10 Times WWE Totally Changed Its In-Ring Style
A blooming Sahara.
The 'WWE style' has obviously shifted over the years - Giant Gonzalez wasn't out there on Superstars doing suicide dives to segue to the commercial break - but it retains what is often a pejorative connotation at its core.
The WWE style, relative to the wider landscape, is safe and comprehensible. It's how they hooked the kids all those years ago: with theatrical, histrionic performances that didn't require a deep knowledge or understanding of the craft. That would have undermined the aim; Hulk Hogan fought for the rights of every man, which wouldn't have worked had he lost them.
It's also how Vince McMahon made much of his vast fortune, before the paradigm shifted: the touring schedules that only now can be described as "old" were torturous; to withstand them, a certain way of working was enforced. What was earnest and magic in the 1980s resonates as patronising and boring now. We know the roster is capable of so much more - only the hardcore fans that remain have seen it before, exposing WWE's approach and informing its viewership decline - but they mostly aren't allowed to show it.
The monopoly bred an arrogance and contempt for the pro wrestling WWE's sports entertainment dominated so thoroughly, and that pro wrestling has to "scratch and claw" to break through...
10. Randy Savage Vs. Ricky Steamboat - WrestleMania III
A sacrosanct match that, while incredible, is perhaps more remarkable in context.
The mid-'80s WWF boasted some tremendous workers, particularly in the tag team ranks, but a match of this technical quality and profile was virtually unprecedented; the prevailing fashion was of heavily muscled men overcoming sneaky or elephantine heels in hair-shaking audience begs. The WrestleMania III Intercontinental Title match paved the future in content and approach.
Worked with a sense of furious tension and advanced craft, it never relented from a white-hot opening salvo. Deftly incorporating the stark moral contrasts and theatrical outside shenanigans that defined the WWF style, this was an unforgettable and electrifying pure wrestling/sports entertainment hybrid. Steamboat's strategy to lull Savage into those beautiful arm drags - contrasted with Savage's deceit to pummel his back with those running knees - remains a total joy, all these years later.
Moreover, Savage and Steamboat essentially rewrote the administration of a professional wrestling match by laying out move for move ahead of it in a practise that, while the norm now, was frowned upon as a betrayal of wrestling's extemporaneous performance art spirit.