Are psychology, "logic" and storytelling within a match overrated?

[Ricky Jackson]

Bravo gentlemen. I can't say I agree with a lot of the points raised, or that I haven't found the argument to be tedious at times, but the degree of thought expressed in this whole deal was impressive. Really, a lot of the recent discussion regarding wrestling theory on this board has been impressive and far beyond my ability to articulate.

[ohtani's jacket]

You guys have gone far and wide with this.

 

It's TERRIBLY frustrating that while wrestling SHOULD be better than reality, it's not.

Why should it be?

 

Last year, the All Blacks entered the Rugby World Cup with the expectation that they'd win it for the first time since 1987. They not only faced the pressure of winning the Cup at home, but winning it for a country that had suffered a coal mining disaster, a major oil spill and an earthquake that destroyed a city and is approaching its 10,000th aftershock. A couple of matches into the tournament, their star player and rugby equivalent of a quarterback tore his groin in training and was ruled out of the Cup. Then it came out that the captain and greatest player of his generation had a foot injury that was so bad that he couldn't train. For four years, the opposition had taunted us that if one or either of these players went down we'd be fucked even if we were playing at home. It was basically a nightmare come true. There was no real replacement for the star pivot who injured himself in training so we had to rely on a young guy who had spent most of the season recovering from a broken jaw. So what happens? Groin injury in the quarters. Next off the rank was a third choice pivot who'd been on holiday before his call-up. World Cup final, thirty minutes in and he goes down with a knee injury. On comes the fourth choice pivot, the man nobody wanted to see play for the All Blacks again because his poor decision making had cost us games in the past and who a week before had missed his call-up because he was out fishing. Suddenly, you've got the most hated player in recent All Black history vying for redemption in arguably the most important game in All Black history. He kicks a penalty goal (just barely) and the All Blacks take an 8-0 lead into half time. Shortly after the break, France score a try and it's 8-7. The All Blacks hold onto a one point lead and for thirty two minutes they have to defend it with the captain on one leg and one kick in penalty range being the difference between four more years of misery or finally getting this gorilla off our backs. It was an eternity and I hated every second of it, but we wore down the clock, kicked the ball out and ended twenty years of heartbreak.

 

That's the type of thing that inspires a movie not wrestling. It's like the film Clint Eastwood made about South Africa's victory in '95. It doesn't translate to wrestling and even as a movie it doesn't compare to the real thing. We all have our favourite angles and feuds and storylines in wrestling which are nowhere near this scope but well executed and fun to watch. Wrestling doesn't have to be like the All Blacks' World Cup victory to be good and it's debatable whether you can book something like that. The more complex the WWE try to make a story the more cringeworthy it seems. They should be telling wrestling stories not stories from film, television or sport.

[ohtani's jacket]

Spurs and Arsenal are morally neutral entities.

So are Misawa and Kawada.

 

See, that's the problem. US-style rasslin'/sports entertainment is your only frame of reference, and you're acting like anything outside of that doesn't exist. It's kind of like saying that film is inherently limited as an art form and only talking about Hollywood blockbusters.

 

What makes you think Misawa and Kawada were morally neutral?

[NintendoLogic]

Spurs and Arsenal are morally neutral entities.

So are Misawa and Kawada.

 

See, that's the problem. US-style rasslin'/sports entertainment is your only frame of reference, and you're acting like anything outside of that doesn't exist. It's kind of like saying that film is inherently limited as an art form and only talking about Hollywood blockbusters.

 

What makes you think Misawa and Kawada were morally neutral?

 

I mean in the sense that there wasn't an obvious good guy and bad guy. Yeah, kicking Misawa in his broken face was kind of a dick move. But so was going after Kawada's injured leg.

[ohtani's jacket]

Kawada was meant to be the heel and Misawa the face, at least in the early part of their feud.

[JerryvonKramer]

jdw, I take it all back.

 

I marked out like fuck when Henry scored tonight.

 

Just amazing scenes. The stories like this are why we watch sport to be honest.

[jdw]

You guys have gone far and wide with this.

 

It's TERRIBLY frustrating that while wrestling SHOULD be better than reality, it's not.

Why should it be?

 

[...]

 

That's the type of thing that inspires a movie not wrestling. It's like the film Clint Eastwood made about South Africa's victory in '95. It doesn't translate to wrestling and even as a movie it doesn't compare to the real thing. We all have our favourite angles and feuds and storylines in wrestling which are nowhere near this scope but well executed and fun to watch. Wrestling doesn't have to be like the All Blacks' World Cup victory to be good and it's debatable whether you can book something like that. The more complex the WWE try to make a story the more cringeworthy it seems. They should be telling wrestling stories not stories from film, television or sport.

I think what gets is *not* that wrestling fails to match the All Blacks great story, or anyone of the epic off the charts all-time great stories in sporting history.

 

But that it fails to even match any number of really good sports storylines that pop up in a given year.

 

They don't need to match Kirk Gibson hitting the dinger in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.

 

The Lakers run in the 1988 post season was one of the most epic things I've ever seen... but probably doesn't play that way to a non-Lakers fan, even even to Lakers Fans it's a distant memory that probably doesn't hold as much as Game 6 of the 1985 Final or the Junior Sky Hook in 1987. But it was a heck of a storylines over the run of 21 games, three seven game series.

 

John

[jdw]

jdw, I take it all back.

 

I marked out like fuck when Henry scored tonight.

 

Just amazing scenes. The stories like this are why we watch sport to be honest.

Yeah... I popped when I went over to Soccernet, saw it was 0-0, and by the time I opened the Gamecast, Henry scored. I'm not a Gunners fan, but always loved the way they played football starting from the 1998 Double side with the great mixture of wonderful Euros (Bergkamp, Petit, Vieira, Overmars) and Brits (Adams, Seaman, Dixon, Platt, Wright, Keown, Parlour). Even loved when Henry, after flopping at Juve, came over and paired up perfectly with Bergkamp up front. Heck... I couldn't even hate The Invincibles since the played such fun futbol.

 

Of course I did enjoy Scholes knocking them out of the FA Cup that year.

 

So Henry coming back and scoring today... very cool.

 

In turn, the storyline of Sunday ManU-ManCity game drove me nuts.

 

John

[jdw]

I like a lot of MJH's post, and wanted to point to one thing in it...

 

Everyone I know give Ferguson his due. They'll debate his status as 'GOAT' on the grounds that had a singular man had the manager's seat for Liverpool's dominance (it was all one system/regime) he'd have just as much, and that Paisley's 9 years were more successful than any period of Ferguson's. Not to mention he won three European Cups - no worry about Fergie losing his motivation. But they speak respectfully of him as a manager. The criticism is that he's a douche and/or cocky. But they always give him his fair and deserved due as a manager. Any knighthood for football in bullshit, though, and I soon as I point out, with regards to not giving Paisley one as they're not done posthumously, that even Shakespeare hasn't been given one, that point dies.

This is to me one of the elements of storyline in sports. Sir Alex vs The Boot Room in GOAT discussions has been a classic one over the past decade. It's a seemingly small one that ebbs and flows out of discussions, but it's a great one for fans to bounce around. It's the same as Jumbo-Tenryu, Misawa-Kawada, Hogan-Flair. Folks might think it's the media or historians that only care, but a pair of fans like MJH and I could go around in circles on it... because it's the type of things Fans argue about all the time.

 

Wrestling isn't sports. It is "entertainment". But while a lot of us hate the term "sports entertainment", to a degree that's what it was/is.

 

John

[JerryvonKramer]

A lot of Liverpool fans would debate Paisely vs. Shankly long and hard too. Argument for Shankly being that he set the groundwork and that his achievement from where they were when he took over to where they were when he left is arguably more impressive that Paisley's silverware.

 

I'd go for Fergie over both of them though. Not only does he have the legacy (where they were when he took over to where they are now) and the silverware, but also he's done the amazing feat, which to my knowledge has never been done by anyone else, of building and then breaking up and rebuilding 3 or even 4 great sides.

 

91-4 side (Schmeichel, Parker, Pallister etc.) , 96-03 side ("you'll win nothing with kids"), 2004-09 (taking on Chelsea), 2009-now (taking on Man City and dealing with limited resources under the Glazers)

 

Don't think any manager has managed to build so many different sides at the same club. Capello and Trappatoni have done it with different teams at different clubs, Jose Mourinho is on his way to doing it too, but this is something truly one-off.

 

I think there are aspects of Ferguson that are often overlooked: his method of squad rotation, his ability to get the best out of the team right when it matters (i.e. the traditional awesome run Man U go on from Christmas to May, every season), his ability to get the very best out of average squad players like John O'Shea and Nicky Butt, his ability to bring through youth, his ability to get the most out of his veteran players (not just Giggs, look at, for example, Brian McClair in 92-3, or the season he had Laurent Blanc), and his uncanny ability to get rid of superstars at exactly the right moment (see Dwight Yorke, Andy Cole, Ruud Van Nistelrooy, even Jaap Stam).

 

It's not just the trophies, it is everything. Ferguson's your complete package. And I haven't even mentioned "mind games" and his handling of the media.

[NintendoLogic]

OK, can we stop talking about soccer now?

[jdw]

A lot of Liverpool fans would debate Paisely vs. Shankly long and hard too. Argument for Shankly being that he set the groundwork and that his achievement from where they were when he took over to where they were when he left is arguably more impressive that Paisley's silverware.

They're both reasonable arguments. Shankly laid the foundation and was very successful. Paisley took it to its highest heights, made some critical changes on the fly (Keegan --> Dalglish being the most obvious, though there were others), and left the team in strong enough shape to continue to win after he left. Flip the coin. English history has given Shankly more of the credit in most of the books that I've read over the years, but that may just be that Paisley came out from under Shankly's wing and the "club" in general was taking credit after Shankly retired.

 

I'd go for Fergie over both of them though. Not only does he have the legacy (where they were when he took over to where they are now) and the silverware, but also he's done the amazing feat, which to my knowledge has never been done by anyone else, of building and then breaking up and rebuilding 3 or even 4 great sides.

 

91-4 side (Schmeichel, Parker, Pallister etc.) , 96-03 side ("you'll win nothing with kids"), 2004-09 (taking on Chelsea), 2009-now (taking on Man City and dealing with limited resources under the Glazers)

 

Don't think any manager has managed to build so many different sides at the same club. Capello and Trappatoni have done it with different teams at different clubs, Jose Mourinho is on his way to doing it too, but this is something truly one-off.

Trap's late-70s teams were largely rebuilt for the team that dominated in the mid-80s. He also largely built the Juve team that won the 1993 UEFA Cup under him then the 1995 Scudetto & 1996 European Cup under Lippi. 3 sides with one club, success in Europe and league... that's pretty close to Fergie. Would no doubt have done it again if he stayed. Of course a lot of success elsewhere, but I know less about the building of those sides.

 

 

I think there are aspects of Ferguson that are often overlooked: his method of squad rotation,

I think that's fairly well known in the past half decade, at least among those who understand the concept. He's generally given a lot of credit as a leading proponant of the concept, whether he was inovative on it or not. I think most top sides have gotten and employed the concept more and more over the past decade.

 

 

his ability to get the best out of the team right when it matters (i.e. the traditional awesome run Man U go on from Christmas to May, every season),

I think a lot of this is due to both the rotation system and his strong belief in depth (and of course ManU's ability to fund it). League is a marathon. Having depth and rotation allows you to cover injuries, keep people rested and healthy, and more options in selecting lineups and tatics for different opponents. Other teams with less depth (say Leeds in their short window of challenging) didn't have the depth to sustain their play late in the year as the injuries piled up, and as players got run into the ground.

 

 

his ability to get the very best out of average squad players like John O'Shea and Nicky Butt,

Yes in general, perhaps no in specifics. Butt actually was a excellent English player, and a good EPL player. With the exception of Arsenal and probably a couple of other teams, he would have been good starting DMF for most of the EPL teams in his prime. Game is different now, so that's not applicable. But at the time, if he were your starting DMF and he was surrounded by players of his quality and work ethic, your team would have been in the upper half of the table and at little risk of relegation.

 

Which is the general value Sir Alex saw in him. A good player in the rotation, even if he wasn't at the level of Roy or Scholes or Giggs or Becks.

 

 

his ability to bring through youth,

Very smart on his part. Also smart to use the power (i.e. money and status) of ManU to attract young talent. Roon was an Everton player for life... until Sir Alex showed interest, at which point he wanted to play for ManU.

 

his ability to get the most out of his veteran players (not just Giggs, look at, for example, Brian McClair in 92-3, or the season he had Laurent Blanc),

Blanc was mediocre his first year with ManU, which helped end the run of three straight Premierships. Okay the following year, but he didn't play as much. We basically got him when he was well past it.

 

A better example might be Teddy in 1999, and periodically after that.

 

and his uncanny ability to get rid of superstars at exactly the right moment (see Dwight Yorke, Andy Cole, Ruud Van Nistelrooy, even Jaap Stam).

Yorke and Cole were pretty much when they had to go, and both were off their prime. Cole's prime was before we got him, while Yorke peaked with the Treble and never was the same. Right time for both probably would have been selling them at least a year before they were, to max out money.

 

RVN and Stam were more feuds. Stam was something of an offer we couldn't refuse, but Sir Alex has said since that he was wrong on thinking what Stam had left in the tank. RVN kind of needed to go due to the feud, and the team ManU wa altering into.

 

Better examples are Becks, Ronaldo and Ince. Max value in sales at the time when the players were becoming headaches (all of them), just exiting their peaks (Becks and Ince), and just didn't want to be there. I suspect that if Sir Alex could have a re-do, the only one he would want back is Ronaldo if he could convince him to stop dreaming about Real. That's simply because Ronaldo was still young and had/has more left on his tank at the time of the sale than the rest. But he'd also likely be realistic that he'd never convince CR7 to stop dreaming about Real.

 

 

It's not just the trophies, it is everything. Ferguson's your complete package. And I haven't even mentioned "mind games" and his handling of the media.

He's been pretty much the total package. While perhaps not innovative tactically, he's been adaptive and looking forward rather than back. Used the power of the club, as he should. Great manager.

 

We haven't even mentioned what he did in the SPL, which given the dominance of the Old Firm, is damn near as impressive as anything he's done "short term" at ManU even if it doesn't match the long term.

 

UEFA CWC: 1983

SPL: 1980, 1984, 1985

Scottish Cup: 1982, 1983, 1984, 1986

Scottish League Cup: 1986

 

Eight full seasons. Three league titles, five domestic cups, and a CWC going over Real Madrid in the Final and Bayern Munich in the QF. Very impressive. Ponder Newcastle having a run like that in 8 years in the past decade.

 

John

[goodhelmet]

OK, can we stop talking about soccer now?

This. Soccer talk makes me want to lock threads.

[jdw]

12 good pages of discussion, two posts at the end that go mildly off-topic (though tie into the discussion of wrestling vs sports storylines) and you want to lock the thread?

 

*sigh*

[goodhelmet]

No, I want to stop reading about soccer.

[Matt D]

Break it off and we can regroup and refocus?

[Jingus]

Locking this thread would be a god-damned crime against humanity, so let's try to refocus the discussion in a non-soccer-direction.

 

I got to thinking a little bit about flips and dives. Typically these are termed as "high risk moves", with the logic being that the flippy diver willingly accepts the tremendous risk of crashing and burning in return for the possibility to inflict unheard-of punishment upon their opponents with such a maneuver. But in most matches, if you step back and look at it, that "unheard-of punishment" is almost always blown off and forgotten quickly afterwards. Especially the lucha or indy dives to the floor, which usually have both men back up and fighting again within a matter of seconds. Why is that? You'd think that after a huge dive this is the perfect time for both men to lay down and sell for a minute, putting over the pain they're enduring while also getting a quick breather. This happens sometimes, most notably in big multi-man scramble matches like Money In The Bank where most of the participants tend to spend a lot of time laying around selling until it's their cue to get back up and do a spot, but most of the time it's just "dive, face gets back into the ring and celebrates, heel gets back up and scowls at him from the floor".

 

And you'd certainly think that such a spectacular move would be the finish, or at least play into the finish in a "if Taue chokeslams you off the apron, you might try to come back but you're probably fucked" sort of way. But most of the time, that's not even remotely what happens. Jeff Hardy will jump off something really tall and put you through a table, but then it's forgotten afterwards and either he loses the match or pins you with a glorified neckbreaker. Why does the counter-intuitive nature of these spots rarely get mentioned? Is it just one of those "Sabu knows the fans will pop huge, no matter how long it takes him to set up this contrived spot" sort of deals where the visual thrill of bodies flying around is so great that it overwhelms the more logic-based part of our brains?

[goodhelmet]

Just to put worried minds at ease, in 5 years I have closed one thread... accidentally. The entire point was that soccer talk sucks and it was the first time I considered closing a thread on purpose.

[JerryvonKramer]

I think it might be time for this one to go to megathreads.

[Loss]

Ok, so wrestling. Go!

[Matt D]

I've seen tremendously little Pat Patterson (but I love hearing him talk on DVDs/Legends roundtables). He gets a lot of credit for putting together more story based WWF big matches (Royal Rumbles, but also matches like Warrior vs Hogan). Do his matches from the 70s/early 80s that have survived show a lot of narrative elements?

[Johnny Sorrow]

Real quick, while I agree that real sports don't have "faces and heels" ala pro wrestling...it is true that the media likes to run with that stuff now and again.

 

 

Weird thing is, this is a Boston paper portraying the Pats as agents of Satan.

[JerryvonKramer]

I saw someone reading this. Man, the stuff you forget about.

 

I don't want to say I miss jdw ... but I do kinda.

[Loss]

This was one of my favorite threads.

[JerryvonKramer]

When I was in New Orleans I sat on a panel and the topic was Shakespeare and narrative theory.

 

They think now that the human mind can only process stuff through narrative, and we make stories automatically. This can be seen most readily in dreams. Apparently, when we dream it's all random images, the narrative throughline only comes AFTER you wake up. You remember bits and automatically weave together the story yourself.

 

It's made me think a bit about what we do with storytelling in wrestling. I'm convinced these days that so much of what we do in our wrestling criticism is akin to weaving together the disparate parts of the dream. The narrative and psychology are made by us, not by the workers.