When comparing the in ring styles of WWE performers to that of independent and puroresu wrestlers the pace seems to be a lot slower with more emphasis on psychology and story telling as well as a lower tone and risk level when it comes to high spots and hardcore matches. The WWE is also rumoured to ban certain moves so that its workers cannot perform them during matches anymore.

To digress for a moment, WWE’s focus on story telling does not take away from the wrestlers or hamper showcasing the workers in-ring abilities, far from it in fact. Any fan who loves wrestling will have their reasons for doing so, but most will agree that pro wrestling is one of the most unique forms of entertainment in the world and in many ways is an art form that very few have ever truly fully mastered. What makes wrestling so special is that it combines athletic ability with story telling and therefore is a cross between sport and entertainment. Most matches tell a story, not unlike a film or a play at the theatre. The basic plot of the story will either be of triumph or tragedy, triumph being the face getting a victory and tragedy being the loss for the face to a heel wrestler. Each match will either be a story in its own right or part or a long running storyline or feud, with the aim of the match to portray one or both men in the match in a certain light (a superhuman come-back, an underdog, an evil monster, etc).

The match will then, again like a film or play, contain the ups and downs of the plot before getting to its conclusion and this is where the wrestler’s story telling ability comes into play. The match itself can contain many elements or spots that change the course of the story such as cheating, overcoming the odds, inspirational comebacks, family involvement, the list is endless. A wrestler will get into the ring knowing what they have to achieve, but perhaps not knowing specifically what it will take to get themselves and the fans watching to that point. The guys in the ring need to read the crowd and make them buy into what they are seeing. Think of home alone, if Kevin McCallister, an 8 year old boy, had outsmarted 2 experienced criminals without much problem, it would be a terrible movie. But he didn’t, he got caught and pinned against the wall, he looked doomed until he was saved by an unlikely source, old man Moley who he thought was evil but turned out to be good. This simple plot is much like a wrestling storyline and heel turn. If the babyface gets beat up a bit, beats the heel up a bit then wins then chances are the match won’t be a classic. On the other hand if you have two excellent workers in a match where the heel is really doing a number on the face and the face is really selling that he is hurt or injured to the point that the fans think the heel will win. As the referee’s hand is going down for the third time, at 2 and 7/8s the face kicks out and the fans go wild as the heel looks like he has just seen a ghost. From there a superhuman effort is needed but finally the good guy gets the win, covered in sweat and full of emotion, and the crowd are eating it up and a quality story of courage and the will to win has been told.

Because of this it is clear why the WWE puts emphasis on story telling but asking workers to alter their style in order to achieve this seems unnecessary as well as pigeonholing the WWE product. By limiting the whole roster to a similar style the WWE is moving away from what help get the company to where it is today, offering something for every type of fan. Asking a worker not to do certain moves for the sole reason of wanting the worker to fit a mould is unfair on them as well as depriving the fans of seeing what that worker can actually do in the ring. Giving a wrestler boundaries of what they can and cannot do will not help them learn ring psychology, having experienced trainers who were good at that style of wrestling to train workers at the OVW developmental territory and giving the workers opportunities to get into the ring with veteran wrestlers that have mastered psychology such as Triple H, The Undertaker and Ric Flair will vastly help younger wrestlers.

By limiting what arsenal of moves that wrestlers can have the WWE is making its own product very one dimensional. During wrestlings (and WWE’s) last boom period, of 1998 to 2001, one quick look at the roster shows that at this point the WWE had a very varied talent pool that consisted of:

Technical Wrestlers such as Chris Benoit, Kurt Angle and Lance Storm
Hardcore Wrestlers such as Mankind
Risk Takers such as the Hardy Boyz, Edge & Christian and Rob Van Dam
Athletic Smaller Wrestlers such as Chris Jericho and Eddie Guerrero
And WWE Style Wrestlers such as Steve Austin, The Undertaker, Triple H and The Rock

This isn’t to say that the entire current WWE roster wrestles a WWE style, workers like Rey Mysterio, Chavo Guerrero, and Jeff Hardy have their own unique styles, but you still read reports that they have been asked by management to stop doing certain moves, or to water down their risky offence. It seems baffling that WWE would scout talent that have been in the business for a few years and have carved our their own niche on the independent circuit only to be drafted to OVW and told to scrap some of what they have learned and taught how to do things a different way.

There are however arguments against these points on why the WWE should ask workers to work a certain style. Over recent years new styles have started to appear, with the rise of TNA’s X-Division and independent wrestlers developing a faster paced, riskier, high flying style of wrestling, the WWE may simply want to differentiate its product from that of every other promotion. Also, logic suggests that while non-mainstream wrestling promotions can get away with a riskier product, because they are viewed by a much smaller niche market of customers, the most famous wrestling promotion in the world cannot as they are viewed by millions of people around the world and if there are any serious accidents, there will be serious repercussions for the company. Because of this it can be argued that WWE has very right to ‘ban’ certain moves that are considered or proven to be dangerous. Take the piledriver for example. Although I cannot confirm that the WWE has banned its employees from executing a piledriver, I cannot remember the last time I seen a traditional piledriver (only the Undertaker’s tombstone). This move clearly has a higher risk attached to it as it involves driving the opponent’s neck almost into the mat with the weight of two people on top of it, and is the move responsible for Stone Cold Steve Austin breaking his neck, and subsequently shortening his career, back in 1997.

There are valid arguments for both sides of the issue, and there is always the possibility that the “WWE Style” is something that has came from years of ‘dirt sheet’ speculation and doesn’t exist at all, although the latter seems very unlikely and would involve a great deal of coincidence. Some fans will agree with and enjoy the WWE’s policy and style, some may have preferred the WWE when the roster contained a variety of different styles, and some fans may wish that there could be a compromise of varied styles in a safe, unique manner. Each fan will have their own opinion, so please feel free to leave yours in the comments section of this blog.

Richard Penaluna

Real name Ian Richard Hodgkinson, Vampiro grew up fatherless in the Northern Ontario community of Thunder Bay. He got his first break in the business in his homeland of Canada working for the International Wrestling promotion which ran out of Montreal, Quebec, even though he had very little training. Ian had spent some time as a body guard for pop group Milli Vanilla, as well as being a bass player and playing hockey but his love for wrestling and his desire to be a star had him searching for ways to get into the business. While in Montreal Vampiro would set up rings before events and only asked to get a little training from the wrestlers in return. He made his debut for the promotion in 1984, still having very little training, although since that time Vampiro has credited Abdullah the Butcher as his trainer.

After a few years in Montreal, Vampiro headed south to Mexico City where he would seek work with the CMLL (Worldwide Wrestling Council) promotion, the countries top Lucha Libre promotion. However Vampiro was not well received during an initially meeting with the company’s long time booker Antonio Pena, and was looked down upon because of non- traditional look of having blue dreadlocks and covered in tattoos. Despite this set back Antonio and the CMLL decided to give Ian a chance under the ring name El Vampiro Canadiense (“Canadian Vampire”) and with that Vampiro was born.

To say El Vampiro Canadiense was over would be a huge understatement. Vampiro was literally an overnight success, especially with the Mexican women in the audience. As Vampiro’s popularity grew so did his character, donning make-up and being heavily tattooed, which only made the fans love him more. Soon Vampiro was receiving crowd reactions similar to rock concerts, having his own boy band style fan following he quickly became the biggest star in the promotion. It is truly hard to do Vampiro justice in describing how over he actually was. He was a sex symbol and pinup idol for millions of teenage Mexican Girls but at the same time being an innovator and pioneer of extreme wrestling inside the squared circle with an arsenal of martial arts technique and an ability to bump like none other, bringing punk rock and wrestling together. Vampiro was an ‘ECW-style wrestler’ before Extreme Championship Wrestling ever existed. After years of being a top star of Mexican wrestling Vampiro’s status grew even further, becoming a media personality, comic book character and even stared in the Mexican action movie ‘Vampiro: Guerrero De La Noche’ (‘Vampiro: Warrior of the Night’) propelling him to stardom across Mexico and Luche Libre that he had never dreamed of. “It was the worst thing that ever happened to me”, Vampiro said in a recent press release, “I had access to anything and everything, in excess, 24 hours a day. Good, bad and ugly. Women, drugs, fame, alcohol, power.”

In the early 90’s Antonio Pena, feeling he had took the CMLL promotion as far as he could, left the company to start his own promotion, the AAA, taking a lot of the company’s young talent (and first ever CMLL world heavy weight champion Konnan, who at the time was seen as the Hulk Hogan of Mexico) with him. AAA and CMLL traded places of the top Lucha Libre promotion throughout the 90’s with Vampiro often being in or around the main event, but his big break came in 1998 when he was signed by World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and given a platform to perform in front of a worldwide audience, not just across Mexico.

Vampiro’s debut in WCW was a successful one and he quickly gained some momentum by teaming with undercover wrestling legend Raven, and the Insane Clown Posse in a programme against Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio Jr and his Rival from Mexico, Konnan. The angle was well received and provided Vampiro with enough heat to be able to go into more singles angles, without having Raven with him to help him get over. From here Vampiro was involved in a few poorly booked midcard angles with Berlyn (The Wall), Oklahoma (Ed Ferrara, who was on the booking team at the time) and Steve Williams until finally being teamed up with WCW and NWA legend Sting in a storyline that would end with Vampiro turning on his ‘Brother in Paint’. In what was probably the highlight of Vampiro’s WCW stint he and Sting feuded throughout the spring of 2000, culminating in Vampiro getting an invaluable PPV victory to end the feud by setting Sting on fire in a ‘Human Torch Match’.

Instead of being pushed up the card after defeating main event worker Sting, Vampiro was then booked into an angle with the green as grass ‘Kiss Demon’. Next Vampiro was to set his sights on the Vacant United States title but was eliminated in the first round of a tournament to decide the new champion, denying him his first WCW gold. However the WCW tag titles were not out of Vampiro’s reach as he and his tag team partner, The Great Muta, won the belts from Kronik in autumn 2000. Vampiro’s first and only title run in WCW was to be short lived though as he and Muta dropped the straps on the following nights edition of Monday Nitro to Rey Mysterio Jr and Juventud Guerrera. Vampiro’s final match in WCW was against Mike Awesome, during which he got injured and was on the shelf throughout WCW’s final days before being purchased by the WWF, with his career in WCW never really getting off the ground. Some people believe that he never got the push that he deserved because of his backstage heat with Konnan. Even though the two men had made each other millions in CMLL they had a hatred for each other that carried over to WCW, with Vampiro once saying about the situation: “For a decade Konnan wished I was dead. I don’t think the Devil hates God as much as Konnan hated me.” At the time WCW was known for its political nature backstage, and many believe that Konan’s alliances with the nWo Wolfpack wouldn’t harm his alleged attempts to have Vampiro De-Pushed.

With the WWF not picking up Vampiro’s contract after buying WCW he then returned to CMLL for a short while before heading to the brand new XWF. Any wrestling fan that has seen the DVD ‘XWF: The Lost Episodes’ will see that had the XWF ever gotten of the ground, Vampiro may have had his chance at being a main event guy in the USA. The XWF was run by Jimmy Hart, Greg Valentine and Brian Knobbs, and was one of many wrestling promotions looking to rise from the ashes of the demise of WCW and ECW, with a business model of using the veterans that the WWF had not taken from WCW to get their name out there (Hulk Hogan, Jerry Lawler, Curt Henning) then emphasizing their excellent cruiserweight roster (Kid Kash, Psicosis, Low-Ki, Christopher Daniels AJ Styles) as their unique selling point. On the pilot episode of XWF Vampiro was booked in the Main event with Curt Henning, as well as given some in-ring time on the microphone, utilizing skills that he had never been able to use in the USA during his time in WCW. With Konnan also on the XWF roster, had the promotion ever picked up a TV deal, the two were to be put in a programme together to give the worldwide audience a taste of what made the two men such legends across Mexico. However it was not to be and after running a few house shows the XWF folded and Vampiro was once again looking for work.

Vampiro spent the next few years making appearances in smaller promotions across the world such as All Japan Pro Wrestling, CMLL, XPW and TNA for a short stint before jumping ship from CMLL to its rival Lucha Libre promotion AAA. When not working for the AAA Vampiro has also worked for Full Contact Wrestling, IWA, IPW:UK, and Nu Wrestling Evolution leading up to 2007 when he was approached by MTV to be part of a project called Wrestling Society X.

Vampiro was assigned as head booker in WSX, and alongside Syxx-Pac (Sean Waltman aka X-Pac) was one of the bigger names in the company and was to be used to help get them off the ground. WSX was presented at a frantic pace, mostly using young high-spot wrestlers in very short matches, which seemed to work with Vampiro’s style on his few appearances for the company. Vampiro won the companies only championship, the WSX title, after beating Syxx-Pac on the companies second show, before dropping it a month later to Ricky Banderas. WSX was pulled from MTV programming after a controversial incident in which Banderas threw a fire ball at Vampiro causing his head to catch fire momentarily.

During 2007 Vampiro has been involved in the making of a film documenting Vampiro’s life and career called Vampiro: A Canadian Vampire in Mexico, dubbed as the great untold story of professional wrestling. A statement that I very much agree with, which is why I dedicated my first blog of 2008 to a true great of the sport and an underrated worker, El Vampiro Canadiense.

Richard Penaluna