10 Wrestlers Who Changed WWE’s In-Ring Style
From hulk-ups to hard knees.
It is easier to define what is an unassumingly diverse and ever-changing "WWE Style" by what conventional wisdom reduces it to.
Impact moves to the head are perceived as dangerous - a psychological kiss-off puckered by those who are as poor as crafting logical stories as Michael Bay. Heel and babyface roles are almost comically rigid. The audience is rarely entrusted to choose their own adventure. There is merchandise to be sold, and stars to market. WWE will make your decision for you, whether you like it or not.
Punches, kicks and rest holds are deployed with eye-rolling frequency, in order to imbue actual moves with meaning. A contest is not a fight to simulate, but a story to tell. Babyfaces are weak, and require crowd support to galvanise them - but they are also, paradoxically, invincible. Heels need to cheat to win, but not to dominate.
There is an element of truth to cliché, and these accusations of simplicity and homogeneity are not without merit - but that fabled WWE Style is so fluid that it is equally easy to argue that it may not actually exist...
10. Hulk Hogan
In the pre-Hogan era, the (W)WWF was a more rough and tumble environment, in which fairly intense brawling was the norm. The Madison Square Garden audience was mostly comprised of working class ethnic communities - hence the popularity of Italian-American Bruno Sammartino and Puerto Rican Pedro Morales - who paid to see their proxy heroes fight, not entertain. Their struggles were epitomised and vanquished by their champions.
The emergence of Hulk Hogan evolved - or devolved - that ethos. The WWF targeted the family audience during their national expansion programme in the early nineties, adopting the same production technicolour of its newest top star, Hulk Hogan.
As the WWF broadened its audience, it broadened its in-ring style, implementing the most basic mode of its trademark "storytelling" approach. Hogan, gigantic of height and engorged with muscle, was somehow the underdog in his matches - whether it was Andre The Giant or the smaller Randy Savage in the opposite corner.
Feeding off their rapturous support, he would deploy his famous "hulking up" routine just as it was felt all hope was lost, no-selling the protracted offence of his dastardly foes to underscore the virtue of saying your prayers and taking your vitamins.