Professional Wrestling Cleanup

It is common for pages and entries on this site that cover the world of Professional Wrestling to be written in a snarky and highly opinionated tone. The medium being one that constantly progresses in a manner akin to a soap opera makes it difficult to definitively document while storylines are still ongoing, which combined with the often highly opinionated nature of wrestling fans gives many wrestling entries on this site a distinctive tone that reads more like a live reaction blog than a discussion of how wrestling uses storytelling tropes to its benefit.

Recurring traits seen within the Professional Wrestling namespace include:

• Open bashing of various promotions, particularly WCW, WWE and the former TNA, and a general bias in-favor of others such as All Elite Wrestling and New Japan Pro-Wrestling.
• Entries being very reactionary in a way that has a high risk of not aging well.
• A reliance on references to opinionated wrestling reviewers and personalities to illustrate points.
• Little to no division between troping Kayfabe and the real world.

My hope for this thread is to help focus discussion on starting to clean up the Professional Wrestling sections on this site. This was inspired by a few topics in the Complaining Cleanup thread, where it was generally agreed that a cleanup focused on Professional Wrestling was needed.

Basically all three of these entries are no longer fully relevant. Vince McMahon has retired, and been replaced by the very well-liked and respected Triple H. The NXT entry is a borderline Zero Context Example. Impact Wrestling isn't as big as peak-TNA, but it is still operating and is considered a very respectable "minor-major" promotion.

Edited by Dramatic on Sep 4th 2022 at 1:21:43 AM

I'm not sure if this is the right place to bring it up, but I've noticed that some of the medium subpages use "Professional Wrestling", while others use "Pro Wrestling", the latter of which causes subpage collision with an unrelated video game. In addition, I've noticed some of the latter pages being moved from "Professional Wrestling" to "Pro Wrestling". Which one should be used?

Professional Wrestling.

Professional Wrestling sounds more formal and better for trope pages

I agree. Professional Wrestling is a good choice.

Thirded.

Edited by RandomTroper123 on Sep 3rd 2022 at 3:39:47 AM

Professional Wrestling

73 pages to move from /ProWrestling to /ProfessionalWrestling (or 233 pages to move from /ProfessionalWrestling to /ProWrestling if somehow votes reverse).

If anyone wants to crack their knuckles and take care of some Zero-Context Examples, the character sheets are rife with them.

I've noticed that St Fan was the one who moved several of the pages from "Professional Wrestling" to "Pro Wrestling". Pinged them to ask their input.

I think we should do something about non-kayfabe examples in the pro wrestling sections.

Professional Wrestling is unique among formats of fiction in how it blurs Kayfabe and reality together, which I think means that there inevitably will be a bit of real world troping. For example, I doubt you could cover something like CM Punk's pipebomb, or MJF's current contract issues, without going into how much Reality Subtext these storylines have.

That said, Exhibit A for going too far in that direction is the Base-Breaking Character entry on Ultimate Warrior's page, which is straight up just troping the real person.

Agreed. I think it might be troping the real person rather than the persona.

Noticing stuff like that for Chris Benoit, too. Now we all know the stuff he did in the final days of his life pretty much defined him and how some real life events affected him badly like the death of Eddie Guerrero. But a good number of these examples don't even go into kayfabe and just center around the said real life events

Benoit is probably valid for Overshadowed by Controversy but i can't think of any other places where the way his life ended would be relevant.

I think we should re-write the page to focus more on the kayfabe parts of his career and try to curb troping real-life events.

I think a good Exhibit A for references to opinionated reviewers and snarky writing is The Gobbledy Gooker, an infamous short-lived gimmick that debuted at the same Survivor Series installment as The Undertaker. Here's one big example:

• Blatant Lies: "They didn't know what to think of him at first, but I think he's won the heart of Hartford!" Uh... sure, Piper.

Here's another example of snarky writing that needs to go:

• Lady Frost is from the ice gardens of Babbington Estates (aka Washington DC) and weighs in at ten thousand snowflakes (we'll get back to you).

Bluff Worked Too Well has a "Pro Wrestling — Non-Kayfabe" folder. Is this allowed?

the trope isn't NRLEP so the examples can stay if they're not otherwise problematic, but i would recommend they be moved to the real life folder.

Alright, I'll move them there. I'm going to paste the examples here just to double check their validity, there're only two, but they're a paragraph each so folder.

Move them to the real life folder.

Bringing this up from the Professional Wrestling sub-page for Troubled Production. Hell, the introduction for the TNA/Impact category shoe-horns in a reference to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter awards.

• Because TNA's heyday (so far) happened in the mid-to-late 2000s, it naturally became a font of memes and snarky internet criticism, mostly from the Observer podcasts, 420chan's /wooo/, and Wrestle! Wrestle! By 2010, even the jaded blogger demo had moved on to better things, primarily because 1) all the jokes had been told, and 2) we'd already seen this story play out, scene-by-scene, in WCW ten years earlier. Right down to the company flushing its own collateral just to elevate some old guys.
  WrestleCrap: The main event of the evening was to feature Sting vs. the man who was probably the hottest merchandise seller and most popular wrestler the company ever had, Jeff Hardy. So they turned Jeff heel. Bang.◊

Edited by DongwaChan on Sep 9th 2022 at 4:06:03 AM

I do believe the Troubled Production sub-page dedicated to pro wrestling needs a complete re-write to be more neutral. Especially since the TNA section begins with a somewhat needless mention of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter awards.

Edited by DongwaChan on Sep 12th 2022 at 6:36:29 AM

I think the Wrestling Observer Newsletter award mention is okay as it's a reader voted award, and as the page describes the "Worst Promotion of the Year" award is based on the promotion's business side, so it is relevant when discussing Troubled Production. I think the "Because TNA's heyday..." bit should be cut because it's just detailing reviewer opinions and not any behind the scenes troubles.

Going back a bit, here is my take on cutting down the Base-Breaking Character entry on Ultimate Warrior:

The Ultimate Warrior remains one of the most controversial wrestlers in the WWF's history. He has his appreciators for being one of the company's top stars during its golden age, and for his Awesome Ego gimmick. He also has just as many detractors who cite his relatively poor workmanship and his many controversies outside the ring in terms of his poor locker room attitude and his personal beliefs.

I feel it could be a little more detailed, but I think that is the gist of the debate summarised.

I still believe the introduction should be re-written without the mention of the award, as the mention of the award seems to have been likely added by a user who thought it referred to the content of the show's television and pay-per-view product and not their business practices (though it's equally likely said user also took that into account), and another user added the note to try and explain how the award worked. And the section itself needs a clean-up for talking way too much about wrestlers complaining about TNA's treatment of them and not about the company's troubles.

Change "...who cite his relatively poor workmanship" to "...who accuse him of poor workmanship" and it could work.

Edited by DongwaChan on Sep 13th 2022 at 5:31:00 AM