by Jeb Tennyson Lund
OnlineOnslaught.com/CitizenScholar.net

[Note: Last week I wrote a column on how WWE wrestling can encourage burnout. Rick Scaia, OO's leader and Kool-Aid peddler, rebutted my column. If you haven't read both columns, the following may not make much sense.]
 
First, I'll offer a general explanation to some respondents. A lot of people wrote in, taking umbrage with the fact that I provided no solution for overcoming burnout and asserting that, therefore, the column was terrible. This is just plain silly. For one, I never set out to solve the problem: I set out to diagnose the root of the problem, for me and (possibly) others. For another, people complain in columns all the time without providing effective solutions.
 
I've never had anyone get upset at my railing at Jerry Lawler's commentary because I didn't offer a "solution" to Lawler. (What am I supposed to do? Tell you to shoot Jerry Lawler?) Yet with something far more complex — like the origins of burnout — I was told a solution should be forthcoming. That's ridiculous, because if I knew how to avoid burnout, I wouldn't be burned out. Or I would be in charge of WWE's creative team, and thus Lawler would be gone already, and burnout would still be unavoidable in some cases. 
 
People's desire for a solution doesn't bother me, though. I know if I read someone who took seven pages to define the origins of burnout, I would kind of hope he also had the solution to it and had forgotten to include it. Hey, it's nice to be able to fix a problem. What I don't particularly care for, however, is when someone rejects my overall thesis by ignoring parts of it and critiquing other things that weren't part of it at all. In short, Rick Scaia's out of his mind.
 
Now, Rick is a podgy, ignorant and misshapen man, possessing a sexual virility so nonexistent that he makes snails dosed with vicodin seem like dynamos of machismo; and when he throws up from drinking, it's not because he's had too much but because the alcohol's rejecting him like a bad transplant. His parents are also ugly, hirsute gnomes, and his friends — two of them, both imaginary — bathe in filth just to wash off the stain from "Rick Time." He also writes turgid and one-dimensional mash notes (all cribbed from harlequin romance novels), wraps them around dead haddock and sends them to Ann Coulter. Wait. I'm not sure that last one's a bad thing.
 
(There. Rick said I had to make fun of him, and I have. But my heart's not in it. About the worst thing I can say about Rick is that he's too damned nice. Well, he is incredibly lazy, too; but here we're venturing into large glass-houses territory.)
 
That said, I generally enjoy it when Rick and I do the point-counterpoint thing, because his perspective is far more optimistic and also more steeped in wrestling's past than mine. But in this case I think that his attitude is what led him astray from engaging my argument on its terms. Simply put, he thought about it as a man who loves wrestling, and he measured wrestling by overly optimistic rubrics. Finally, steeped as he is in arguing about wrestling, he employed a common counter-argument to a common silly proposition — one I never made.
 
 
Resignation or Disappointment
At one point, Rick writes: "I'm kind of resigned to wrestling's cyclical nature (up for a PPV, then down for the reset, then build it back up again) more than I'm disappointed by it."
 
He's doing two things, here. One, he and I are apples and oranges. Rick has watched wrestling since childhood: it is a habit, a memory, a staple of life — a pillar, even, of what he is. Most of the people who wrote to tell me that I was nuts were people with a similar background. Now, I would by no means say that these people don't know better or are hooked, blindly, into something that is less than their estimation of it. But the fact is that I simply approached (and approach) this phenomenon differently than others.
 
For one, I'm probably too analytical for my own good, prone to asking questions first and enjoying things later. But I also got into wrestling at age 22, while attending a snooty college. My job, day in and day out, was to deconstruct things and be very picky about them. This habit was facilitated by the person who got me into wrestling: someone who told me all the backstories and the political intrigues, the elements of psychology, the importance/non-importance of certain moves, and introduced me to three wrestling websites before I ever saw a match. (He'd come to my room and use my computer. I had a T-3 connection at the time.) Our hanging out and chatting over beers familiarized me with the "inside" elements of wrestling before I watched it.
 
But because wrestling was not a phenomenon I encountered in formative years — not something I grew up with, something that can be used as an index in memory, for pinpointing when things happened to myself — it's also something to which I am less beholden than, say, Matt Hocking or Rick. This is why I made a point of saying that my column did not attempt to speak for the diehards. Rick is a die-hard. I'm not.
 
Because of his die-hard status, and also because he's an optimistic guy, he tries to pull a bait-and-switch with the terms "resignation" and "disappointment." Resignation seems like a tamer, less critical word. It's an audible sigh, not a groan. Disappointment carries with it a sterner vision, perhaps of a father shattering your pride by saying, "I'm very disappointed in you."
 
There is another distinction in "resignation," one that Rick avoided. It is that resignation is a secondary, reactive term: it describes a reaction to a feeling more than the feeling itself. For instance, "I always have a sad birthday, so I'm just resigned to feeling sad on my birthdays now." In short, to be resigned to something, you have to experience something first. In this case, that something is disappointment.
 
I do not believe for a second that Rick is trying to be sinister by substituting the word "resignation" for "disappointment." But it seems an argumentative fallacy to attempt to prove that you're not disappointed by something by arguing that you're resigned to a level of disappointment. If that's the case, why repudiate the existence of disappointment at all?
 
 
Burnout Ratio: Hamburger and Steak

"How many times since the beginning of March has RAW announced a Huge Match/Happening for next week?  Probably 5 or 6 times out of those 8 or 9 weeks.  We've had Benoit/HBK once (and are getting it again next week), we had the Benoit/HBK/Foley/Benjamin vs. Evolution match, we had the Brand Lottery show (hyped heavily over the final half of the preceding week's show), and we even had 'This is Your Life, Mick' (which was hyped for a week after being set up by the Rock's 'surprise' return).  I'm probably forgetting some more.  But the point is, RAW's been really good at putting together matches/events that seem big, and hyping them a week ahead of time... makes them seem more special."
 
"Earlier this week, I extemporized at length about the tantalizing 'Free-Per-View' RAW we've got coming up next week.  And simply put: if you can do shows like this, if you can build to Happenings like HBK vs. Benoit during your 'off-month,' then I simply cannot endorse the idea that it is impossible to execute consistently-entertaining episodic TV for 52 weeks a year."
     — Rick, in his rebuttal

  
In describing one of the causes of burnout, I chose a ratio: a proportion of good minutes to bad minutes. Figuring that I generally only enjoy (without qualification) about 30 minutes of Raw, whereas about 90 of those minutes are average, boring or awful, I settled on a 1:4 ratio. This wasn't meant to be absolute or scientific. It's based on my experience and was named only for the sake of furthering the point.
 
In one respect, I used the ratio to describe the content of each show; in another respect, I used it to describe the overall annual content (more on that later). I also used a meat metaphor, describing the average 1:4 show as hamburger. It's a blend of decent meat along with fat and sinew. Rick attempted to discount the validity of the 1:4 ratio, not by taking note of instances of hamburger, but by defending "steak." His particular references were this recent story-arc of Benoit, Michaels and Triple H, and the "free-per-view" that aired this Monday, along with the Brand Lottery show and "This Is Your Life, Mick."
 
Note that he's not even addressing the show as a whole. He's talking about the main-event (and special one-time or annual events). By and large, the main event is often the hunk of good meat thrown in the blend of fat and sinew used to make palatable "hamburger" out of a show. The main-event is steak, usually. So while I'm talking about shows as a whole, Rick is talking about the best part of a particular set of recent shows: his specificity completely skews and ignores the overall per-show phenomenon. I'm decrying mediocrity in a whole show, and he's claiming excellence by ignoring the whole content of the show and picking only one — excuse the pun — "choice" element.
 
Moreover, Rick is being even pickier by not only discussing the main-event picture, but only the main-event picture of Raw. I think he perhaps did this because addressing the main-event picture of Smackdown would only validate my point. If the overall product of a wrestling show is ground tolerable meat, then Bradshaw v. Guerrero is pretty much cartilage, hoof, anus: anything that, on its own, would be practically indigestible. It is then mixed with the offal that are the throwaway opening matches, the feuds that go nowhere, the divas losing their towels, etc. Smackdown isn't even hamburger; it's Scraple.
 
In short, I said that people can get tired of nothing but hamburger. Rick countered by asking how anyone could get tired of excellent steak. I addressed shows as a whole, over an extended period of time; Rick selected the last few weeks of one angle on one show. I won't be so haughty as to claim that, by not countering me with comparable data, Rick essentially conceded the point. However, there is some validation of my point in Rick's omission. 
 
Additionally, Rick sidestepped (at one point) and also conceded (at another) the discussion of an annual ratio of good-to-bad. In this case, what I meant is that good shows and bad shows and mediocre shows all average out over the year, leaving you again with a good-to-bad ratio of about 1:4.
 
Of course some shows are fantastic! Of course some are terrible! By and large, they are pretty good or okay. Yet Rick marshals these last weeks of Raw as a defense for — and example of — the year as a whole. He cites "This Is Your Life, Mick," something that will never happen again, and the Brand Lottery, which may only happen once per year. Practically speaking, we know that this is an improper defense, because the shows were unusually good or non-replicable. The very fact that Rick describes this last Monday as a free pay-per-view-caliber show should tell you that it is fairly unique and not representative of the average content — which is, you know, average.
 
(The fact that Raw has had a streak of pretty good shows in the last month also loses its significance when you compare it to the eight weeks or so last fall when Smackdown was so consistently good that watching Raw was painful by comparison. Even that span was unique and unusual. We will not see a year when the truly excellent Smackdown shows and the truly excellent Raw shows add up to much more than 52 shows total. And if we look not at one brand but at wrestling as a whole, one bad Smackdown and one good Raw average out to — you guessed it — mediocre weekly wrestling content overall.)
 
Then again, while trying to contradict the notion of a quality ratio, Rick also cites a cyclical quality ratio. He talks of average shows building up to good shows, then resulting in deflating "comedown" shows. For instance, while this last Monday was a "free-per-view," some of the shows preceding it were "maintenance shows," to use another of Rick's terms. This would seem to support my argument, since the shows themselves maintain a span of time, rather than devouring that time with excellence and irresistibility. Certainly elements of those shows built to the important pay-off matches of the free-per-view. But there were also minutes where nothing much of value was happening. Just as we built to Benoit v. Michaels, we also had Kane lick Lita ostensibly so he could later kidnap her... or something.

Further, Rick apologizes for these shows by using a delicate term, like "maintain," when a more apt term, like "kill," will do. These shows were maintenance shows, maintaining time. When I go to the dentist, I maintain time in the "maintaining" room for thirty minutes or so. I've got the "good momentum" to get to the dentist's office, then I "maintain" time until I'm ready for the "payoff" of a "semi-annual Great Dental Cleansing Extravaganza in the Hell in the Chair." My nemesis, "Isaac Yankem," is accompanied by his nefarious hygienist/valet, "Gina." In the end, the receptionist (Linda McMahon), makes me write a check to cover the "experience."
 
You can euphemize it all you like, but what you're doing is killing time. Something started; now you have to wait for it to finish. Basically, you're waiting. Just because WWE threw you a magazine to help kill that time doesn't mean that you're really enjoying the time or the red herring that the magazine represents. It's passable, in the passing. When you're ticking minutes and weeks off the clock, you champion mediocrity and toleration, not adulation and embrace. Mediocrity is one of the alienating factors leading to burnout. Toleration — or should I say "resignation"?—is the reaction.
 
 
The Argument Never Made
Rick writes: "Specifically rebutting Jeb's idea that an off-season or rerun weeks would strengthen the overall product, I would point to the last two months or so on Raw." Rick goes on to dismiss the idea of an off-season on the basis of the negative impact on WWE economically as well as the impact on us as viewers. Which is all well and good, except that I never proposed an off-season for wrestling.
 
This upsets me for three reasons. One, Rick spent the lion's share of his rebuttal time addressing this issue, when it wasn't necessary. Two, I'm not in favor of the ideas in my columns being dismissed by criticizing ideas not proposed in them. Three, I already agree with Rick on the off-season issue anyway.
 
To reiterate a point made above, I never proposed a solution to burnout because I wanted to diagnose the aspects of WWE programming that had led to my burnout (and possibly others'). I wondered why my burnout happened, and that interested me. Plus, having gone on for seven pages, I felt that tacking on another seven, ten or fifteen discussing possible solutions would make the column too lengthy to enjoy.
 
Dismissing the problem of burnout by saying that there is no easy solution does not abnegate the existence or validity of burnout. It's like saying, "It ain't fixable, so it ain't broke." There is no pithy solution to the budget crisis in Social Security and the impending retirement of Baby Boomers, but that doesn't mean that an economic disaster isn't potentially looming on the American horizon. Burnout happens; fixing it is hard. But the trouble is that Rick spent so much time invalidating a solution I didn't propose that it started to seem as if he was saying, "The 'solution' won't work, so there isn't a problem."
 
 
Agreement in Essentials

"Do I deny that the Fed sometimes has trouble doing this [being entertaining]?  Nope.  Do I deny that Wrestling Burnout for writers and for fans is a real phenomenon?  Nope."
 
"But I do think that we have evidence to suggest that extended, sustainable periods of quality programming (even during fallow months) is possible... and when it doesn't happen, well, frankly, I'm kind of resigned to wrestling's cyclical nature (up for a PPV, then down for the reset, then build it back up again) more than I'm disappointed by it."
— More from Rick

  
Luckily for readers and for me, Rick and I are different people. You don't want to read identical arguments from two different people, and I think I'd shoot myself if I woke up one day and discovered I was a bassist with a shaved head. In the end, you have more diverse reading content, and I still look good drinking martinis and wearing suits.

I watch wrestling with a detached cynicism. When I'm really into it, I watch with an engaged cynicism. Basically, I'll look a gift horse in the mouth. Rick, on the other hand, approaches wrestling with the happy baggage from his youth, with an educated but open mind and with enough excess enthusiasm to spark even jaded readers' interest in a show, along with his. Yet we are both fans, both prone to being pleased or disappointed by wrestling shows.

Rick thinks that quality is cyclical. I think that burnout is cyclical. What we're doing is dancing around the Half-Full v. Half-Empty argument. Sometimes wrestling is great for no goddamned good reason. Other times, even a good storyline can leave a fan cold. I think the only distinction between these two conditions is that no one viewer can make wrestling good, but wrestling can bum out any viewer.
 
What I'm saying is that Rick didn't really contradict me. In a heartening and slightly perverse way, he agreed with me. I may call it disappointment, and he might call it "resignation," but we're just putting different spin on the same ball. By focusing entirely on special events or the main events of shows, Rick tacitly admits that there is a ratio of good-to-bad. Given that the main events are a small portion of the shows — and special events a very small portion of the yearly content — that per-show and annual ratio approaches the one I named.

He attributes "resignation" to the inevitable "down" times between special shows or good new storylines. I attribute disappointment to a personal "down" time induced by the volume, constancy and sometime mediocrity of wrestling. The biggest point of contention seems to be on whether wrestling can have an off-season; but that was a point I didn't advocate. And maybe the whole "disappointment" argument owes more to the fact that Rick has TiVo (and I don't) than anything else.

When it comes to a ratio of good shows and bad shows, good minutes per show and bad minutes per show, he and I are looking at the problem from opposite ends of a telescope. My aggravation is magnified; his is minimized. If we look through the scope at the same time, we're both seeing a wrestling fan — someone subjected to good and bad, excitement and boredom.

But I have hair.
 

E-MAIL JEB LUND
BROWSE JEB'S ARCHIVE

Because it was Cinco de Mayo — and because he knew it would drive Rick Scaia crazy — Jeb Tennyson Lund wrote this column in between hearty sips of Corona with lime. He'd also like to send best wishes to Canadian Bulldog. Thanks for the compliment!!!

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