Professional wrestling, as a staged art, involves having winners and losers. Your job, when you are to win, is to make yourself look good. You job when you lose is to make your opponent look good. Those wrestlers who almost never win and whose primary job is to make other wrestlers look good are called jobbers.
Pro wrestling jobbers are one of the most important things in professional wrestling. They are truly the unsung heroes of wrestling, and in that vein, I salute them. Jobbers have brought us some of the most entertaining moments in the history of pro wrestling. This is because they are free to do humorous skits without having to worry about damaging their character. It's awesome.
Jobbers have a long and diverse history in pro wrestling. There have been jobbers for as long as pro wrestling has existed. They have always been there to put other people over by jobbing. Some of the most well known jobbers of all time include the Brooklyn Brawler and Al Snow.
The art of being a jobber is essentially knowing how to sell very well. Selling is the art of making it look like the moves your opponent is doing to you hurt very much. This involves taking big bumps and flatbacking simple moves, like punches. Often times, a simple right handed blow will send a jobber flying back into a ringpost or out of the ring. In this way the opponent ends up looking like superman.
Some jobbers were entertaining not because they wrestled, but simply because their presence was odd or amusing. One example is Lodi, a guy who was in Raven's Flock in WCW and never seemed to do anything other than hold up signs and generally act as Raven's cheerleader. Another good one is Vincent/Virgil, a guy who made his payday by being named after the guy in control of the opposite company than the one he was in, be it WCW or WWF.
The next time you see a pro wrestling jobber on TV, make sure to salute them. Whether it's Tommy Dreamer, Colin Delaney, Funaki or Santino Marella, be aware of how much entertainment value they add to the television program and finally give them the respect they deserve.
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