by Eoghann Irving 
Exclusive to OnlineOnslaught.com

Everyone's a Critic
I think it's safe to assume that anyone reading this would consider himself or herself a fan of professional wrestling. One thing that fans of almost anything have in common is the firm conviction that they could do a better job of things. This is certainly true in sports, where fans spend a large amount of their time shouting at the TV about what the athlete/coach is doing wrong.

In the case of wrestling or the WWE in particular, since that is the only televised wrestling that most of us can see, we as fans criticize almost every aspect. People spout off about poor workrate. We gleefully point out botched moves. We criticize wrestlers who we feel are not selling their opponent. No one in the company is immune to our attacks. However, one special group is particularly singled out for our derision. Who else but the WWE writers?

When we criticize a wrestler, it is generally with the understanding and respect that he is doing something we could not do. Not so with the writers. We all think that we could write better angles and storylines. Ninety-nine percent of us are wrong though.


Pity the Poor Writer
Writing is perhaps the most under-appreciated skill around. Very few of us would look at the design of a car and point out how much better the aerodynamics could be. I have yet to have someone explain to me how he or she would build a better television than the one I just bought. We respect the people who do these things. We recognize that they have spent time to develop the necessary skills.

I think this is because with the majority of skills it is quickly obvious whether you can do it or not. I mean, it is easy to tell if you are an athletic person. You can either solve simultaneous equations or you cannot.

Writing is not so clear cut. Everyone thinks they can be a writer. Everyone learnt the basics at school, though what was taught was the function and form, not the artistry. We have all thought up an interesting idea or two in our time. How hard could it be to take that idea and flesh it out? Well, of course in reality it's very hard, but caught up in the excitement of our idea we forget that. In reality, though, writing is just like any other skill. It takes practice, determination and experience to produce good results.

By the time you read this column, it will have gone through several hours worth of processing. The initial writing process will take me maybe 45 minutes. Twenty minutes or so of re-drafting and general tightening up, plus some spell-checking and basic proofreading would follow that. It then is passed on for approval, during which time it may well be further edited and formatted to suit the site.

All that work is for a column of somewhere around 1,500 words. On top of that, column writing is perhaps the easiest and quickest form of writing. It requires little in the way of research and is primarily based on opinion. Producing in-character dialogue and building storylines requires far more time and planning. That does not even venture into the areas of having to deal with wrestler's egos, office politics, Vince McMahon's whims and a multitude of different audience groupings.

You are bored now, aren't you? You don't care about how difficult writing is. The writing still sucks on Smackdown and RAW regardless. Right?


It Was A Dark And Stormy Night In The Ring
Wrong. The writing on SmackDown and RAW is much what it always was. It's B-grade soap opera with just enough to justify two people getting in the ring and hitting each other. Wrestling, even the WWE, is not about good writing or even good storylines. Some of the most popular or successful angles and storylines have been downright cheesy. When it gets right down to it, wrestling is about personalities.

Could the writing be better? Certainly. Like I said, it's B-grade at best. So certainly, the writing could be a lot better. Whether that standard of writing could be delivered to fill 4 hours a week is questionable, but it could be better.

They could pay more attention to the details and the history for example. That certainly would not hurt. They could try planning further ahead.... That would definitely cut down on the restarts and the storylines that go nowhere. Those are areas where the writers could unquestionably improve.

However, would it make the shows more popular? Nope. I've yet to meet a person who tunes in on Mondays and Thursdays because of the subtle nuances in the relationship between Bischoff and Morely and the way they are used to explore Worker and Management relationships.

Moreover, while the continuity errors and restarts are mildly irritating, if the program as a whole was enjoyable... would we give a damn about them? I don't think so. The shows are failing on a much greater level than that sort of nit-picking detail.

WWE shows are about larger-than-life personalities. In other words, the wrestlers are what sells the show. Not the writing, not the wrestling. The wrestlers.


Been There, Done That
So if, as I claim, the writing is much the same, why does everything seem so lame? Two reasons spring immediately to mind:

1. You've seen it before.
2. The wrestlers.

Now around this point you're most likely thinking that if we've seen this stuff before, then why not do new stuff? Seems logical after all. Except that there isn't a lot of new stuff to do. Unless you enjoyed the necrophilia angle... that was new!

As I've mentioned, wrestling storylines are not sophisticated things. They don't have the time to be, and even if they did, the audience has not shown itself to be good with subtle characterization or complex concepts. If I were to believe some of the stuff I've seen in message boards, there were a lot of us who practically had brain melt-down because Chris Jericho recently carried on more than one feud at a time — the sort of stuff that viewers of other programs wouldn't bat an eyelid at.

Given the inherent limitations of the wrestling genre with its broad characterizations, and given that pushing the envelope as the WWE has done in the past generates less impressive results each time it's done, what are we really left with?

The most a writer can reasonably do is slap some new paint on the old ideas, and if you have 5+ years of wrestling watching behind you, it's going to start looking repetitive. At the heart of it, it's always the same routine. And it always has been.
 

Character, Character, Character
That leaves the wrestlers. What are the wrestler's doing wrong? They're not making the best with what they have.

Here are some comparisons for you. On RAW, look at Rock and Austin. On Smackdown, look at Matt Hardy and A-Train. All four of those wrestlers have been given a good push lately, given plenty of airtime. Two of them have used it well. Two haven't. You all know who is whom, don't you?

Now tell me what, if anything, is it about the Rock's material that is better than Austin's? Nothing. They both use repetitive catchphrases. They are both harking back to previous years. So, why is the Rock coming across as the more entertaining of the two?

Because he is putting his personality into it. He is having a blast. He is taking whatever material he has and putting his all into it. Austin on the other hand, he's just phoning it in. There is no spark to his performance.

It's the same deal with Matt Hardy and A-Train. Matt has taken his new gimmick and run with it. He's clearly enjoying himself; he plays the role to the hilt. That shows through in his performances, and the audiences are responding. A-Train, on the other hand, remains a personality vacuum. It's not that he isn't working. He shows up and he works hard in matches, but again there's just no spark.

Sure, you could argue that A-Train's character is feeble to non-existent... but then so is Brock Lesnar's. The angry monster is not a sophisticated character, but wrestlers have used it to get across before. A-Train could potentially do that, too. He hasn't.

Wrestling is all about personality. The first boom was Hogan. The second boom was Austin and Rock. Think about other wrestlers who have had a long successful run. Most if not all of them have that strong personality that attracts attention.

If a wrestler has that spark, he can overcome any amount of bad writing and still draw people in. If he doesn't have that spark, then no matter how good the writing, it is not going to happen.

Professional wrestling is a personality-based business. The percentage of fans actually interested in it because of pure wrestling skill is small — certainly not enough to maintain two two-hour wrestling programs a week.

Now I don't want to give the writers a totally free ride here. I honestly think there are things they could do that would help the situation. For a start, they could try sticking with an idea for more than 5 minutes. It gets very confusing when the storylines keep changing for no apparent reason.

However, in wrestling what it always comes down to is that if you're not enjoying the show, the fault lies with the wrestler. He or she is the performer. It is up to them to take what they have and make it good.

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