| Shooter (professional Wrestling) |
Article Index for Shooter |
Website Links For Shooter |
Information AboutShooter (professional Wrestling) |
|
These wrestlers often gain their skills from Martial Arts ( Ken Shamrock ) or Amateur Wrestling ( Kurt Angle ) backgrounds. Others are just generally brawlers ( JBL ) and some are just naturally big and strong so fighting them is generally impossible ( André The Giant ). Despite the worked nature of the spectacle, shooters have been around since the beginning. Originally, the NWA World Champion was typically a shooter or "hooker" ( Lou Thesz is the most famous example), in an effort to keep regional champions and other contenders from attempting to shoot on them and win the title when they were not scheduled to do so. Wrestling promoters have also used shooters as in-house "enforcers," to put in matches against those wrestlers who have committed some transgression. The WWF has used Bob Holly and the Acolytes Protection Agency ( Ron Simmons and John Layfield) in recent years in this role. It should be noted that these are "shooters" by pro wrestling standards. The average wrestler, while not regarded "legit" by athletic standards, is tougher than the average person. In past times, most promoters required all of their wrestlers to possess some toughness, so that if they were involved in a brawl they wouldn’t make "the business" look bad by losing to a common Bar patron. Other wrestlers often attempt to challenge well-known shooters backstage to gauge their own toughness in impromptu grapples. For example, Kurt Angle is generally considered the toughest shooter in WWE (understandably so, given his Olympic gold medal in amateur wrestling), and stated in his autobiography that nearly everyone backstage that has tried to take him on has failed (the only one he said ever gave him trouble was The Big Show , owing to his sheer size and strength). SEE ALSO |
|
|