Hardcore asked more of its participants than other styles of wrestling had up until that point. Matches had to be harder, faster and more impactful, high spots needed to be more creative, storylines and angles needed to linger in the mind and play upon the conscience. The business itself was required to adapt or die in the wake of this ceaseless onslaught. Hardcore wrestling was a world of brute force, a world gone mad. It was an arena of uncertainty, a last gasp of violent innovation to round off a tumultuous century. With hardcore wrestling, the business got closer than ever to the gore splattered arenas of ancient Rome and emerged all the more popular as a result. Even in todays blood-free, PG era WWE, hardcore style wrestling leads most, if not all, of the major Pay Per View events. Regular PPVs like Hell in a Cell, TLC, Extreme Rules and Money in the Bank feature No Holds Barred and No DQ matches at almost every turn. Wrestlers get put through tables, thrown off ladders and whacked with foreign objects in a manner that can be seen as the direct influence of hardcore wrestling. The athletic intensity of the new breed of pro wrestlers positively screams hardcore and the acceptance of painful gimmick matches and super bumps as being part of the job simply speaks to how absolutely the hardcore wrestling ethos has been absorbed into the business as a whole.
I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction.
I don't generally read or reply to comments here on What Culture (too many trolls!), but if you follow my Twitter (@heyquicksilver), I'll talk to you all day long!
If you are interested in reading more of my stuff, you can find it on http://quicksilverstories.weebly.com/ (my personal site, which has other wrestling/comics/pop culture stuff on it).
I also write for FLiCK http://www.flickonline.co.uk/flicktion, which is the best place to read my fiction work.
Oh yeah - I'm about to become a Dad for the first time, so if my stuff seems more sentimental than usual - blame it on that!
Finally, I sincerely appreciate every single read I get. So if you're reading this, thank you, you've made me feel like Shakespeare for a day! (see what I mean?)
Latcho Drom,
- CQ
