Fixing TNA: Chapter Four

Article also available at www.v2journal.com/wrestling

A WRESTLING SHOW NEEDS A CLEAR, LOGICAL NARRATIVE WHERE EVERY CHARACTER SHOULD HAVE A MOTIVATION AND A CONSTITUTION

A wrestling promotion presents a simulated version of a real sport. Therefore, much like “real” sport, the main goal of everybody in the narrative should be winning. From Gail Kim to AJ Styles to Robbie E to Eric Young, every character’s incentive should be to win matches and titles. Just as the ultimate incentive of every NFL player is to win the Superbowl, and every NHL player is to win the Stanley Cup.

The beauty of wrestling is that outlandish storylines and rivalries can be written around each wrestler’s journey. Heated personal feuds, even love triangles. But if the characters do not appear to have a motivation and a constitution, and do not appear to care about winning matches and titles, why should the audience relate to them?

Characters need to have a reason to exist, and a list of traits that define them and make them different to everyone else. As a viewer, I need to know why I should like or dislike Jeff Hardy, or Kenny King, or Bully Ray, or Mannik.

Defined characters are the absolute number one fundamental rule of any storytelling. And, for those who suggest that the concept of babyfaces and heels is passé, then why is Chris Sabin a babyface, and why is Devon a heel, and why is Hernandez a babyface, and why is Christopher Daniels a heel?

The fact is that, however much some people in the industry may want to be ground-breaking, wrestling cannot move away from having faces and heels, and it never will. If it did, the industry would die.

Unlike other sports, wrestling has the wonderful advantage of being able to unite its entire audience in favour of one competitor and against another. So why not embrace that, rather than trying to muddy the waters between good and evil?

Wrestling’s predetermined nature is an advantage. The great moments, those that lead to a larger audience and larger paydays for all concerned, are those moments when a wrestling story is told in a traditional way: the moments when good fights against evil, and ultimately overcomes it. Wrestling’s scripted nature allows for the most exciting developments in every rivalry; unlike “real” sports, there is no need for wrestling to ever be boring, or disappointing, or unsatisfying. Not that the good guys should always win, but everything that happens should entice people to watch the next show, and the one after that, and tell their friends to watch. The way to ensure that the audience invests its emotions, and money, in a wrestling show is to present them with characters they can feel passionately about.

More than simply being faces and heels, though, each wrestler should have their own set of defining characteristics. Viewers should be able to easily reel off five or six key features about the personality of Samoa Joe or Velvet Sky or James Storm. Characters need to be rounded and three-dimensional, and the audience should feel like it knows them. That is not presently the case in TNA, even for wrestlers who have been with the company for many years. The audience should instinctively know who Samoa Joe is, what he stands for, what he believes in, what he likes and dislikes, and why he is in TNA. I don't mean to pick on Samoa Joe, who I believe is an exceptional talent, but this is a wrestler who has featured in the TNA main event scene, is a former world champion, and has been wrestling in the promotion for almost a decade, yet I don't feel as a viewer that I know who he is. I do not believe that is largely Samoa Joe's fault; it is a fault with the way the company presents its talent on TV.

Like any kind of storytelling, a consistent narrative is required. The show must exist within its own universe, with its own structural rules. Wrestling fans want to watch a wrestling show without having their intelligence insulted, and without being forced to ask themselves uncomfortable questions. They want to “lose themselves” in the moment, invest their emotions, and to be rewarded for that investment.

One of the worst things wrestling can do is remind the audience that what they are watching is fake. Wrestling, like no other product, needs the fans to suspend their disbelief and invest their emotions in what they are watching. That’s why it is the only form of scripted entertainment I can think of which is mocked for being fake. Nobody criticises Star Wars or Friends or The Hobbit or The Catcher In The Rye or Dexter for being fake.

Wrestling suffers from its predetermined nature in an unfair way, but it can overcome this by playing things straight and presenting an alternate universe which makes sense and doesn’t lead to more criticism and more questions. There is a huge difference between a product being scripted, and a product being presented in a way that insults the intelligence of a viewer, who TNA requires to invest in the product to an extent that they are willing to part with money to order pay-per-views and purchase house show tickets. The crux of this is that the audience needs to believe. It needs to lose itself.

It is also a mistake to be too concerned about mixing reality and fiction. The importance of confining wrestling to its own alternate universe cannot be overstated. There are many misconceptions about the “shoot-style” presentation of wrestling storylines, but bear this in mind: only a minority of your audience knows anything about what goes on backstage. The rest of the audience doesn’t care, and only wants to invest in your product.

Furthermore, that minority who do understand shoot references are the very people who know that these are as much part of the script as anything else that happens on an episode of Impact. By introducing “reality” to a wrestling show, all that is achieved is that everything else looks a little more fake.

Wrestling fans want a product they can believe in, and invest in, and a world where they can lose themselves for a couple of hours each week, like an audience at a magic show. The last thing any of them want reminding is that it's not real; it is the equivalent of a magician telling his audience how to perform each trick. Imagine reading a great novel where, every dozen or so pages, there is a reminder in big capital letters that the whole story is fake. The reader knows it's fake, but they want to believe, and they want to immerse themselves, so why deny them that enjoyment?

The narrative of the show and the constitution of the characters truly are the foundations without which nothing can succeed. If characters do not have any consistency, the audience will find them that much harder to relate to, either positively or negatively. If the TNA universe does not have its own parameters, it is like a house built on quicksand.

Play everything straight; time spent acknowledging “real life”, or even talking about the wrestlers’ desire to entertain the fans (which of course should be their goal, but should not be acknowledged any more than a character in a movie should talk about wanting to act really well in order to please the audience), only serves to take viewers out of the moment they so desperately want to lose themselves in.

If you are enjoying this series, please let Dixie Carter know! You can tweet @TNADixie.

You can also follow me on twitter @gavinduenas.