British Wrestling is great, it should be on terrestrial telly. I think you, the guy or gal reading this thinks so too, or you wouldn’t be reading this. I’ve listened to a lot of British fans berating British wrestling, which is easy to do as they have probably been to one or two shows where some idiot who thinks he knows the business put idiots who think they know how to wrestle on.
And these people know who they are…
Meanwhile the rest of the country is comparing what the British are doing to what is convenient to look at, the WWE.
It’s easy to see that the WWE are the best at what they do and it hurts me to think that some people are not learning their lessons from what we see on the television.
So, what is it that Saracen wants to get off his chest this month? I’ll tell you, referees.
Now I’ll start off with my disclaimers before I get people’s backs up, refs do an extremely important job and the people who do it will probably see it as a thankless task, it usually is.
It just strikes me as odd as why a person who wants to be a professional referee has absolutely no idea what they are doing sometimes.
Referees are the rules enforcers, they make decisions and they penalise the wrestlers when the rules are breached, admittedly, the ref never tends to see the low blow the bad guy just pulled, but he’s only human. However, they do need to be in that ring and ready to face a wrestler twice his size, knowing that despite what the wrestler could do to him, he has the confidence and the backing of the federation behind him.
So why refs are smiling when they are warning wrestlers I do not know, why should the wrestler listen to a referee that grins while he’s berating you?
Even worse, the half-soaked ref who lazily warns you as though he’s doing just another job, the audience can tell he’d either like to be somewhere else, or he wants to be a part of the action.
There are a lot of factors that play into the role of referee and they are hidden factors that the audience pick up, body language for example, the audience can see that the referee is scared of the wrestlers in there, it loses the respect of the wrestlers and they seem to get on with it without him, as he is about as much use as a chocolate teapot.
I have been to shows where even the audience loses confidence in the ability of the referee, blatantly bad decisions can ruin a match and make the audience aggrieved towards the wrestlers, just because one ref doesn’t know how to work the job.
There was also one travesty of a match when the referee jumped up and started beating up the wrestlers… I had to go to therapy for weeks to get over that one!
Don’t get me wrong though, I have had the pleasure of working with some excellent referees in my time, they know exactly what they are doing, what you are doing and what the crowd is doing. They will animate for the audience so the ones at the back who can’t hear the conversation can clearly see what’s going on and I as a wrestler feel more confident knowing they are there and ready to count when you pin.
I feel the ref is the most important person in the ring and without him you just have a scrap.
So if you are learning to be a referee, study the refs on WWE and see how they work, how authoritative they are and how they help the flow of the match.
If you are serious about being a ref, then you will want to do your best to prevent some armchair critic slagging off your match.
That’s all I got, I’m quite a busy boy lately, so apologies if I seem a little sporadic.
All the best.
Saz