• 2 years ago
With the world currently in lockdown, wrestling has been forced to change: smaller venues, smaller crews and no fans in attendance. This has left weekly episodic TV feeling flat and left some of the audience at home struggling to get into the product like they once did. But Empty Arena matches pre-date 2020 by a good few years, so why were they invented? What mood were they trying to capture and what could modern matches do to get some of that magic back?
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Transcript
00:00 Wrestling and wrestlers are larger than life, figuratively and in some cases quite literally.
00:21 They're sculpted heroes for a modern age who battle vile villains for their honour,
00:25 a championship belt and our amusement. It seems only fitting for these colossal contests
00:31 that the crowd would be outsized too, at the upper limit having 70,000 plus voices joined
00:37 in unison to cheer the babyface, boo the heel and count out the 1, 2, 3.
00:46 Wrestling crowds kind of take on a life of their own, they have all the passion of a
00:50 sporting audience with the participation of a pantomime, they're there to be played to
00:55 by the performers and in some cases played by them. Though that isn't to say they don't
01:00 impose their own will on proceedings.
01:10 This vocal adulation for certain stars and vociferous dislike of others is woven into
01:16 the very fabric of wrestling, it adds to the stories. It's in the pauses during promos,
01:22 the slow build to a hot tag or a countdown to a claymore. It produces moments like this
01:28 and this and this. Moments that if you were in attendance would have left your ears ringing,
01:42 but as recent events have proven with no crowds in the arena, the silence too can be deafening.
01:48 But what is it about a lack of live fans that changes the impact of wrestling? And if that
01:53 is the case, why has it been used throughout wrestling's history in some top tier feuds?
01:58 I'm Laurie hailing from partsFUNknown and this is Empty Arena Matches Explained.
02:18 Before recent global events forced the hands of wrestling companies to move from large
02:22 arenas to more sheltered spaces, shrink the number of personnel present for each show
02:27 and close the doors to fans to stop the spread of Covid-19, the Empty Arena Match had been
02:33 used sparingly throughout the history of wrestling to interesting effect.
02:38 The format was thought up by the hardcore innovator Terry Funk in 1981 as a way to cap
02:43 off his feud with Jerry 'The King' Lawler in CWA. The logic on Funk's end being that
02:48 babyface Lawler drew much of his power from the partisan Memphis crowd and this would
02:53 essentially cut him off from the source. To an audience of 11,300 empty seats, commentator
03:03 Lance Russell and cameraman Randy West, Funk and Lawler went to war.
03:09 With no audience and, tellingly, no referee present, this gave the match the feel of a
03:13 full on fight rather than a sporting contest. Their feud had crossed the line from mass
03:19 entertainment into something bloody and brutal that needed to be settled behind closed doors.
03:25 And blood was spilled. It's a Terry Funk match of course. With no referee there to
03:31 call a winner, things came to a close when Funk was busted open above the eye and Lawler
03:35 decided to stop the beatdown. Clearly enamoured with this style, Funk followed up a year later
03:47 over in Florida's Championship Wrestling with a Texas Bunkhouse Empty Arena Cage match.
03:53 Some serious Fridge Poetry going on there. It was essentially a squash match which saw
03:57 Funk dunk on Bruce Walkup, tossing him out of the cage before cutting a searing promo
04:03 on Dusty Rhodes. What's interesting about this iteration
04:16 of the match was the addition of the cage and the fact that it was fought in street
04:20 clothes, adding to that feeling of unsanctioned violence the Lawler match tried to capture
04:24 a year before. However, there was also a referee present to count the three, which kind of
04:29 detracts from that feeling of this operating outside the laws of normal wrestling.
04:33 But it is this energy that a lot of Empty Arena matches have tried to capture. Look
04:37 at Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa's one final beat.
04:49 This is a feud that has defined NXT for years now and one that circumstances robbed of a
04:55 deserving payoff many times over. And now in 2020 TakeOver Tampa Bay is cancelled and
05:01 regular NXT is filmed on a closed set.
05:04 So then with things unresolved between these two, the constant conflict was having a disruptive
05:08 effect on NXT. Ciampa and Gargano would brawl through the audience, tear things up at ringside,
05:14 they even destroyed the Performance Center in their attempts to topple one another.
05:19 So it's fitting then that NXT dad Triple H would have a stern word with them about
05:22 sorting this whole thing out and he'd find a place for them to settle the score away
05:26 from his precious PC.
05:28 So circumstances that could have crushed this conclusion were turned to its advantage. Yes,
05:33 Ciampa and Gargano were always deserving of a main event TakeOver slot, but being locked
05:38 away in a warehouse, the match barely sanctioned by Hunter, status as NXT Golden Boy on the
05:45 line for both men in a straight fight, that's so much more juicy than another TakeOver classic.
05:51 It's this kind of feeling that makes the Empty Arena match quite a compelling prospect
05:56 even when outside factors force a promotion's hand.
05:59 Over the years the AWA, NJPW, WCW and TNA have all had their own takes on the Empty
06:05 Arena formula, but the match that made the lasting impact has to be Half Time Heat.
06:14 Which saw The Rock and Mankind go toe to toe in front of no one for the WWF Championship.
06:20 So in an attempt to lure viewers of Super Bowl 1999 over to the WWF, Vince McMahon decided
06:26 to put on this alternative Half Time show. The match was going to be pre-taped and in
06:31 order to stop the results leaking ahead of time the decision was made to do it in front
06:35 of no audience.
06:37 And while this was a decision made out of circumstance, it added to the drama of the
06:42 match.
06:43 Fan favourite and underdog Mankind was out there alone against corporate heel The Rock,
06:48 who came to the ring flanked by Vince McMahon who was also on lopsided commentary duty.
06:53 The deck was stacked against Mrs Foley's baby boy and the fact that there was no crowd
06:57 in attendance to cheer for him added to the fact that this felt like corporate WWF conspiring
07:03 to keep Mankind off the top spot.
07:05 Add to that the fact that the empty space was easily filled by The Rock's larger than
07:09 life personality, offering up quips for days as he beat Foley throughout the arena.
07:23 The brawl also made good use of its pre-taped nature, offering up a couple of spots that
07:33 wouldn't have worked as effectively in front of a live audience, like burning Mankind's
07:37 hand in a pizza oven complete with sizzling sound effects.
07:41 Or the climax of the match where Mankind cleverly drops a pallet on top of The Rock so he can
07:45 get the pinfall and we get some POV shots from beneath the forklift as it all happens.
07:59 And that's the thing with empty arena matches, with no audience there, there's a lot of
08:02 space to fill and it feels like matches have to go above and beyond to capture the drama
08:08 of a regular wrestling match.
08:10 And people have definitely managed it this year, Jungle Boy and MJ have absolutely crushed
08:14 it at Double or Nothing, Edge in WWE has cut some uncomfortably intimate promos straight
08:20 down the lens.
08:21 But quite simply, wrestling is designed for a live audience.
08:24 From stings at the start of entrance music to make you pop, big bassy notes to get people's
08:30 hearts pumping, call and response catchphrases, yay boo spots, the slow build to a hot tag,
08:40 everything has been designed with that live audience in mind.
08:43 So with so much of wrestling being about playing to a live audience, it's no wonder that
08:47 the people stuck at home during lockdown have struggled to get into the product like they
08:52 once did.
08:53 I've had plenty of tweets about this, and answers as to why have ranged from the empty
08:57 space reminding people of the current state of the world, it feeling like a Mexican soap
09:01 opera without fans, so maybe a bit melodramatic, to the fact that some of the emotion and excitement
09:07 that is normally in wrestling isn't there without a braying, cheering mob reacting to
09:13 every moment.
09:14 Because I guess once you get past the great big secret of wrestling, it's not a real
09:19 fight, then watching wrestling is kind of all about suspension of disbelief.
09:23 It takes you to buy into the characters and invest in the story that's being told, and
09:28 it's much easier to do that if loads of other people are seen doing it too.
09:32 It's also useful for the performers too, because the crowd is basically a microcosm
09:37 of the wider wrestling watching public and essentially a live litmus test as to what
09:42 is getting over.
09:43 To use an altogether different example, think about sitcoms that are filmed in front of
09:48 a live studio audience and edited to have a laugh track in them.
09:52 Graham Linehan, the creator of Father Ted, Black Books and the IT Crowd had an explanation
09:56 for this in a piece for The Guardian.
09:58 He said "audience laughter, when it's deserved, acts as a sort of fairy dust that
10:03 makes funny moments not just funny but joyous.
10:07 It also takes the edge off moments that otherwise might tip over into tragedy.
10:11 Imagine Basil Fawlty whacking his car with a branch or Goose stepping around a hotel
10:15 lobby to complete silence, and you're imagining not a comedy but a fairly grim account of
10:20 mental collapse."
10:21 And that's why shows like The Office don't have laugh tracks, they're meant to be as
10:25 awkward as they are funny and the sound of laughter would take that uncomfortable edge
10:30 off.
10:31 So yeah, laugh tracks can kind of feel like a cheap trick trying to tell you that something
10:35 is funny when you might not think it is.
10:37 But you could also say that they're trying to get you to loosen up and enjoy.
10:41 It's the same reason people are more likely to laugh aloud in a comedy club, shout out
10:45 in a cinema or boo in a pantomime.
10:48 So there's a relative anonymity in being part of a crowd that allows people to let
10:53 loose and maybe some of that feeling of letting go and just enjoying yourself is conferred
10:59 through the TV.
11:00 And you can think about it like this, the crowd in wrestling TV basically provide the
11:05 soundtrack.
11:09 Like music in a drama, it heightens moments of tension, is playful in moments of levity
11:15 and ramps up to a fever pitch when something truly exciting happens.
11:24 That might be why a lot of people thought AEW has generally been a lot more successful
11:28 during lockdown.
11:29 Because both AEW Dynamite and WWE programming haven't kayfabed a reason for the lack of
11:34 fans things have essentially carried on as usual, but in a diminished form.
11:39 The exception being that AEW chose to have other wrestlers be an audience.
11:44 And it means that people are there to cheer, to boo, to react to spots, to sing impromptu,
11:49 nearly tuneless versions of Judas.
11:52 It creates an atmosphere, it creates a crowd.
11:55 Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung believed that we synchronised emotions and thoughts when
12:00 we come together in groups.
12:01 This is what he deemed the collective unconscious, populated by instincts and archetypes informed
12:07 by our collective culture.
12:09 Jung's archetypes were things like the wise old man and the great mother, but wrestling
12:15 is also filled with cultural archetypes.
12:17 It's about big manly heroes taking on sneaky villains, monsters being toppled by brave
12:23 underdogs.
12:24 We know from wrestling culture and wider culture how we should react to this stuff.
12:27 And maybe the collective unconscious of a crowd just helps us get into it a little more.
12:33 I'm not saying this is the actual reason why or that any of these theories might actually
12:37 be true, it might just be a case of less noise on the telly makes it feel flat, but it's
12:42 kind of fun to think that some of this stuff might be bubbling away beneath the surface.
12:45 Either way it's kind of telling of how important crowds are to the reception of wrestling that
12:49 some of the most lauded from recent times are ones that tinker with the formula.
12:54 The Boneyard Match, the Firefly Funhouse Match, Money in the Bank, Stadium Stampede.
13:00 For want of a better word, these were all more televisual.
13:03 The Boneyard Match had the feel of a Sons of Anarchy parody, Firefly Funhouse was a mind-boggling
13:09 meta series of vignettes, and Money in the Bank and Stadium Stampede were essentially
13:13 sketches stitched together.
13:15 They didn't necessarily require an audience to be there, and because of setting or style
13:19 they couldn't have one anyway, so they were more scripted, they had dramatic cuts, in
13:25 some cases music and spots that couldn't be done in front of a live crowd.
13:29 But for your regular in-ring action, your live wrestling, not having an audience, unless
13:34 you've got a very good story reason for not having an audience, some of it just feels
13:38 a little bit off.
13:39 Because like I've said a hundred times in this video now, crowds are a really important
13:43 part of wrestling and that's probably why WWE personified theirs.
13:48 So suffice to say, I can't wait for the wrestling universe to be able to get out there
13:54 and chant and sing and boo and what and yes and 1, 2, 3 and 10 together and for those
14:02 that can't make it out to be able to watch them do it at home and still feel like part
14:08 of the crowd.
14:17 So thank you for watching, if you liked the video please click the thumbs up down below
14:20 to let us know and share the video around with anyone else you think might be interested
14:25 as that would really help us out.
14:27 WrestleTalk Magazine writer Liam Wyatt wrote a fantastic piece about empty arena matches
14:31 which form the basis for some of this video and goes into even greater depth about how
14:36 individual promotions are navigating lockdown's lack of crowds.
14:41 You can find out more information about that and read the article by ordering your copy
14:45 on the link in the description down below.
14:47 But if you fancy some more PFK content, some should have just appeared on screen now for
14:51 you to click and enjoy.
14:53 I'll see you on your next trip to partsFUNknown.

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