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When thinking about world of professional wrestling, it can initially seem like an overwhelming thing to get into, especially for someone who may be new to the product.
Now more than ever, there is so much wrestling to watch, the biggest and most well known company being World Wrestling Entertainment, more commonly known as WWE.
With this being the case, the focus to this guide will be WWE.
At the time of writing, WWE TV currently airs weekly in the UK on BT Sport, there are 2 main branded television shows, Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown.
There is also WWE’s developmental brand, NXT, which features talent not on either of the main brands yet, but in an exciting brand of their own. NXT airs on Wednesday nights.
The objective of winning a wrestling match is to defeat your opponent in the ring, there are 2 standard ways of achieving this, pin fall – pinning your opponent’s shoulders to the mat for a count of three, and submission – applying a submission hold to your opponent and forcing them to tap out.
There are other match types, most often used in WWE PPVs (Pay Per Views) such as the Ladder match, Steel Cage and Hell in a Cell to name a few, the rules of which are explained often on WWE programming when those matches or PPVs are coming up.
One of the great things about the WWE product, is that it is catered to casual viewers, people who may wish to drop in and out from time to time, and if for whatever reason you do miss a show, there are plenty of recaps the following week so you can pick up right where you may have left off. A lot of exclusive content can be found on WWE’s social media and YouTube channel, another avenue great for catching up on what you may have missed.
There is also the WWE Network, which is WWE’s streaming service, essentially Netflix for wrestling, it is on this service that you can watch WWE’s monthly PPVs, also on this service, is almost every edition of Raw, SmackDown, NXT, every WWE PPV and a whole host of exclusive, behind the scenes documentaries that give fans and viewers a look into the lives of the WWE superstars.
The WWE Network costs £9.99 per month, there is a free tier though, with certain content available to watch without a paid subscription, a perfect teaser of some of the content on offer on the service.
Now, when it comes to the superstars themselves, all of them are of course, fantastic athletes, there are though, admittedly, some that do stand out from the rest, these more often than not, are the current crop of WWE Champions.
The WWE Championship, often hailed as “The richest prize in the game”, is the top prize in WWE, currently on the Raw brand, as of this writing, the WWE Champion is Randy Orton, he’s been wrestling for almost 20 years. Orton is a third generation wrestler, taking after his dad and grandad before him.
Over on the SmackDown brand, their top title is the WWE Universal Championship, currently held by Roman Reigns, an exciting wrestler, certainly one to watch, much like Randy Orton, Reigns very rarely (if ever) has a bad match, always a big fight feel whenever he is in the ring. A firm favourite amongst many of the fans in WWE.
There are a lot of reasons to get into watching wrestling if anybody is considering it, the bright lights and atmosphere of it all really shines and the electricity can really be felt even from the comfort of your own home.
Anyone interesting in checking out some great wrestling, it’s worth heading over to the WWE Network and giving it a go. It’s a great place for any beginner or an ex-fan of the product to start.