Ultimate (Play)Fighting

by Colin Hunter

I'm not ashamed to admit that I love pro wrestling.

OK, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit it.

But I felt safety in numbers last night, as I was one of the 16,664 humanoids who crammed into the Air Canada Centre last night to see a live broadcast of Monday Night Raw, the flagship TV show of "sports entertainment" juggernaut World Wrestling Entertainment. Tonight, I'm off to London's sold-out John Labatt Centre to watch a taping of WWE's other big TV show, Smackdown.

Which, for many people I know, begs the question: Why?!  Why on earth would anyone want to watch a low-low-low-brow spectacle in which Spandex-clad musclegoons pretend to fight? 

My answer: I watch it precisely because it's a low-low-low brow spectacle staged by play-fighting musclegoons. I love wrestling for all its unabashed absurdity, for its simplistic melodrama and crass passion-plays, for its ludicrous plotlines and cavernous plot-holes, for its silly perpetuation of stereotypes and and its utter numbskullery. 

When people find out I watch wrestling, they automatically assume I'm also of fan of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), commonly known as ultimate fighting.  But this just ain't so. Pro wrestling and MMA may seem to share many similarities, and therefore have the same appeal, but a closer look reveals that the two are as different as apples and monkeys. And so I present to you....

Wrestling vs. Mixed Martial Arts: A Comparative Cage Match

REALITY: MMA is "real," in the sense that two goons actually try to beat one another up. Any day now, hungry lions will likely be introduced to the sport.  In wrestling, the goons create the illusion of violence through choreography that, while far less believable than MMA, allows the audience to satisfy an inner bloodlust without all the icky guilt associated with cheering for actual combat.

CHARACTERS: Wrestling has an undead undertaker (see left), several giants, a leprechaun, a snooty aristocrat, a jungle savage, an evil gazillionaire and a gaggle of Playboy bunnies. MMA has a bunch of dudes with shaved heads and crooked noses who pretty much all look like the guy over here------->

DRAMA:  Wrestling is a play, not a sport. It's a play in which the conflicts of the world -- good vs. evil, domestic vs. foreign, rich vs. poor, America vs. Whereveristan -- are dramatized through bawdy pantomime. It's all about archetypes and pathos and morality struggles.  MMA, on the other hand, is two dudes wailing on each other.

ENTERTAINMENT VALUE: Pro wrestling is kind of like Vaudeville -- an ever-changing variety show featuring an weird menagerie of entertainers. If the angry giant doesn't entertain you, maybe the conniving leprechaun or the pyrotechnics or the dancing ladies will. As for MMA, well, it's two dudes wailing on each other.

I'm sure many fans of MMA will whole-heartedly disagree with me, and will be tempted to totally wail on me. I can only hope that my defensive manoeuvre -- a flying elbow drop from the top rope -- will be as effective as it seems on TV.