In the year 2000, Tim published an editorial piece in MAGIC MAGAZINE explaining how magicians can learn a lot about showmanship and storyteller from the world of wrestling. It seems just as valid today as it was back then.
Love it or hate it, each week over half a billion people globally tune in to watch the larger than life antics of World Wrestling Entertainment. The WWE’s home videos routinely reach No. 1 in sports, and its action figures have outstripped Pokemon’s sales. The autobiographies of two wrestlers, Mankind (Mick Foley) and The Rock (Dwayne Johnson), are New York Times bestsellers. Profits from these ventures, along with those from live ticket sales, pay-per-views, CDs, and a new theme restaurant have given the company (which is now listed on the stock exchange) projected sales of $340 million for this year, up from $250 million in 1999.
In 1982 Vince McMahon bought his father’s wrestling company ‘Capitol Wrestling Corporation’ and turned it into the multi-million dollar sports-entertainment empire that it is today. It’s a combination of larger than life characters, soap opera story-lines and over-the-top slugfests with some truly ingenious moves. We know it’s “candidly, honestly fake,” as Newsweek’s John Leland put it, but for some reason people just can’t seem to get enough of it.
So what are they doing right or, more to the point, what are magicians doing wrong?
Both magic and the WWE are filled with larger than life fantasy characters; people who do absolutely amazing things. You would think though, that a magician would be a much more flamboyant character than a mere wrestler… but let’s take a look at what makes up a character in the WWE. First, they have unique and exotic names like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Undertaker, Hardcore Holly, and The Road Dogg. Catchy names which generate a definite mental picture. Magicians have names like David Copperfield, Lance Burton, Seigfried & Roy and (with the odd exception of a few ‘The Amazing Fred’s or ‘The Great Joe’s) they don’t sound very magical at all. Most of the wrestlers even have nicknames like The Rattlesnake, The Brahma Bull, or The Game. Some magicians have nicknames, but none they’ve chosen themselves and certainly none we could print here…
The wrestlers also have catchphrases: “If you smell what the Rock is cooking!”, “That’s the bottom line ‘cos Stone Cold says so!”, and “It’s True, It’s True, It’s True!”. Whenever they make a speech or address the crowd the wrestlers manage to work a phrase in and the fans join in and say it along with them. With the amount of talk that comes out of the average magician’s mouth, you’d think he could slip in something memorable from time to time. Yet only a few magicians like Paul Daniels (“You’ll like this… not a lot”) and Max Malini (“I only cheat a little…”) have used catchphrases or, like Dante (“Sim Sala Bim”) unique magic words.
The wrestlers each have their own entrance music, their own distinctive costumes, and their own “finishing moves” that no other wrestler would claim as their own. Magicians all dress the same, use each others music, and even do the same tricks whether it’s spongeballs and the cigarette through quarter, or Origami and Interlude. The idea is to make yourself stand out from the other characters. People hear the music and they instantly know who’s about to come on. Play ‘Peter Gunn’ and we think of Rudy Coby, but play ‘Japanese World’ and though we should think we’re about to see Seigfried & Roy doing Origami, it could be any number of illusionists who bought the prop and watched the tape.
The wrestlers have ATTITUDE! They come out and they’ve got a point to make and a score to settle. They have a purpose and a reason, and we want to see them succeed or fail. The magicians come out and show us a few tricks for no particular reason. Now if the wrestlers came out, politely greeted each other, and then gave a demonstration of various highly skilled holds and moves…. that’s sports, but it’s not entertainment. One wrestler might have been ripped off by Vince McMahon, and now they have the chance to beat the boss up in the ring. Oh how the fans share in that experience! One of the wrestlers might lose a match because of outside interference, or triumph against insurmountable odds… and the fans all share in the emotions. Magicians will defy the laws of gravity, they cheat death with displays of supernatural powers… and yet their fans watch as though the outcome is predetermined. There is no sense of drama, betrayal, tragedy or triumph for the fans to enjoy.
Finally, all this comes together in the WWE merchandising. Fans can buy t-shirts with catchphrases, posters showing the “finishing moves”, CDs of the music, every possible gimmick is available for purchase so they can continue the experience at home until they come and see it live once again.
There are many other elements of the WWE which are irrelevant to this discussion. In it we see the evils of our society blown up into 500-pound caricatures emphasizing, recreating, and perpetuating some of the worst elements in our society. To some extent, this is where the WWE can learn from magicians, or to be more specific, one magician who pre-dated the WWE and yet would have been the most colourful and popular character of all time. He had a magical name ‘The Great Houdini’. He had catchy nicknames ‘The King of Cards’, ‘The Elusive American’. He had catchphrases “Nothing on earth can hold Houdini!”. He had music (Rosabelle), a unique look (stripped almost naked), and his own tricks (Milk Can Escape, Water Torture Cell). But most of all he had ATTITUDE! Whether he was out there to take on a challenge, or to debunk a fraudulent medium, the fans were going to share in the agony of defeat or the ecstasy of success with him. But he was better than the WWE. He wasn’t re-enacting the problems of his time, he was taking them on and defeating them!
– Tim Ellis
