Professional wrestling has a history of being wacky and ridiculous. This is a profession where grown men and women go to outrageous lengths to pretend to hurt one another to tell a story, sometimes without actually speaking. It’s a bit of a kitsch, but millions of people around the world love it.
But wrestling, like other endeavours, is rife with criticism geared towards it.
People mock wrestling and its fans for its inherent fakeness, for the excess violence seen on some occasions, and for the ridiculously over-the-top and sometimes offensive acts put on display by wrestling companies.
Many wrestling fans defend what they watch because of its uniqueness, but other people in the society will always find one reason or another to make fun of wrestling. Now, they can add another element to their criticism: illogical and borderline-stupid rules that govern the decisions made and the match structure in WWE.
No matter how much WWE tries to sell itself as ‘sports entertainment’, it’s still wrestling, dammit. It requires viewers to suspend their disbelief to really invest in what they’re watching. But there’s another element to all of this as well.
Most fans these days are smarter than in previous years and can be just as interested in the backstage happenings of a company as in the matches themselves. When there’s something special happening backstage that we’re not supposed to hear about, you can guarantee that people will try and find out about it no matter what.
With the ubiquitous internet breaking the walls down between the on-screen product and the decision-making process in WWE, fans are learning more and more about the rules and processes that dominate WWE.
Some of these make sense, such as their concussion policy and wellness policy. Others are more open to debate, such as the overly-childish promos and storylines done because the company is PG, or the no blood rule, despite blood being an integral component of matches for decades.
Then there are the rules and mentalities that simply do not make sense. You don’t have to be an expert in business administration, economics, behavioural psychology, or even wrestling to understand that some of these rules defy all logic.
Here are six of the most illogical and incomprehensible rules that seem to govern how WWE makes its decisions and books its matches.
#6 In a Tag match, partners can only interfere once
Go back and watch any regular tag team match on RAW or SmackDown from the last few years. What you’ll notice is that, in each match, when two people are in the ring, one of the partners will interrupt a pin attempt only once throughout the entire match, and then that person’s opponent will then attack that person.
What this means is that tag team matches can only have one moment where a pin attempt is interrupted. This doesn’t make sense because the idea behind having your partner come in to help you is the main purpose of a tag team match.
For an example of how a tag team should operate, watch this match (I know it’s long, but still, it’s worth it):
What you’ll notice in this match (aside from its unparalleled awesomeness) is that for both teams, partners on the apron interfered several times throughout the match. This made each near-fall feel like it could actually end the match and added much more drama to the match.
In making this rule, WWE’s basically telling the audience that, unless a wrestler’s partner interferes, they shouldn’t worry about any match-ending moves. Simply put, they’re creating a predictable formula for every tag team match where everything follows the same flow.
But having a tag partner interfere several times has multiple benefits. Aside from showing proper tag team psychology and adding drama to the match, it can also generate support/heat for one wrestler or another.
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For instance, during the 2001 Survivor Series ‘WWE vs. Alliance’ match, Shane McMahon kept getting involved and breaking up pin attempts throughout the first half of the match. This made the audience loathe him, and they wanted to see him get his comeuppance desperately.
So when several wrestlers hit their finishers on him, the crowd roared in approval, as an irritating match participant was finally eliminated.
Good luck finding a match with that kind of psychology or storytelling in WWE matches these days, what with the above rule being something of a standard in the company.
#5 Only John Cena can do the Yay/Boo thing
This entry is based on the recently reported ‘house show rules’ document that’s been circulating over the past few days.
Apparently, the only person allowed to do the ‘yay/boo punch exchange’ is John Cena. Nobody else can do this move, even though Cena isn’t even on the roster full-time now. So what the agents are telling the wrestlers is that no one can be more popular than John Cena.
This is a ridiculous rule that defies all logic. It’s one thing to ban piledrivers or to prevent another wrestler from using the same finisher as another.
It’s another matter entirely when no one can do a generic spot that involves the crowd. Fans love to get involved in matches in any way they can, and they do this mostly by cheering and booing at certain points.
We’ve seen this spot done several times with different wrestlers, most notably anyone wrestling against Roman Reigns and even in matches between Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn. Fans getting involved in this way is a direct indication of the fans’ opinion of the match they’re watching.
So by restricting the spot to only John Cena, WWE’s basically telling their wrestlers, ‘we don’t trust you to be spontaneous in your matches. Only Cena can be trusted to involve the fans in his matches.’
This is a terrible mentality that prevents the younger wrestlers from not just getting over with the audiences but also makes it harder for them to prove that they can be draws.
As long as the company prevents anyone else from reaching Cena’s level of popularity by implementing ridiculous restrictions like this one, they’ll be forever dependent on the stars of yesteryears, in order to stay popular and profitable.
#4 The Roll-Up is the most powerful finisher in the WWE
Quick, name the one wrestling move that everyone’s afraid of. No, it’s neither the F-5, nor the Tombstone, nor the AA, or even the Rear View. It’s the dreaded Roll-up, the one move that can pin even the toughest of wrestlers.
We’ve seen it a thousand times in the past year. Wrestler A will be getting close to victory. Suddenly, there will be some cheap action, such as another wrestler’s music playing, someone getting up on the ring apron or some other screwy booking decision.
Then Wrestler B will hook Wrestler A’s leg and roll them up for a successful pin.
I am not a trained wrestler, and if you’re reading this, odds are that neither are you. But I’m fairly confident that if someone tried to roll-up either one of us like they do with this move, both of us would break out of that move and be back on our feet long before three seconds go by.
The dreaded Roll-up makes everyone involved look horribly weak. It makes the wrestler receiving the move look both incredibly frail for being felled by such a simplistic and painless-looking move and incredibly stupid for being so easily distracted as to be caught off guard for three full seconds by something happening outside of the match.
It makes the wrestler using the move look weak by having to end the match with something so boring instead of their actual finisher. And it makes the writers of such a match look inept by suggesting that they cannot come up with anything more creative than ‘victory by roll-up due to interference’.
If you’re wondering why so many wrestlers aren’t gaining any further momentum, you can thank this illogical and boring match finish that seems to permeate WWE’s creative department constantly.
#3 Guests and Actors must look better than the wrestlers
Wrestlers, both male and female, are supposed to be very tough people.
After all, you can’t spend almost an entire calendar year performing such painful moves, training so hard and working through severe pain without being very tough. So why are so many wrestlers put into positions where celebrities and guests get the upper hand over them?
It isn’t logical for a professional wrestler to be outdone by someone with little-to-no experience in the business. Yet for some reason, WWE has booked many wrestlers to have done so. Big Show was defeated by Floyd Mayweather, despite being almost 2 full feet taller and outweighing him 3-to-1.
Jersey Shore’s Snooki, a ridiculously inexperienced person, managed to actually hurt trained wrestler Michelle McCool with a handful of moves. Chavo Guerrero, bless his soul, was made to look horribly weak by taking a karate chop from Bob Barker, of all people.
While slapstick humour and cheesiness do have their place in wrestling, it doesn’t help when it makes someone look like a fool. By having these untrained non-wrestlers look better than the trained wrestlers, it suggests that anyone can become a wrestler, and no one should take wrestling seriously because these people look like fools.
Recently, several guest hosts came to WWE programming and got the better of established top wrestlers in verbal exchanges.
Shouldn’t the wrestlers be the ones at the top, intimidating people that dare question what they do? You’d think WWE would try and protect their assets (read: their talent) by booking segments that show non-wrestlers as being afraid of them.
But if WWE constantly creates segments where wrestlers are made to look like chumps so that some random celebrity can say that they beat a wrestler, the company’s reputation will be unable to improve.
#2 Making booking decisions to SPITE fans
Picture yourself as the top authority of a big company that has a vocal fanbase. You want to make decisions that’ll both bring you more money and appease the people that purchase your product. You might not always agree on what’s best, but you do strive to give them what they want.
Then, suddenly, you make a decision that gets rejected by your audience en masse, and they make it known just how much they disapprove of your decision.
What do you do? Do you, A) Realise you made a mistake and try to fix things so that you continue to grow and retain loyal fans? Or do you, B) Keep doing what you’re doing, despite the overwhelming disapproval, and then change other things around to ‘get back’ at the fans because you don’t like it when they screw up your plans?
If you picked the first option, you’re a reasonable person that understands the unpredictability of having a large audience and understand people. If you picked the second one, your name is Vince McMahon.
Several key decisions over the course of the year have been done, seemingly, to spite the wrestling audience, especially the most vocal elements. Nowhere was this more prominent than at WrestleMania 32, when several booking decisions were made that defied all logic and seemed to have been done solely to spite the fans.
Zack Ryder won the MITB briefcase, despite overwhelming support for either Sami Zayn or Kevin Owens winning (long-term booking would’ve likewise suggested either one of those as a logical decision).
Chris Jericho, the long-time WWE veteran that’s beloved by many, who can come and go as he pleases without having to worry about his reputation, defeated the new arrival A.J. Styles, who was in dire need of a win at WrestleMania.
The League of Nations, a group that no one liked (or even liked to boo, it was more like XPac heat) defeated the New Day, despite the latter team’s overwhelmingly greater fan support and importance to the tag team division.
Dean Ambrose lost to Brock Lesnar, despite Ambrose needing a key win to maintain any momentum he had, going into WrestleMania.
Roman Reigns, a man that many noted observers predicted would get booed unrelentingly at the event, won in the main event. Fans were so upset that Triple H and Stephanie, the heels in the match, had to placate the audience afterwards to try and send them home somewhat less angry (making them happy was not an option by that point).
If someone with key decision-making power makes decisions like these that not only confuse potential casual fans but also alienate existing fans, many of whom are still loyal to the product due to sheer goodwill carved out of years of loyalty, it really makes one question whether those in power use any logic whatsoever.
#1 Wrestlers MUST lose in their hometown/country (when on the main roster)
Most people don’t have the ability to live their dreams like wrestlers do.
They’ll never be as tough, strong or popular as those wrestlers, and won’t be able to see the world like those wrestlers. That’s why many people choose to live vicariously through their favourite wrestlers, especially when that person and that wrestler share a hometown.
At least they have that in common, and it gives something for that person to be proud of.
You would think that, when Wrestler X arrives in their hometown, they would win their match to make the audience happy (that is, of course, the most basic goal of a wrestling match, at least in theory). Yet for some inexplicable and illogical reason, the main roster wrestlers seem to always lose in their hometowns.
Worse, wrestling isn’t like a legitimate sport where a hometown loss can be caused by genuine superiority from another team on a given night.
This is the pre-determined world of wrestling, where someone makes the conscientious decision beforehand to have someone lose in front of an audience that would give them a raucous ovation.
Where is the logic in that? In what other form of entertainment would the powers-that-be want to disappoint the audience that pays hard-earned money to attend their events?
Since most fans are smarter these days, they’re aware that these decisions are made by people backstage. Simply put, someone with decision-making authority thinks it’s a good idea for a wrestler whose hometown they’re in to lose in front of an audience that loves them.
No matter how much people in WWE might think that wins and losses don’t matter… the truth is that they do. A lot. People want to be associated with winners instead of losers. And if someone from a certain hometown sees their hometown hero losing in front of them, they’re not going to be happy with the product they’re watching.
It would seem that, when it comes to WWE’s decision-making department, logic has left the building.
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