8 Reasons Why Ricochet And Ospreay ARE Pro Wrestling

Let's face a few more unpalatable truths. The kind of hard selling these people are talking about is no more realistic than Tom and Jerry’s frying-pan-to-the-face spot. It's a sop to the crowd, to allow them to suspend their disbelief a little easier - but there’s no credibility to it.

Well over half the moves in the arsenal of a Triple H, a Daniel Bryan or a Seth Rollins - or a Vader, funnily enough - would disable or disfigure a man if they were real... but then we all know that they're not real. You can't sit in a real submission move screaming in pain for thirty seconds before agonisingly crawling to the ropes... but then it's not a real submission move, is it? This is theatre, and it comes in all shapes and sizes - it's just that the theatre these critics like doesn't ask very much of them as a spectator.

A pro wrestling match is a narrative, and the first rule of narrative is always that suspension of disbelief. Whether it's a two act play, a two hour movie or a tiny white lie you tell your parents, when you tell a story you ask your audience to go with it, to abstain from querying the structure of that story.

No story can stand up to rigorous questioning. Every film ever made has plot holes - they have to. A film is a narrative cut up into scenes and set pieces, jumping here, there and everywhere. It's the crew's job to coax that juddering, cut n' paste mess into the appearance of a flowing, coherent story, and it's the audience's job to allow themselves to be fooled. But no film - not even a bona fide masterpiece - can withstand the kind of scrutiny that comes with completely withholding that suspension of disbelief.

In the same way, all these marathon technical classics and intense, believable mat-based workouts may appear more credible than Ricochet/Ospreay, but that's simply because they hand-hold the spectator, bringing the action as close as possible to the appearance of a genuine sporting spectacle in order that even cynical b*stards like us can go along for the ride.

But if you choose to interrogate it instead, then it all falls apart like wet cake. It's all ridiculous, every match: from Sammartino/Zbyszko to Flair/Steamboat to Ricochet/Ospreay to Kenny Omega going five competitive minutes with a nine-year-old girl.

If the WWE’s action was real, then the very first flurry of offensive moves from these massive, highly trained men would end the match in seconds and put the recipient on the shelf for weeks or longer.

'Believability' isn't a yardstick to measure professional wrestling by, it's an entirely subjective perspective: a moveable feast, not set in stone. What matters is - did the crowd go with it? Were the audience engaged? Judging by the footage here, absolutely.