This Day In Wrestling History - April 13

Date: April 13, 2008 (6 years ago)

Feature: TNA Lockdown featured the all-time great TNA match of Samoa Joe vs. Kurt Angle for the TNA World Title. The match was effectively built up, featured two big-time stars, and delivered in the ring. It had potential to usher in a new era of wrestling, spearheaded by TNA, but gave way to a weak TNA Title run for Joe and no lasting change to TNA's in-ring product. Six years later, WWE is delivering consistent in-ring work, while TNA is struggling to find an identity - an identity that could have materialized starting with Lockdown '08.

Torch Back-Issue: PWTorch Newsletter #1021.

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PWTORCH COVER STORY #1021
HEADLINE: Joe beats Angle for title in MMA style match
SUBHEADLINE: Is Joe-Angle start of a new era in the ring, or a one-time novelty?
By Wade Keller, PWTorch editor

For twenty minutes on Sunday night, Samoa Joe and Kurt Angle put on a hybrid of a match that incorporated about 70 percent MMA-style techniques and 30 percent of the familiar pro wrestling highspots. It was a fascinating experience as a viewer to watch as two experienced craftsman in TNA rose to the challenge to create a new type of worked pro wrestling match.

It worked. It was a very good, perhaps a great TNA PPV main event. The submission style holds were 90 percent more realistic than a typical pro wrestling match, with a few embellishments for the sake of telling their story dramatically. (The credibility of most of what they did gave them the leeway to embellish some drama in less realistic ways without it breaking the mood.)

There were still highspots, but there were fewer than usual. When they did happen, they meant more, and the ones Angle and Joe chose were selected for realism in addition to the excitement factor. Usually, highspots are chosen by wrestlers because they're dazzling to watch without much regard for any sense of realism (in that a discerning eye would easily see the cooperation involved by the victim or the ease of escape from someone putting up resistence). In this match, almost everything just "felt" more realistic.

Their match drew from the popular sport of MMA, with UFC being the top name brand most are familiar with. Almost any sports fan and any TNA fan has been exposed to one extent or another on cable or at a sports bar some variation of UFC on Spike, Pride on FSN, WEC on Versus, or the IFL on various channels. It's out there, and it has redefined what a realistic fight between skilled athletes looks like. WWE and TNA wrestlers have been slow to adapt. The top heel in WWE, Randy Orton, still applies a lying down headlock in almost every match about four minutes in. It's a move that's not used in UFC because it's technically ineffective in that a skilled MMA fighter knows how to escape from it. When Orton applies it in a WWE match, he's basically putting his opponent in a position to look completely incompetent compared to even the most entry-level MMA fighters.

Pro wrestliing fans, though, for decades have been willing to look past the "fake" aspects as long as they were entertained and given a product they could get emotionally involved in with characters they felt strongly about and matches that took them on a roller coaster ride (just as a good scripted movie or TV show or book does). Pro wrestling fans may not be in the market for a "new style" if it goes too far and eliminates a lot of the dramatics that may not be realistic, but are really exciting - the highspots, running the ropes, pyramid suplex spots, dives outside of the ring, tables breaking.

That's the challenge for TNA right now. Angle is gung-ho about MMA. He's borderline obsessed with coming a generation too late to be involved at a top level in a sport that would have probably been his calling if it had been around ten years earlier. MMA was a struggling sport with no big money contracts and a shaky future when Angle signed on with the WWF. Now, he believes he is uniquely qualified to use his skillset to bring MMA-style realism to TNA's rings. Samoa Joe is an ideal opponent because he, too, has a realistic style and fans perceive him as a legitimately tough guy, not just a showman.

The catch is, TNA does not have a roster full of Angles and Joes. There are a handful of wrestlers prepared to have a match with the style and tone of what Angle and Joe delivered on Sunday. If TNA presents Angle-Joe MMA-style matches, it by comparison makes everything else seem "faker." TNA management, though, seems willing to live with that as they've always taken the "we'll be all things to all people" approach where they try to have a little bit of everything on each show, and even change from week to week. They see it as a positive attribute, but it's really a sign of not having confidence in any one style or the discpline and confidence to stick with it. By jumping from one style to another on the same show, it often ends up frustrating fans who like MMA-style but hate Super Eric, or vice-versa, frustrating fans who like Black Machismo-So Cal Val-Sonjay Dutt soap opera skits but are bored with a match centered around realistic submission holds with no weapons being used.

TNA is likely to go forward from here with occasional MMA-style matches, never stopping to address the fact that there's no meaningful difference in the rules between a regular TNA match and what was presented on Sunday. They're not equipped talent-wise to switch to a new, more realistic style, nor does their booking philosophy suggest they'd even see that as a smart move.

What Angle and Joe did, though, is put on a display of how to build interest in a match with more matholds applied realistically and strategically with flurries of punches and realistic counters and blocks. There is no reason that every wrestler can't apply some of what Angle and Joe displayed on Sunday to improve the drama in their matches and advance their style to a form that is more realistic in the context of a worked match.

[Torch art credit Grant Gould (c) PWTorch.com]

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