10 Easy Ways Of Injecting Realism Into WWE
1. Sell, Sell, Sell!
Selling is a dying art form - and it's one of the main reasons why so few are emotionally engaged with WWE.
Wrestling is meant to look like it hurts. On a recent revisit of Bret Hart Vs. Undertaker at the WWF's UK-exclusive One Night Only pay per view from 1997, your writer was struck by how exquisite the Dead Man's sell job was. His right leg had been ostensibly decimated by a heel Bret Hart throughout the match in order to set up the Sharpshooter. By its conclusion, 'Taker was hobbling around so convincingly that he'd won over a large portion of Bret's famously ardent European fans.
That's the aim. It should be, at least.
Effective selling generates sympathy for the face. And, when an audience connects with a wrestler on this emotional level, they are far more likely to want to see them succeed. It seems simple, yet, in the rush to grab and sustain an audience's attention, too many performers in WWE choose to overstuff their matches with content without allowing enough time for that content resonate. It's fast food wrestling that dissipates with a sugar rush.
On any given episode of RAW, and especially on pay per view, the drama once sustained through selling is now supplanted by finisher kick-outs, adversely affecting believability in the process.
We remember that One Night Only match 20 years later. Try to remember the middle portion of any RAW match held more than a fortnight ago. Like most everything else in WWE, it is impossible.