A little over a month ago, I wrote a piece on International Object about wrestling commentary. I argued that in its current state it served almost no purpose (in fact, I called it harmful), and that one may very well enjoy the show more without it. As a general rule, I’m a theoretical journalist: I observe, posit new ideas, and let people think about them. And while there were quite a few people who did just that, I’m not sure anybody turned the volume down to watch wrestling because of the article. But I did.

Since I wrote the article, I’ve only listened to the audio on a wrestling show once: The Royal Rumble, as I watched that with a group. Every other show I’ve watched has been served in silence.¹ I’d like to take this time to go over a few interesting realizations during this experiment.

1) I miss the crowd.

There’s just no way around this: crowd noise is seductive. It’s instantly understandable why a wrestler’s job is to create as much of it as possible. Without crowd noise, it would be very difficult to tell how the pace of a match is going with the selected audience. It’s also seductive to other audience members—I found myself yearning for the crowd noise at times, wondering what the collective found good or bad about a match. Even though I find myself to be a quiet fan most of the time, there’s something very assuring about knowing the reactions of 20,000 people.

But because it simply wasn’t there, I had to look at match quality from different angles. I had no commentary to tell me if a move had been done very well or poorly (or, as what happened on Raw this week, the schizophrenic feeling when a move is done incorrectly but the announcers call it like normal), and no audience reaction to guide me. I was on my own completely to judge the quality of the matches I saw.

Because of this, I found the largest change was that I actually had to pay attention. You can’t half-watch video with no sound. There are no cues to tell you when to glue both eyes. I couldn’t surf or tweet or fold laundry at the same time—I had to just watch. This confirmed a theory I had in the original article:

Over time (during the 20th century, before everyone had more than 5 channels at home), radio broadcasts of sports events, audio plays, and the like became quite popular, and in many circles still are. There are still people out there who prefer their entertainment to be audio-only. Perhaps its just habit, but I like to think it’s because an audio broadcast sparks imagination in a similar way that reading does: by providing only part of a thing, your brain has to paint in the rest.

By eliminating the audio, I had to imagine the crowd noise and imagine the commentary. And, just to spoil my next point, my imagined commentary was always better than the reality. I can confirm the opposite of this, as well. To test this theory, I went back and listened to some Gordon Solie, Gorilla Monsoon, and Bobby Heenan commentary. Based only on their words, I was able to paint a pretty great picture of an imagined match.

2) I do not miss Michael Cole, Jerry Lawler, Booker T, Josh Matthews, or any wrestler’s voice.

So, I figured I’d enjoy a respite from Michael Cole. But what I didn’t exactly expect was that I wouldn’t really miss any announcing voice. What were they going to tell me that I didn’t already know? I know which moves are which (not that they really call moves that often anyway). I know what’s coming when Randy starts pounding the mat. I know that an injustice has been done when Daniel Bryan steals another victory on Smackdown. I don’t need their help or explanations or hand-holding. The wrestlers are performing in front of 20,000 people who can’t hear the audience, and they have to communicate what they’re doing to the back row. Surely, the zoomed-in camera is picking up their intentions.

Without them, I also didn’t feel any shame in watching wrestling. Michael Cole especially makes the audience feel like they should feel guilty about this guilty pleasure. Nobody feels good about this. Without him, without any of them, I could watch wrestling in peace. I could think about it without being reminded what’s happening later in the main event. It was really nice.

Another thing I didn’t expect was that I wouldn’t really miss the promos. As I just explained, the wrestlers are playing to the back of the room even when they’re talking, so I could figure out what was going on. If Jericho coming back and not saying a word was genius, no wrestlers ever talking would be a revolution.

3) Language is not essential for a great performance.

Watching wrestling with no sound heightens the art of it by an order of magnitude. Without commentary, I have absolutely no choice but to pay attention to the individual wrestling moves, stack them up in my head, and figure out the rhythm and build.

If you haven’t seen The Artist yet, please go do that. It’s a wildly good move that is entirely without audible language. One of the points the movie makes is that silent actors have to ham it up in order to communicate their feelings. This supports wrestling as a visual artform, says Roland Barthes:

“Each sign in wrestling is therefore endowed with an absolute clarity, since one must always understand everything on the spot. As soon as the adversaries are in the ring, the public is overwhelmed with the obviousness of the roles.”

The movie suggests that films with sound would so easily trounce silent films because actors could be more realistic with their emotions. But wrestlers have microphones and announcers and they’re still overacting. The Artist flips this throughout, showing both the up and downsides to audio. It highlights a lovely point: there is room for all kinds. It’s a point you can see almost anywhere, because there are so many art forms that work like this. To see how a great overacted performance can be received, take Daniel-Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood. As Andy Friedman of Esquire reminds us:

For roughly the first 15 minutes of Paul Thomas Anderson’s magnificent oil-baron epic… Daniel Day-Lewis doesn’t speak a single intelligible word. There’s a fair bit of grunting, hissing, and moaning — his character, name of Plainview, is just a journeyman prospector at this point, physically engaged in the grimy nuts and bolts of digging wells — but no actual dialogue.

It’s not just films. Ballet dancers will communicate epic love stories with no voices. Cirque du Soliel performances often have no speaking roles. And, of course, there are the mimes. We must never forget the mimes.

And yes, very few of these mediums work with no sound whatsoever. Music often accompanies them to heighten moments and keep the audience engaged. Do not misread this argument: I’m not saying we need absolute silence. I would love a live audience option on my remote. I would be delighted to hear that a wrestling company hired an orchestra.² But I do not need the announcers.

As it stands, I don’t really feel any great desire to turn the volume back up. I’m enjoying wrestling more. If I miss a funny line, undoubtedly I see it embedded on Tumblr somewhere. Almost every wrestling plot boils down to “let’s wrestle” or “let’s wrestle later,” and I can piece together who’s feuding with who. It is really not that difficult. And as a nice perk, I don’t wake up my girlfriend as I catch up with Raw on Thursdays. I might just keep doing this.