The Original Wrestler

With The Wrestler set to become one of the most talked about movies of 2009, I decided to seek out a copy of a movie with the same title which was released in the early seventies.

I managed to get a region one DVD on Amazon.com for the equivalent of £2. Definitely the bargain of 2008 (I bought it in December before you tell me it's the New Year!).

The film was made in 1973 or '74 and is based around the Minnesota area. You can tell that the AWA was behind this as all the wrestlers which starred in this picture are from that company. Verne Gagne, former owner and promoter of the now defunct AWA, is one of the main characters in the story. He is also named as one of the producers of the film, so it's safe to claim he had an influence in its production.

It is the story of a promoter who has to deal with the threat of gangsters who want him to have a new up and coming wrestler defeat the ageing champion.

As this movie is from the seventies. one of the most interesting things was looking out for wrestlers that I am aware of. It was fun seeing people like Dusty Rhodes, Jim Brunzell, Ray Stevens and Billy Graham making cameo appearances throughout. What also made it intriguing was they played themselves whilst Gagne and Billy Robinson - the two most featured wrestlers in the film - were cast under fictional names.

The movie has aged but, then again, so has wrestling. It was made during the time when kayfabe was a priority so the film is produced in a way to make the match outcomes look legit. The fact that the bad guys want Frank Bass (the promoter) to fix the result in the championship match assists the need to kayfabe the films audience.

Ironically, there is one scene where sports reporters are interviewing Frank and they are adamant that the sport is a fix despite protestations from the promoter. I believe this scene was used as a way to discredit the print media in a certain way due to their lack of coverage of professional wrestling in their pages. Bass goes off on a tirade about how the writers not reviewing wrestling in the newspapers is preventing the fans from learning about the sports. As I noted, there is evidently an element of propaganda within the dialogue here

Another scene I found interesting was when Billy Taylor (Billy Robinson) went to a training session being run by Mike Bullard (Verne Gagne). This part of the movie shows certain moves from amateur and professional wrestling and - despite being slightly in context with the story - it comes across as an infomercial about both genres of wrestling. You can definitely see Verne Gagne's fingerprints on this scene as this was the kind of rookie class he ran back in the day as he was known to introduce his students to both styles of wrestling.

Overall, this was not a timeless piece as the entire wrestling word has changed since 1973. It can, however, be used as a time capsule to see what the territorial business was like back in the day. One scene which highlights this is when Bass meets with all the promoters from around the United States to discuss their champions. The actual real-life promoters of that time are featured in this scene. The most notable name being Vince McMahon, Snr whose son was the one responsible for killing this territorial system when he took the WWF national in the early-eighties.

This is a brilliant item to have in your wrestling DVD collection, especially for the price it is.