Dean Malenko, an unassuming name for an unassuming wrestler. He is also the main crux of my argument when it comes to people saying to me “wrestlings fake you know Rich.”
That statement always annoy me. It’s plain ignorance which breeds that comment and i always think what exactly turns people on and off wrestling. But i digress. Why has Dean Malenko got the answers to my argument about the reality of wrestling.
Well for all of you that don’t know, Dean Malenko was an absolutely brilliant wrestler. He had every move in his locker and could execute them to perfection. It’s these skills that made him one of the most respected wrestlers in the business. So why didnt Dean Malenko become a huge success? Why didn’t Dean Malenko hit the pinnacle of Professional Wrestling?
Along with his brilliant technical wrestling ability, Dean Malenko was blessed with absolutely no charisma or personality. Chants of “bore us, bore us Dean Malenko” followed him everywhere. It was this that hindered him.
Because in case you havn’t noticed, Professional Wrestling is a pantomime. If you have no real discernable talent but can whip up a crowd into a frenzy with your personable style of charisma- step forward The Rock, then you have the wrestling world at your feet.
However flip the coin on it’s head and your going to be a jobber for the rest of your career. The Wrestling business is all about giving the crowd what they want and poor ol Dean Malenko was not what the fans wanted.
This is not all in my argument though. When somebody says that ” Wrestling is fake” i turn around and loudly quip and say “of course it is, because if it wasnt, then they would be dead”. This is a statement that cannot be argued with. If a Wrestletr encountered all of those moves for real, week in and week out for a considerable amount of the year then they would be dead. Suplex, DDT’s, Tombstones and piledrivers are orchastrated in Professional Wrestling in order not to harm somebody. Thats because if they wern’t given the correct due care and attention then the moves could do serious damage. Not something that the WWE really wants to be worried about.
And this coincides with the orchastrated endings which are fixed. Again if you think about it they have to be, because if not then you would have two wrestlers doing perfectly executed moves on each other for several hours. Not really what a Pantomime is all about really is it?
So the next time you turn around and say those insufferable words then just think, Wrestling isn’t real because it doesn’t need to be. Lifes real enough.
