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| A wounded warrior, but a warrior no less Photo Credit: Wrestlin' Wally |
In a moment, it reminded me of the ovation Sara del Rey got eighteen months prior at the ECW Arena for her match against Claudio Castagnoli. Of course, del Rey got in more offense than Lovelace did on Saturday. She even won the match, not the first or last that she'd take against a male opponent. Every time she set out in the ring against an opponent, male or female, she was not defined by societal stereotypical norms about gender roles. She was a wrestler. Not a female wrestler, an intergender wrestler, or a special attraction wrestler. She was a wrestler.
So was Lovelace on Saturday. It's all in the presentation.
And so it was presentation that ruined the Resistance Pro tag match. It felt like it was a minor upset whenever either one of the women in the match was able to inflict any damage on either of the men. Yes, Darcy Dixon was able to power bomb Robert Anthony at one point in the match, but it was such a struggle. Do you think any man would have had that much problem lifting Anthony up? Even the smallest cruiserweights on the indie scene do moves like that on wrestlers Anthony's size. There was one moment in the match where the intentions of the wrestlers within it were known, even more than how feebly the women were portrayed within the context of the match. When Anthony had Dixon up in the scoop slam position and shouted "DOMESTIC VIOLENCE!" it was clear the match was nothing more than a cathartic exercise for he and Jay Bradley to act out misogynistic urges to attack women.
Obviously, some will argue that the most horrific unintended circumstance from any intergender wrestling match is that it's going to foster an atmosphere that attracts the creeps and cretins who want nothing more than to have the right to hit women who annoy them, but only live vicariously through the wrestlers who pretend to do it in the context of a staged athletic competition. Those people exist, sure. They were the ones yelling back at Brandon Stroud and Danielle Matheson chastising them by going "It's just wrestling!" I don't think you're ever going to get rid of it, but I also think that it as a pervasive problem in all wrestling crowds is way overblown.
I've seen the sheer goodwill by wrestling crowds shown towards women wrestling against men, and deflation when those women lost to men who played up the violence against women quotient. Hardly anyone in the Palmer Center in Easton wanted to see the Sendai Girls get hit with further violence after losing their match. Even though I've seen them react positively to some of the baser aspects of humanity, there's also a genuine feeling of respect towards the American Joshis in Anarchy Championship Wrestling. The biggest example in the last two years has been del Rey. Of course, the admiration and applause for Lovelace was palpable and felt genuine, which made it all the more baffling why some of the same people clapping for Lovelace wanted to see Bradley decapitate Dixon after the match with his lariat as "payback" for Dixon losing the match (which was a goddamn weak strain of storytelling to get out of what was displayed in that ring).
The point is that those cues will only come out if wrestlers play to them. The good people will reject those cues and the ones who still have a ways to go in treating people decently will be the ones to eat them up and continue to make me embarrassed to be in the same crowd as them. Sometimes, those cues are Pavlovian, but when called out on them, if your answer is "It's just wrestling," then it's perfectly valid to ask you why being treated as a human being is conditional on gender. That's the attitude you project. It's a bad attitude, and you should feel bad.
Who shouldn't feel bad are the people who actually put on wrestling without gender barriers with good intentions behind them. People like Mike Quackenbush shouldn't face shit because of unintended consequences, because of the actions of a few who infiltrate their audiences who don't get it. The people who should face shit are the ones with caveman attitudes, the ones who refuse to get with the times and leave the attitude that women are second class citizens back where it belongs, in the past.
So if I were going to take away anything from this weekend, it's that Billy Roc's school and the promotion attached to it, Wrestling Is Heart, deserve my money and attention. Resistance Pro? They can rot for all I care unless something in their SOP changes. And Jay Bradley can rot in Impact Wrestling for all I care. I hope they feed him Robbie T week in and out until he quits the business out of spite.
The future is now, but the problem is that treating people like human beings shouldn't be a space-age concept, especially along the lines of gender. Heidi Lovelace and Darcy Dixon both got their asses kicked at National Pro Wrestling Day. However, only one got hers kicked as a wrestler and not as a worthless female. The former promotion is the one that's going to get my dollars.
And if you were a decent person, it should be the case for you too.
I have not seen the match in question and it's likely I won't as aside from ACH v. Scorp and maybe the CWF match there is nothing on this show that jumps out at me as something I have to see. Having said that on initial reading this comes across as a criticism of pro wrestling psychology. Now one can argue that women should not be portrayed as "weaker" than men, but is it "fair" for Latino quasi-midget Rey Mysterio to be treated as "weaker?" It probably isn't fair and when Rey is gassed to the point where at times he is clearly more muscular than opponents one could easily argue that stereotyping is a factor.....but that's the thing. Wrestling is wedded to role playing, which on some level is wedded to stereotypes and it is that role playing that is the source of what passes for most wrestling psychology.
ReplyDeleteLooking at this another way why shouldn't a smaller woman be portrayed as clearly weaker than a larger man in a wrestling contest? Yes you can find weird examples in male v. male contests where things were strangely reversed (Ted Dibiase working a bearhug on Big Bossman, Bunkhouse Buck working as a dominate heel on top of Dustin Rhodes, Barry Windham reeling/bumping like Mike Jackson for Bobby Eaton offense) but by and large that is how wrestling works. It's one thing to argue for intergender wrestling, though I tend to be very suspicious of it because I think it does more harm than good. It is another thing to argue that intergender wrestling should be used as a tool to tear down traditional wrestling psychology.
I don't want to live in a world where all pro wrestling looks like Chikara, let alone ROH.
Seems to me that the argument isn't that smaller people are likely/sometimes/often weaker than larger people, but rather the intent behind the way that weakness is portrayed.
DeleteIf its a discussion of "Women being not as large or necessarily strong as men", that may work on a national level but on the independents, there is much more of an even playing field. Instead of males wrestlers averaging in the 250-260 range, alot are in the 210-225 range.
DeleteBookers/wrestlers/promoters/agents are doing a good job destroying size-based psychology without injecting women into the mix. If it were Dixon vs. Apollyon, I'd have bought the lack of selling on the man's part a lot better. But Robert Anthony? No, not at all.
DeleteThere is a very well known match from 1994 where Bret Hart worked 1-2-3 Kid. It's a great match and one of the better matches I can recall occurring on free WWF tv in the 90's. But there is one spot in that match that has always bothered me. Kid powerbombs Bret Hart. No way in fucking hell the 1-2-3 Kid should have powerbombed Bret at all in 94, let alone easily. But he did. The gap in weight is not that big, but it was still poor psychology.
DeletePhysically, I don't see why Sean Waltman shouldn't be able to lift Bret Hart. Bret's heavier but hardly by a lot and you'd expect any wrestler at their level to be able to bench more than their own weight.
DeleteHeck, Apple Miyuki's 110lbs and one of her regular trademarks is a deadlift suplex on people twice her weight, from a position where the opponent *can't* offer much assistance.
In 1994 the powerbomb was a protected spot done by Vader a few other monsters on extremely rare occasions. Waltman using it as a throw away transition spot in a match like that was bullshit because he was the 1-2-3 Kid and he was working the world champion.
DeleteBut that's just a matter of not muddying a move's use, so why is it relevant to this discussion? It's no different to someone using the DDT in a throwaway spot while Jake Roberts was using it to devastate people, nor using the cutter in a throwaway spot today.
DeleteIt's relevant to this discussion because psychology matters.
DeleteOnly if you're working on the assumption that the larger, stronger wrestler should be the dominant fighter, which is totally flawed logic.
DeleteAs much as people want to believe it, being a pro wrestling fan does not give you full range to act in a way you wouldn't or shouldn't act in real life. That goes for misogyny, racism, homophobia etc. When I'm at an indie show and a crowd of people are telling a guy in cheetah print trunks and a matching headband that "You suck homo" and "Homo's gotta go", encouraging their young children to chant the same things, I feel uncomfortable. (Side note, the wrestler that had this chanted at him was not being played up as a heel) Same goes for a crowd of people encouraging a wrestler to hit a woman, not because they are a wrestler or an interfering manager, but because "This is a mans sport". The "Its Just Wrestling" mentality isn't an excuse to let people act this way.
ReplyDeleteI legit enjoyed the R-Pro match, and was surprised at DD considering she's just started wrestling. I also enjoyed the bit at the end because it was such a subversion of what you'd usually see. Instead of the dude taking out his frustration on the women for losing the match, it was Dixon taking out her frustrations on Bradley for him losing the match. He shoved her away, and she got right back in his face like it was nothing. I didn't know if he was going to lariat her, or if she was going to duck it, counter, and leave him laying in the ring. She wasn't helpless, not by a long shot.
ReplyDeleteThen again, I was watching at home and not among the masses (of Philly no less) who could find a way to degrade just about any and everything thing.
I'm pretty sure everything Bradley said when he was by the ring was sexist. Before the match even started he didn't want her to start because she was a woman (and I think this was the match that took a while to start because they kept tagging in and out because lol, a woman couldn't hold her own against a man) and then made comments about how she belonged in the kitchen, not in a wrestling ring. Even when the match was going on, he made insults about her while he was on the mat.
ReplyDeleteAnd it wasn't just him; the other man in the match (can't remember his name, nor do I care) was also sexist (he participated in the lol, women can't wrestle men tagging in the beginning) and didn't seem to think his partner was worthwhile. And it was a shame, because I really wanted to see Thunderkitty wrestle, but this match wasn't able to give me a reason to watch more of her. It's not her fault, it's R-Pro's fault and bully to them for making me bored during a match; I don't want to watch sexism, especially when I could watch a wrestler with a really interesting gimmick that I WANTED to watch. I'm still willing to watch Thunderkitty in another match (well two, since I have her match against Trash Cassidy but you sad that one's bad), but I know it won't be any match with Resistance Pro.
That's particularly sad given that Billy Corgan specifically cited, as one of his goals with Resistance Pro, opposing misogyny and presenting women as capable fighters.
ReplyDelete