Against the grain wrestling opinions

[BomberPat]

the Deadlock podcast recently brought up something from that era, of how the RAW intro was all explosions and fire and Steve Austin walking through an abandoned warehouse, but now, with infinitely more money at their disposal, the intro to every wrestling show is clips of wrestlers in the ring posing and doing wrestling moves. There's none of the bells and whistles that make it seem cool and interesting and bigger than just wrestling. 

[The Gaffer]

18 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

the Deadlock podcast recently brought up something from that era, of how the RAW intro was all explosions and fire and Steve Austin walking through an abandoned warehouse, but now, with infinitely more money at their disposal, the intro to every wrestling show is clips of wrestlers in the ring posing and doing wrestling moves. There's none of the bells and whistles that make it seem cool and interesting and bigger than just wrestling. 

Even just the generic annual shoots seem to be gone. Or at least just so blended with AI/after effects etc now that they're not discernible. 

Used to be the case all the lads would have to spend a day in that year's warehouse/smelting plant/construction site and that's where a lot of your promo/hype package inserts would come from. 

It was a cool way of telling the year apart. I remember around 2005 - beginning with WrestleMania 21 - they had everyone standing in front of these giant spotlights. It looked awesome. 

Edited November 25, 2025 by The Gaffer

[Chico Torres]

With both WWF and even more so WCW I can just tell from the look of the tv show what year it is, let’s say from 1990 to 1997ish. And not just the look but the commentary, the presentation, the rosters too obviously but there’s definite “feel” about a show that clearly distinguishes say 1991 WCW from 1993 WCW or 1990 WWF from 1994. And then at a certain point it just became very samey in terms of presentation and structure and a lot of the roster too.

I think my only special wrestling skill could be identifying the exact year, maybe even down to the specific quarter, of wrestling tv based on a very short clip, kinda like that weirdo kid on You Bet who identified a match based on the sounds. Tell Matthew Kelly I’m ready (or not, I think he may have been yewtree’d)

[thatvinylgeek]

Not sure how "against the grain" this is, or how to word it a such but...

WCWs ring was way too small (and myriad other promotions as well). 

My first intro to pro wrestling was late 80s/90s WWF and everytime I switched on Channel 4 and they had WCW on I found it really hard to watch because of the ring size. 

Even when WCW was at its prime in the Monday Night Wars I just could not get into it because of the tiny ring and it baffled me how they were putting on matches, when they was barely room to suplex each other. 

I am sure others raised on watching WCW have the polar opposite opinion and think WWEs ring is mahoosive...first impressions and all that. 

[LaGoosh]

The WCW ring also sounded like utter shit when people bumped on it. It had this weird flat dull sound to it.

[Browser Brady]

1 hour ago, thatvinylgeek said:

Not sure how "against the grain" this is, or how to word it a such but...

WCWs ring was way too small (and myriad other promotions as well). 

My first intro to pro wrestling was late 80s/90s WWF and everytime I switched on Channel 4 and they had WCW on I found it really hard to watch because of the ring size. 

Even when WCW was at its prime in the Monday Night Wars I just could not get into it because of the tiny ring and it baffled me how they were putting on matches, when they was barely room to suplex each other. 

I am sure others raised on watching WCW have the polar opposite opinion and think WWEs ring is mahoosive...first impressions and all that. 

I believe’ that the WCW sized ring(18X 18) was actually more common than the WWF size ring(20 X 20). As in 18 X 18 was used in the territories/ indies and only the WWF used the bigger ring, i am guessing because they had physically bigger people.

 

But yeah weirdly a smaller ring did make it look 2’nd rate.

i did prefer the sound of the WCW ring though.

[BomberPat]

Megaslam were selling a ring on Facebook recently, and because the Facebook algorithm is fucked, half the people commenting on it were Americans in absolute disbelief that a 14x14 wrestling ring even exists, let alone that anyone would want to buy one.

[LaGoosh]

20 hours ago, BomberPat said:

the Deadlock podcast recently brought up something from that era, of how the RAW intro was all explosions and fire and Steve Austin walking through an abandoned warehouse, but now, with infinitely more money at their disposal, the intro to every wrestling show is clips of wrestlers in the ring posing and doing wrestling moves. There's none of the bells and whistles that make it seem cool and interesting and bigger than just wrestling. 

I think generally these days there's a lack of creativity when it comes to the presentation and visual language of pro wrestling and has been for ages.

It reminds me of something someone said about Star Wars in that George Lucas was inspired by art, history and cinema while the new Star Wars stuff is just inspired by Star Wars. Well wrestling feels like that but with everyone mainly inspired by mid-2010s WWE.

Edited November 26, 2025 by LaGoosh

[RedTwoster]

19 hours ago, Chico Torres said:

With both WWF and even more so WCW I can just tell from the look of the tv show what year it is, let’s say from 1990 to 1997ish. And not just the look but the commentary, the presentation, the rosters too obviously but there’s definite “feel” about a show that clearly distinguishes say 1991 WCW from 1993 WCW or 1990 WWF from 1994. And then at a certain point it just became very samey in terms of presentation and structure and a lot of the roster too.

You’re spot on here. From maybe 2002 onwards, I think most people would struggle to identify which era of Raw it is based on set alone - I know I would. As soon as the Smackdown fist went away, same story.

I’d quite like AEW to have a bit of a bold reset at some point to avoid falling into that pattern. I don’t think WWE will ever change in that respect - why would they - but I could absolutely see Tony Khan splashing the cash on something quite different.

[WyattSheepMask]

15 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

The WCW ring also sounded like utter shit when people bumped on it. It had this weird flat dull sound to it.

sounded like shit and seemed to absolutely zero give to it either. While WWF rings from that time sounded better, but there were times were they also seemed to have zero gif to them. A good example is the Superplex from the Bret/Owen Summerslam 94 Cage Match. No wonder that era of wrestlers bodies are absolutely knackered

[Chili]

The WWF rings had absolutely zero give until about 1998 when they changed. I'd have rather bumped on the WCW ring. From all accounts the 80's/90's WWF rings were harsh. Something to do with NBC in the 80's and how it looked, I want to say Dick Ebersole had something to do with it. 

Edited November 26, 2025 by Chili

[BomberPat]

yeah, the WWF ring used to be famously unforgiving; it's probably one of the reasons why the WWF house style evolved to be heavy on the punches and light on bumping - older wrestlers used to joke that they'd rather take a bump on the outside than in the ring. The story I always heard was that they moved to a lighter ring - more give, central spring, lighter boards - in around 1998, specifically after Hell In A Cell, though Jeff Jarrett has said that the only reason they started making the ring easier to bump on was because Vince started taking bumps, and I can believe that too.

32 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

I think generally these days there's a lack of creativity when it comes to the presentation and visual language of pro wrestling and has been for ages.

It reminds me of something someone said about Star Wars in that George Lucas was inspired by art, history and cinema while the new Star Wars stuff is just inspired by Star Wars. Well wrestling feels like that but with everyone mainly inspired by mid-2010s WWE.

100% agreed on this. I remember being so annoyed at WOS Wrestling on ITV, because they just followed the visual (and actual) language of WWE as closely as possible, to the point that they were saying "sports entertainment" and doing a "Don't Try This At Home" video that I swear was word for word, "yes, this is entertainment, but the hazards are real". It's not even that everything should be Lucha Underground or reinventing the wheel, it's that there's a hundred ways to film and produce wrestling without losing sight of presenting it as a live sporting event, and everyone would rather just follow WWE's lead - WWE started showing wrestlers arriving at the building with their luggage, and suddenly everyone from AEW to tiny indie promotions are doing the same thing. The presentation, the look, the formatting, it's all just trying to be what WWE have been doing forever - it's one of the reasons people were actually excited about the NWA once upon a time, because studio wrestling hadn't been done in so long that everything old was new again!

I used to watch and review the bigger AAA shows, but I took one look at a clip of WWE-owned AAA and had no interest - it's shot and produced like WWE, the matches are worked to WWE's psychology, they use a WWE ring, and WWE rules, they've stripped away everything that made that company interesting. And AAA was a deeply flawed, shambolic shitshow, but I like their flaws a hell of a lot more than I like WWE's flaws.

[Carbomb]

Sounds to me like, aside from a moment when they thought they had to worry about AEW, they've realised "Hold on! We're a fucking monolith with invincible brand recognition that will always have millions of worldwide fans who pay for whatever warm diarrhoea we spoonfeed them! We don't need to put in that much effort really". 

[Chico Torres]

Nearly 30 years of the same presentation has meant everyone has forgotten any other way to present wrestling. Not just the look but all the tropes, many of which have been mentioned; the opening crowd shot and pyro, backstage walking and interviews, the entrances, the in ring interviews and interruptions and talking style…it’s all pretty much the same.

What I hate is that no one seems to remember how to do a wrestling tv show that isn’t presented as a “live event” that’s happening right now. It used to be that a tv show would have the matches of course, but also cut away to event centers, special reports, the hype interviews weren’t presented as happening right now, vignettes, music videos, recaps etc. It was normal for a tv show to not be its own standalone event like the infrequent SNMEs but just a tv show.

There are also so many different ways for a show to look. I always loved the look of CMLL shows from the late 90s and 2000s with the staircase and ramp and colour, would look great now. But no, every shit indy has to have its own low-rent titan tron. It looks like a shite school play approximation of a wrestling show (especially if they have the mini toy ring). Ban all “titan trons”!!

[Statto]

6 hours ago, Chico Torres said:

What I hate is that no one seems to remember how to do a wrestling tv show that isn’t presented as a “live event” that’s happening right now. It used to be that a tv show would have the matches of course, but also cut away to event centers, special reports, the hype interviews weren’t presented as happening right now, vignettes, music videos, recaps etc.

This winds me up something chronic when it's the TV show of a smaller promotion and it's so very obviously a taped event chopped up into TV episodes but they still try to give the pretence it's live every week, rather than doing an honest presentation of taped matches with studio links. You're being given the opportunity to do something a bit different, take it.

It's not like it's a new thing either - listening to the fantastic Nuffink and Like It podcast reminds that even 20 years ago the FWA were sort of pretending the matches were happening "live" even though they also used studio links and certain episodes would have meant Steve Lynskey had somehow teleported from Broxbourne to Morecambe in 60 seconds if they were indeed "crossing live".

Although I've basically got used to it now, it also wound me up when AEW's presentation style suddenly mirrored WWE's exactly overnight - announce table at ringside to the right of the hard cam rather than up on the stage, enclosed timekeeper's area at bottom right of screen rather than just the table bottom left, solid barriers with LED boards rather than the "bicycle rails" (as Schiavone liked to call them), big graphics of the belt forming itself onscreen before title matches etc. It was such an overnight carbon copy I can only assume it was a network directive as that's what "big time" wrestling looks like to them.