Skip to main content

Sport or Art? A discussion hosted by Jordynne Grace

Jordynne Grace set a wonderful contextual argument last night on Twitter and as I am up at 6am on a Sunday to 
edit the podcast, let’s have a longer crack. Jordynne’s premise and indeed question was “Should wrestling be 
considered sport or art?”, while there are obvious cases for both. I personally think that comes down to the 
context in which everything is placed and the expectation that is therefore set for the audience. Let me give you 
one example that will happen in the next couple of months that gives you a rough idea of where I am coming from. 

 I am 100% for calling wrestling a “performance art” rather than a “sport”. The insistence upon calling it a sport is
really holding wrestling back in my opinion. Discuss with me.
In the next couple of months Meiko Satomura comes to Fight Club Pro. Thanks to previous appearances she is 
a huge face and has been booked against Pete Dunne and Chris Brookes in singles matches. For those of you 
unfamiliar with Fight Club Pro, it is an intergender wrestling organisation. The universal response to these matches 
are; “Oh My GOD Meiko is going to kill Pete and Chris.”. The fans have bought into Meiko’s character based
up on a pure sporting context. As the best wrestler in the world IMHO for the last twenty years, her kick and 
suplex offence based on old school straight shooters, Chigusa Nagayo, Billy Robinson and Akira Maeda. She 
is the hot favourite going into matches with men forty pounds heavier, six inches taller, and in one case a full 
time have a WWE contract. Fight Club Pro have used the sports conceit, Meiko’s reputation and the fan’s 
expectation to build the entertainment value. Would it be a fair context as a sport? No, it wouldn’t, however 
it will be entertaining and has been presented successfully in a sporting context, in an entertaining way.


The wrestling business has stratified greatly since the Monday Night Wars.  There is a concern that wrestling 
has to many genres to ever make a full cultural impact, while I agree that makes it more difficult, that isn’t 
impossible. You just need the right wrestler. While my favourite wrestlers do come from genuine sports 
backgrounds, I do understand that isn’t completely necessary to be a big star. No one watches Hulk Hogan 
for his picture perfect rolling Cross Arm Lock. Nor is The Rock, going to be wearing kick pads and going 
heads up with Hirooki Goto anytime soon. Also a theatrical conceit does not have to produce a theatrical 
context, some of the best wrestling I’ve ever seen has been in promotions like Chikara and Lucha 
Underground. Watching the 2012 King of Trios may be some of my favourite wrestling matches ever, but 
what makes is it special is watching hometown boys The Spectral Envoy beat the Young Bucks and Mike 
Bennett in an utterly thrilling match that was blessed some fantastic athletic performances.      
Some fans, commentators and wrestlers believe that wrestling cannot be taken seriously unless there are 
badass wrestlers. The old conceit of Jonny Valiant “I can’t make you believe that wrestling is real, but I can 
make you believe that I’m real.” holds true to an extent. However as Meiko has proved you can put that 
character into an entertainment context and it will still work. There is room for both. Is wrestling Art? I like to 
think of wrestling being seen through lenses, as Mike Quackenbush once said “What happens when you view 
wrestling through the lens of sports? Through the lens of Science Fiction? Through the lens of a psychodrama?”.
Wrestling is performed on a canvas for a reason, it is an art. Making us believe is an art in itself.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dr. F.R. Leavis and the literary wrestling fan

  Do you know who Dr. Frank Raymond Leavis is? He has had more cultural impact through his writing than perhaps any British Humanities scholar of the 20 th Century. He was the leading light in a movement that lent credence to the idea that novels were of artistic value.  Seems silly doesn’t it? Obviously novels are important, The Bronte’s, Dickens all that. Surely someone must have read them before and thought these things are quite good? Well they may have done, but it was Leavis who was the first person to give them academic weight. He propagated the belief that popular literature was as important if not more so than the classical texts so prevalent in the education systems of the time, because they were reflective of the culture that produced them. He is the reason you probably didn’t spend days slaving over Latin grammar in secondary school. So why am I battling on about a long dead Cambridge lecturer? Well it’s to do with the methods we use to appreciate popular culture....
Post a Comment
Read more

The Forgotten Tag Teams; The World Class Tag Team

Today marks the 30th Anniversary of the World Class Tag Team Gedo and Jado, to celebrate I'm re-releasing this article I wrote for Wrestle Talk TV as part of my Forgotten Tag Teams series. Who is the most influential tag team in wrestling today? The Usos with their family friendly outlook, history and work rate? Or is it The Wolves with their American Strong style approach to Impact? Or is it the state of the art spot driven offence of The Young Bucks and Time Splitters in NJPW? Well they are in NJPW, in fact you could argue they ARE NJPW. They are the reason for the whole companies success and growth after hitting rock bottom in the early 2000s. They are Gedo and Jado, one of the most successful tandems in wrestling history, a fact overlooked by their success as bookers. In fact so successful are they with the pencil they have taken the Wrestler Observer Booker of the year awards from 2011-2014, no one else has got a look in. If you examine the story of the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mae, Mildred and Moolah; Putting Women First

The history of women's wrestling is not always pleasant, and in this article I tried to outline its complete history in North America to bring people up to date on the whole story as women's wrestling began to rise. Tomorrow four women will wrestle for a recognised world title at Wembley Stadium, which would have been impossible the last time a major company played the same venue. While there are plenty of things to fix, here is a revisit to my story of how things got started. This was first published on WrestleTalk.Tv sometime in 2015.   The recent passing of Mae Young closes the book on a story of professional wrestling that should never be forgotten. It is easy to see her as a lovable old rogue passing her last days by having some fun on an international stage. Picking up a few last pay days to ease her retirement, one might say being exploited for comedic gain, but her story starts at the very beginning of big time women's wrestling in North America and if you like tale...
Post a Comment
Read more