Ten years ago, WWE fans weren't concerned about WWE being too "kid-friendly" or dumbed down by the PG limitations. Instead, they were getting a ton of violence and blood and big risky highspots. I made a case in a cover story ten years ago in the Pro Wrestling Torch Newsletter that WWE was taking things too far, creating needless risk and business-damaging injury hiatuses. Since then, WWE has definitely corrected course in terms of unnecessarily career-shortening risky moves and obviously they've toned down the blood and gore drastically for strategic corporate reasons. Here's a look at my case for cutting back ten years ago.

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Wade Keller's COVER STORY
Headline: "Increased violence in WWF unnecessary and risky"
PWTorch Newsletter #659
Cover-Date: June 30, 2011

The WWF locker room after the King of the Ring PPV ended looked like a scene in a ratings sweeps week for E.R. Blood everywhere, moaning and wincing, and body parts being iced and taped. Steve Austin suffered a hand injury, Kurt Angle suffered a potential broken tailbone and was knocked out briefly, Chris Jericho suffered a concussion, and Chris Benoit wrestled his last match before taking months off to recover from surgery this week.

If Shane McMahon were a full-time wrestler, without the luxury of weeks to meticulously plan and plot and practice his match, and without months to recover afterward, he couldn't put on matches such as the one last night.

Kurt Angle doesn't have those luxuries, but as a result of Sunday night's overly ambitious stuntfest, he may miss extended ring time. Plus he banged his head, doing who knows what kind of damage due to his vulnerable state, having just suffered a concussion a few weeks ago. Even more astounding, he partook in a 20-plus minute stuntfest with Shane McMahon after wrestling two other matches earlier in the night.

Meanwhile, Chris Benoit is about to miss three to six months of ring time. Perhaps those repeated top rope headbutts that Harley Race warned Benoit against are the cause? Benoit, facing surgery, decides to go all out rather than take it easy in a match in which he could have gotten away with coasting. Everyone would have understood.

In the main event, Chris Jericho lands on his head overextending himself on a Lionsault attempt.

Booker T, either overexcited or careless or just plain green, tosses Steve Austin past the table Austin was supposed to land on. Austin hits his head on a chair and lands on his hand which he put beneath him to soften his landing, ending up with a sore back and an injured hand. The tables are designed to create the image of catastrophe while actually breaking falls. You need to land on it for that to work.

The moves leading to injuries aren't necessary ingredients in entertaining fans and making loads of money. There are simply more efficient ways of drawing money than employing a wrestling style that could land many wrestlers into premature retirement or repeated costly stays on the disabled list.

Benoit's neck problems surfaced after his TLC match on Smackdown, a throwaway TV match that was barely mentioned after it happened. What would have been a landmark match of the year five years ago is now "just another TV match."

When "just another TV match" is triggering injuries that require invasive surgery and three to six months off, it's time to begin evaluating the chances the WWF is asking wrestlers to take or letting wrestlers take. Since the WWF's incentive-based contracts encourage such risks, maybe it's time to show some responsibility and reign in wrestlers who are overambitious in their desire to stand out from the crowd.

Shane McMahon is another story. He doesn't have an incentive-based contract, so why did he go through glass twice? Is Shane trying to prove to the locker room of wrestlers that he is paying his dues or is he is trying to prove himself to his father? Either way, someone should step in and slow him down. What if Vince McMahon is letting Shane risk serious injury because in a way he rationalizes that it exonerates him from being criticized for letting others take similar risks? After all, if he lets his son take those risks, they must not be all that dangerous, right?

No matter what the reason, there is no point in Shane taking all of those bumps. Once through the glass would have been sufficiently controversial and extremely dangerous. Going through two glass walls and then taking additional bumps onto the broken glass is overkill, if not barbaric.

As great as the match was - and by so many standards it was a great match - it was unnecessary. Less could have been more. It's all about how its sold - by the wrestlers in the match, the announcers, and the follow up on television this week. As the TLC match on Smackdown showed, or the Benoit-Angle match on Raw last week showed, a great match with daredevil stunts means nothing if there is no follow up. A horrible match (Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant) or run-of-the-mill match (so many Ric Flair vs. Dusty Rhodes or Von Erich vs. Freebird matches) with proper build up and follow up can become legendary.

The WWF is wasting the equity that comes from making a big deal over occasional shocking moves. By their current approach they are making them instead seem commonplace, hardly worth noting. WWF wrestlers are too talented to have to resort to this garbage-at-the-expense-of-finesse-and-psychology approach that the New Jacks and Mikey Whipwrecks and Sabus thought they had to take to get noticed.

All the blame shouldn't fall on Paul Heyman. While he's certainly far from a conscientious objector to this style, Shane was taking crazy bumps and the WWF was underplaying potentially landmark matches long before Heyman arrived.

The WWF has a problem. They have lost perspective. They need to slow down, take a deep breath, and not think like ECW did - that the way to get out of a rut or increase business is to become more extreme every month. WWF management has to step in and say, "No more. It's gotten out of hand."

If not for the principle of it, for the practicality of having healthy wrestlers able to work. For the practicality of not having athletic commissions reevaluate the freedoms now afforded the WWF. For the practicality of not arming another activist group with footage that would make any politician cringe.

Then they need to put more thought into their booking - do their jobs so that every subtle move a wrestler executes means something, rather than relying on wrestlers to do outrageous stunts in order to stand out. A good step in that direction is to begin planning their storylines and big TV matches weeks and in some cases months ahead, and making sure they build in adequate time to milk them for all they're worth, not letting even one top-of-the-cage move or swing of a weapon get by without it meaning something.

People are getting hurt. And even if people weren't getting hurt, it's still totally inefficient. Once viewers are sufficiently shocked, they're being shocked again and again - all within the same match - thus becoming numb. Fans are flat out being conditioned to think that this stuff must not hurt at a time when it hurts more than ever.

The WWF is really becoming like the Road Runner cartoon, except the anvil really does hurt and the wrestlers don't reappear in the next scene without a scratch.

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