This review was commissioned by grappleholics over on my Ko-fi account.
Oftentimes, a premium is placed on how pro wrestlers work a crowd. This typically means critics look to how wrestlers entice and manipulate the audience. A lot of the terms we utilize in this endeavor are directly related to audience reaction—a big “pop,” or an effective “heat,’ for example. The difficulty with this paradigm is that it tends to shift the value of the artistic expression to the reaction to it. And even on the surface level, many can attest to how that simply isn’t always the case. After all, many bad matches happen in front of diehard, roaring fans, and many great ones can find themselves happening to total silence or even emptiness.
All of this to say that while powerful audience reaction is oftentimes the ends, with pro wrestling as the means, there’s value to be found in pro wrestling being an end in and of itself. It’s similar to live comedy, where there’s a built in expectation for an immediate, audible reaction, and yet the act itself can still carry weight as its own form of expression. The important thing from a critical standpoint, speaking for myself at least, is understanding what the medium is best suited to express.
This, I feel, separates the best of wrestling as an expression from the worst. One can describe a match as “overindulgent” because of how it ignores the crowd, for example, but it tends to drift in that direction because the ideas being expressed do not align with the medium’s strengths. Or at the very least, this indulgence is approached with a laziness and lack of understanding for which elements of pro wrestling can best convey them. Ideas of morality and self-conflict have a place in pro wrestling, but leaning on in-ring dialogue and hammy theatrics within the context of a physical confrontation can lead to a break in immersion.
Something pro wrestling is incredibly well-suited at conveying however is external conflict. Pettiness, hatred, meanness, these are the themes in which pro wrestling luxuriates and thrives. Utilizing the medium as an expression of these ideas is when it can often be maximized—with or without the approval of a viewing audience.
And that brings us to WCW in 1996.
Quite simply, this crowd doesn’t care for The Belfast Bruiser and Lord Steven Regal. Take a peek at the fans in the stands. They’re sitting there in disinterest, children milling about in the aisles, all clearly impatient to see the bigger stars on the show. Bruiser and Regal are no Hogan and Flair, after all. It’s hard to say that these two ever even win over this crowd, the pops are few and far in between.
To that end, it feels like Bruiser and Regal work in spite of the audience. And on this night, it works out so beautifully. The match simply does not conform to the traditional American-style wrestling that they might see on Nitro every week. There’s no real shine-heat-comeback structure here, both men work much closer to their heel personas, and it’s hard to pick a side to really root for (although in our hearts, we must always choose the Irish over the British). What results is apathy from the crowd, but one that simply can not mar how lovely all the action is.
Regal and Bruiser give us a bout filled with all the best elements of pro wrestling. It’s pure fucking violence, and I love it. What does one need from roaring fans when we’re gifted instead with the wall of sound that is flesh on flesh contact? This is about twenty minutes of the meatiest striking and most vicious grappling and escape work one is bound to find. It’s on occasion pretty, but always, always nasty. Fingers hooked into eye sockets, forearms ground into noses, and palms smacking against faces. It’s almost euphoric watching it all unfold, all these tiny potshots they take at each other that just build and build.
The best one is that big punch on the floor that breaks Regal’s nose. So loud, the crack of an explosion, and then the debris Regal’s face—immediate blood pouring from it, and the panic from WCW’s production truck in the back is palpable. Suddenly the match is all wide shots and distant views, trying to obscure as much of the blood as possible, an ironic turn on a pay-per-view entitled Uncensored.
In that way, Regal and Bruiser not only work in spite of the crowd, they seem to work in spite of the entire company they’re in. There’s some unfortunate WCW-isms here like the limp run in disqualification that keeps this match out of the realm of true classics. It’s that lack of institutional support that puts a damper on this, more than any other choice that the two made in the ring. It’s so odd seeing them produce something so substantial and thrilling in spite of the deck being stacked against them. It feels akin to dropping a Nomura/Abe match in the middle of a WWE pay-per-view in 2024 and ending it with a Judgment Day beatdown. These two are going to do their thing and everyone around them will either join them for the ride or get left in their dust. It’s a match not about leading the fans in attendance, but purely about sharing this vision of what pro wrestling can be. A vicious outpouring of violence between two gnarly dudes trying to hurt each other.
It doesn’t need a traditional structure when the sheer integrity of every moment stands so strong. Everything is fought for and against. Watch how Bruiser slaps on a meaty headlock, and how Regal starts smacking at his arm to try and get it loose. Or later on, the struggle that Finlay puts behind reversing an Irish whip before turning instantly into an armwrench. All culminating in those bigger moments like the struggle for the suplex to the floor and the spitefulness that Regal embodies once the blood starts flowing. God, what a lovely thing to see. The crowd’s indifference is not the match’s loss, it’s theirs.
Rating: ****1/4
