Old School Wrestling Discussion Thread

[Moderndaywarrior]

I can't think of who the first wrestler with long hair would have been but it would not surprise me if it was perhaps one of the early Native Americans having it as part of their gimmick?

 

Aside from that it probably caught on when long hair for men in general became more popular around the late '60s (or maybe early '70s as wrestling is usually a few years behind the curve). I have not seen enough wrestling from this early to be able to tell.

 

I can't sure for sure who did long hair first,but I can pretty well say that at the beginning it was more of heel gimmick/look....one of the more often seen feud of the 60's & 70's being the "Wild unkept Biker" or "Hippie" type heel against the "Clean Cut,All-American Boy" face.

 

On a side note, how many fans of SMW do we have here? I've done all the reading on SMW and seen much of the video clips and highlights, but when it comes to the '"feel" of a promotionthat's not quite the same as watching the show on a regular basis,if you know what I mean;unfortunately by the time SMW came around,the business was in a down time so our local TV stations never carried it,which sucks since the little bit I HAVE seen I'm sure I would have much preferred it to WWF/WCW and the fledgeling "pre-extreme" ECW,which were the only shows we got where I live.

[wrestlingfan1]

Ahh, the Golden Era , how I love thee let me count the ways...

 

1. I loved how the story telling came through the matches rather than through actual story telling. Look back even as ' recent ' as the mid 80's you didn't watch a wrestling show and be subject to endless hours of back and forth banter. There was a match and a short , usually in ring interview following the match or an even shorter pre-match interview, unless they were hyping a grudge match at an upcoming 'super show.' Then the interviews were a little longer.

 

2. The longer matches providing more 'wrestling' entertainment rather than acting entertainment. One of the ' behind the scenes ' dvd's I was watching I remember Vince himself saying the fans are the reason behind that change. " The fans today don't want to sit and watch long matches with rest holds. " Well SOMEONE had to start shortening the matches to condition the modern day fans into not wanting to see those types of matches. One of the reasons why I love puro and watch it every chance I get. The fans watch it and the crowd treats it as a sport per se. They treat those afforementioned " rest holds " as legitimate ways to end matches. Which leads me to...

 

3. The fans. The fans were more ' into ' it then they are now a days. Sleeper holds really looked like they could end a match, now when one is applied the fans rush off to the merchandise, concession or bathroom. The often ill performed ( and no not ill as in good ) high flying moves are what seemingly everyone wants to see. Heels were heels and faces were faces and were treated as such, unless they were wrestling in their hometown. Why I agree with Vince that the cut and dry , black and white , Good Guy vs Bad Guy doesn't fit into todays market ( now that its openly fake ) I don't agree with the company not recognizing the difference between " Heel Heat" and actual " Heat " , which despite some of the nay sayers , really does exist. The easy way to spot that is a heel is , mostly, booed anywhere he wrestles because he's a heel. When that same person is booed out the arena even when wrestling in his home town, thats real heat - tranlation : He's a poor wrestler by any standards. It happened rarely in olden days but its more frequent now.

 

More to come...

[Moderndaywarrior]

Ahh, the Golden Era , how I love thee let me count the ways...

 

1. I loved how the story telling came through the matches rather than through actual story telling. Look back even as ' recent ' as the mid 80's you didn't watch a wrestling show and be subject to endless hours of back and forth banter. There was a match and a short , usually in ring interview following the match or an even shorter pre-match interview, unless they were hyping a grudge match at an upcoming 'super show.' Then the interviews were a little longer.

 

2. The longer matches providing more 'wrestling' entertainment rather than acting entertainment. One of the ' behind the scenes ' dvd's I was watching I remember Vince himself saying the fans are the reason behind that change. " The fans today don't want to sit and watch long matches with rest holds. " Well SOMEONE had to start shortening the matches to condition the modern day fans into not wanting to see those types of matches. One of the reasons why I love puro and watch it every chance I get. The fans watch it and the crowd treats it as a sport per se. They treat those afforementioned " rest holds " as legitimate ways to end matches. Which leads me to...

 

3. The fans. The fans were more ' into ' it then they are now a days. Sleeper holds really looked like they could end a match, now when one is applied the fans rush off to the merchandise, concession or bathroom. The often ill performed ( and no not ill as in good ) high flying moves are what seemingly everyone wants to see. Heels were heels and faces were faces and were treated as such, unless they were wrestling in their hometown. Why I agree with Vince that the cut and dry , black and white , Good Guy vs Bad Guy doesn't fit into todays market ( now that its openly fake ) I don't agree with the company not recognizing the difference between " Heel Heat" and actual " Heat " , which despite some of the nay sayers , really does exist. The easy way to spot that is a heel is , mostly, booed anywhere he wrestles because he's a heel. When that same person is booed out the arena even when wrestling in his home town, thats real heat - tranlation : He's a poor wrestler by any standards. It happened rarely in olden days but its more frequent now.

 

More to come...

 

-I agree,I liked it much better when the matches were main plot points and the interviews were basically just a short and sweet logical way to get to the match.

 

-Funny how it works; it used to be when booking the Main Event,the promoter usually wanted the match as long as possible because they fans would feel ripped off if the Main Event wasn't long.

 

Vince himself was the one who got away from using the "long match" formula;his father ran 1 and 2 hour long main events with Bruno and Backlund for years but soon as Vince,Jr. took over those got phased out as he took the product into more of a "bright lights and flashy presentation" feel that became today's "sports entertainment".You could also maybe say the original ECW had something to do with it as they often did matches involving alot of crazy high spots with really no psychology behind it,which conditioned the fans into only wanting to see the crazy stuff.The only other promotion I know of that did shorter Main Events like that on a regular basis was Detriot under The Sheik;The Sheik's matches were short by the standards of the day,but then they were also a much wilder type of action than most places so the fans bought into it.

 

-The fanbase itself changed when Vince went national;he basically threw away all of what wrestling used to be and re-created everything to his liking in a very cartoony,action movie,"anyone can do anything,acknowledge it's fake" way...along the way all the hardcore fans who were used to seeing wrestling presented with some sort of care and effort to put it on the same level of reality and athleticism as professional boxing or football saw everything they enjoyed get dumped all over then eventually "their" guys would leave for the "fake' WWF and be portrayed in very "fake" way while there,so those fans all walked away in disgust,they were replaced by a fickle public,which forced the business to pandering to the whims of opinion and constantly trying to position itself as "the next big thing".(this also kind of relates back to the points you made in #2.)

[tristram]

I'm fairly unbiased in my appraisal of the pre-sports entertainment mainstream era versus the old school traditional regional promotions which encouraged athletic excellence. I can go back now and watch the Von Erichs, Dusty Rhodes, Ric Flair, Nick Bockwinkle... I couldn't back then, being from the Southern Hemisphere until Vince McMahon Jr came along, we weren't exposed to that, but retrospectively I can learn and acknowledge the principles and merits of the era. Even though I can acknowledge it, I don't believe that we can window-dress it any other way but to acknowledge that VKM's moves were necessary due to the environment the business operated in. In the early to mid 80s, many factors started evolving which made the regional style promotion redundant. There are a number of reasons why we don't regularly see hour long broadways, and not many of them are attributable to the WWF's expansion.

 

1. Social responsibility. Promoters, through government groups, consumer lobbyists, and shareholders adverse to risk and reputation sufferance, let alone the wrestlers themselves, have demanded a change to how wrestling is conducted. I don't think we can underestimate the enormous physical effect detrimentally it had on some of the athletes to work the long matches.

 

2. Mainstream media. In the early 80s, mainstream broadcasting was opening up. To not take advantage of it would be folly. It happened in a variety of industries that relied on media exposure that mergers, acquisitions et al happened to tighten up industries to present the best overall picture of that industry. Similarly, with mainstream media came the need to make sure the product matched the target market of not only the wrestling promotion, but the networks who gave the promotion the exposure it needed financially.

 

3. Target markets. Target markets have changed big time as marketing knowledge has evolved. Many products are now going back to a PG-centric base because they realise the importance a child can have in influencing purchasing decisions for tickets, merchandise, Pay-Per-Views. Kids want zany characters, bright colours, surprises, they don't want 12 month wrestling athleticism programs.

 

4. The nature of TV exposure. The nature of mainstream TV exposure means that products need to be bright, evolving, and full of conflict. Slow moving action doesn't cut it when there's hundreds of other channels to flick through. The sleeper hold that used to hold us doesn't hold us now, it causes us to channel surf. You could say the remote control has evolved wrestling.

 

5. Globalisation. The global markets have opened up, same as it has for wrestling, and this has meant a massive opportunity to hit those markets. Wrestling promotions have to get in there first and present the most compelling saga evidence available to capture the market first. Bare in mind a lot of these newer markets have had limited regional wrestling, that their social customs may be a lot more restrained and require decorum, so they want quick moving safe action.

 

If you read back through the annals of all the old school guys, they talk about 'what's good for the business'. Which meant things like doing the job correctly for the older established wrestler, not breaking kayfabe, bleeding everywhere if it required it etc. Nowadays, doing what's best for business is about evolving into as many rapidly growing markets as possible by creating a product that compels a large number of motive satisfactions. Yes, it's probably meant a loss of in-ring psychology, but I don't believe that's the cause for the longer entertainment segments, it's down to the nature of the format in which wrestling is presented these days, the required target market requirements and significant stakeholder pressure (TV network ratings, sponsorship returns) that require continuously moving action to continually bring all market motive satisfactions to play. I think if you reflect on many industries, particularly entertainment, due to the changes in technology, globalisation, new target market demographics, that the environment has caused significant programming/'booking' alteration requirements. To me, if VKM didn't do it, someone else would have. It just so happened that he had the best strategic vision to execute it and make it into a billion dollar industry.

[Moderndaywarrior]

There's alot of good and interesting points you made there:

 

1.Agreed,and that is something that has changed in all professional sports over the years as well as changes in pyhsical conditioning and fitness programs.I will say this though; years ago,when the focus was more on "in-ring conditioning" rather than everyone working on having a bodybuilder's physique,you saw fewer "muscle tear" type injuries than you do now....part of that is because of the prevalence of "sports enhancement drugs" now,causing guys too actually put on too much muscle,more than the skeletal structure God gave them was meant to support;the other part is course due to the much more athletic nature of the moves now...the "old" stuff might have been "boring" but to me it looked a heck of a lot safer too.

 

I still wish they'd teach how to throw a halfway decent punch again though;in martial arts class,we learned to throw strikes during "point contact" type sparring that LOOK very hard and crisp,but actually there's enough control behind it that it doesn't hurt at all,so I know it's possible lol.

 

2.Again agreed, long before Vince GCW on TBS(and to a lesser extent SWCW on USA),as well as WCCW through syndication was opening up the market through National TV exposure...factor in the advent of PPV and it was bound to happen....heck by the "Hogan era" GCW was already expanding into the Ohio Valley and Ole was making rumblings about wanting to run in Los Angeles since the long time promotion there folded.

 

3. I'm on the fence here...of course there IS a target market for wrestling,however I feel Vince went too far in marketing towards children and basically ended up alienating the older crowd too much.Wrestling drew just fine when it was a bit more "mature",if you wheeeeel.Heck even into the 1990's, SMW,ECW,and even the WWF drew well with a more "adult oriented" product....I guess I'm saying it was better was it was closer to the "middle ground" rather than either strictly "kids stuff" or 'adult only".

 

4.Definitely true, it's part of the short attention span syndrome that has become widespread since the advent of the "remote control" age.It's definitely a far cry from childhood of kneeling by the TV with a pair of pliers on the dial and my dad saying "Change it....change it...no....no...stop,i like this sow.",then that's what we watched until it went off and if you didn't like it you went and did something else for a while.

 

Of course,it didn't exactly help that the NWA was having more than it's share of problems as well;since its inception, Sam Muchnick of St.Louis had been the "glue" that held the NWA together,he had enough respect and was diplomatic enough to keep the various egos in check and everyone on the same page for the most part;by 1981-82, he was getting on in years,not always feeling healthy, and wanted to enjoy his golden years;when he retired,

things kind of became a "free for all" as the different promoters all jockeyed to grab as much power as they could.Without Sam, there was noone to play peacemaker and compromiser so they whole thing started falling apart.That,more than any "genius" on the part of Vince,helped the WWF go places.

Actually I think the problem know is too much exposure;rather than a regular whose like and dislikes can be learned,they've gone into territory while the market is so varied that it's nigh impossible to predict so they end up trying to cater to too many different things,and like the old saying goes...you can please some of the people all the time,or the all of the people some of the time...

 

Overall,you are right,changes were coming;if not by Vince than by somebody else.I think what aggravates most old school fans is not the changes per say,but rather the way Vince did it...one guy who by his own admission never cared much about wrestling,just wanted to be a multimedia mogul along the lines of Ted Turner basically ignoring all of the rich history and tradition of wrestling....it was like Vince basically said "All of you that have been loyal fans for years......screw you guys, you don't matter."

 

As a friend of mine once said,which sums the feelings of many old time fans: "Some people call it looking for new audiences,most others just call it selling out."