The Match IS the Story

It frustrates myself to no end how wrestling fans will proudly announce as a point of honor that they're bad at watching wrestling.

Reading a thread on reddit had someone say something pretty reasonable. "If I got to a show and I get a great wrestling match with a bad build, I'm happy. If I get a great build and a bad match I feel ripped off."

The amount of people that wanted to signal that they felt the opposite seemed insane to me, like a legion of people who would say something like "I don't care if the Game is good, I care about the heart of gaming... Trailers and Pre-Release bonuses."

More so, this ignores the fact that wrestling and story aren't separate things, they work in unison. There are no true "5 star moves matches". The 2016 Ricochet vs. Will Ospreay Best of the Super Juniors match (not even a 5star match but whatever), something frequently cited as a 'moves' match, tells the story of two acrobatic hotheads trying one up each other while the match slowly breaks down into something more vicious as both realize they can't easily showboat their way to a win. A match that designed its psychology around the crowd, gave things time to breath, and told a highly successful story.

You don't have to like it. You can criticize it. You can find parts of it cringe (I HATE the superhero flip spot). You can not care enough to want to figure out the story telling of a promotion you don't care about. But if you say "I didn't like it because it didn't have a story", then, I'm sorry, you're bad at watching wrestling. You need big loud wet men to stand in the middle of the ring, to announce to your their feelings, to make sure you, the audience, know how to feel. You need to be told the story before you watch it.

And like whatever, that's fine. It doesn't make you a bad fan. Part of this is the fault past-WWE/F, which basically spent decades training people to think matches don't matter, and the rare times they do, the announcers will spell it out for you. Not that there weren't in-match stories -- wrestlers have always been good at their craft -- but it definitely often felt like an uphill battle.

So many older wrestling fans are proudly incurious. I can't let them claim this as a virtue. I can't go "we just like different parts of wrestling". I mean... we do, but they reason we do is because they're bad at watching wrestling.

Don't get me wrong, either. Context rules. Watching a lot of Japanese wrestling, figuring out the plot can be tricky sometimes, involving social media, magazine interviews, or simply being aware of decades old history... But in most cases, great matches are still designed to stand on their own, to entertain the person who bought a ticket for their their first time. The context gives more layers, adds context, allows you to pick up on more meaningful details. I still love a good promo, or a good backstage segment I love seeing characters interact... but The Ring is what makes wrestling special. That is the language wrestling uses to communicate. If you can only understand what happens outside the ring, then you're just watching a bad soap opera.