Bull Power vs. Otto Wanz is Better than Sports
Bull Power vs. Otto Wanz is Better than Sports
Is pro wrestling sport or entertainment? With Vader and Otto Wanz, it's better than both.
I’m not a sports fan. I bring this up because in recent weeks, that age old debate of whether pro wrestling is sport or art has come up again as the Discourse of Choice for many online. Most people I know who have a deep understanding of this particular medium understand that it is neither.
Put simply, wrestling is wrestling.
No legitimate athletic contest has ever connected with me emotionally in the way that professional wrestling has. Even when wrestling draws aesthetically from sports, it’s its own unique beast. It’s a combination of episode storytelling, theatrical pantomime, and genuine athletic ability that creates something that surpasses the strictest definitions of realism.
The 1989 bout between Big Van Vader (working as Bull Power) and Otto Wanz illustrates this dynamic perfectly.
Everything about this match screams “sports” spectacle. Both men come out with entourages waving their respective national flags, and we even have to sit through three separate national anthems—Austrian for the challenger, American for the champion, and German for the host country. It really doesn’t get much better than a heated crowd of Austrians jeering and booing the American national anthem. Great work there, guys.
Even something like that adds to the kind of rowdy sports-like atmosphere of this bout. There’s a sense of very real patriotic pride at stake here. It’s a tale as old as time in sports and pro wrestling both, and that’s because it’s a real timeless kind of storytelling. What can be trite and overbearing when handled by American promotions though, never feels quite as hammy when it’s a foreign crowd booing the US.
Once the fight gets going, we see all the other ways that this match draws from real life sports, even moreso than other forms of pro wrestling. This is wrestled with a rounds format, and it eschews a lot of traditional pro wrestling structure and tropes for something a little more head on. We don’t really get a lot of pinfall attempts in this, except for an absolutely beautiful leaping sunset flip from Vader in the third round.
There’s a greater emphasis in this match placed on working towards a ten-count knockout. In that way, it shares a lot with shoot style matches and even a lot of joshi. Even better is that all the action works towards that goal as well, so much of this is just both men punching at each other. And it rocks!
Vader especially is brutal with some of the strikes he’s throwing here. Real meaty clubbing blows with his forearm, solid open palms right to the nose, all of them land so menacingly. Wanz gets busted open early, a testament to the force that Vader’s striking with. The blood also means that Vader’s targeted punches come across even more malicious with each passing round.
Structurally, this is actually quite simple in design. The two men trade rounds, each taking the chance in the succeeding round to try to regain momentum. For much of the early match, it’s all about how Vader’s youth and power is a massive difference maker. But Vader has such a well rounded game, that when Wanz makes a near miraculous comeback in the fourth round, Vader comes back in the fifth with dirty tactics like biting at the ear, and increased athleticism by coming off of the top rope.
The sixth round is where the real masterstroke is.
Wanz, refusing to be bullied down, takes the fight to the already cheating Vader by bringing the action down to the floor. In the skirmish, Vader gets cut open on the ear, and suddenly his power and confidence gets shaken. He hesitates to return to the ring where Wanz batters the wounded ear.
The seventh round features the pinnacle of Vader’s performance in the whole match. While we’ve seen glimpses of him selling throughout the match, with a kind of wobbly legged agility one can’t quite believe looks so easy on a man his size, it’s in the seventh round that his true depth as a performer becomes clear. In a desperate bid to salvage a suddenly losing fight, he calls for a time out as his manager checks on his wounded ear. But when it’s back to go time, the look on his face says it all: Vader’s scared, he knows he’s going to lose.
That’s the good stuff right there. This giant hulking monster reduced to a bleeding coward awaiting the end. What a thing to behold. And no matter how much I can sit here and try to break this down into its individual elements—how it pulls from the sports-like aesthetic of boxing to how they mix in classic babyface-heel dynamics and match structure—the experience of it all together is so much more transparently, obviously fantastic. Wrestling is so much more than those things as individual elements. It’s a representation—not a recreation—of reality that carries its own specific power. The whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts.
I’m sure it’s easy to say that I just haven’t seen the right sports for me, there’s violence and barbarism and emotional catharsis out there in various legitimate combat sports. Believe me, I’m sure that you’re absolutely right! I have every faith in your knowledge in comparison to my ignorance. The thing is, I really just don’t care because this is it for me.
Bull Power vs. Otto Wanz is the kind of match that exists beyond simple parameters of what makes a pro wrestling match great. It’s the kind of cohesive experience that can both define and transcend its own form.
It is both definitively, and definitively beyond pro wrestling.
IS IT BETTER THAN 6/3/94? Definitely. The easiest point of comparison to make here is the ear blood. Where Misawa’s wounded ear becomes a passing plot point, here it’s a defining turning of the tide that grants our aging hero his miraculous win. But really, if I’m being honest, it’s Vader’s performance that puts this over the top. It’s an all-timer of a heel performance, and one that displays the range he had as a wrestler.
Rating: ****1/2