Rob Van Dam has an interesting take on the sport of professional wrestling.
During the latest installment of his “1 of a Kind” podcast, the WWE Hall of Fame legend made a comparison between pro wrestling and porn.
“Why did WWE movies look like low-budget porn acting?’ [Laughs] I thought I would take that question to address a point that I would like to make, in case somehow this has escaped capture by a lot of people’s minds or imaginations,” Van Dam stated. “Alright, you ready for this? Wrestling is porn. When you look at it, no matter which one you’re talking about, wrestling or porn, you’re watching something to escape the reality and the more you can believe what they’re doing, the more you invest your emotions, and that has a lot to depend on their acting and their performance. If they f**k up and they do something, then all of a sudden, it ruins the whole fantasy or the whole feel of it that you had, the whole fun you were having with it, and now all of a sudden, it looks like, ‘No, they’re just working together.’ It totally can take you out of it and take you away from what they’re trying to do, which is distract you from the real world in such a way that allows you to follow them.”
RVD continued, “The better they are, the more escape you are allowed to do with them, and thereby invest your emotions more into said entertainment, and that is the same agenda all the way til the end. The finish is what a lot of people remember, but everything leading up til that as well is so important, and you don’t want to be hearing a director’s voice calling shots and stuff because you want to think they’re not working, they’re into it like I want them to be into it. So that is the art. With wrestling, that’s why it bothers me when it’s just thrown out the window and people just stand there, waiting to catch somebody outside the ring because that is the equivalent of the director saying, ‘Scream a little louder, honey.’ So there’s that.”
Check out the complete episode of the “1 of a Kind” podcast featuring Rob Van Dam via the YouTube player embedded below.
(H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.)