Reading Wrestling

Welcome back to Reading Wrestling, your encyclopedia on the art of pro wrestling. Today we talk about high spots, the set-piece spectacles where wrestlers leap from great heights to inflict pain on their opponents and dazzle the crowd.

What’s more iconic of wrestling than the Macho Man’s elbow drop off of the top rope? Using the ring as a platform from which to dive onto a supine opponent is a hallmark of the show, connecting it with mass entertainment like circus acrobats, tightrope walkers, and various death-defying high-wire acts.

What began as a way to make use of the entire stage, the ring in the case, expanded outwards into more and more elaborate leaps and shows of agility. Consider Superfly Jimmy Snuka’s groundbreaking cage dives in the 1980s. From there, high spots became fecund terrain for experimentation and innovation. Shane McMahon’s coast-to-coast dives, ECW’s dives from scaffolds and arena balconies, even matches that took place on the roof of arenas: the arms race to jump from higher, leap farther, project the body into space was on. There are now entire match types that carry with them the implication of harrowing dives: ladder matches, tables matches, and so forth.

You'll hear us discuss a whole range of wrestlers and their high-spot highlights, including Mankind/Cactus Jack, Macho Man, Lucha Bros, Bam Bam Bigelow, Big Van Vader, Montez Ford, and more.  

Today on Reading Wrestling, we’ll take things to the top rope..or at least the second rope…as we discuss these high-flying antics. 

Welcome back to Reading Wrestling, your encyclopedia on the art of pro wrestling. Today’s entry takes us to a classic match format, the Lumberjack Match. When a feud comes to fever pitch and needs a resolution devoid of scurrilous escape attempts, there are a couple of options. One is the technology of the steel cage, which we spoke about in a previous episode. The other, more manual option, is the good ol’ Lumberjack Match. For these special matches, the ring is  surrounded by a dozen or so other wrestlers, some of them bias, some of them brutal, some of them looking for a reason to dole out some punishment. Should a wrestler find themself outside the ring, voluntarily or not, they will meet with a swift form of Lumberjack justice. While, on the surface, the Lumberjacks are there to serve as an impartial, gentle reminder to stay in the ring, savvy wrestlers have thought to weaponize the flannel army by throwing their opponents out to be pummeled. Of course, it would be an oversimplification to think of the Lumberjacks as a cohesive, coordinated body. While they may engage in some collective pummeling, they are just as likely to turn on each other. Today, on Reading Wrestling, we’ll try to keep our discussion as expansive as possible without getting outside the ring. 

We come at this topic from a number of different angles, including asking the question "why use lumberjacks and not a steel cage to keep the action in the ring?" We also discuss how the perceived value of this aging match type has changed over time. We conclude that, while the lumberjack match used to be an important way to showcase a range of wrestlers, it's become another mechanism for setting up high spots. We also discuss some memorable matches. 

As we promised you in our 12 Days of Wrestling Christmas episode, here is our gift to you to close out 2021: a special bonus episode featuring a conversation on Dusty Rhodes and Jimmy Valiant--with Dan from Douglasville and Uncle Vinnie! This was recorded at our launch party at Five Saints Distilling in Norristown, PA, on November 6, 2021. 

We hope you enjoy it!

Welcome back to Reading Wrestling, your encyclopedia on the art of pro wrestling. This week we’re foregoing our usual style in order to bring you some light holiday listening. Instead of working through a theme, as is our usual format, we’re going to do a 12 Days of Christmas gift exchange with our favorite wrestlers! We’ll go around and take turns giving our gifts. We don’t like to constrain the groups we can give gifts to around here, so we don’t have stodgy rules like “oh, the wrestler needs to be in this promotion..” or “oh, the wrestler needs to be alive,” just to get a gift. We’re too generous for that crap. And humble too. So today, buckle up for some generosity.

Also, don't miss the action from the RWW, our audio drama wrestling league that kicks off the show each week. This week, we've made a heartfelt holiday greetings montage from all of your favorite wrestlers: Tom Graham Cracker, The Saturday Night Superstar Dazzlin' Deanna, Miss Noell, Ravin' David, and the Matcha Man wish you, the RWW Crab Nebula, a very Merry Christmas. There may even be a surprise greeting in the mix!

We'll go around the table and give gifts to some of our favorite wrestlers, including Wardlow, Serena Deeb, Randy Orton, Ric Flair, and more. 

Join us for a festive good time!

Christmas music by fmceretta, used under Creative Commons. https://freesound.org/people/fmceretta/sounds/426704/

Welcome back to Reading Wrestling, your encyclopedia on the art of pro wrestling. Today’s entry takes us to one of the primary ways to win or lose a match: submissions. In a standard wrestling match, there are two ways to win cleanly: by pinning your opponent or forcing them to submit. But these potential outcomes have completely different meanings in the world of wrestling. While a pinfall is considered the most definitive way to win, a submission carries with it a certain stigma. As it goes, anyone could be incapacitated in a match to the point that they are pinned, but one has to consciously take action to submit, to “say uncle,” as it were. It’s said that some of the biggest names in wrestling had clauses in their contracts that stipulated they could never lose by submission, lest it harm their character irreparably. Of course, submissions don’t have to be match enders. They can be an intrinsic part of a match’s narrative arc, both slowing the tempo while retaining the tension and giving the wrestlers a chance to grab a breather. Today, on Reading Wrestling, we submit to you our take on the topic and will try to limit the amount of verbal contortions we do. 

AND one of your favorite characters has returned to be a guest on the show! It's TOM! This was a raucous recording and you'll be able to hear how much fun we were having with this topic. 

Unfortunately, though, we experienced some technical difficulties mid recording with the mic Tom was using. We did our best to clean up the audio, but there are parts that aren't up to our usual production quality. Sorry for this, and we hope you're still able to enjoy the episode. 

We take on the topic from a number of different angles, including discussing the potential stigma of losing by submission and whether that stigma varies across men's and women's wrestling. 

We also bring up our favorite and least favorite submission holds, including Dave's coverage of the Figure Four Leglock (as made famous by Ric Flair), Noell's discussion of Bull Nakano's take on Bret Hart's Sharp-Shooter, and Chris' arguing for the supremacy of Sting's Scorpion Death Lock over the Sharp-Shooter. Tom tells us about a time when Mick Foley put the Mandible Claw on himself rather than submit in a match. 

Please accept this submission into our wrestling encyclopedia, and be sure to write to us to let us know your thoughts on the topic!

Welcome back to Reading Wrestling, your encyclopedia on the art of pro wrestling. Today’s entry takes us to a special role in wrestling, the impish, the sly, the mischievous provocateurs. Contemporary wrestling narratives often build to a flammable situation and just require someone to bring a match to set it all off. Enter these masters of disaster. Whether the instigator of conflict is a ruthless heel, a wronged fan-favorite looking to dole out comeuppance, or just a troll in it for the fun of it, these figures are the catalyst for chaos. Put another way, some feuds build to their own boiling points, such as the explosion of the Mega Powers; others need a little help. The provocateurs can be managers, like Jimmy Hart or Bobby “The Brain” Heenan, rogue referees, as when Vince McMahon appointed Mike Tyson a ref, or comic relief figures, as when R-Truth’s 24/7 Title Express pulls into the station. All in all, someone’s gotta get this party started, and you can always count on your friendly neighborhood provocateur to kick it all off. We hope today’s conversation on this topic will provoke a reaction. 

We start off discussing the role of the provocateur in wrestling, and somehow we ended up on the topic of...clowns? Starting with Doink the Clown, we discuss the role of the clown in causing trouble and generally unsettling order, either in a heelish delight for discomfort or a good-natured, fun romp. The topic of clowns digs up some uneasy childhood memories from the wrestler-talkers, and we take a diversion into some unexpected territory...

The topic eventually comes back around to a meta-point about wrestling itself being a medium that trolls high art. Even in its scriptedness and beckoning for people to chide fans with "But you know it's not real, ROIGHT?! [sic; Philadelphia pronunciation intentional]," wrestling makes a mockery of reality, much to the chagrin of its opponents. And that mockery is what makes it such a powerful medium. 

If someone didn't start none, there wouldn't be none. So the role of the provocateur is crucial in setting off the feuds that shape wrestling's story lines. So come and hang out for another episode of Reading Wrestling, and write in to tell us who your favorite provocateur is!

Welcome back to Reading Wrestling, your encyclopedia on the art of pro wrestling. Today’s entry takes us to the long-simmering story arcs of wrestling, the feud.

Feuds may seem related to rivalries in sports, but they are altogether different. The best wrestling feuds, which can begin by a perceived wrongdoing or just as a desire for retribution for a loss, are slow-burning and finite. We know this dispute will come to resolution, but we don’t know how, when, or what the cost will be.

Take, for example, one of the most famous feuds of all time, Buzz Sawyer versus Tommy Rich, which built for over 18 months before culminating in the Last Battle of Atlanta, in a 1983 match that would become the precursor to the contemporary Hell in a Cell match. Sawyer and Rich, heel and babyface respectively, battled back and forth in a rancorous feud that some say stemmed from real-life dislike for one another. A series of incredible feuds followed, including Austin versus The Rock and Shawn Michaels versus Bret Hart, taking us into the current day.

All in all, feuds are a scaling up of the grammar of a single match. Just as any bout builds narrative tension to be released in the match’s outcome, a feud builds such tension over time, a kind of fractal match made of matches. Today on Reading Wrestling, we’ll talk about how feuds work, some of the best, and why viewers are drawn to them.

It's a special episode of the Reading Wrestling podcast--our first live podcast, recorded at our launch party at Five Saints Distilling in Norristown, PA, on 11/6/2021!

Our topic, Around Town, takes you on a tour of Wrestletown, the wild and zany array of extra-arena spaces where interviews happen, stories advance, and characters are forged. Perhaps we’ll take a stroll down Main St to see the Flower Shop, the Funeral Parlor, a luxe high-rise condo with a penthouse that hosts A Flair for the Gold, and, of course, a once reputable business that has become a den of ill-repute, as well as a place to get a stylish haircut for a good price, the Barbershop. 

Along the way in this episode, you will hear from some friends of the show who were present at the party, including Jeff Bridgeport-Ribhouse, Miss Noell's Mom, and John & Amy, the owners of Five Saints. We also saved some fun for later recorded some more extended discussions, including one Dan from Douglasville and--oh yes!--Uncle Vinnie! Those recordings will be released later, as bonus episodes. 

So come and celebrate our launch with us, hear from other listeners of the show, and learn the lay of the land in Wrestletown in this week's episode of Reading Wrestling. 

Welcome back to Reading Wrestling, your encyclopedia on the art of wrestling. Today’s entry takes us to another hallmark of character building, the dances, poses, and, well, what we might term pre-TikTok shimmies wrestlers have crafted as part of their characters. Wrestling is, of course, famous for its taglines and sonic memes, as when the Rock bellows, “The Rock came out to surprise the MILLIONS,” and the crowd answers “AND MILLIONS” of the Rock’s fans. But another dimension of a character’s persona can be the dances and poses they perform. Consider here participatory memes like Daniel Bryan’s “Yes” chants, where the crowd collectively points to the heavens and chants the affirmation. Or think about Adam Cole, bay-bay, or Finn Balor who have a singular dance move that always hits at the same point in their entrance songs. Some wrestlers might do a full out dance as part of their gimmick, like Rikishi and 2 Cool. Others might have a pose or gesture that is their signature move, like Shayna Baszler’s Queen of Spades hand symbol. All in all, the crowd is conditioned to expect these movements as part of the character and to participate through them. Today on Reading Wrestling, we’ll talk about the subtle choreography that makes a wrestler memorable. 

Welcome back to Reading Wrestling, your encyclopedia on the art of pro wrestling. Today’s entry takes us to an icon of pro wrestling storytelling--the mask. Whether the mask is used to create a temporary mystery by withholding the identity of a wrestler or it’s an integral part of their character, masks are unique to pro wrestling. You don’t see mysterious baseball players, listed on the team’s roster as only a question mark, glide to the plate for their at-bat while gesticulating mysterious hand gestures to connote mystery, alas. 

Before moving on to the Lucha Libre tradition, we discuss the role of masks in U.S. wrestling. Noell suggests that a mask generates mystique for a wrestler, and she goes on to suggest that the mask can be like a "power suit," creating a dimension of psychological advantage in a match.  

We discuss the importance of the mask in the Lucha Libre tradition, including the highest-stakes grudge matches, where a wrestler wagers unmasking should he or she be defeated. Chris suggests that losing one's mask has a stigma that correlates loosely with submitting in the American tradition. Just as the Undertaker never submitted, Mil Mascaras never lost his mask. 

Noell's History Corner takes us back to 1865, to the Paris World's Fair, when the first known masked wrestler debuted.  She then speaks of Mort Henderson, the Masked Marvel, who is believed to be the first North American wrestler to wrestle in a mask. We also learn about Magdalena Caballero, La Dama Enmascarada, the first  female wrestler to use a mask. 

Separate from masks to be wrestled in, some wrestlers used elaborate masks as entrance gear. Chris discusses Vader's mastodon mask, designed by Antonio Inoki.  The mask made for a spectacular entrance with its blinking red eyes, which Noell connects to the coeval popularity of Terminator 2, and the steam it would shoot into the air. 

We end with a discussion of unmaskings and reveals. Dave takes us to the Fabulous Moolah and to when Mr. McMahon revealed himself as the head of the Ministry of Darkness. Noell starts off discussing Tiger Mask and then goes to Jushin Thunder Liger. Chris wraps up the discussion by bringing us back to the Black Scorpion incident in WCW, who ended up being Ric Flair. 

You won't want to miss this episode of Reading Wrestling!