WWE RAW Results (05/12/08) Jim Ross welcomes us to the Joe Louis Arena as we go into the show with the lights out in the arena. The lights come back on and William Regal is in the ring...
Hi all and welcome to one of my more off-the-wall editions. We’ll get into that shortly, but first a brief addition to a previous column.
For those of you who read my column a couple of weeks back called “What You Leave Behind”, which discussed the concept of a wrestler’s legacy, you might remember I started by mentioning the video that inspired the idea starring the late British comedian Bob Monkhouse. Well, a reader got in touch and asked that seeing as the video was originally in the name of a charitable cause I might also give the website of the charity to which it was affiliated, which I will now gladly do. You can find that video again as well as some background on what it was supporting at:
www.giveafewbob.org
I don’t want to get too heavy on the details, but it is aimed at raising awareness of and tackling prostate cancer, which is obviously a very worthwhile cause. So if as many of you as possible would be so kind as to go give the site a visit, even if only briefly, and help spread the word both I and those who work for the charity in memory of the legendary funny-man, would be very grateful.
Right, back to work for me!
So you’re watching ECW on Tuesday nights (well, some of you are…), and there’s a fairly stiff match going on in the ring. They’re trading some rather nasty looking punches and chops, which reverberate throughout the arena and then out of nowhere, there is a pretty sick clothesline and the wrestler on the receiving end of it goes down in a heap. The crowd let out a collective gasp as he sells it like he’s about to go up to the great wrestling ring in the sky.
Joey Styles gets all excited about the intensity of the match presently going on and praising those involved when Tazz chimes in with the classic line used over and over again in the wrestling world:
“Well, this ain’t ballet…”
Right now, no doubt everyone watching tries comparing what is happening in the ring at that very moment to a group of six year old girls dressed in pink, wearing tutus, leaning against a wooden bar, bending and straightening their knees to music provided by an elderly gentleman on a dilapidated and likely out of tune piano. A woman in her early to mid twenties encourages them to bend and straighten in time and if it weren’t for the fact that she is dressed exactly the same as the young girls, might have been moderately attractive. Shame.
Has anyone realised just how wrong Tazz’s analogy is? Yes, you heard me right. Wrestling is more like ballet than you think and today I am going to prove it and change your perspective of one of them forever!
For starters, both are of course choreographed. Granted, they will be to different levels of detail (ballet will have every movement, however slight, planned from the curtain raising to the standing ovation at the end whilst wrestling will depend on those taking part), but they all come with a definite start, middle and end. Every night the performers will have to go out and perform what they have memorised in the hope of entertaining the crowds. Additionally, in both cases there is far more to a performance than just “doing” the moves. They have to sell them and make them feel special. Both require more than just technical prowess. In order to succeed, charisma is a must-have quality. That’s not to say you don’t have arguments about that in the ballet world either. Just as there are wrestling fans hooked on catchphrases and gimmicks derided by those who prefer a purer, more technical wrestling match, you will have ballet fans who would rather watch a dance which is difficult to perform over one which is all bright lights and funky music.
Further more, both are choreographed into a story, and as such those who take part will have roles to play. For example, you get the likeable face winning the heart of the beautiful Diva from the jealous and the not so likeable heel in wrestling, whilst in ballet you might have two kids on Christmas morning opening their presents (The Nutcracker), but whichever art form it is, the need to play that character and not go off at a tangent into performing as something or someone else is paramount to holding the credibility of the show and maintaining the viewers’ interest.
And if that’s not enough, it appears there are even skills that one can take over into the other world! Yes, that’s right if you are good at ballet, you may have some basic skills required to wrestle and vice-versa! Well, both require athletic prowess and stamina for a start, the more agile wrestlers can certainly leap about a bit, much like a ballet dancer, but perhaps one which might interest you is the concept of “lightness”. This is something one person in either industry can do when being lifted by another (be it for a graceful hold or devastating suplex). Basically, not only might you jump a little to give the lifter a head start, but also if you keep tensing your muscles upwards as they lift you, you can keep your body from becoming “dead weight” and give them that few extra percent to get you high in the air.
OK I imagine some of you are not fully convinced thus far. Fair enough, whilst the comparisons do exist they are hardly groundbreaking. I suppose I would be scraping the barrel pointing out both have a gender bias (men dominate the wrestling industry whilst women the ballet, although that’s not to say that women do not make valuable wrestlers, nor men valuable ballet dancers). But perhaps the next point might change your mind a little more. Consider the following story.
It’s been a long night and our Superstar has been working hard. Another sold out crowd came to see just how good they were in person. As usual, they delivered and everyone was on their feet to applaud them at the end. Colleagues congratulated them as they headed back to shower and get changed. They had been given that push that so many wanted yet so few received. In this ultra-competitive industry you have to be prepared to hand your life over to perform the craft you love so much at the very highest level. After signing a few autographs for fans who had waited at the back doors to catch just a glimpse of their idol, our Superstar headed to the hotel.
Finally, on their own, they could get some rest. The niggling injuries they had sustained over previous nights continued to wear down their tired and sore body. The pressure was on to keep performing at their peak each and every night. How could they be sure they would ever get this opportunity again? If they stop now and allow time to heal, would that momentum be lost? Would they return as just another performer, who tried to make it but couldn’t cope?
No, failure at this critical stage was not an option. They had trained all those years, gone out and performed so many times. It could not end this way. The Superstar reaches into their bag and pulls out a bottle. They swallow a couple of the pills inside before climbing into bed. Tomorrow, they get to do it all over again.
Sounds like the kind of story we have heard every so often from a wrestler on the road, but for those of you who haven’t guessed already, you may have noticed I never referred to them as a wrestler. In fact, I never even referred to them as a male in the story above. The truth is I was telling the story (albeit a fictional one) of a professional ballet dancer.
Now, just like with wrestling, not every ballet dancer pops pills to cope with performing, in fact it’s probably very few indeed. But professionally, it can be a darker side which plagues the industry much like it does wrestling. There is pressure to keep up with the daily schedule of performances despite any nagging injures you might have and just like with wrestling, you worry about taking time off because there is so much competition for the top spots. You work so hard to get your shots, you cannot be certain that you will ever return to where you are presently.
Unfortunately, at the end of the day the similarities on this front can sadly be very real indeed. Both sets of performers can wind up facing serious long term health issues from the grind of the nightly performances and the threat of an early career ending injury is all too frequently just around the corner. It’s a side of both industries neither seems able to tackle effectively and, perhaps rather disappointingly has even become accepted as one of those sad things that happens.
At the end of the day, I don’t think that clichéd old saying is used to deride ballet. I think it probably just takes advantage of the image that a lot of people who would be viewed as “typical” wrestling fans might have of what is actually a very demanding career as a dancer. But maybe, just maybe it explains why on so many previous Smackdown computer games gone by when you were able to choose your character’s entrance there was a ballet option! Don’t believe me? See for yourself! I know for a fact it’s on Here Comes The Pain, no doubt a couple of the others as well – perhaps the WWE have realised the connection too!
So the next time you’re watching the WWE and the announcers start with “Well, this ain’t ballet!” I hope you’ll know exactly what to say back to the TV:
This ain’t ballet?!
Just a thought…
Has this column changed your view of ballet? Has it changed your view of wrestling? Drop me a line at stuart_black@hotmail.com and I’ll be looking forward to hearing your thoughts. This column was written with help from my younger brother Ian, who is an actor/singer/dancer and has done more than his fair share of ballet over the years. For those of you that instantly brand him a “Faggot” or similar, he was also a purple belt in karate and has done break-dancing with professional crews, where is ballet allowed him to do thinks the rest could not! Finally don’t forget to check out my Myspace page www.myspace.com/stuartblack (currently under construction) where I am building an archive of all my columns to date.
