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Wresting Hypothetical Question


Hi Scott,

Wishing you continued success with your blog.

I enjoy the concept of wrestling without actually enjoying it on my TV set these days.

My question is a hypothetical one since Vince would never go for it. 

It seems to me that one of the most exciting aspects of Ultimate Fighting is that anybody can win at any moment.  You can't turn away to grab a slice of pizza because some dude might get knocked out with an out of nowhere knee or something.

So why does every single WWE match have to come down to somebody hitting their finisher, or a run-in/fluke roll up?  Why can't wrestler A slap on an arm bar and win out of nowhere?  Wouldn't this make RAW a more compelling program?  Sure you can't do this for a PPV but on a week to week show you could have surprise victories that would lead to easy feuds.  Loser wrestler would say, "That was a fluke, there's no way you can do it again" and then you'd have instant heat on a rematch.

I mean, do people really pop for early pin attempts, because you KNOW that unless one of the dudes hits his finisher there's no way the match is ending? 

And this second idea is even less likely, but you could have styles clashes where speedy wrestler A can beat big man wrestler B, but technical wrestler C can beat A.  So you'd have some fluky victories by different guys.  This is what makes boxing as minimally interesting as it is.

I guess my question is, has there ever been anything in wrestling like the two scenarios I've described and did they work?

Keep up the good work.

-Channing




​Yeah, I mean basically you're describing a whole style that New Japan was doing for a long time when Inoki was all into the fake MMA thing, and there's still some vestiges of it today.  I don't know how effective it was, in that the company damn near died when they were doing stuff like pushing ex-MMA fighters as IWGP champion, but certainly you're much more likely to see matches even today end on something like a random submission move than you would in WWE.  As has been noted several times, WWE is all about their "house style" now, kind of like McDonalds where you know exactly what you're getting on every show and some people prefer the Big Mac and some prefer the McChicken but it's not like you're getting different burgers if you go to the other McDonalds across town.  ​

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