The Piledriver

Hello! Terror here with my new discussion topic which purely focuses on the professional wrestling industry. Throughout the lifetime of this site, I will be offering reviews, ideas, opinions, and info on anything that I come across on the internet. It would be of great help to have others search for info about professional wrestling. Watch out in the very near future for my ideas and opinions on the injury crisis that is currently taking place in the WWE. This topic is open to any and all discussions concerning the professional wrestling industry. Thank you for reading this and be sure to stay tuned for updates!

Wow, this has to go down as one of the more formal intros to a general topic I've seen go down in here. Was actually planning on starting a wrasslin' topic myself at some point, but keep not getting round to it.
I myself have mainly been following wrestling for the past... between 3 and 4 years now? I watched bits and pieces before that period, but that's how long I've actually been an active follower.
Personally am primarily a follower of WWE (Raw, Smackdown & NXT) and Lucha Underground, though also catch the occasional snippets of TNA since my parents watch that. I actually had to break it to them recently that it's all pre-determined and that the people cheating in matches aren't actual real-life cheating jerks. A conversation I never anticipated having to have.

Well! 

As someone who is part of the business itself (Here comes the shameless self promotion.)





So I have a lot of insight on how things work!

As far as watching the product I stick mostly to WWE, As well as local promotions and a few indy companies here and there!

Well, one thing that definitely needs to be done to ensure the health and well being of wrestlers is to tone down the in ring product. Matches don't need to be spotfests. Wrestlers shouldn't go into matches with the mindset of 'can you top this?' as they perform crazy stunts that are only going to serve to cause them issues down the road.

This sort of wrestling really picked up steam in the late 90's and early 2000's. They started introducing crazier gimmick matches and wrestlers started performing crazier stunts in order to make an impression on the fans and management. Only a few years before that wrestling was more about storytelling, wrestling psychology. It wasn't as much shock and awe as where the product eventually went, but it was still engaging and exciting, and a lot of those wrestlers are still around. Some are still capable of competing because they didn't have to destroy their bodies as they performed their work all those years ago. Now, it seems that most wrestlers will only last 10-15 years at best if they get to the upper echelons of the industry because of all the punishment they go through.

And that leads to another issue that needs to be addressed, wrestlers really have to take more downtime. They simply cannot wrestle 250-300 times a year and expect to get through it unscathed. The damage will pile up until something forces them to take time off to recover, and then in most cases, they rush through recovery so that they can get back in the ring... which usually leads to more injuries. Wrestlers don't take care of themselves as well as they need to. And the promoters don't make it any easier for them.

If a wrestler isn't competing, they aren't getting paid. There's no compensation for when they get injured and in order to maintain their lifestyle, they need to get back in the ring as soon as possible. That's the way it has been for decades, and that's the way the promoters apparently like it, cause nothing has changed, and they are the ones who could make it better.

I'm not really sure what it would take to change things for the better. Wrestling is a very political environment, and that prevents a the wrestlers from possibly uniting to address this issue. If they were to collectively make a stand to try and improve the situation, maybe they would succeed. But individual and small groups of wrestlers are easily discarded and replaced. They have no power regardless of how popular or respected they might be.

In the meantime, the casualty list grows longer and there's no end in sight.

This is a difficult question to answer as although I have been an idependant wrestler for a while, I haven't ever sustained an injury.

As far as I'm concerened, as far as moves go, theres a limit, theres somethings people do that is completely unnessescary and WILL cause people to get hurt. WWE themselves seem to do a good job, banning piledrivers, curb stomps and such. However if you look at the indies, theres people doing spring-board flips into piledrivers, like, no, stop. It adds NOTHING to the product, yes, its impressive, you can do a flip, but why run that risk instead of using a normal move with all the same impact?

This is a bit hypocritical coming from someone who regularly uses the dreaded STYLES CLASH. But the difference is, I practice multiple times and make sure the opponent is 100% comfortable with the move.

Now as far as WWE goes, the injury list can be broken down to the work schedule, wrestling every single day of every single year is gonna destroy the body, leaving wrestlers weak when injury appears, its no coincidence that 99% of injuries occur on non televised house shows.

Cut the schedule, cut the injuries.

In my personal opinion, wrestlers should not be weekend warriors where they wrestle only once per week, but they should wrestle at least twice or possibly three times a week. I believe the same goes for WWE as well. They could either shorten the amount of house shows or eliminate them all together. Like C.S.O. stated, "They simply cannot wrestle 250-300 times a year." That's exactly how the body begins to weaken and break down.

As far as moves are concerned, I'm more of a mind to visualize matches as if they are a real fight. When I was training in the past (but then had to quit for personal reasons), I was always asking myself, "Does this make sense? What is the purpose of the move? Is there any wasted motion in this move?" Wrestling doesn't need to be extreme, yet it must not be mundane. I agree with Punk on the notion that wrestlers can perform a less dangerous move and still get the same pop. I have a disinclination to piledrivers since not a lot of people know how to give them, and not a lot of people know how to take them. A lot of the moves that affect the head are moves that I tend to stay away from unless I know it is safe. And to digress, I hate double foot stomps because if anyone does them, they're just out there to hurt you. The only time I will ever accept a dangerous move is if I know my partner and I have practiced it over and over and over until we are comfortable enough to perform it and know we can do it without hurting ourselves.

One more thing I like to add is that although the smaller guys are gaining more attention, they have to be more creative with their movements which is unfortunate. Guys who are smaller are sometimes overshadowed by the bigger guys, especially if there is someone who is as small as me. I weigh around 130 lbs. and I'm not tall by any means compared to the other guys.