Wrestling Beast's blog

I have always looked down upon staged wrestling. Pro wrestling entertained me when I was 12, but since then I have not looked back with a great deal of nostalgia. When I discovered personals sites devoted to wrestling, I thought that the attention devoted to people wanting to "pro" wrestle weird. To me, engaging in an athletic "performance" with a predetermined outcome and improvised holds and moves is boring. However, I understand that other people find greater appeal in that, and each to his own.

So there is a divide between competitive wrestling and "pro" wrestling, whether you call the former freestyle, MMA, rough action, submission, etc. The former can range from pro fantasy to "stiff" pro, but it does not matter to me what you call it, its not competitive. I think it is important to state clearly what you do up front. If I see a guy who talks about pro all over his profile, I would not assume that he would be into competitive. But if he is, he should be explicit. And vice versa. These days, even some people into "submission" wrestling may only be interested in those submissions that are prearranged.

But there are these terms "jobber" and "heel" that get thrown around in both spheres. In pro wrestling, the terms are well-understood. A "heel" is the bad guy and a "jobber" is there to take a staged beating. Some competitive wrestlers have also taken to the term. A "heel" is someone who expects to dominate and a "jobber" is someone who expects to be dominated, ideally. Some competitive heels tend to take matches with obviously smaller, weaker, less experienced wrestlers. I admit to being guilty of this, although its mostly by circumstances than design because there are few opponents in my area who are as big as I am. A "jobber" may seek out a bigger, stronger wrestler, acknowledging that he will most likely lose to that wrestler. In this sense, he is a submissive. In an encounter between opponents where the matches are one-sided, the "heel" and the "jobber" become apparent. But in my matches which fall into this dynamic, the heel has to earn a submission and sometimes the jobber can turn the tables, at least for a tap.

But many people enjoy switching, taking on heels when they can get them and jobbers otherwise. In one of my previous posts, I stated that I let the jobber get some of his own back by letting him engage in one-sided gut punching, with me being on the receiving end. I do not consider this pro or staged because each and every one of those punches are real and my opponent never knows when I may pounce to try and take him down. Since I am testing my physical and mental limits, as well as my opponent's, this is still competitive in a different way.

What most irks me is this "please don't hurt me attitude" I read in some profiles. I tend to view this as a kind of "bait and switch", a wrestler who says he will engage in "light" submission but the encounter will seem much like a series of pro matches. There is always a risk of injury in real competitive wrestling, even without body punches. If that is the kind of wrestling you are into, then we will not meet.