Duckman – Layin’ The Quackdown: Joe Rogan’s Fake Factor.
There’s nothing interesting happening in the world of pro wrestling this week. So much so, that I was contemplating not writing about wrestling. I was going to write about the Scottish Independence Referendum instead. There’s almost too much to say about that.
It’s the biggest decision this country has ever made. Should Scotland leave the union of the United Kingdom and become an independent nation? It’s a big question, with massive repercussions for generations to come.
I realise this isn’t the place for that kind of article. People come to sites like this to get away from the incessant whining and bullshit of politicians and the mainstream media. So I decided against dipping my toe in the Scottish Independence debate.
Instead I’ll do what I wish so many people on Facebook would do: keep my opinion to myself, make my vote and then wait with baited breath to see what the rest of Scotland does. Honestly, I’ve never been so utterly bored with so many people trying to convince me that their gang are right. Truthfully, no one has the answers we need to make this decision, and that’s the scariest thing about all of it.
Instead of writing about something important, I’m going to write about Joe Rogan’s recent comments on pro wrestling and pro wrestling fans. If you’re not familiar with Joe Rogan, he’s an excitable UFC commentator, stand-up comedian, podcaster and former host of the TV show Fear Factor.
Last week, Joe made headlines on both MMA and Wrestling sites. This was during a discussion on his podcast (“train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day” – man, I love Nick Diaz and his weird shout-outs) when the topic of WWE arose. Someone on his show had been offered a job on the WWE’s writing team. Here’s a quote to give you a flavour of what Joe had to say about our favourite pastime:
“[UFC] is real. [It’s] people battling for their lives in the most difficult contest in all of sports. You know what else would stun that audience? A simple card trick. It’s all planned out, it’s obvious. [Professional wrestling] is some weird, *expletive* thing that strange guys do, sit in front of the TV and pretend they don’t know it’s fake. You’re pretending. You don’t want to know. You shut that part of your brain off. I’d watch lions killing gazelles on television because that’s real. I need real. I can’t get entertained by fake. When you watch Game of Thrones and you watch a guy get his head cut off, you know what it looks like? It looks like a guy actually getting his head cut off. It looks real. When I watch wrestling, and I see a guy get hit and go, ‘UGH!’ and turn to the crowd, I know that’s bullsh*t. It’s offensive to me.”
Yep, it’s 2014 and Joe Rogan is still confused and annoyed that pro wrestling is not a real, competitive sport. One day, in the distant future, this argument will finally be settled and we can all get on with our lives. Until then, people like Joe Rogan will continue to point out the fucking obvious and act like they’re the first person to ever entertain the idea that pro wrestling is predetermined.
As you can imagine, MMA fans high-fived Joe, called him bro, chugged some Alpha Brain and agreed that pro wrestling is stupid and fake and the people who watch it are equally as moronic as the pseudo-sport they follow. Obviously ignoring the fact that a huge percentage of them used to watch pro wrestling and probably only got interested in the UFC when Brock Lesnar debuted in 2008.
Of course the vocal majority of wrestling fans reacted just as you would expect, with measured responses and well thought out counterpoints to Mr Rogan’s point of view. Who am I kidding? Of course they didn’t; they were too busy being stunned by a card trick to write anything sensible.
I’m appointing myself as the official spokesman of the ‘stunned by magic pro wrestling fan’ in this never ending argument about nothing. I’ve watched a few ‘behind the magic’ specials. Hell, I used to be a member of the Paul Daniels magic club for kids (and that’s a shoot, brother). So I’m not as easily stunned by magic as the rest of my wrestling watching brethren apparently are.
Let’s put aside the obvious – Joe Rogan says these kind of thing to get his name out there, get attention and more people listening to his show – and instead focus on the points he makes. Then let’s tear those points a new asshole. We can even call that new asshole Joe if you want.
I think it’s important to make a clear separation between sports entertainment and pro wrestling. The differences might not be obvious, but they are there and they make all the difference when addressing Rogan’s comments.
WWE is a cartoon come to life. It’s sports-entertainment; a sporting pantomime, complete with audience participation, easily identifiable good guys and bad guys and a healthy dose of camp silliness. There’s plenty of ‘nudge-nudge-wink-wink’ to the audience, who know they’re watching a well-choreographed, physical form of entertainment.
Professional wrestling is the style of wrestling that you see in places like New Japan and Ring of Honor. It’s wrestling in a more serious form than WWE, with a lot of the pantomime and camp silliness of sports-entertainment removed. Instead it’s wrestling presented as a serious sporting contest, where wins and losses matter. Everyone watching knows and accepts that what they’re seeing is not a real sporting contest, but the physicality of a real sport is plain to see, even if the match was worked out in the back a few hours before show time.
While most of the people reading this would class themselves as a pro wrestling fan, if all you watch is WWE, then you’re a sports entertainment fan. Don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with that. Think of it like people who only listen to one genre of music. They’d still call themselves music fans, but in reality they’re actually a rock or a techno fan.
The genre of professional wrestling is more than just WWE and that tends to be forgotten by the general public. Ironically it’s similar to the confusion some people have in understanding that MMA is the sport and that the UFC promotes MMA. See Joe, we’re not that different after all.
I’ve never understood the argument of ‘fake vs. real.’ It’s a not a question of fake vs. real. It’s the difference between predetermined and legitimate contest. There’s nothing fake about what wrestlers do. The injuries sustained by a wrestler in the course of their career are just as real as those of a MMA fighter. Then there’s the schedule that WWE stars have to endure and the lifestyle that can break you physically and mentally. There’s nothing fake about any of that.
As wrestling fans, we don’t all sit there watching with one part of our brain switched off. Shit, if it’s a particularly bad episode of RAW, I’ll switch off at least five parts of my brain. With IMPACT it can get close to a total brain shutdown. In all seriousness, we know the outcome is predetermined. We know it’s not a real fight. One look at UFC will show you what a real fight looks like. It’s not just the fight we care about.
Pro wrestling is a simple game. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to book a wrestling feud. Which is a good thing because they should be concentrating on building rockets, not wasting their time booking wrestling.
The premise behind pro wrestling promotion used to be so simple: two men had an issue that needed to be settled (be it personal or simply competitive); the promoter announced the match and set the date; the wrestlers then built to the match through interviews and put across their personalities to sell the match; then they have the match and the issue between them is resolved, or something happens which necessitates a rematch(s). Sound familiar Joe?
Professional wrestling is not that different from the UFC, at least in terms of promotion. Sure, the UFC can’t decide the outcome of fights, but they can put the right fighters together, who will draw big money thanks to their personalities.
Nick Diaz vs. GSP was the perfect example of a pro wrestling style feud in the UFC. It was built purely on character and personality, with an added backstory of bad blood and mistrust. No one really believed Nick Diaz would beat GSP, but Diaz did such a great job hyping the fight that fans forgot that reality and bought into the characters involved. It did over 900,000 buys on PPV.
During last week’s Bellator show, Stephan Bonnar and Tito Ortiz did an angle straight out of pro wrestling booking 101: the masked man revealed to be a former training partner of the heel, who is now helping the babyface. Of course, a lot of MMA purists hated it, but it was the biggest thing talked about coming out of that show and added a lot of interest to a fight not many people really cared about.
I’ll always defend pro wrestling against the naysayers. You don’t have to watch it. But you have to respect the art form and the skill that is exhibited in pro wrestling matches across the world on a daily basis. Sure, they’re not REALLY hitting each other, but does that matter? Those people on Game of Thrones aren’t really cutting someone’s head off Joe, but it looks real and we accept it as such in that world.
And that’s the point Rogan misses. To the outsider, to the untrained eye, WWE does look ridiculous, especially compared to UFC. But then Game of Thrones looks ridiculous when compared to Breaking Bad. You can compare the quality of the writing and the characters, but what those characters do, in those specific worlds, are so different that you could never fairly compare the shows. Sure, they’re both great, but they’re great for very different reasons.
Pro wrestling and UFC do share some common ground, but you can’t compare one to the other because they exist in completely different worlds.
Where Rogan might have a point, is in the way wrestling is presented by WWE. They make it difficult to suspend disbelief these days and emotionally invest. WWE has drowned in lacklustre soap opera, poor storytelling and bad comedy since the end of the Attitude Era. If it’s boring and childish and not compelling or exciting – which is what 90% of WWE’s output is these days – then it’s difficult to emotionally invest and easy to write-off everything you see as stupid and fake. Especially at my age.
There are so many moments on RAW (Bella segments most recently) that are just cringe inducing and almost impossible to justify to a non-wrestling fan. Those are the moments when it’s embarrassing to be a wrestling fan and unfortunately, the mainstream public get everything they know about wrestling from WWE. If Joe Rogan watched the G-1 Climax tournament from New Japan, I think his opinion would be drastically altered.
Or maybe not. Just because we like something, doesn’t mean the rest of the world has to and vice versa. I can’t stand Formula 1 but I don’t spend my free time making fun of it or slagging off the people who watch it. Why belittle something someone else likes just because you don’t understand or appreciate it? Why try to convince them that what they like is wrong? It’s just wasting energy and starting fights that don’t need to be started.
Joe Rogan is entitled to his opinion, no matter how ill-informed he is. He’s wrong about pro wrestling and he’s wrong about most pro wrestling fans. Sure there’s some fuck-nugget-retards within our ranks, but there’s just as many who watch football, baseball or UFC. In fact, I’m starting to worry that the fuck-nugget-retards are rapidly outnumbering the rest of us.
Be it opinions on wrestling, or something actually important – like Scottish independence – there will always be someone ready to argue with you. When it comes to wrestling, my mind is made up. It’s going to take a shit lot more than Joe Rogan saying something dumb to make me stop loving pro wrestling.
Speaking of someone saying something dumb, you can see me do just that by following me on Twitter which is @MFXDuckman. Just like Joe Rogan, I’ve got a podcast too. It’s on hiatus at the moment while my partner on the show, Sir Ian Trumps, enjoys a well-earned holiday. Then he moves house at the end of the month. We’re hoping to have a new show when he’s settled, but that could be into October at this rate.
So while you’re waiting for MFX to return, jump back in time and check out some of our past shows. They’re all great. Full of jokes and modesty. Check ‘em out by going to www.mfxpodcast.com and by the time we return, you’ll have heard our whole back catalogue and you can decide for yourself whether or not Brick Hogan is real or fake. Just don’t ask Joe Rogan for his opinion.
As always, thanks for reading and be sure to keep supporting SLTD and all the great people who contribute here.
Until next time…
Peace
Duckman
Recent Comments