Post by Stone Cold Eleanor Shellstrop on Jan 17, 2013 21:37:15 GMT -5
The thread in this section about John Cena's wins and losses (among other things) and the thread in (W)rest of Wrestling about Hororwitz got me thinking about how wrestling fans think about wins and losses. Yes, wrestling is pre-determined, that goes without saying, and that wins and losses really don't matter in the same way that they do in real sports. You can lose every match you have during the year and still make it to Wrestlemania. The same really can't be said for the World Series or the Superbowl.
However, would wrestling be more 'believable' if the main event guys, like John Cena, or CM Punk, or Sheamus, happened every so often just to be bested by the other guy? Think about it like this: in real sports, sometimes even the best teams have an off-day, or they lose their focus, or they can't function properly as a team, or a key position is out with injury. All these things allow for their opponents to take advantage. Other times the best sports teams can be firing on all-cylinders and still suffer an upset loss by a team that was believed to be the 'underdog' because the other team just happens to have a better hustle that day or they go out and play harder because they have nothing really left to lose, etc.
Which brings me to John Cena and Barry Horowitz. When Barry Horowitz, or other guys perceived to be the underdog like Virgil or the 1-2-3 Kid or Zack Gowen or kind of even Santino at the 2011 Royal Rumble (hell, even Mankind winning the WWF title in 1998 was played up as a Horowitz-esque victory), end up getting that big victory against all odds, it feels like a really special moment. True, after someone who fans perceive as a scrub wins the big one (think Zack Ryder winning the U.S. title), they're really less of a scrub because of it. But that one moment could potentially be the beginning of making a guy get over. Not over to the levels of Hulk Hogan, but they are perceived, potentially at least, as being 'more legitimate' now that they've broken that glass ceiling. A big win could be the start of moving someone up the card. I think here of someone like Triple H in 1998 and 1999, how he seemed to move up the card after beating the Rock at Summerslam and then the next year how his heel turn pushed him up further until a program with Austin was all but inevitable. And sometimes even a big loss can help someone look like a main event star, as, for instance, when Jeff Hardy lost the ladder match for the WWE title against the Undertaker, but still looked like a million bucks because of how hard he tried and the ass-kicking he took.
Conversely, those top level guys like John Cena, the Undertaker at Wrestlemania, and 400+ days as WWE Champion CM Punk are all people who fans know won't lose. So when they DO lose, that moment should be special too. Whether or not that moment when they lose, especially if it is a clean loss, is used to elevate a talent or to further establish someone already on top, or because no one else below the main event card looks credible... it's not that these things don't matter, but rarely do the stars align in such a way when the Barry Horowitzes of the world best the John Cenas of the world. Yet in competitive sports that happens a lot more often than it might be expected to.
In short, would wrestling benefit from incorporating more real-life sports moments into their shows when it comes to book their talents to win or lose, meaning that just because John Cena is the most winningest guy around doesn't mean he NEVER loses, or that Barry Horowitz is the most losingest guy around doesn't mean he NEVER wins, and so on and so forth.
Would that make how top guys and lower level guys get booked a lot more palatable and/or tolerable (depending on your preference)?
So to say that wins and losses don't matter is true, but perhaps only from a certain point-of-view, the point-of-view that treats wrestling as being 'as real' as other sports. But we still cheer when Luke Skywalker, some wussy nobody kid from a backwater planet, destroys the ultimate weapon of the evil Galactic Empire. And movies are just as pre-determined as wrestling is, but no one ever really says when they go to a movie, 'well, the wins and losses really don't matter'.
