10 Most INFURIATING Wrestling Narratives

5. Older Wrestling Looked More Realistic

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WWE

It’s all flips and gymnastics and no-selling now, isn’t it?

Stupid vanilla midgets doing acrobatics in the Tokyo Dome for the express purpose of inseminating their critical cache with that massive mark Dave Meltzer’s fanboy milk. It’s pathetic. Five star matches ruined wrestling. It isn’t like it was in the 1980s, when everything looked real.

1980s wrestling was so awesome, subjectively and critically and in terms of its mainstream pull, but it didn’t look more realistic. If anything, the flailing arms, jelly-legged selling beloved of the heels looks fairly comical viewed through a 2019 lens. The old ten punches to the head spot was very effective for its time, since the fandom at largely legitimately despised the villains, but now, it looks a bit silly and very, very painful. They are getting the brains beaten out of their skull, which theoretically should hurt more than a padded kick to the wide surface area of the back.

The Irish whip automatically disqualifies any pro wrestling from realism, and while selling was perhaps more pronounced within that long-forgotten context, the style of it, broadly, no longer looks authentic.

People go on like JCP and Mid-South were W*ING.

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Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!