After reading a bit of discussion on The Wrestling Blog, Fair to Flair and Twitter about the dueling chant, I felt compelled to share my piece. As a veteran live wrestling show fan (in multiple promotions, cities, and countries), I think I have a fairly good grasp on the concept. In fact, if you follow SHIMMER or CHIKARA or ACW, you’ve probably heard me and my friends leading a dueling chant ourselves. As someone who has been there, done that, and done it better than most let me first say: put away the idea that fans do this as some self-indulgent attempt to draw attention to themselves.
As anyone who attends wrestling shows can tell you, the asshole fans who want to draw attention to themselves actually draw attention to themselves. They don’t join in with other fans to cheer on a wrestler or applaud the match. They cat call. They make obnoxious comments. They talk about the football game or cheesecake or make unfunny and embarrassing Undertaker references at ROH shows or do other things that have no purpose save making others look at them and acknowledge their existence. You won’t hear these people on TV or DVD, but they are there at every show. They are the actual jerks attempting to take away from the match for their own benefit.
The true vocal fans, the troublemakers, the chanters, the clappers, the singers are on the complete opposite end. They are the hardworking, very small minority of people that make the difference between a “hot” crowd and a “dead” one. They might be just three or four people in a crowd of two or three hundred, but they’re the ones who get all the chants (not just the dueling ones) going. The majority of fans only join in with the fire starters when they can be bothered, which is only a fraction of the time. The notion that either of these factions, the lead vocalists or their grudging backing chorus, clamp their hands numb and scream their throat raw out of anything other than love or passion for the sport is, simply, wrong.
On dueling chants specifically, K Sawyer Paul suggested they were a failure because they don’t clearly convey their purpose. The mistake is in thinking that the crowd has a purpose. A wrestling crowd is not, in any way, a homogenous group with a single defined goal. It is a collection of individuals with various tastes and preferences that are in constant conflict with each other.
When I and 10 to 20 of my favorite people in the world at the moment scream, “Let’s-Go-Kana,” and then 10 to 20 people who in that moment I hate more than anything in the world scream, “Let’s-Go-Sara,” we’re both making very clear our, separate, goals: We want Kana to choke the life out of Sara with the Kana Lock. They want Sara to decapitate Kana with an axe kick.
This is not a detached, orchestrated, cooperative, unified attempt; it’s fucking war. We must scream louder and harder and longer or they (those putrid sub-humans who dare challenge us and our chosen fighter) will win. In that moment it’s all or nothing. Kill or be killed. It’s Pro Wrestling.
You might not understand this if you haven’t been there, in the trenches, trying to convince Chris Hero that he absolutely cannot beat ACH while Chris Hero’s many fans reassure his ego with a “Yes-he-can!”If you were there but sat unmoved and didn’t cheer “Ha-ma-da” or “Me-li-ssa,” then you didn’t feel that surge of adrenaline and you didn’t see how time stood still and the euphoria hit and you didn’t realize you were not only watching the perfect wrestling match, but that your voice had become a part of it. The wrestlers see it and feel it too. They’ve told me. They live for those moments just like fans.
Of course not every chant fans earnestly perform is good, but the truly problematic ones (“U-S-A” or “Show-Your-Tits”) tend to have more obvious issues than merely seeming mildly pretentious or confusing in a limited context. So, before judging a chant, of any kind, consider what it’s like for the people actually saying it, and the wrestlers as they hear their fans fight for them. Better yet, participate yourself at the next show you attend. It’s an experience worth having.
And just one more thing: To any Cheerleader Melissa fans attending NCW Femmes Fatales in Montreal next month, I only have this to say: Let’s-Go-Hailey! - Clap - Clap - ClapClapClap
Leslie, aka John Hyperion, is the editor-in-chief for the progressive pro wrestling blog, the Dirty Dirty Sheets. Check it out for the beat on everything puroresu, joshi and independent wrestling.
Edited by TH.
