Wrestling Without a Ring

The big buzz coming out of Wrestlemania is about the two heavily produced and edited matches. Undertaker vs. AJ Styles in the Boneyard match and The Fiend vs. John Cena in the Firefly Funhouse Match. To a lesser extent Edge vs. Orton and Gargano vs. Ciampa also had this same feeling with the filmed and edited nature of the matches. All of those are very different experiences and a lot of people are talking about how revolutionary they are for wrestling. They're not, and they won't be. Wrestling is largely a live performance that thrives off fan interaction, it's not the first time this kind of thing has been done. DDT runs shows in weird places all the time, but they have fans and the show is whatever happens without any editing. The closer comparison to me is all of the stuff from the Hardy complex. At least for the Boneyard match. There is nothing in wrestling to compare to the Firefly Funhouse Match.

The thing that really differentiated the Boneyard match from any Deletion match was WWE's production values. They used them very well here. Impact did cool stuff with what was at the Hardy's compound, but they don't have the resources that WWE has and it was cool to see a match done with that budget. Thnside of WWE production is there camera work. Specifically the shakey cam handheld and moving the camera with the wrestling taking a blow as well as having a shit ton of cuts at all times. This match has a lot of nice touches in it. Despite not having a ring both men's entrances are great. Undertaker's is helped by the fact that I love Metallica and I really enjoyed his pause to have his graphic show up like it was a grindhouse film. The best aspect of the WWE production over the Hardy matches isn't just the building specifically for the match, but the lighting setups. With the Hardy compound matches they use headlights and a couple of big lighting setups they have, but it's all in the shots as well as lighting up the scene. WWE uses the lights better as you never see the sources of the light and they help to let 'Taker appear out of nowhere.

One thing both of these matches do right is having a soundtrack to the match and adding sound effects as well. This is a thing the two less cinematic matches WWE had both failed to have and felt more awkward for. Those being Edge vs. Orton and Gargano vs. Ciampa. The second of which is made even weirder for not having commentary, although that might not be much weirder than the first having really quiet overly serious commentary. Although the ambiance of the crickets behind everything when Ciampa and Gargano brawled outside was nice.

The biggest failing of the WWE matches is that they are built and performed more like a fight scene from a movie, but don't get shot the same way. Of the three matches Edge vs. Orton was probably shot like a normal match and went straight through and didn't really take advantage of it being filmed. The other two definitely were, but they weren't shot in a way that took much advantage of that. Ciampa vs. Gargano used it at least once that I could tell where Ciampa did an air raid crash from the top rope to the outside, probably onto a crashpad. Then cut to another shot of them crashing to the floor from probably a more sane height. But using cuts isn't the big difference from filmed fight scenes in movies. The action and shots aren't blocked out to look cooler in general. Its not live, there are no fans you can plan your shots better. When Gargano does a suicide dive you can have him go right over the camera using a crash pad or whatever and cut to another angle where he really takes Ciampa out. But they don't really utilize that stuff. There isn't a single shot in any of those three matches that looks as cool as the scene from Tag Team Apocalypto where the Hardy's and the Rock and Roll Express shoot fireworks at Decay and Andrews and Everett filmed from a crane or drone shot swooping overhead.

All three of the WWE examples are very serious fights as well. And none of them have as drastic as stakes as the Deletion matches tend to have. They are all about proving how tough they are, or that they still have it, the Apocalypto match is going to blow up the Hardy's hometown if they don't win the match. The Deletion matches have a sense of humor and aren't self serious which, as these matches tend to be longer, gives the viewer a nice break from the intensity. Matt is getting pinned and the boat, Skarsgard, moves and knocks Trevor Lee off him to break up the fall. Plus the biggest feature of the Hardy compound is the Lake or Resurection which reverts people back to their old gimmicks when they get knocked in. Shane Helms gets knocked in and comes out as Shane from 3 Count and makes Lee and Andrews dance with him. They get mad and superkick him back into the lake and as the match goes on Helms comes back as the Hurricane and helps Matt beat them up. It's not all punching and yelling at the other guy to stay down or shit talking them about how they're not good enough. For me the Deletion matches still have more of the flow of a wrestling match and don't feel like as much like an action movie fight scene and are just more fun to watch.

The same can't be said for the Firefly Funhouse Match. How much this is a match and not an extended promo/skit can be debated, but it definitely can't really compare to the other matches in this piece and is probably unreplicatable. Part of it stems from WWE lucking into the story by having Cena beat Wyatt at Wrestlemania that hurt his momentum, and the fact that Cena has such a storied career in WWE also helps build it up. This is a psychological examination of who Cena has been throughout his career and what that says about him and uses the lense of past superstars as well as previous iterations of his character. The writing is deft throughout with a bunch of humor, and real feelings. None of the sections over stay their welcome and they move quickly from scene to scene with every culmination of a scene helping lead to the next one before Wyatt becomes the Fiend and hits Cena with a Sister Abigail and gets the win. It was perfect, but WWE won't be able to do it again, and neither will any other wrestling company that tries to make this kind of thing work, which hopefully they won't.

Not every one of these cinematic style matches works. Largely because the people who filmed and made them don't know why anything is shot the way it is in movies and television. Or they don't have a strong idea of what they are trying to do. The Deletion matches worked because they were fun and the people behind it wanted to do something that was a wrestling match you can't do in a ring. Anybody can make this kind of thing work if they have an idea. Undertaker vs. Styles worked because WWE had a bunch of production value put into the match. Cena vs. Wyatt worked because Cena is a good actor, which is a big factor that's going to be missing in every other version of this match. Most of them are going to end up like Orton vs. Edge and Gargano vs. Ciampa in that they will be overlong slogs of matches that substitute moving slow and playing hurt with emotion. Without fan reaction a lot of selling loses a lot of its appeal. The wrestler isn't appealing to the crowd for support so it falls apart. Unless they do what fight scenes do when the good guy is getting the shit kicked out of him and have a flashback to show where he gets support from its not going to work the same way.

The biggest factor in making cinematic wrestling matches, or matches without a crowd, good is realizing that it changes how wrestling works. If that's not done you're going to end up with matches that feel empty. The key is making sure you compensate for the lack of audience in some way. Some kind of soundtrack mixed with commentary would be the most effective way so it still feels familiar to the fans watching. It's definitely a style of match that has to be used sparingly and needs to be done well more often than not or it will quickly wear out its welcome, and frankly the WWE might already have worn it out there.