Is professional wrestling a type of art?

Vince135792003

Blatantly stolen from another wrestling board but do you find the entertainment that professional wrestling brings you as a sort of art?

Click yes if you beleive so.
Click no if you don't.

Mr.Nice Guy

Yes I believe so.

I regard art as something that evokes a reaction in you and a wrestling bout that tells a story in the ring will do just that.

For me Bret/Bulldog at SS '92, Austin/Bret at WM13, Guerrero vs Lesnar at No Way Out, Benoit's win at WM20, all of these for me are works of art in pro wrestling as they tell a story in the ring and strike an emotional chord inside you.

Lots of people like to crap all over wrestling but I was at the Point for Raw's visit to Ireland a year or so ago and found it very emotional to observe the one minute's silence for Eddie Guerrero. I know I wasn't the only one who felt that way.

That tells me that there's more to pro wrestling than people give it credit for and that it truly is an art form.

Vince135792003

I agree. The art of wrestling is n't necessarily a crazy spot fest or violent hardcore match. Its a match that tells a logical story and that makes you become emotionally involved in the match. Mr. Perfect versus Bret Hart at Summerslam comes to mind.


Completely off topic but in relation to Eddie Guerrero.

On bebo, if you check out some of the comments underneath the Eddie videos. It's weird how many 12/13/14 year olds seem to believe the current storyline between Rey, Chavo and Vickie.

J.R.HARTLEY

i'll stick to the big bad wwe on this. while i feel that classic matches can be likened to amazing performances in both theatre and film, i feel that so much of the classic wrestling has been forgone in the main showcase matches, i feel like a previous poster said that some of the matches e.g. bret and bulldog were in the amazing artistic performance range but so few matches now live up to that standard, with no benoit and Angle on show each week wwe certainly has turned into a spot fest, it's full of people who just do the odd power move and clothesline, the wrestling equivalant of the three cord strum the ramones were famous for, as for ROH and TNA i can't comment not having seen nearly enough of it to formulate an opinion

Vince135792003

Crappy art is still art though.


Wrestling is an atheltic performance art. To me wrestling is not a sport for a whole host of reasons. The biggest one being that the winner is predetermined. The goal of "good" wrestling is to put on a performance that really grabs the audience in an emotional way.

I think spot fests while very, very exciting and they take a hell of alot of talent to do are losing somthing that makes wrestling so good. A Jerrry Lynn/ RVD match while really exciting to watch is a million miles away to the emotion of Austin versus Hart at wrestlemania 13. That match will be timeless becasue there was more depth to it than just a match that wants to pop the crowd every 5 seconds.

J.R.HARTLEY

thats very true i have to agree with you, we're basically of the same opinion of how it could be and has been great art but at the moment we're being fed some trash art(spot fests).

Fozzy

Wrestling is absolutely an art. If you look at the definitions what what art is, wrestling easily fits into all of them. Of course there's good wrestling and bad wrestling, just the same as there's good and bad songs, paintings, films and everythin else

But any wrestling match is an art form as long as there's some degree of psychology involved in the match, otherwise it's just a demonstration in stunt work