The Katz Files – Arnie Katz
The Unwritten Laws of Wrestling
The Kingfish Arnie Katz woke up early this Saturday so you don’t have to. He’s in one of his weird moods, so hold onto your keyboards!
Pro Wrestling isn’t a new business. The North American version began with guys fighting all challengers at carnivals more than a century ago. (No, one of them was not Ric Flair.)
Pro Wrestling thrived when the Six-Day Bicycle Race and Roller Derby are, respectively, defunct and small-time. Although the wrestling promoters with whom I work as Director of Business Development for ClicckFighters.com – check it out – are incandescently brilliant, most wrestling promoters aren’t geniuses.
One of the things that has helped them survive is the vast storehouse of practical knowledge that pro wrestling has accumulated. There’s nothing fancy; it’s more like a catalog of what works and what doesn’t.
These unwritten rules rank somewhere between the Ten Commandments and the US marijuana laws in terms of how strictly they are enforced. Imaginative bookers bend, break and twist them in fascinating ways, but most promoters can stay out of real trouble by sticking with them.
The result of having hundreds, perhaps thousands, of promoters resort to the Unwritten Rules of Wrestling is that many situations have a level of predictability that telegraphs the outcome to many smartfans. Frankly, a lot of my predictions over the years have derived from simply spotting the Unwritten Laws at work.
It is an Unwritten Law that…
… If there is a trophy, the loser must break it over the head of the winner or at least a member of his family.
… Nothing riles an American crowd like the singing of another country’s National Anthem
… If there is a cake, someone must sit on it or have it ground into his face.
… The guy who dominates the opening segment of the match will lose.
… A champion tag team that isn’t meant to keep it long should have a miscommunication that leads them to either lose the title or fight each other for sole possession of it.
… Slow-witted guys are super strong.
… When one of something doesn’t lead to a pin, three of the same thing will.
… The homeliest guy in the promotion will be known as “Pretty Boy”
… Every wedding, contract signing and celebration must end in a fight, with whatever is around getting broken in the process.
… The man who wins a match on the TV show immediately before a pay per view is likely to lose at the pay per view.
… Heels sing badly.
That’s it for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with another installment of the Internet’s fastest-rising daily wrestling column.
– Arnie Katz
Crossfire4@cox.net
(2/23/08)
This is column number 38 in a row in the current daily series.
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