What Happened to Punches???

Buchanan
Mar 30, 2017
3 min read

It's safe to say that short of a superplex off the top of the Hell in a Cell, that basically every "move" in wrestling has been done before at some point. The same could be said for moves and spots in death matches and hardcore matches respectively. While there will always be different ways to hurt people with weapons like light tubes, the luster of the extreme nature of these kind of matches starts to spoil over time. It then turns into the "seen this movie before" mentality, which in my opinion leads to loss of viewership.

As you look back through the history of professional wrestling and compare it to what we are exposed to now, the only constants that are shared from say a match in 1978 to a match in 1998 are, the "moves". There have been certain moves banned throughout time, whether it was storyline based or an actual safety precaution. As I watch wrestling today in 2017 I'm constantly wondering, "What happened to punches?". I mean, obviously you have Roman Reign's "superman punch", and you have The Big Show's "W.M.D.". But what about the rest of the field? I don't necessarily just mean "finishers", I mean straight tough man punches being used in matches more regularly. Let it be known, this is not an insult of anyone's work or their style of punches, that's not what this is. Maybe it's just my inner child, but I don't look at punches the way most viewers do now. I don't need it to look completely real. I don't need it to look UFC. Somewhere along the road elbows, forearms, and knees become the industry standard, and everyone stopped using knuckles. That's not to say those strikes don't all look devastating, but why did he have to hard fists? In my eyes (and my version of a super fan), there was nothing better than someone throwing a stiff right to the temple, with the opponent hitting the mat just as stiff. Or even two wrestlers exchanging blows back and forth relentlessly, much like the "forearm spot" they do now.

I'd like to believe that the days of wrestlers using great looking punches still exist, and hopefully more are just around the corner. However, I look back to Brock Lesnar's face off with John Cena in the ring several years back when Lesnar made is surprise return. Brock tackled him to the ground and almost immediately busts Cena square on the mouth, resulting in some blood and a decent fat lip. I understand that concussions are probably the reason that hard punches aren't used as frequently anymore. As I was hinting towards before, I must have missed the memo stating that punches that aren't UFC quality are not cool anymore. Because whether it was a mistake or not, the love tap Lesnar gave Cena was just enough to make you take notice.

At the end of the day, I'm just stating something I've noticed. I watch plenty of wrestling, and I see plenty of punches form all different types of wrestlers. Some great and others sloppy. As I continue to watch wrestling into my 30's, I find myself looking back to the things I loved about wrestling when I was a kid. After all, it's "fake fighting". So as an adult, maybe a selfish part of me wants this new generation of wrestling fans to have the same disbelief I had watching the simple things. I'm sure there are plenty of guys throwing punches out there. I could almost venture to guess that I will probably notice more wrestlers throwing some haymakers after this article is posted. But selfishly, I still just want to see more. Feed me more!