10 Beautiful Moments Of Respect In Wrestling
"Knowledge will give you power, but character respect."
There's an inherent respect among pro wrestling's "brotherhood" - to such a profound extent that some members of it cannot reconcile any fan opinion on the in-ring that is beyond passive enjoyment - but this rarely makes it onscreen.
That would be boring.
Wrestling is built on competition to make it coherent - and hatred to make it interesting. There is a near-lost art to underpinning this with respect, to tacitly put both parties over, but it's the verbal fire that convinces the audience to part with their money for a glorious, cathartic sh*t-kicking. And that element of respect, while necessary, is often quite amusing in how suddenly and drastically it is undermined.
"X is an amazing athlete, don't get me wrong, but he's still a complete piece of sh*t with buck teeth!"
Most wrestling storylines operate in the spirit of disrespect: men will touch up the ex-girlfriends of their rivals, right in their face; blood is drawn faces; teeth are removed via kicks to the back of the skull; belts are lashed against swollen, bleeding backs; performers who apparently don't meet certain conventions of beauty are described as "oversized rats" that have just crawled out of the "Lincoln tunnel".
Programmes based on respect aren't interesting - even in Hulk Hogan and Ultimate Warrior's all-baby storyline, Warrior threatened to kill him via aeroplane crash - but on rare, beautiful occasion, that inherent respect does bleeds onscreen...
10. Hiroshi Tanahashi And Katsuyori Shibata Reconcile Their Differences
Hiroshi Tanahashi despised Katsuyori Shibata.
Tanahashi transformed New Japan Pro Wrestling commercially after Shibata had abandoned the promotion in its mid-2000s crisis period. The Ace did so by forging a new stylistic path in which he sought to perfect a nuanced, advanced form of pro wrestling storytelling, one broad (and safe) enough for a family audience but loaded with an intelligence designed for the purists.
Shibata returned, in 2012, with his own imprint: a gruesomely stiff interpretation of the Strong Style by which Tanahashi was so disgusted. Tanahashi referred to it as a "curse" in his autobiography - how prophetic, given the fate Shibata later endured. "Is there a "next" to Shibata's pro wrestling?" he asked. In 2017, he would learn his answer.
Shibata meanwhile shrugged off the criticism. He didn't "rate" Tanahashi's work, much less his genre.
This mutual disgust naturally made it to the ring - it's wrestling - at Destruction In Kobe in 2014. The match was a classic, built and informed by this clash of philosophy - the best, most compelling argument that both can flourish. After Tanahashi emerged the victor, Shibata in an intimate, beautiful moment expressed his gratitude to Tanahashi. He had saved NJPW, thus allowing him to become a star in it.
And Tanahashi, the greatest babyface of his generation, was naturally honourable enough to reciprocate the respect.