professional Wrestling.