Why I prefer MMA to today's pro wrestling...
As a recent convert into the world of MMA, I think it only appropriate that I explain why I prefer MMA to today's pro wrestling.
The key to that statement is today's pro wrestling, IE the WWE and TNA product that I watch.
I certainly didn't think a couple of years ago, that if you listed for me 3 PPV events in August 2006, that I would say that the one I wanted to see most was UFC and the 1 that I wanted to see the least was SummerSlam. A couple of years ago, MMA wasn't on my radar. Sure, I knew a little bit about it from sites that covered it such as WrestlingObserver.com and others. But, I never sought out MMA news or content, and that was true until about the middle of 2005.
Pro wrestling on the other hand has been a constant in my life since Childhood. So of course, a couple of years ago, I would've said I was looking forward to SummerSlam the most followed by TNA, followed by UFC but that there was no way that I'd order the UFC show.
That's not how it is today, so the only question is how did I get here?
As a sports fan it is only natural that I should like MMA I suppose. The fact is that MMA is not unlike most other professional sports out there. Ultimately, the goal is to win and to win enough to be called a champion. So, in MMA unlike today's pro wrestling the championships are important.
You want an idea of what I mean? Quick, name for me the WWE Intercontinental Champion, or the World Tag Team Champions. This is more of a problem in the WWE than it is in TNA because in TNA you only have 3 belts to keep track of whereas there are off the top of my head, 9 championships in WWE.
In MMA you don't see incomprehensible things such as the champion losing his title without actually losing. Sure, a champion can be stripped for various reason, but I don't think Chuck Liddell would ever lose his title by having Tito Ortiz submit Forrest Griffin in a 3-way match. Yet that's a common occurrence in today's wrestling world. It devalues the title because the new champion can't even declare that he beat the former champion.
Another thing that I find attractive about MMA is its unpredictability. Wrestling being predetermined is easy to figure out if you know what to look for. It is made even easier by the fact that the creative teams these days don't put any effort in to stories and are awfully transparent in the directions they go with certain characters. Ask yourself this, what in its current storylines could the WWE do to shock you? But in MMA, you can have a hyped up fight last a minute and 18 seconds. Sure, that kind of unpredictability isn't necessarily the funnest thing to watch, but it is an element missing from today's pro wrestling. Hey, remember when the slogan was anything can happen in the WWF? Think that's still true?
The fact is that MMA to me right now is what wrestling was to me when I was a kid. When I believed that the 2 guys I saw fighting were fighting because they wanted to win and to make more money and to move up the rankings. For as silly as it is to look back on right now, the WCW top 10 rankings actually added an element of believability to wrestling for me. Say Steve Austin was ranked number 6 and Tom Zenk ranked number 8. If Zenk won, he should logically move up in the rankings and drop Austin down. Granted, this being wrestling and that being WCW it was never guaranteed to work that way and the rankings didn't necessarily make sense to begin with but they did when I was 7 so lay off.
Wins and losses matter in MMA, and they don't in today's pro wrestling. In UFC I doubt seriously that you'll see a man lose 6 fights in a row challenging Matt Hughes for the Welterweight title but that's a given in the WWE and TNA. Plus, the fighters fight to win, and they don't need any side stories like revenge for raping a corpse several years back.
The one thing that Wrestling today has on MMA is that you can pretty much guarantee a good show if you put enough effort into it. In MMA because anything can happen, you have no real control over an event at least to the degree that you do in Pro Wrestling. In wrestling you can set exact match times, but in MMA you could conceivably have a 5 card Pay Per View where all 5 bouts end in less than a minute in the first round. That would be an epic disaster but it is theoretically possible.
The trouble is that wrestling isn't taking advantage of its resources. They can virtually guarantee good shows with just a little effort and yet they do not do this that often. The WWE can take to people, build them up for a year and have them wrestle at Wrestlemania and they can do it without being afraid that either guy will lose before the big match. You can try and accomplish the same thing in MMA but there is no 100% guarantee.
An example, Tito Ortiz is supposed to be in line to challenge Chuck Liddell for the Light Heavyweight title in February on a UFC Pay Per View. But, Chuck Liddell is not guaranteed to make it to that show as champion. Heck, what if lightning strikes and Tito Ortiz loses to Ken Shamrock in October. Sure, the odds are long and its probably not going to happen, but as Chris Berman always says about football, that's why they have the fights.
That's not a risk for WWE if they wanted to do John Cena and Batista at Wrestlemania they could book both guys to be strong going into the show and they don't have to risk Cena losing to Umaga before hand. Yet, the fact that they can directly influence their long-term direction and often choose instead to book from week to week is another point in favor of MMA. As for TNA, its WWE Jr. in that regard and it tries to be everything to everyone and ends up being nothing to nobody because it has no singular identity.
So it simply comes down to this, MMA and especially UFC are playing to their strengths and professional wrestling right now is ignoring its strengths. I say that its today's wrestling that makes me prefer MMA and that is because the problems I find in today's wrestling didn't always exist. Think of it like this how many times did Hulk Hogan lose the WWF title by having 1 of his opponents pin another 1 of his opponents while he was not involved? I actually have been pretty hard on WWE in this post, but I actually am more offended by what TNA is doing. They have made the conscious decision to be WWE lite, so they're making all of the same mistakes the only difference is that they have every ability not to make them. They don't have 9 belts, they have 3, but none of them mean anything because they are still treated like after thoughts the way the WWE treats every belt accept the one HHH is chasing or holding.
I suspect that I'm not alone. I suspect that the growing MMA audience is made up of a fair amount of people that are just like me and see MMA as the natural progression of what wrestling used to be than today's wrestling product. UFC is closer to the NWA and WWF of the 80's than the WWE and TNA are in my opinion.
I still find some enjoyment in today's pro wrestling but I have to look harder than I used to and there could be more to enjoy if the people in charge would observe what actually happens in the world these days. I still say that if the WWE treated wrestling like a legitimate sport that there would be people that buy in to it as such even though they know the outcome is predetermined. I believe this to be true for the same reason I see people walk out of horror movies scared even though they know what they're watching isn't real. If you sell it hard enough you can get people to buy into it. The problem is that neither WWE or TNA wants to sell it hard enough. TNA could emulate UFC in a lot of the ways that they do things and probably attract some of that audience but they either don't have the people in charge that would know how to pull it off or they just don't care and would rather be WWE lite.
This is why I prefer MMA to today's pro wrestling and why I see the MMA numbers getting bigger over the next few years and the wrestling numbers getting smaller. Unless some fundamental changes are made I could envision a day where a UFC show head-to-head with Raw could win the ratings. Its a long way from happening, and may never happen but its not something I consider out of the realm of possibility years down the line.
The key to that statement is today's pro wrestling, IE the WWE and TNA product that I watch.
I certainly didn't think a couple of years ago, that if you listed for me 3 PPV events in August 2006, that I would say that the one I wanted to see most was UFC and the 1 that I wanted to see the least was SummerSlam. A couple of years ago, MMA wasn't on my radar. Sure, I knew a little bit about it from sites that covered it such as WrestlingObserver.com and others. But, I never sought out MMA news or content, and that was true until about the middle of 2005.
Pro wrestling on the other hand has been a constant in my life since Childhood. So of course, a couple of years ago, I would've said I was looking forward to SummerSlam the most followed by TNA, followed by UFC but that there was no way that I'd order the UFC show.
That's not how it is today, so the only question is how did I get here?
As a sports fan it is only natural that I should like MMA I suppose. The fact is that MMA is not unlike most other professional sports out there. Ultimately, the goal is to win and to win enough to be called a champion. So, in MMA unlike today's pro wrestling the championships are important.
You want an idea of what I mean? Quick, name for me the WWE Intercontinental Champion, or the World Tag Team Champions. This is more of a problem in the WWE than it is in TNA because in TNA you only have 3 belts to keep track of whereas there are off the top of my head, 9 championships in WWE.
In MMA you don't see incomprehensible things such as the champion losing his title without actually losing. Sure, a champion can be stripped for various reason, but I don't think Chuck Liddell would ever lose his title by having Tito Ortiz submit Forrest Griffin in a 3-way match. Yet that's a common occurrence in today's wrestling world. It devalues the title because the new champion can't even declare that he beat the former champion.
Another thing that I find attractive about MMA is its unpredictability. Wrestling being predetermined is easy to figure out if you know what to look for. It is made even easier by the fact that the creative teams these days don't put any effort in to stories and are awfully transparent in the directions they go with certain characters. Ask yourself this, what in its current storylines could the WWE do to shock you? But in MMA, you can have a hyped up fight last a minute and 18 seconds. Sure, that kind of unpredictability isn't necessarily the funnest thing to watch, but it is an element missing from today's pro wrestling. Hey, remember when the slogan was anything can happen in the WWF? Think that's still true?
The fact is that MMA to me right now is what wrestling was to me when I was a kid. When I believed that the 2 guys I saw fighting were fighting because they wanted to win and to make more money and to move up the rankings. For as silly as it is to look back on right now, the WCW top 10 rankings actually added an element of believability to wrestling for me. Say Steve Austin was ranked number 6 and Tom Zenk ranked number 8. If Zenk won, he should logically move up in the rankings and drop Austin down. Granted, this being wrestling and that being WCW it was never guaranteed to work that way and the rankings didn't necessarily make sense to begin with but they did when I was 7 so lay off.
Wins and losses matter in MMA, and they don't in today's pro wrestling. In UFC I doubt seriously that you'll see a man lose 6 fights in a row challenging Matt Hughes for the Welterweight title but that's a given in the WWE and TNA. Plus, the fighters fight to win, and they don't need any side stories like revenge for raping a corpse several years back.
The one thing that Wrestling today has on MMA is that you can pretty much guarantee a good show if you put enough effort into it. In MMA because anything can happen, you have no real control over an event at least to the degree that you do in Pro Wrestling. In wrestling you can set exact match times, but in MMA you could conceivably have a 5 card Pay Per View where all 5 bouts end in less than a minute in the first round. That would be an epic disaster but it is theoretically possible.
The trouble is that wrestling isn't taking advantage of its resources. They can virtually guarantee good shows with just a little effort and yet they do not do this that often. The WWE can take to people, build them up for a year and have them wrestle at Wrestlemania and they can do it without being afraid that either guy will lose before the big match. You can try and accomplish the same thing in MMA but there is no 100% guarantee.
An example, Tito Ortiz is supposed to be in line to challenge Chuck Liddell for the Light Heavyweight title in February on a UFC Pay Per View. But, Chuck Liddell is not guaranteed to make it to that show as champion. Heck, what if lightning strikes and Tito Ortiz loses to Ken Shamrock in October. Sure, the odds are long and its probably not going to happen, but as Chris Berman always says about football, that's why they have the fights.
That's not a risk for WWE if they wanted to do John Cena and Batista at Wrestlemania they could book both guys to be strong going into the show and they don't have to risk Cena losing to Umaga before hand. Yet, the fact that they can directly influence their long-term direction and often choose instead to book from week to week is another point in favor of MMA. As for TNA, its WWE Jr. in that regard and it tries to be everything to everyone and ends up being nothing to nobody because it has no singular identity.
So it simply comes down to this, MMA and especially UFC are playing to their strengths and professional wrestling right now is ignoring its strengths. I say that its today's wrestling that makes me prefer MMA and that is because the problems I find in today's wrestling didn't always exist. Think of it like this how many times did Hulk Hogan lose the WWF title by having 1 of his opponents pin another 1 of his opponents while he was not involved? I actually have been pretty hard on WWE in this post, but I actually am more offended by what TNA is doing. They have made the conscious decision to be WWE lite, so they're making all of the same mistakes the only difference is that they have every ability not to make them. They don't have 9 belts, they have 3, but none of them mean anything because they are still treated like after thoughts the way the WWE treats every belt accept the one HHH is chasing or holding.
I suspect that I'm not alone. I suspect that the growing MMA audience is made up of a fair amount of people that are just like me and see MMA as the natural progression of what wrestling used to be than today's wrestling product. UFC is closer to the NWA and WWF of the 80's than the WWE and TNA are in my opinion.
I still find some enjoyment in today's pro wrestling but I have to look harder than I used to and there could be more to enjoy if the people in charge would observe what actually happens in the world these days. I still say that if the WWE treated wrestling like a legitimate sport that there would be people that buy in to it as such even though they know the outcome is predetermined. I believe this to be true for the same reason I see people walk out of horror movies scared even though they know what they're watching isn't real. If you sell it hard enough you can get people to buy into it. The problem is that neither WWE or TNA wants to sell it hard enough. TNA could emulate UFC in a lot of the ways that they do things and probably attract some of that audience but they either don't have the people in charge that would know how to pull it off or they just don't care and would rather be WWE lite.
This is why I prefer MMA to today's pro wrestling and why I see the MMA numbers getting bigger over the next few years and the wrestling numbers getting smaller. Unless some fundamental changes are made I could envision a day where a UFC show head-to-head with Raw could win the ratings. Its a long way from happening, and may never happen but its not something I consider out of the realm of possibility years down the line.
Labels: Mixed Martial Arts, OCC Opinion, TNA, UFC, WWE
posted by Casey Trowbridge at 8/13/2006 08:25:00 AM
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