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MIKE JOHNSON LOOKS AT THE DEBUT EPISODE OF MTV WRESTLING SOCIETY X

WSX: A WHOLE NEW WORLD

The first episode of MTV's Wrestling Society X was a mixed bag if you were an old school, die-hard wrestling fan. The product was all about throwing out as many insane highspots and explosions as you can and the first time I watched it, my first reaction was how "weird" it looked. The more I thought about it thought, I realized that I was looking at it similar to the first time I watched Lucha Libre on Galavision in 1993. The problem wasn't with the product as much as it was something from a completely different universe than I was used to watching, and I, as a fan, need to get acquainted with a language written from a totally different alphabet.

The focus isn't on your traditional wrestling fan or in telling a story with psychology or drama, but in a full-out, balls to the wall athletic style mixed in with over the top insanity and stunts, set in an "underground bunker". Based on the pilot episode, there's good and bad to that focus.

WSX did a great job of trying to brand themselves right out of the gate as something different, both with the look of the show, the opening graphics, the music, and by placing a really fun Jack Evans vs. Matt Sydal match as the opener. Evans looked like a star from the first moment he appeared on camera.

The downside is that a show taking place on a "gritty, underground battlefield" looked very overproduced and something closer to "American Gladiators" than old school ECW in atmosphere. There were far too many "reaction shot" closeups of fans after hot moved, and with an audience made up of glorified extras, that didn't help that matter, either. Given that it's a MTV Networks production, that's just the reality of what a series needs to look like to be on the network.

The good news is that the pilot episode is said to be the weakest of the 10 that were filmed. It wasn't produced to win over fans; it was done to impress and win over MTV Executives. Your run of mill wrestling fan hoping for anything to watch beyond the diluted ECW that they are spoon-fed weekly weren't in the equation here - it will be the episodes that follow that will tell the tale of the tape for those fans. Many of the close-ups were to edit matches and keep things within a 30 minute timeframe. It'd be interesting to see what the "director's cut" of the matches were. The episode was designed to get WSX on TV and since we've all had the chance to watch it on MTV, mission accomplished. It will be interesting to see how the production (or over-production as it may be) changes as the show fleshes out.

The actual in-ring product itself will be what sells WSX to its potential audience of MTV viewers. The wrestling fans are going to watch. That's a no brainer. Diehard wrestling fans will watch reruns of WXO if they can find it. WSX's goal is to attract the fans that watch MTV for Jackass and other similar ventures and wow them with Teddy Hart shooting star presses, exploding caskets, and Jack Evans' 630 splashes. While they tried to introduce far too many characters at once (which is why Jack Evans stands out the most after episode one, he was alone in a singles bout vs. everyone else in packages or a Rumble), we got a pretty decent preview of what to look forward to - a whole new world when it comes to professional wrestling presentation on television.

Whether that world will change the landscape or simply be another upstart with good intentions and a short run, time will tell. Still, it's an exciting time, having a third independently produced "national" wrestling product out there on a weekly basis.

Onto my thoughts about WSX - Episode One:

The WSX presentation immediately grabs you, particularly the look of the bunker and the opening graphics for the show, which are different from everything else out there right now and eye catching. The screen shaking during the explosions is going to take a little getting used to, but it's different. Between the musical opening, the ring announcer running around screaming, the announcers "live" in the foreground of the bunker, and the entrances from different areas, WSX looks like a totally different world in comparison to the antiseptic look of the TNA Impact Zone (a building I truly love watching wrestling in, but it looks clean as a whistle on TV) or the big budgeted monstrous WWE events. I also thought the commentary was good and again, with Zakk Wylde joining the booth, it just felt different. Different is good when you are trying to be an alternative, a lesson that at times, TNA doesn't also remember. Kriss Kloss did a good job of trying to get in some background on the talents when he could, even slipping in that both Justin Credible and Teddy Hart trained in the Dungeon in Calgary.

The downside again, was that this episode looked too overproduced at times and not gritty enough. I know a lot of time went into creating the look of the series, but if you want to break it down, ECW and Bill Watts' UWF didn't design themselves to be gritty, they just sort of were and that was part of the charm. WSX has to let fans find that charm, not design it to appear that way. Still, it's just episode one. I hated, hated, hated the close-ups of the fans, because to me, it just took away from the flow of the show. I'm hoping we'll see that less and less as we move onward.

I was mixed on the usage of information on the talent from other companies. While it's a great idea in theory to mention their titles in IWA Mid-South and Jersey All Pro Wrestling, when we are branding WSX as a company, you don't want to dilute that WSX name. Still, I thought it was an original idea. Even I was scratching my head trying to remember Justin Credible's "11 WWE & ECW titles" (That included a lot of Hardcore title changes, I checked.)