Pro wrestling, at its basest level, is the struggle between Good and Evil. There must be a face (the hero) and a heel (the villain), and ideally there should be a fundamental reason why they need to creatively beat the snot out of each other -- be it the prestige of a championship belt, the love of a good woman, a disrespect that must be avenged. Motivation -- that's the word I'm looking for.
In the Good Old Days, a convincing feud between two wrestlers was built up over time. In fact, if it was done correctly, the grapplers didn't even need to lay a hand on each other. A pumped-up insult here, a run-in that changed the outcome of a match there. When they finally met up in the "squared circle" -- preferably in front of a capacity crowd and/or a big pay-per-view audience -- the anticipation of what they'd do to one another was overwhelming. Thanks to a generation raised on MTV editing and instant gratification, the art of slowly building a wrestling feud is on the endangered species list.
Some wrestling federations, on the other hand, still do things the Old Fashioned Way. Bodyslam Wrestling Organization (BWO), a NJ-based fed-cum-wrestling school, spent a solid year building up a feud between veteran brawler Chaos (the metal-band-roadie-lookin' guy in the photos) and fan-favorite-turned-despised-heel Evan "Lone Wolf" Myers. Chaos had actually stepped away from active wrestling, due to a bad concussion and years of in-ring damage, but that didn't stop Myers from repeated and vicious verbal attacks, trying to get Chaos to snap, charge the ring, and injure himself further. All the while, Chaos stood at the sidelines, seething with fury, but unable -- or unwilling -- to attack, while audience members screamed for Myers' blood.
They got it this past April, at a Garfield High School show. A year of bad blood resulted in a near-thermonuclear battle between the two. This was no technical match, no highspot-fest, just a good old-fashioned ass-kicking with smashed chairs, barbed-wire baseball bats, and bodies tumbling down the bleachers. In the end, with both men lying bleeding and battered (literally: Chaos cracked some ribs at some point in the bout), it almost didn't matter who won and who lost. For the duration of the match, both made the audience believe, however briefly, that they were fighting each other for A Reason.
And that is when professional wrestling succeeds.
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