Source: David Barron of The Houston Chronicle
WWE has a real hold — in ring as well as out
Sunday’s WrestleMania XXV at Reliant Stadium will employ a little sex, a little violence, a healthy dose of athleticism and marketing acumen, soap-opera story lines, dazzling pyrotechnics, high-definition production values, clever writing and any number of other techniques of the entertainment trade.
It is a sufficiently successful combination, in the midst of a recession, to draw more than 70,000 people contributing to a live gate of more than $6.3 million and to generate as many as a million pay-per-view buys, at $54.99 a throw, for an event broadcast in 28 languages to more than a hundred countries.
But it’s not enough by itself to explain why the likes of Simon Beck, a call center worker from Leeds, England, or the Gamboa siblings from Houston, who reminisce about filming their family wrestling sessions when they weren’t watching the real thing on TV, will travel so far or invest so much in a weekend of fan-focused events that culminate in Sunday night’s matches.
Instead, the best explanation for WrestleMania’s success may be buried in the “Don’t try this at home” disclaimer on the company’s DVDs, which mixes action shots of WWE’s characters with the words, “Cheer for them, believe in them.”
Even with the best that marketing and athleticism and HDTV technology have to offer, clearly, it wouldn’t be Mania without belief.
“There is so much misery in the world,” said Beck, who has been saving for months to pay for his first WrestleMania trip. “But when you watch those two hours, you can believe. You go with it, and it takes you away from everything.”
Those in ring believe, too
And here’s the kicker: Ask the performers who emerge from behind the curtain knowing who will win and who will lose and how the night’s story lines will unfold, and you’ll find that they believe in it, too.
“We were just kids who never thought we would make it,” said WWE veteran Jeff Hardy, who in one of Sunday night’s featured matches will face his real-life brother, Matt Hardy, in an “extreme rules” grudge match. “But we believed, and we found that anything is possible.”
“I remember sitting at home and watching Owen Hart and Bret Hart (two former WWE performers) wrestle each other and thinking how cool it would be if we did that one day. And here we are, Jeff versus Matt. It’s going to be nuts.”
Belief, on the part of fans and performers, has fueled what was a gamble in 1985 by WWE chairman Vince McMahon and his wife, Linda, the company’s CEO, that became one of the longest-running, most profitable propositions in sports or entertainment, with trappings to rival a Super Bowl or a Daytona 500.
Fans relate to characters
Wednesday, for example, Linda McMahon and several WWE performers attended a benefit auction that raised $45,000 for the Houston Public Library Foundation. About 10,000 people each night are expected to attend a fan festival at Reliant Park.
WWE sets the hook, of course, with television. As traditional soap operas vanish, WWE has expanded, with live programming 51 weeks a year on three networks (with a fourth on the way). Story arcs fall, rise and intersect for pay-per-view cards, with the biggest and best reserved for WrestleMania.
Although all of the WWE’s championship belts will be on the line Sunday, much of the buzz has focused on a non- title match between WWE veterans Shawn Michaels (real name Michael Shawn Hickenbottom, who grew up in suburban San Antonio) and the Undertaker (real name Mark Calaway, whose sport was basketball at Houston’s Waltrip High School).
“Those are characters we can relate to. They’re more iconic to us,” said Stephen Johnson, a banker from Manchester, England, who accompanied two friends to Houston for this, his first WrestleMania.
Linda McMahon is an occasional performer in WWE storylines as well, and so she revels in the high-tech carnival aspects of sports entertainment.
“It’s about a traveling soap opera, a spectacle that has so much to offer, from music to merchandising, from live-event action-adventure to backstage little secret things that are going on,” she said.
(The latest twist, announced Friday, is that The Wrestler star Mickey Rourke, who at one point was rumored to be part of Sunday’s card, will be ringside for a match between Chris Jericho and three WWE Hall of Famers. Unannounced, but anticipated, is that Rourke will wreak havoc upon the villainous Jericho as the match concludes.)
Call it family fun
For most WWE fans who travel from 50 states and several countries for WrestleMania, their focus is on the Undertaker’s 16-0 WrestleMania win streak or the triple threat match for the world title involving Edge, the Big Show and John Cena, star of two films produced by WWE Studios, including the recently released 12 Rounds.
For siblings like the Gamboas — brothers Fidel and Mathew and sister Venus Saenz, who attended the library benefit art auction and will be at Reliant Stadium on Sunday — WrestleMania is family fun.
“We always watched wrestling with our dad since we were growing up,” Fidel Gamboa said. “I’ve been a fan forever.”
The Gamboas believe. So do the tourists from Leeds and Manchester. And so does John Layfield, a former football player at Abilene Christian University who, as the despicable Wall Street tycoon character JBL, has promised to make history by the manner in which he defends his WWE Intercontinental title Sunday.
Shakespearean roots?
Layfield, who moonlights as a financial commentator on Fox Business Channel, compares WWE matches to one-act plays in their good-versus-evil plot lines and a mix of character development, stagecraft and violence that he says has its roots in Shakespeare.
But while Layfield knows the outcome, he, too, advises suspending disbelief once the curtain goes up and WrestleMania begins.
“Is it real? Is it fake? Is it scripted? Is it not?” he said. “It doesn’t matter. If you enjoy it, believe. Leave the higher thinking processes somewhere else and just enjoy it.”
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