Tonight, while avoiding work, deadlines, and responsibility, I browsed the internet for any remaining traces of an unforgettable endeavor between my brother and I, The Tag Rope. A short-lived blog about professional wrestling’s impact on society, it’s been all but erased from the annals of cyberosity. Among the writings still intact is what will likely be my closest interaction with the upper-echelon of the wrestling business, an interview with Al Snow.
The interview was intimidating and scary, but what Al said is undeniably incredible. This was the heart of The Tag Rope. Intelligent, reflective, and legitimizing. If you have any desire to understand the thought process that have kept me enthralled with professional wrestling into adulthood, start here.
Below, sans editing or proofing, is the entirety of my talk with Al Snow.
TTR: Thanks for speaking with me, Al. To start out, what have you been working on recently?
AS: I’ve been wrestling independently, back on the circuit on a pretty regular basis. I’ve been keeping very busy with that. I’ve also been doing some acting in several different movies and I have also signed a developmental deal for a television show. So we will see what 2009 brings as far as possible opportunities.
TTR: That sounds exciting. Can you tell us about the films you’re working on and how you got involved with acting?
AS: The decision to be an actor was something I’ve always toyed with but just never had the time because of being so tied up with my wrestling schedule. I had to be pretty well devoted to wrestling to keep up with my responsibilities. At times in my career I’ve worked seven days a week, most recently with Ohio Valley Wrestling. So I really didn’t have a lot of time. A lot of people approached me about the possibility of doing different things and I just wasn’t able to take advantage of those. Once I was released in February from WWE and their developmental program, I was able to take advantage of some of the opportunities that came up. It was great. It’s just a natural extension of what I’ve been doing for the last 27 years. In wrestling, the performers aren’t really actors. They’re more reactors. So, it’s a challenge and it’s fun to go out and start to learn a whole new skills set. It’s a different environment and a different way of doing things. In the movie environment there’s a different etiquette and expectations, so you’ve got to go and relearn everything. It’s been challenging but fun at the same time.
TTR: Being out on the independent circuit, are you keeping as busy, or even busier than you were when you were working for WWE?
AS: It varies as far as the amount of scheduling, but I have been keeping very busy. I’m very fortunate for that. It’s not the same as my time with WWE in a couple of ways. You’re not with the same group of guys week in and week out. There’s a little different sense of camaraderie. There’s still camaraderie but not the same as what there is when it’s the same core group of guys. Obviously, you’re not going to make the same amounts of money because they’re not landing the same venues and don’t have the same promotional vehicles behind it.
But I didn’t get into professional wrestling to be the superstar. I got into professional wrestling to be a professional wrestler. I absolutely love to get into the ring and perform, to do the art of professional wrestling. The challenge is far greater on a smaller level because there is the aspect of the psychology of anonymity and group dynamic. The larger the crowd and the darker the arena, the more anonymous the audience becomes and the more they just become a group intellect. It becomes easier for them to get lost in what you’re doing emotionally in the match, and therefore it’s easier to work or manipulate that. When you’ve got a smaller venue and it’s well lit, fans become a little more self-conscious and it takes a lot more on your part to get them to forget that they can be seen or heard by their friends or family and get them emotionally wrapped up in what you’re doing to the point that they will not only react but react at the level that you want them to. That challenge is something I really enjoy.
TTR: You’ve done a good amount of training over the course of your career. When you’re in the ring with an individual who may be half your age on the independent circuit, do you feel that you can take that role of a trainer in the ring?
AS: I definitely try to. That’s really how professional wrestling is passed on. It’s not taught verbally. It’s taught by older, more experienced guys leading younger, greener guys through a match. When I got into the business, half the locker room would be full of guys that had been wrestling for no less than ten or fifteen years and it’s not like they did it on the side. That was what they did for a living. That was how they fed their families and kept a roof over their heads. It wasn’t like they could go and do something else. It was all they had known for twenty or thirty years. So they would take you in and lead you through and correct you as you were doing it and making mistakes. You learned so much more because you learned it as you experienced it. So you got a better relationship with what it was you were supposed to be doing, whereas now there’s just not that many guys that can pass it on.
TTR: Have you seen a lack of leadership in the community to pass on the fundamentals and traditions to the next generation?
AS: They’re just not there. The belief in wrestling that somehow somebody has suddenly reinvented the wheel is ridiculous, it’s absurd. You don’t reinvent the wheel, it’s still round. When the bell rings, everything that was done in the 1950’s or the 1940’s is still the same thing you’re doing today. The only thing that changes in professional wrestling is the level of sophistication of the audience. As a result, it’s just so unfortunate that there’s so few of those guys that have been around for a long enough period of time that they have a real idea of what it is that needs to be done to pass it along.
TTR: Over the course of your career, how have you seen wrestling’s fan base change? How have their perceptions of wrestling and expectations of wrestlers evolved?
AS: I’d say the fans now perceive wrestlers as true celebrities and not just as professional wrestlers. Wrestling isn’t just seen as the redheaded stepchild of entertainment. It’s a little more mainstream these days. A better understanding of pro wrestling may be almost like when you go to watch a magic show. People still enjoy that but there’s no longer the belief that the performer is altering reality. In regards to wrestling, I think fans have a better understanding that everything physically is real to some degree or another, but the only thing that is fake is the outcome. It’s a show, it’s a story. It’s a chance to watch and get involved. I think that’s in large part due to the rising level of sophistication of society as a whole. We live in an age where an eight year old can instantaneously access live video of Antarctica. We can watch a war being waged on TV. A person’s scope and world view is so much more dramatic than what is was at one time. The fans have a far better grasp of what they’re paying to see, but they’re still paying to believe. For them, it’s just like going to a movie. People don’t believe that Batman actually fights the Joker, but they want to know that when they spend their money, they can lose or immerse themselves in that movie and get emotionally involved in that story. It’s the same thing for wrestling. It’s a prizefighting card that people are paying to see, just like a boxing match or MMA event. When they enter that arena, they can lose themselves in the story that winning or losing really matters and that some guys are going to do whatever it takes to win. They’re looking for people that they can live vicariously through and emulate and look up to as a hero. That still exists today, it’s just that the audience is more in tune with what they want and what they expect. It’s up to the wrestlers to give that them.
TTR: With that in mind, what specific changes do you think wrestlers are making? To say that it’s not secret that the outcome is fixed—
AS: Come on, let’s not be ridiculous. The big misnomer, the myth, the completely asinine idea that now all of a sudden people have come to the realization that the outcome is predetermined is completely ridiculous. People have know, as a society in the United States, at least since the 1930’s. They have known that professional wrestling isn’t an actual competitive situation. When the newspapers refused to report the outcomes of professional wrestling matches as if they were sporting events, everybody knew. Nobody, and I’m telling you nobody, except maybe the completely retarded person who is stuck up in the hills and cut off from the rest of the world, actually believed when they paid their money that they were going to watch as actual competitive situation. They were not that stupid. I don’t care what part of the country they were from, whether it’s down south or the Midwest or whatever. Trust me, those people know and they still went. They went like they did for the same reason, like I said, that they would go to a movie or a magic show. They know what it is.
When people would come up to you in those days, or even now, and say, “Hey, wrestling’s fake,” they don’t want you to tell them that it is. They want you to give them sometime of answer that they can in their mind accept without believing you’re insulting their intelligence. As far as wrestling today is concerned, the only thing a wrestler has to do differently today is they have to work smarter to work their audience. They have to make more of an effort to help their audience lose themselves and suspend their disbelief for a period of time. The audience desperately, absolutely wants to believe that they’re going to see a competitive situation.
For instance, there are two predominate ways to win a boxing match; by knockout or by judge’s decision. There are two ways to win a professional MMA fight; knockout and submission. Again, in pro wrestling there are two predominate ways which are pinfall or submission. If you were to pay to see a professional prize fighting boxing match and you could clearly see when the bell rang that the competitors were not trying to do one of those two things to win right off the bat, would you pay to see those two compete again? No, and professional wrestling is no different. You dress it up, you say what you want about it. You can create stories or feuds or soap opera-like drama, but at the end of the day, if it doesn’t build up to and culminate with one of those two men proving they were the better man in that contest, what would be the point of any of it? Professional wrestler these days have to work harder, not necessarily physically harder, but they have to work harder at suspending their own disbelief that they’re really out there competing and trying to win so that there’s something at stake that the audience can relate to. The audience is so much more sophisticated, not because all of a sudden the curtain was pulled away from the Wizard in Oz and everyone knows wrestling was predetermined. They’ve known that for ages. It’s just that the art of wrestling is to tell the story physically that you’re both trying to win. Then you can create drama that will then manipulate and evoke emotions on a grand scale. These days, we have to work smarter and more realistically to get that audience to believe in that way.
TTR: Are you happy with the mainstream wrestling scene as far as their fulfillment of that task and their ability to captivate a crowd like that?
AS: I haven’t watched it enough to really weigh in on that. I do think that wrestlers themselves are devoting way too much time focusing on the wrong things because they haven’t been taught to focus on the right things. The right thing to focus on is the action is the ring, not so much the consequence of that action. I also think, based on my own experience, that a lot of guys instead of focusing on being the match the sells the most tickets, they’re thinking about being the best match on the show. That is a huge, huge mistake that will lead to the downfall of the wrestling business. This is also a mistake I’ve made. It’s not like I’ve done everything perfectly in my career, but I have tried to learn from my mistakes over the past 27 years and to be able to pass that along.
So now there’s more and more talent focusing on being the best match on the show and worrying less about being the match that sells the most tickets. The more this happens, the further you’re going to see the wrestling business slide.
TTR: Can you elaborate more on the disparity between those two points of view?
AS: Let me give you an example. Think about Wrestlemania 3. That event was probably one of the largest drawing gates in professional wrestling. I think over 93,000 paid to see the event in the Pontiac Silver Dome. At the time, there was a lot of talk from the wrestling critic world, in the newsletters, that the best match of the night was Ricky Steamboat and Randy Savage. It was a really good match, but it wasn’t the best match of the show. The best match on the show was Hulk Hogan versus Andre the Giant, which was the main event. The reason why is because 93,000 people paid to see it. The thought process now by the talent is that they want to have the best match on the show. The only way they know that they had the best match on the show is if a fan tells them that, or if someone reports it in a newsletter or online. That’s terrific, but that shouldn’t be what they’re driving for. They should be driving for the match that sells the most tickets. In some regards, like that example, the “in the know” fans or hardcore fans thought Steamboat and Savage was the best match and that they didn’t really like the Hogan and Andre match. The reason that’s wrong is because wrestlers start to focus on such a small percentage of the audience to dictate what they do.
If you were to go to a hospital and needed to have a gall bladder removed, would you tell the surgeon how to do his job? If someone broke into your house tonight, would you tell the police officer how to do his job? Well, wrestlers are now allowing fans, who have never done their job and had those experiences, to tell them how to do their job. The fans are not only expressing their opinion, which they are absolutely completely allowed to do. Let’s not misunderstand that fans are completely entitled to their opinion. They can say they liked it, disliked it, and critique as much as they want. That’s just like a movie critic. But allowing them to dictate what you do is wrong.
Think of it this way. In the business right now, there is more actual physical talent there than ever has been in the history of wrestling. I mean, true physical talent. But the wrestling business is lower than it ever has been. If physical ability, athletic moves, and pure physical excitement and action are what generate ticket sales, which is what allows the business to continue to survive and thrive and give guys places to work, why is it now lower than it ever has been? Maybe it’s because they have departed so far from the true art of professional wrestling, of helping the audience become involved in a story of winning and losing. It’s now more at the point of just doing exciting action that will lead to the next exciting piece of action that will lead to the next and none of it really truly has an actual consequence.
TTR; Do you think a lot of that has been shaped by wrestling catering its product more toward a television audience?
AS: No, I think it’s come more from the lack of the older generation being able to lead the younger generation with a better understanding of what it is that they’re really trying to do. The influence or direction that the younger generation gets a lot of comes from the critics, the newsletters, the online outlets. That can all teach them the wrong things. Again, I don’t want anyone to take this as I’m done on the wrestling critics. I think it’s great that those people have such a passion for the wrestling business that they’re willing to now cover it. It’s terrific that they’re willing to venture an educated opinion about it. But it’s still the wrestler’s business; it’s not the fan’s business.
TTR: Thanks for those insights. To wrap things up, what are your plans for the coming year? What can we expect from Al Snow’s career in 2009?
AS: Well, I think my career is probably drawing to a close over the next few years. I want to try to slowly transition into doing more in films. That’s not only acting, but other stuff. I’ll continue to wrestle. I absolutely love the wrestling business, it’s the greatest business in the world in my opinion. I’ve been doing it for 27 years and I’ve never once regretted it. I think I’ll always be involved in some way and I’ll probably at some point have an interest in opening up a wrestling school and continuing to train guys.
There’s a reason why so many other forms of entertainment have risen and simply faded away and ceased to exist. There’s a reason where professional wrestling has been around since the late eighteen hundreds or whatever and continues to exist. It has not only survived, but thrived, and it’s grown into what it is today. That’s because there are things about pro wrestling that are intrinsic to it and they don’t fit in other forms of entertainment. Wrestling is unique unto itself and as a result, if those things that are intrinsic to wrestling aren’t passed on to the younger generation you will see a reinvention of the wheel. Pro wrestling will become something new and different and it will have it’s success but it will eventually go away. I think it’s great that wrestling evolves. It always has been and always will be a reflection of the audience that is watching it. I think that it just makes sense that wrestling has evolved as far as sophistication and physical ability is concerned, but there are certain things about professional wrestling that, regardless of evolution, have to stay the same in order for it work. By opening up a school I may be able to pass some of that along and keep it alive.
TTR: Best of luck with that, we’ll all be hoping that we can keep wrestling alive. Thank you for your time.
AS: Thank you.
