Professional wrestling is a performance art
in which two individuals work together to give the appearance of an athletic contest
to a live audience. The contests contain variations, such as a
tag team match in which two or more wrestlers compete against two or more other wrestlers,
modified stipulations such as a reward for victory or a change in the rules, as well
as a change in venue, such as a contest taking place somewhere besides the ring. Prior to the contest, sometimes the wrestlers
will perform a narrative which gives the wrestlers motivation for why they are participating. If this “angle” occurs in a professional
wrestling company that has weekly television, the narrative could take place over the course
of several weeks or even several months. Wrestlers take classical theatrical roles
as protagonist and antagonist – “babyface” and “heel” respectively – to provoke
the appropriate cheers or boos from the audience. Example: Popular wrestling babyface “Stone
Cold” Steve Austin is tragically struck by a vehicle, and the identity of the driver
is unknown. Over the course of several weeks, World Wrestling
Entertainment commissioner Mick Foley investigates the crime because nearly all matters taking
place in professional wrestling narratives are handled internally. Otherwise, every surprise attack that takes
place outside the confines of a wrestling match would be a matter for law enforcement. Commissioner Foley eventually reveals it was
babyface wrestler Rikishi would struck Austin. This effectively changed Rikishi's alignment
from babyface to heel in front a live audience, leading to a showdown between the two. Due to the popularity of the angle, it is
furthered by implicating heel wrestler Triple H as the mastermind behind the attempted vehicular
homicide, prompting another match. Throughout the angle, due to the clear instances
of right and wrong, the audience cheers for the babyface, Austin, and boos the heels,
Rikishi and Triple H. They have a series of matches, all of which are designed to illicit
specific reactions from the live audience during specific points or “spots” in the
match. These narratives and these matches play out
every week, and every week, a combination of the writers and the wrestlers prepare their
narratives, matches, monologues (called “promos”), and other aspects of professional wrestling
around attempting to persuade the live audience to react a certain way so that their actions
are applauded and therefore universally understood by the audience watching from home. Who is babyface? “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. We know this because the narrative, promos,
and matches are manipulated in such a way that the live audience cheers for him, immediately
instructing the audience watching at home who is the good guy, even if that home audience
has never seen Steve Austin before. Sometimes the live audience reaction does
not go the way it was intended. When Rikishi revealed his role in the attack,
he gave the audience his motivation: he wanted to protect The Rock's place as a main event
wrestler due to WWE's history of favoring white wrestlers. This was meant to be a heel turn, but some
people in the audience agreed with Rikishi's statements, as the fictionalized motivation
brushed up against reality. WWE course-corrected and had The Rock refute
Rikishi's claims in later weekly episodes, which aligned future live audiences against
Rikishi and put all the pieces where they were planned to be. Playing to the live audience and working the
audience is everything in professional wrestling. Unlike traditional theater in which the separation
between the drama and the audience is a thin, invisible wall, the separation between pro
wrestling and the audience looks a lot different. The pro wrestling audience, instead, surrounds
the ring. The audience works with the wrestlers to create
the show. The audience also works with each other to
enhance the show, such as leading chants of the wrestlers' names or catch-phrases. It's hard to imagine professional wrestling
without the audience. What would that even look like? What would change? We got the answer to the question a few weeks
ago, as social distancing suggestions and legal requirements prompted immediate changes
to televised wrestling programs. New Japan Pro Wrestling shut down entirely. The American independent wrestling scene slowly
faded out and waited for a return to normalcy. Weekly professional wrestling in the United
States, programs put on by top wrestling companies World Wrestling Entertainment and All-Elite
Wrestling, experimented in shows with no audience. Empty arenas. This is not the first time a wrestling match
has taken place with no live audience. For example, aforementioned wrestlers The
Rock and Mick Foley, then going by the name Mankind, once battled in an empty arena match
in 1999. Furthermore, some rare matches are more theatrical
and highly-staged than others, such as Randy Orton vs. Bray Wyatt in the House of Horrors
match in 2017 that was filmed like a movie and without a live audience. But a weekly show with all matches in front
of empty chairs? This was unprecedented. There was too much money on the line, too
many contractual obligations with their respective television partners. Pro wrestling follows the old theater adage:
the show must go on. But even if it were safe to continue wrestling
during this crisis, and it very well may not be, should it even continue, considering how
much of wrestling is built around the live audience? Professional wrestling, both the angles that
lead up to the matches and matches themselves have long been formatted to play to a live
audience. The live audience can occasionally detract
from the festivities, but far from often than that, the audience contributes to them. In fact, some things that wrestlers do are
not only enhanced by the live audience but are dependent upon them. They simply could not happen and cannot work
with the audience. One aspect of professional wrestling, particularly
professional wrestling promos, is the “call and response” nature. When the aforementioned “Stone Cold” Steve
Austin would conduct his promos and hype his upcoming match for the audience, he would
ask them to participate. A typical Steve Austin promo would involve
him asking the audience “If you [insert relevant actions here] – and then inserts
something like “want to see me do this particular action” or “agree with what I'm saying”
and the follows it with his call to action: “gimme a hell yeah.” to which the audience
will invariably respond “hell yeah.” Another call and response, a far simpler one,
in fact, is when Austin would say “What?” to the crowd, to which they would respond
with the same word. In doing this, Austin connects himself with
the live audience, cementing his status as babyface or fan favorite. The live audience sees themselves in Austin
and this familiarity breeds popularity and acceptance. This call and response is not relegated to
Austin, as it is common among most major wrestlers throughout history. [“If you're not down with that, we got two
words for ya.”] A variation on the call and response is for
the audience to recite the catch-phrase simultaneously with the wrestler instead of waiting for the
pause to make their response. In both cases, the call and response and the
sing-along variation, the live audience is absolutely necessary. On the March 16th episode of Monday Night
Raw, broadcast from WWE's empty performance center, they played up the fact that there
was nobody there to respond to his call. [“Gimme a hell yeah.”] Without the live audience, wrestlers perform
their promos under a different set of rules, but due to their complete unfamiliarity with
these rules, wrestlers who have performed promos to empty arenas sometimes seem a little
bit lost due to the lack of immediate feedback and the inability to feed off the reaction. As for the match themselves, certain key factors
in matches do not exist without a live audience. Wrestlers and the live audience generally
have a symbiotic relationship to helps the match. Some of this is invisible, but some of it
is obvious. One example is that a wrestler will perform
various actions designed with the intention of causing the crowd to react and make the
match seem exciting, epic and important. One common way is for the babyface to rhythmically
stomp on the canvas or clap their hands in hopes of provoking the audience to do the
same. As part of the narrative, this is the wrestler
trying to garner support either for themselves or for the wrestler's tag team partner, currently
in peril, and in need of a boost in morale. As part of this show, this is actually the
wrestler trying to get the live audience excited either because the match isn't exciting enough
on its own or as a signal to the audience that the match is about to have a shift in
power, with the babyface turning the tide and suddenly gaining the upper hand. This connects the live audience with what's
happening in the ring. It gives the audience the impression that
they are participating rather than being passive onlookers. That way, should the babyface prevail, that
is also their victory. In this match, on the March 13th episode of
Smackdown, Nikki Cross instinctively stomps her boot on the canvas to provoke the audience
and connect them with her partner, Alexa Bliss, currently being trapped by the other tag team. Cross undoubtedly learned to do this a long
time ago, and it's a difficult thing to just remove from a wrestler's repertoire, even
though it serves no real purpose in an empty arena. On the March 24th episode of AEW Dark, comedy
wrestler Colt Cabana performed the classic babyface clap to an empty arena before realizing
there was no reason to do this. He may have done this on purpose as a joke. One of the most famous ways a babyface wrestler
can make their comeback is by “hulking up” named after Hulk Hogan, who would suddenly
feed off the crowd support to gain superhuman strength. In doing this, the live audience could feel
as if they were responsible for Hogan's many victories. In addition to these flourishes to garner
live audience support, there are also specific wrestling moves that require audience participation
or always illicit a particular audience reaction. For example, sometimes a babyface will corner
a heel wrestler and climb the turnbuckle and throw a series of punches. The punches are counted by the crowd, usually
to the count of ten. It's only a series of ineffectual punches,
but because of the audience participation, it's a big favorite among crowds. Without the crowd, ten punches in a row form
a fairly boring spot in the match. One way that wrestlers establish the babyface-heel
dynamic is by dueling in a flurry of repeated moves, most commonly punches. The wrestlers strike one another, and when
the babyface connects, the audience quickly cheers, and when the heel connects, the audience
quickly boos. This is repeated until either the babyface
gets the upper hand, resulting in an explosion of greater cheers, or the heel gains the upper
hand, temporarily deflating the audience and making them want the babyface to make a comeback
that much more. Occasionally, the audience will react to the
babyface and heel in an unplanned way, such as cheering the heel or booing the babyface. In this match from 2015 between babyface John
Cena and heel Kevin Owens, it is Cena who is booed and Owens who is cheered during their
dueling punches. Recognizing this “wrong” reaction and
hoping to maintain their alignments, they quickly stop their duel of punches, and Cena
launches himself at Owens to move on. Without the live audience, this might have
gone differently. The symbiotic relationship between professional
wrestlers and the live audience is helpful to the wrestlers because it lets them know
what's working, what's not working, how quickly or how slowly they should proceed. In fact, matches are formatted with reactions
in mind, and without the live audiences, the format is exposed in ways that that can be
detrimental to the action. Let's use a different and more accessible
medium to better explain for people who have never watched professional wrestling. A traditional situation comedy will use a
laugh track in the space immediately after a joke, and a modern situation comedy will
not. However, the existence or non-existence is
related to the format in which the jokes are written for the respective shows. A sitcom with a laugh track and therefore
artificial breaks in the narrative generally only allow for jokes to be structured with
a lead-in, punch line and then the canned laughter. The laugh track makes it impossible for jokes
to have rapid succession or an immediate comeback by another character. Singular jokes, which require long leads-in. A sitcom without a laugh track allows more
freedom to tell jokes in rapid succession or have immediate comebacks by other characters,
but they also require more jokes to be written due, as there is no canned laughter filling
up any dead space following a joke. In short, a sitcom having or not having a
laugh track cannot be the same show except with or without canned laughter. The very format must be different because
the timing, spacing of jokes and the requirement of lead-ins to the joke are different. A sitcom without a laugh track is not just
a traditional sitcom with the canned laughter mysteriously missing. It's designed from the ground up to be formatted
and structured differently. Wrestlers in an empty arena performing the
match exactly as they would with a packed arena is like a traditional laugh track sitcom
with the laugh track removed instead of a sitcom designed from the ground up without
a laugh track. Note the difference: Professional football player
Lawrence Taylor made a Wrestlemania appearance years ago, and though the match only lasted
eleven minutes, he went on to say that it was more exhausting than anything he did in
his football career. Wrestling is exhausting, and the ring is not
a trampoline. It's made of wood and metal, and wrestlers
land back, neck or sometimes head first on it many times throughout the course of one
match. Wrestlers need to rest or else the match will
suffer. So, the heel slaps on a chinlock or something. It generally needs to be the heel. The audience is willing to watch a chinlock
or headlock for a while if they think their chants and cheers and cries will help provoke
the babyface to make his comeback and escape the hold. If the babyface slaps on a rest hold, they
the dynamics change. The audience is not conditioned to cheer for
the heel to make his comeback, and since all the babyface is doing is applying a hold while
not moving, there is nothing to excite the audience. If anything, he's upsetting the audience hoping
for more action. So. A rest hold in front of a live audience, applied
correctly and at the right time, can excite the live audience, which in turn excites the
television audience. It's infectious. All that needs to happen is a smattering of
people in the live audience chanting or cheering for it to spread across the arena. But without a live audience, there can be
no transmission of this excitement. They are relying on each individual watching
on their televisions to be excited by the least exciting part of the match. A chinlock or headlock now looks like what
it really is: a rest hold. Even matches with few or no rest holds still
have spots in which they're resting nonetheless. Such as immediately following a failed pinning
attempt or after one wrestler is knocked down. But while the fallen wrestler rests, the standing
wrestler has been conditioned to use this time to rile up the crowd. If there is no crowd to rile up, the wrestler
still standing will have to do something else to pass the time while the fallen wrestler
catches his breath. Perhaps argue with the referee, but that's
something usually reserved for heels. Without a live audience, a lot of what wrestlers
do is exposed. Wrestlers communicate with one another during
the match to prepare for moves, to remind them of what is meant to come next, and to
warn them about any potential danger. Over the roar of the crowd, this is usually
drowned out, except for loud and consistent talkers like John Cena. Without the live audience is drown out the
communication, wrestlers can either opt not to do this anymore, resulting in potential
problems, or just do it anyway and hope that the television audience does not mind seeing
the curtain pulled back. Without the live audience, everything becomes
awkward. Empty. Listen to bits and pieces from this empty
arena match. The only way to push their matches into territory
where they can never feel awkward is if they are constantly attacking, never resting, never
slowly building the match to a crescendo. Wrestling cannot work the same way in an empty
arena. This is Hulk Hogan vs. The Rock from Wrestlemania
18, often stylized as Wrestlemania X8. In the angle leading up the match, The Rock
was firmly positioned as the babyface, and Hulk Hogan was firmly positioned as the heel. He returned to WWE after a long stint in WCW
as a main event heel and one of the leader of the massive heel faction, the nWo. And The Rock was...The Rock. The most electrifying man in sports entertainment
and one of the most universally beloved babyfaces in the world. Yet, when it was time for this epic, first-time
encounter between the two titans, this dream match once thought impossible, the crowd was
so excited that they eschewed their role as designated cheer section for the babyface
and began cheering both men. The Rock even received a fair amount of boos. The ovation and the electricity in the air
even before the match began gave us this iconic moment in which Hogan and The Rock, realizing
what was happening in the crowd and what was about to happen between them, turned from
side to side to listen to the live audience and to savor the moment. It was unexpected, and it was amazing. That can't happen...here. Wrestlemania 36 is scheduled to take place
soon, and due to what's happening in the world, it can only be done in an empty arena. Vince McMahon, against the wishes of many
people within the company, decided to go ahead with it instead of postponing the event. Several major stars in the company like Roman
Reigns have opted not to participate due to health concerns. WWE and AEW have both tried to roll with the
punches due to the obligations. AEW, knowing that matches are not the same
without an audience, elected to have a lot of their wrestlers act as audience members
during one episode of their weekly show. In the following episode, they opted not to
do this, perhaps out of concern that the number of people at ringside began to skirt up against
violating the social distancing recommendations. AEW also tried to make lemonade out of their
lemons by performing special effects in the empty seats that they otherwise could not
do if there had been a live audience. Nevertheless, their weekly show has suffered. WWE's weekly shows have suffered even more
because WWE is simply not as likely to try new things as AEW is. Vince McMahon is set in his ways whereas Cody
Rhodes and the Young Bucks are more open to try new things. In spite of this, all of them – meaning
WWE management and AEW management – are going to need to make a decision about the
health and safety of their performers soon. Empty arena matches are better than no matches...until
you take the health risks into account. Nobody needs to tell me there is money on
the line, I know, but this can't continue. And to be honest, holding on to their weekly
shows to produce empty arena matches is only maintaining something that does not really
work anyway.
I fucking love pro wrestling. Glad to see both thought slime and renegade cut talk about it recently. It's a terrible shame what this virus has done to the entire industry, but I'm greatly looking forward to when this lockdown is over and we can see wrestling at its best again.
Dammit this was amazing and academic but now it's blocked