What’s Wrong with Wrestling Entertainment: Less Is More

One of the most common complaints about Total Non-stop Action (TNA) wrestling is the ridiculously overbooked nature of its pay-per-views and main events. In fact, after subjecting myself to watching the main event from its Wrestlemania equivalent, Bound for Glory, I can understand why.

In brief, after having won through at least 2 previous matches, the challenger Rhyno (Ex-WWE and now mid-card jobber at TNA) faced champion Jeff Jarrett (Ex-WWE and now owner, eternal champion and heel of TNA) in the main event of the evening. If it seemed improbable that he would win anyway, Jarrett had no matches previously, they stacked the deck even further by getting all five henchmen, including the again WWE beauty Gail Kim, of his to attack Rhyno during the match. Then to top everything off, Rhyno won the match and vanquished the evil Jarrett.

Now if this kind of scenario sounds ridiculous and improbable: you’re right. If you dismiss it as just wrestling: you’re wrong. The point is that while you suspend your belief to a certain extent when watching sports entertainment, you still want the storyline of the match to be somewhat logical. If the match fails to have a logical conclusion then you are left confused and wishing you had spent your hard earned dollars elsewhere. And just to prove that WWE has its share of overbooking, I give you the example of Orton vs. Batista at Cyber Sunday.

In this match, the super-heel Randy Orton was champion against the super-face Batista. Orton had found every way to retain his title: count-out, disqualification and outside interference; so to even the score they orchestrated it so that Stone Cold Steve Austin (the ultimate face champion) would be special guest referee and ensure a fair result. After a typical beginning and middle of the match, the main event ended in farce after multiple run ins eventually saw Batista once again become champion. First, Shawn Michaels cost Orton the match due to his long running feud, Shawn was then attacked by his new opponent JBL and finally Stone Cold attacked Orton handing Batista the title. Now if this sounds confusing, imaging watching the match! Even worse, the faces (Stone Cold and Batista) were both out of character by cheating to win – something really only the heel should do.

Now, this has not always been the case. For instance, re-watching Michael’s classic ladder match at Wrestlemania X against Razor Ramon and his WWE championship match against Chris Jericho last year, I was reminded of how a few spots and good old fashioned wrestling can make for a classic. In both these matches, the wrestlers utilised their environment just enough to ensure that the stipulation (a ladder) was worthwhile but focused on telling a good story that drew in the viewer. Moreover, Michael’s played a heel in one match and a face in the other, thus showing it can be done as either a crowd favourite or crowd target. In particular, both matches avoided the fate of overbooking and instead had a well paced and satisfying ending.

However, while overbooking can be bad, under-booking is just as bad. Just ask anyone who saw Orton vs. HHH at Wrestlemania XXV this year (a match I still haven’t watched due to the horrendous reviews), where after months of the McMahon family being tortured and beaten by Orton and Legacy, not a single person interfered in the match that turned out to be torture for its sere lack of excitement. Thus, in this case, more booking was needed to draw the feud to a satisfying ending rather than prolong it for the next pay-per-view.

To finish off, I’ll give you a list of some of the most overly booked matches of all time:
Hart vs. Yokozuna into Hogan vs. Yokozuna – WWE Championship
Orton vs. Batista – Cyber Sunday
Rock and the Nation vs. HHH and DX – Intercontinental Title