The Analytics of Professional Wrestling
A conversation with Craig Leask, the creator of Pro Wrestling Musings and budding wrestling statistician.
Welcome to issue #2 of Throwdowns.
This edition as you may have guessed from the title, will be about a very niche corner of professional wrestling and will also mark my first time writing about a lifelong love of mine. With that said, bear with me.
Joining me for this article is Craig Leask (who you will learn more about shortly), my inaugural guest in what I hope will be a regular conversation series and staple of this newsletter. So with introductions now out of the way, let’s Throwdown.
Professional wrestling is complicated.
Beyond the grandeur and sometimes downright paranormal, it is in it’s most stripped down existence — a form of entertainment. Similar to that of our favorite action flicks, sports’ teams and universally shared storytelling tropes that have been stitched into the fabric of our pop culture consciousness.
But, it is frequently not held in the same regard as those aforementioned things. It’s fake. Those things: presumably real, art and essential.
For these individuals/performers who sometimes also don masks, they train, work an inordinate amount of days out of the year, manage personal strifes and experience actual physical pain. But alas, it’s fake.
Professional wresting in 2020 is more self-aware (to an extent) than ever before. Performers and creative departments in countless spouting companies across the world have more and more infused real-life disputes, incidents and vices into storylines. Blending the line of kayfabe (in-character) and reality has never been as rampant.
Not one to shy away from borrowing tactics from others, some promotions have also even dabbled with the use of analytics akin to that seen within several sports.
New Japan Pro Wrestling — a company that is often helmed as the pinnacle of in-ring excellence — has been a pillar in this regard, most famously seen during their G1 Climax tournament, in which performers both earn points and go through a March Madness-like bracketing system in their proceedings. Their announce team also always quick to throw in stats about the workers in the ring.
In terms of the use of analytics stateside, recent breakthrough company AEW, which is spearheaded by Tony Khan (Current Senior Vice President of Football Technology & Analytics for the Jacksonville Jaguars) and Cody Rhodes, have on multiple occasions advertised themselves as a “sports centric” alternative to current juggernaut, WWE.
The company has adopted win-loss records for their performers as well as releasing weekly power rankings, but has of yet to fully take the plunge in terms of adding prominent weight to the numbers.
This budding but not yet fleshed out component of wrestling has instead been taken up by fans themselves to help promote the potential marriage of analytics and wrestling. Further blurring the lines between fact and fiction.
One of those fans is Craig Leask, founder of Pro Wrestling Musings, a site that tallies, creates and releases analytical data on a variety of aspects pertaining professional wrestling. What follows is my conversation with Craig on his process, how it could be used professionally and a look ahead at what may be next.
I think the most immediate question that arises when coming across someone who makes analytics for professional wrestling, is why?
It started with a drive to speak to more people about wrestling. With it being a niche interest, I don't speak about it too often in my day to day life. When you start looking at Wrestling Twitter there are a lot of people giving opinions and making content about wrestling. I've always been a creative person and felt I'd like to make my own thing to add to the space.
I started by using bar chart time-lapse videos to illustrate title histories. I enjoyed doing this and got quite attached to the feeling of seeing the finished product. I was quite keen to do more at this stage.
The analytics idea came from my interest in football (soccer). Football matches always have statistics shared on news websites to give you more of a perspective on how the game unfolded, possession, shots, shots on target, fouls, etc. These two things, more or less, came together in my head to form the idea one day when I was walking up a big hill.
From there it has developed by testing it out, problem solving and discussing it with others. The wrestler's performance statistics that I have started working on is inspired by statistics you can get on your players in the popular 'Football Manager' PC game series.
How do you go about tracking the data? Basketball has companies and manual/automated tracking devices like Second Spectrum and Synergy. Baseball has Statcast and TrackMan. I am assuming it is all manually tracked?
Yes, it is manual, very manual! Essentially I watch a match with a timer (or timers) and use the timer and a shorthand I have created to track the competitor's statistics. In terms of challenges, the main one is that I live in the UK and most of the wrestling that I have been covering takes place in the US. Meaning the coverage I provide will usually have a significant time delay.
In terms of the process, I have had a couple more ideas that could add to the process that I can't quite manage to do at the same time as the other statistics I already gather. The only way would be to watch matches more than once, however, I am reluctant to do this as I fear it would take a lot of the enjoyment out.
In terms of benefits, the main one is that because I am so immersed in the process due to the extremely manual nature of it, I can make changes immediately if there is a glaring problem with the process and I am very well place to come up with progressive ideas to improve the product.
New Japan Wrestling (NJPW) is probably at the forefront when it comes to using analytics, but during AEW’s infancy, Tony Kahn spoke about introducing the sports element back into professional wrestling. How do you think the company can better establish this in their product?
I agree, NJPW is definitely streets ahead of their competitors in terms of presenting their product as a sport and the use of analytics is certainly part of this. I actually think this is a big part of overly enthusiastic fans, like myself, criticism of AEW for promising a 'wrestling league' and delivering a convoluted ranking system.
AEW need to look to NJPW as they have clearly defined tournaments where competitors have a clear goal to work towards over a set period of fixtures; the New Japan Cup or the G1 being the most obvious examples. In AEW, yes they track wins and losses and have their rankings but they feel way too convoluted.
For example, Hikaru Shida has been the number one ranked female in the company according to the rankings, however did not get a title match. Yet as soon as Kris Statlander reached number one she immediately got a title shot.
Imagine if a sports company just stopped the league season when the leaders suited them? However, it is early days and the intentions of the company are encouraging. The rankings have been used in interesting ways to drive storylines. Jon Moxley and PAC have both cited frustrations over either not being given the matches to amass wins or not receiving the rewards their accumulated wins should garner.
However, there is so much more that can be done with statistics. Look at what other sports present based on uncontrollable athletic contests. AEW can do so much if they tap into this potential goldmine. They can build up in-ring stories with these potential numbers.
A wrestler with the best knockdown rate against the wrestler who has been shown to be able to absorb the most punishment by the numbers. A contest preceded by a analytical tale of the tape story. That would be intelligent story telling very much on the level if not surpassing that of NJPW.
What do you think the next revolution in professional wrestling will be? analytics, a union, etc?
I would love to see a statistics revolution. I got excited just outlining my thoughts on how that should work in the previous question! I think I've done a great job of creating interesting content. However, I'm one person and my equipment is a pen and paper and some timers.
Imagine what an intelligently organized wrestling company could do? Even saying all that, wrestlers really must find a way of forming a union. It is unfathomable that in such a high-risk occupation that has a history of it's workers being taken advantage of to the detriment of their health, wrestlers have not been able to create a trade union. David Starr is doing great work, hopefully it grows and grows.
This has been Throwdowns. If you enjoyed this, or any other post in the archive, please feel free to share it on social media or with your friends and family. It is greatly appreciated.
If you have any questions, concerns, feedback or want to send me recent work for consideration in future “recommended reading” installments, feel free to email me: Alexm.regla@gmail.com. As always, thank you.