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I am, as the saying goes, a straight-up, stone-cold sucker for wrestling video games.

Yes, I know wrestling is infantile and misogynist and a vehicle for angry, stupid American rednecks to vent their intolerance. I'll watch it once in a blue moon, because I'm wary of Vince McMahon and the sway he has over the masses. I need to keep an eye on this motherfucker. He's tricky. It's pretty terrifying - nobody takes wrestling seriously because it's admittedly not real - but the demented storylines that WWE spins basically teach halfwits to hate hyper-stereotyped arabs and gays, and that it's 100% justified to slap women around under the flimsiest of pretenses. Violence solves everything, and you can only be the big-belt champion if you're a juice pig. Wrestling is a microcosm of American society without any constraints, where extremism is rewarded with ratings hikes and hatred is A-OK because it's "fake". It wouldn't be so bad if people didn't take it so seriously, didn't bask in the one-liners and wait with bated breath for the next predictable plot point, but they do. They eat wrestling for breakfast, lunch, dinner and late-nite snack, and they're not smart enough to separate parody from reality - aggressive, exclusionary mentality drips into their soft heads through the TV set and we all move a big step backwards when they mark their voting ballots. The WWE is totally fucked and not something to be treated lightly.

(Side note: I'm allowed to say all these mean things about wrestling fans because they're way too guillible, mostly American, and tend to form a huge Bible-belt voting bloc that continues to perpetrate intolerance. I'm being cruel for the purpose of promoting social equality. Plus God said it was cool - he's tired of these bastards smearing his Good Name.)

Anyways, believe it or not, this was all one big tangent from the get-go: I really wanted to talk about wrestling video games. See, the thing I find interesting about wrestling is the way the matches are choreographed. Momentum shifts from one battler to another, and back again. The ref will get knocked out by an "accidental" chair shot and an illegal eye gouge predictably turns the tide of war. You can almost see a wrestling match as performance art, constructed out of building blocks of reversals, rampant cheating and special finisher moves. The best performances keep an audience on edge: swinging control back and forth between combatants, varying tempo, springing a crucial surprise ("OH MY GOD! What...what is this?? Kane's MOTHER is coming down to the ring with a TUB of MUSTARD! And... OH MY GOD! She's SPREADING it all over his UNCONSCIOUS BODY! It's IN HIS EYES!!Oh the HUMANITY!" *sound of splashy vomiting*).

But oftentimes wrestling matches suck. They're boring and uninspired, and what appears to be obvious opportunities to do something new are ignored in favour of ten minutes of super-homoerotic grappling (to waste airtime without superstar exertion, you see). Me and Tim sit on the couch and criticize - why can't we write the stories and matches? Surely we'd come up with something better than this recycled poonani.

Enter the Playstation 2, and one very special WWE Smackdown! game. Make your own characters (Rasul's Mom is a popular favorite), make your own matches, control control control. It's not about the quick win, it's about stringing each other along and letting the tension build. Oh shit, the Rock just fell off a 15 foot steel cage! It would be relatively simple for Rasul's Mom to drop off the cage top and pin her unconscious competitor, but it would be way cooler if she tried (and failed) to land a massive moonsault instead. Wrestling is the only video game I don't mind losing in, as long as the fight was epic. It's all about the performance and, let's face it, the Playstation 2 probably knew who was gonna win right from the start. It's all fixed.

Anyways, if there's a point here at all it's that you can like wrestling or you can hate it, but the worst thing you can do is ignore it entirely. If you turn your back, it'll give you the low blow.

Posted by Chris at 11:21 AM >> Commentations (4)