the gameplay footage I've seen indicates that a large portion of time is spent just randomly poking the ball around in the wrestling ring up the top which looks awfully boring. I find on some games that the pop bumpers ruin the flow if they trap the ball for too long. The wrestling ring seems to take it a step further by making this frustration of mine the actual objective.

I thought the same thing, what it the point of the lower PF? The ball spends so much time on the upper PF then pauses when hit into the top hole then some more time bouncing around, when it finally drops out onto the bottom there are two ramps leading back up there