Wrestling IS Performance Art: Deal With It

Joey Ryan invented the ‘Penisplex’ in 2015. In that same year, Jay White was an emerging Young Lion in the NJPW dojo system unrecognisable from his current ‘Switchblade’ guise. MJF, meanwhile, was wrestling as ‘Pete Lightning’ and ‘Maxwell Jacob Feinstein’ in his debut year. Both men are now flourishing as true old school heels with an ability to control entire crowds into a state of unanimous hatred.

The debate is all a big, tiresome omni-work. The old school podcasters moan about it to drive clicks, because reminiscing over halcyon days in the mid-south coliseum doesn’t—and that’s sad, subjectively, but no less true. Their snitch-tagging acolytes want the recognition of a retweet. Their opponents in these online rivalries hope to get over as rebels.

The irony is that, viewed through the optics of 2019, something like Arn Anderson’s ‘80s selling looks comical. Mr. Perfect took ridiculous, rotating bumps. Broad slapstick used to get over as a comedic device—even if nobody ever punched somebody’s shadow in “a real fight”—to pop a more earnest, easier crowd. Back then: now, hyper-irony pops a more jaded public on a fringe people are under no obligation to acknowledge.

Wrestling in 2019 is diverse, and what’s wrong with that? Isn’t a rigid imposition of form precisely why WWE draws so much criticism? Freedom of creative expression can manifest as anything because that’s what it f*cking is.

Wrestling always was a performance art because it was never a fight. It was by definition a performance. Acknowledging this didn’t “kill the business” at SuperBrawl VI in 1996. The business exploded two years later. In 2019, the concept of traditional wrestling performance is toyed with, subverted, parodied, and this is crucial, perfected.

And yes, Arn Anderson does look like he’d cream Joey Janela in a real fight, but Minoru Suzuki would knock f*ck out of Arn Anderson, and you can watch him in 2019.

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