The Katz Files – Arnie Katz
The Arena Meets The Screen! Matter!
The Kingfish Arnie Katz talks about the evolution of pro wrestling from a live attraction to premium home viewing.
The earliest professional wrestling venues in the United States were convenient clearings in the area the touring carnival staked out near the outskirts of town, It moved indoors, to theaters and arenas, and wrestling continued to center of live events for almost a century.
I remember going with Joyce Worley and Bill “Potshot” Kunkel to see an early WrestleMania on closed circuit TV in a theater. (The WWWF introduced fans to the idea when it used the Felt Forum, a small adjunct to Madison Square Garden, to telecast select cards to overflow crowds.)
There are still places you can go to see pro wrestling on Big Screen TV. Living here in Las Vegas, I am aware that the Olympia Gardens, a fancy gentleman’s club, is a “WWE Blast Area” location. That means you can go there, drink, and ogle the women while watching Mr. McMahon brutalize Hornswoggle.
My Viewing History
Like most people, I first encountered wrestling on TV. I was a very young child, there was very little on even in New York City and one of the stations had filmed wrestling matches from the Midwest.
I didn’t attend my first live card until the late 1970’s, when Joyce, Bill and I collaborated on a wrestling radio show and a magazine. We continued to watch WWWF on its second-rate NY UHF outlets, where we also got Wrestling from the Olympic and Wrestling from Florida.
We attended nearly every card in the New York area, which meant once a month each at Madison Square Garden, Nassau Coliseum and Westchester County Arena.
They were very different experiences. Even though we were always within the firth five rows at MSG, it did not match the immediacy of the much small Westchester venue.
Nassau Coliseum was in a special category for two reasons: they were one of our radio show’s sponsors and they drew badly. We always got great treatment, but the crowds didn’t do much to build excitement for the matches. Nassau was a great place to work, but not so good for actually watching the show.
I subsequently attended many shows in other venues includes several indy cards in southern Nevada. I also continued to watch WWE, WCW and ECW on television and regularly bought pay per views.
A Change in Emphasis
At one time, television was merely a teaser for arena shows. They’d show you a bunch f squash matches and promos and expect you to go to MSG, Boston Garden or wherever to see the stars battle each other. Most fans didn’t know that a promotion like WWWF could put on the same show in 20 different cities with only minor variations, since there was little authentic news about pro wrestling until the 1990’s.
Money changes everything. Cable meant money and when cable revenue soared far above the take from any house show, promotions changed the way they did business. WWE and WCW upgraded their free TV cards, because they needed to convert that audience to the highly lucrative pay per views.
The focus on wrestling as TV programming, both free and pay per view, changed the show in a very basic way. Today, RAW, Smackdown and iMPACT are done primarily for the viewers at home, not the fans in the arena seats. And house shows for those three troupes almost never have important developments, unless those happening are videotaped for later broadcast. If it doesn’t happen on television, it doesn’t happen.
Watching Wrestling Today
I no longer attend many wrestling cards. I’ve found that the big shows are much more fun to watch in the comfort and privacy of my living room, where I have the means to satisfy every appetite that might arise during a WWE or TNA show.
I see the non-ring stuff much more clearly than those in the arena. Of even greater importance at times, I can hear I can hear the announcers add their element to the show. (I know the holds at least as well as Michael Cole, so I don’t need him to call them, but a lot of plot information comes through the microphone I can hear at home but not in the arena.
A big except to what I’ve just written is that I think every wrestling fan should go out and see an indy card. Pro Wrestling is really intense in a small, packed area, where everything that happens plays directly to the people clustered around the ring.
Some of the best times I’ve ever had with wrestler were at that kind of show. The performers may not be up to WWE/TNA level (though in some cases they are), nor is the production on the same level (but I can do without pyro), but the in-ring drama is riveting.
How I Watch Pro Wrestling on TV
One of the things I like best about the shift toward televised wrestling is that I can record shows and enjoy the benefits of editing.
When I’m not writing a recap, I find that a typical two-hour WWE show becomes much more entertaining when judicious fast-forwarding shrinks it to about 40 minutes. I dispense with commercials, videos of what happened on shows I’ve seen and recaps that air five minutes after the original event.
And, yes, I do zip through matches (again, only when not writing recaps for PWD). I have no need to see Mark Henry, Great Khali, the Miz and other wrestlers who either don’t put on a very good show, fight matches given no meaning through plot support or both).
Final Thoughts
While there are certainly problems with the TV-based wrestling shows of today, including thin content, but the medium allows bookers to flesh out the show to include many more dramatics and story elements.
I don’t think fans will stop attending “big event” wrestling shows, but the overall demand for them is very clearly much lower than it was a decade ago.
The days when WWE did more than a dozen house shows a week are gone for good. Now, the promotion makes a lot of foreign tours to areas where fans are still curious about the live product.
In the future, live wrestling may become largely the province of indy wrestling with WWE and YNA sticking almost entirely to large, televised events.
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
(3/2/08)
This is column number 46 in a row in the current daily series.
Loading ...