The Katz Files – Arnie Katz
Does Size Really Matter?
The Kingfish Arnie Katz talks about the role of physical size in the pro wrestling show.
When Kevin Nash held a press conference a few months ago, one of the topics that seemed to draw the most interest was his philosophy about “big man-small man” and “Big man-big man” matches. I’ve thought about it for a while, kicked it around with my good friend Bill “Potshot” Kunkel and with the inimitable Joyce Worley.
I’ve come to the conclusion that size is one of the most decisive factors in the wrestling show and that the way a promotion handles size is crucial to its success. WWE, TNA, the original ECW and the current revival of ECW have all made fundamentally different decisions about how to handle the size differential.
Let’s go promotion by promotion and look at their approaches:
WWE. Vince McMahon, as a body builder, does what might be expected: He goes for the biggest, most muscular guys he can find. He will hire stiffs like Great Khali because WWE believe that the public buys the super heavyweights and will not accept the lighter performers. WWE operates under the premise that a good big man can beat any “little man.”
WWE does less with its most physically talented wrestlers than any major promotion in history. Instead of building up the under-200-lb. guys, they use them as enhancement workers to put over the mid-card musclemen. You’d think the popularity among WWE fans of such smaller stars as Rey Mysterio, Chavo Guerrero and Ric Flair would tell them something, but they’ve operated 50 years without hearing it.
Original ECW. Paul Heyman’s promotion of yore is still the best idea for marketing lighter weight wrestlers in history. The ECW idea was simple: Don’t have super huge guys so that the smaller performers don’t look like midgets. When Rhino was in original ECW, his “big man” act looked great, but the same character seemed foolish in WWE, because Rhino was smaller than more than half of the roster.
TNA. There are very few huge guys in TNA, so that wrestlers like Abyss look huge, though they’d be about average size in WWE. The X Division is the single best way ever developed to market light heavyweights in a promotion that also has heavyweights.
New ECW. No clear-cut policy has emerged, though things like the temporary addition of the nothing-but-big Great Khali tends to distort the size picture. That assumes you can get Khali into the same picture frame as some of ECW’s smaller performers.
Right now, TNA has the most effective size strategy and WWE has about the worst. Too many WWE matches feature a monster and a middleweight – and that only works when the big man is exceptionally mobile and the smaller man isn’t one-third his size.
The Kingfish Says!
Behind the Scenes at PWD
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– Arnie Katz
Crossfire4@cox.net
(1/27/08)
This is column number 11 in a row in my return to life as a daily columnist.
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