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

[Matt D]

I think that's breaking it down too much. It's not that complicated. Wrestling that makes sense is good, and displays good psychology. Wrestling that doesn't make sense is bad, and displays bad psychology. We tend to break things into categories too much when discussing this stuff. It's too fragmented. That we're at a point where we're asking if it really matters if wrestling makes sense honestly embarrasses me a little.

Again, I think it's because so much of it doesn't or didn't. And more than that, so much stuff that was, and IS, wildly lauded doesn't or didn't. For decades the argument was about "action" or "workrate" or whatever. The question of narrative and whether or not it made sense is pretty damn new. Meltzer might complain in years past about a wrestler not knowing how to put a match together, but if they worked hard, was athletic, and did a lot of stuff, that'd be far more than forgiven.

[Loss]

I felt the need to break down some of the points from the first post.

 

Some of may not know that as well as being a wrestling enthusiast, I'm also a doctor of English with a particular interest in literary theory -- just completed two books looking at literary approaches being published next year. So I'm always interested in methods of assessment, aesthetics, notions of value and so on.

 

In wrestling fandom, the so-called smarts have always valued psychology, logic and storytelling within a match over pretty much anything else.

 

I've been thinking about this of late and wondering why. Two questions:

 

- In real life, do fights follow any particular logic? Would a bloke in a barroom brawl think about softening up a leg in order to apply a hold? What happens in UFC? Seems to me that the idea of a fight telling a story is purely the invention of pro wrestling. Most fights in real life are scrappy, disjointed, all over the place and so on.

Two things:

 

(1) Wrestling is not "fake fighting", and I never have cared for that term. It's "fake sport". There is a difference. In theory, the competitors should be trained and skilled. This is why I get so frustrated by arguments that Rey isn't credible. He's trained and highly skilled. He can perform moves that other wrestlers can't. This makes him credible within the confines of a sport. It's not about looking at guys on a surface level and making assumptions about who would win in a shoot. That's not how I see credibility. That mindset is simply a byproduct of Vince McMahon and steroids.

 

For a wrestler of Rey's size, it's important he is really good in the ring, because that's where he gets his credibility. If a small guy can't sell convincingly and can't execute his offensive repertoire competently, it's going to be impossible for him to get over. Big guys like the Great Khali have shortcuts at their disposal that Rey doesn't to make them credible, so maybe they don't have to be quite as highly skilled to be successful. But even their credibility is not based on look alone. Khali is clumsy and has trouble executing basic wrestling moves. Maybe if they met in an alley, Khali would clean Rey's clock, but they are meeting in a ring, which is supposed to be athletic competition, and skill matters as much as or more than toughness.

 

Also, the basic goal of a wrestler is not to hurt their opponent, it's to win a match. Sometimes, there is no way to win a match without hurting the opponent, so that's why they do things that hurt. But in good wrestling, the end result is to win.

 

So looping this all back together, good wrestlers are skilled and have credibility. Good matches have wrestlers trying to win them. I don't like comparing wrestling to fighting because barfighters, as a rule, don't train for their sport.

 

(2) Yes, real fights follow logic in the sense that people like us want it from the wrestling we watch. If Person A kicks Person B in the balls in a real fight, they're going to sell it.

 

- When assessing other narratives, do we apply the same sort of standards? Seems to me that a match that moves from A to B to C in a logical fashion is almost always praised for that fact. But if we watch a film that moves from A to B to C in a logical fashion, would we praise it for that? Or would we criticize it for being unadventerous, conventional, predictable and derivative? Are the best books those that advance their narratives logically from A to B to C? John Grisham does that very well, is he a better writer than James Joyce? Or Shakespeare? His works are a lot more "logical" on a narrative level. But typically, we don't judge books or films in this way. We EXPECT narrative simply to form part of its fabric and tend to focus on other things: style, themes, characters, whatever. So why in wrestling is the fairly mundane and unremarkable fact of basic narrative seen as being the be all and end all?

(1) Good movies are much, much more common than good wrestling matches. If you look at bad wrestling matches, what are most of them missing that keep them from being good? Your milage may very, and your answer may differ depending on which style, promotion, or era you're thinking about. But for the American wrestling fan, we often find that to be something not done particularly well in bad matches. So yes, I agree that having a match that makes sense is just basic competence, not greatness. The point was never anything to the contrary. The point was more that it's impossible to achieve greatness without that basic competence. Why is this discussed? Because often times, we see wrestlers who learned to run before they learned to walk, so they have some impressive tools at their disposal, and no clue how to properly use them.

 

(2) By the same logic, a movie that had great characters, themes and style, but had a terrible story arc would be acknowledged as such. They are routinely acknowledged as such.

 

Short version:

 

1. Is a match structure with a logical story realistic? How?

No. Wrestling is not realistic. Realism and believability are two words I try to stay away from when discussing wrestling. Plausibility is not a word I shy away from. Neither is logic. There are some death-defying wrestling moves -- and some mundane regular moves -- that aren't particularly realistic. But they don't have to be.

 

I think I have talked about this before, but I see wrestling as mythological. A wrestling promotion can set up their mythology to be whatever they want it to be. Certain moves are more dangerous than others. Certain wrestlers are more dangerous than others. Certain things matter and certain things don't. Those of us who watch a great variety of wrestling all the time have had to learn to shift paradigms constantly. I have preferences like anyone does, but for the most part I'm pretty lenient about what that mythology should entail. What I care about is a viewer is that mythological consistency. If the piledriver is a dangerous move, and someone sells it in half-assed fashion, that's bad bad bad. If the piledriver is a transitional move and someone sells it in half-assed fashion, maybe that's a little less grating.

 

Booking establishes the norms and frameworks for the wrestlers to work within.

 

2. Is it in and of itself something that makes a match good? Why?

 

Posters on this board do a very good line in challenging received wisdom. Reassessing sacred cows like Dynamite Kid vs. Tiger Mask, or rehabiliting the reputations of people like Ken Patera or Buddy Rose.

 

But this is one assumption that seems to have gone unchallenged. In every writeup I read it is an implied part of the assessment criteria. I am looking to ask some critical questions about that assumption.

No. It's the bare minimum. Matches that don't accomplish that bare minimum can't be good, no matter what else they have going. Great matches just continue expanding on that.

[Loss]

So Loss, are you saying there is no scope for the wrestling equivalent of absurdism? Or Dadaism?

 

Even aside from that, I still think it's setting the bar ridiculously low to say "makes sense = good", "doesn't make sense = bad".

NO NO NO. No one ever said it was the only thing that mattered. That has been said by me in this thread multiple times (and ignored every time). It is the bare minimum. The point is that if a wrestling match can't make sense, it can't possibly be good, NOT that all it takes for a wrestling match to be good is for it to make sense.

[jdw]

Simply put, psychology is why the wrestlers do what they do.

That's pretty much how I've tried to describe it over the years. It's the why and thought process behind what they do.

 

I've always argued that the claim that a match has "no psychology" to be wrong. There is psych behind Dreamer being put through three tables, even if he has to lay around there forever in a way that looks pretty dumb ass considering how quickly he comesback other times.

 

John

[Kostka]

Jesus Loss, that post was just full of win. I'm using some of that next time someone tries to slam me with the "he's too small = he's not credible" shit.

[JerryvonKramer]

I agree that Loss's post there is pretty great. I especially like the stuff about each promotion being its own self-enclosed mythology.

 

I will say more / reply later.

[Kostka]

It's so fucking true, though. With pro wrestling, context is everything.

[FLIK]

.....this thread totally lost me a page & a half ago

[smkelly]

There are some real wrestling fans in this thread.

[goodhelmet]

Pro Wrestling ONLY motherfuckers.

[ohtani's jacket]

There's nothing praiseworthy about a guy working over someone's knee because it was injured on the outside. The other day I watched a great movie called Mamma Roma by the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini. It tells the story of an ex-prostitute trying to start a new life so that she can raise her teenage son properly. Early on, there's a scene where the son and another character talk about whether they're afraid of death and the son says he's not. From that piece of information I'm sure you can all figure out what happens to the son in the end. It's a nice piece of set-up, but that's all it is -- set-up. You don't praise a movie for its set-up and you shouldn't praise a wrestling match just because of a simple bit of action that took place. A guy working over another guy's knee doesn't tell a story anymore than the Mamma Roma set-up.

[NintendoLogic]

Here's a discussion I think puts the ring/crowd psychology distinction in clearer focus:

 

http://board.deathvalleydriver.com/index.php?showtopic=57396

 

I think it was Jingus who once mentioned how difficult it is to have a compelling match centered around legwork because one of the wrestlers is spending most of the match lying on his back or hobbling around.

[El-P]

There's nothing praiseworthy about a guy working over someone's knee because it was injured on the outside. The other day I watched a great movie called Mamma Roma by the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini. It tells the story of an ex-prostitute trying to start a new life so that she can raise her teenage son properly. Early on, there's a scene where the son and another character talk about whether they're afraid of death and the son says he's not. From that piece of information I'm sure you can all figure out what happens to the son in the end. It's a nice piece of set-up, but that's all it is -- set-up. You don't praise a movie for its set-up and you shouldn't praise a wrestling match just because of a simple bit of action that took place. A guy working over another guy's knee doesn't tell a story anymore than the Mamma Roma set-up.

You're the only guy who can bring out PP Pasolini in a wrestling discussion. Yeah, Mamma Roma is a great movie, and special to my heart. Odd to read about it from nowhere, on this wrestling board, especially these days for me. Yesterday I saw "A Dangerous Method" by Cronenberg, and C.G. Jung says that he doesn't believe in coincidences. Really odd to hear about Mamma Roma today...

 

Anyway, back to wrestling. At some point (long time ago), I thought too that a guy working on a leg or an arm was sufficient enough to be call psych. I was wrong, of course. Most of "working on a leg/arm" stuff is just spending a little time before the end run, and only in good matches does it play any actual role.

[ohtani's jacket]

You obviously haven't been checking out the DVDVR Best of the 60s forum

 

Regarding "working the leg," I think it depends on what's happening in the match. Most of the time they're doing it because they're in a wrestling match. Sometimes they do it because they're a heel or a fired up babyface, at which point it's a type of characterisation. But if they really hate each other and have some sort of vendetta, then you've at least got the makings of a story. I always hated it, though, because in real life a knee injury would sideline a worker for months and they're right back at it the next night.

[Matt D]

I praise movies for set up. And I get annoyed if something is brought up in the third act when it wasn't in the first.

 

But I kind of get my kicks from script structure (and love todd alcott's website for instance). It's just how I'm wired. That said, it's just part of a whole. If one thing is set up really well and every else is a mess, well.. yeah.

[JerryvonKramer]

My proper reply is still forthcoming. But I do want to be the first person in history to compare the Chamber of Horrors match from Havoc 91 to Pasolini's Salo. Not sure which one is the more horrific.

[Loss]

Also worth noting: If you look at the percentage of great wrestling to bad wrestling, the bad wrestling percentage is way higher. I'm not sure if the ratio of bad books, bad movies and bad music to good is higher (it very well may be), but sometimes, basic competency receives praise because basic competency is not something that's a given. The bar is admittedly low sometimes, because there's so much bad stuff out there. On a show with 8 matches, if one match is generally logical, it's going to receive praise -- maybe more than it deserves -- because it's surrounded by so much crap. Proper context matters a ton.

[Matt D]

Also worth noting: If you look at the percentage of great wrestling to bad wrestling, the bad wrestling percentage is way higher. I'm not sure if the ratio of bad books, bad movies and bad music to good is higher (it very well may be), but sometimes, basic competency receives praise because basic competency is not something that's a given. The bar is admittedly low sometimes, because there's so much bad stuff out there. On a show with 8 matches, if one match is generally logical, it's going to receive praise -- maybe more than it deserves -- because it's surrounded by so much crap. Proper context matters a ton.

It's more than just Sturgeon's law though!

 

I think most bad books, bad movies, etc... most of them have basic storytelling logic. They're bad in execution, but most bad novels, for instance, at least tell a story. Most bad movies can be followed. Not all, but most. Basic coherence is "square one" element for most narrative mediums. It's a starting point. You almost can't not have it.

 

It's not like that with wrestling. As wrestling has developed in the US, for one reason or another, it's not "square one." It's just not.

 

If you read 8 random novels from this year, I bet at least 7 would make sense. Some might be good. Most would probably be bad, but a huge majority would have basic coherence. as you said, on a card, you might get one match out of eight like that.

 

THAT is why it stands out so much. In almost every other medium, it's a given. In wrestling, it's anything but.

[ohtani's jacket]

I praise movies for set up. And I get annoyed if something is brought up in the third act when it wasn't in the first.

 

But I kind of get my kicks from script structure (and love todd alcott's website for instance). It's just how I'm wired. That said, it's just part of a whole. If one thing is set up really well and every else is a mess, well.. yeah.

Well, if you're into scripts or you're a writer, critic or even a big movie fan you'll probably notice the set-up, but it's like a muso liking a song because of a chord progression. We're all pretty big wrestling fans here so we notice details, but in my opinion wrestling matches require certain conditions to tell a story above and beyond the wrestlers' ability to work. To tell a story either the stakes must be high or there has to be an angle to pay off. It's exceedingly rare that wrestlers create a story out of nothing.

[ohtani's jacket]

Also worth noting: If you look at the percentage of great wrestling to bad wrestling, the bad wrestling percentage is way higher. I'm not sure if the ratio of bad books, bad movies and bad music to good is higher (it very well may be), but sometimes, basic competency receives praise because basic competency is not something that's a given. The bar is admittedly low sometimes, because there's so much bad stuff out there. On a show with 8 matches, if one match is generally logical, it's going to receive praise -- maybe more than it deserves -- because it's surrounded by so much crap. Proper context matters a ton.

The percentage of great to bad is the same in any medium. The difference between wrestling and other creative endeavours is that at every stage of the creative process be it scriptwriting or songwriting or even shooting a film there is the chance for revision. Basic competency in these endeavours doesn't come easily but you can achieve it by reworking what you've created. If I rewrite a screenplay a dozen times it's going to be a lot more competent than the first time I wrote it regardless of how good I am at structuring a story. In wrestling, you can only really improve your match by doing it again and even if you do the same match night after night on the houseshow circuit you still need to produce your improved performance live. It's a much different discipline. Wrestlers don't labour over a match for a year like writers do with a screenplay. It doesn't take two or three years to produce a match like it does a film. The closest analogy is probably a prolific songwriter, but they still craft their work far more than a wrestler does. But really, most wrestling sucks because it's not important. Aside from matches that disappoint, there's no reason for most wrestling to be any better than it is. Take the Tito/Bossman match I watched earlier tonight. Theoretically, Tito and the Bossman had a great match in them but there was no reason to have one. Thankfully, some wrestling environments are better than others when it comes to the motivation or incentive to have a great match, but 90% of the time it's missing.

[jdw]

Anyway, back to wrestling. At some point (long time ago), I thought too that a guy working on a leg or an arm was sufficient enough to be call psych. I was wrong, of course. Most of "working on a leg/arm" stuff is just spending a little time before the end run, and only in good matches does it play any actual role.

You're wrong. It is psych. The psych is to fill a section of the match and/or kill time. If it's well done by engaging the crowd, it's effective even if it has dick to do with the finish. It might not be "great psych", but there is thought there.

 

I tend to think that triple table spots are bad because the force the guy going through the table to lay around far fucking too long. But the psych is:

 

"This is a COOOLLLL MOTHERFUCKING SPOT that the CROWD WILL LUUUUUUUVVVVVVV!!!"

 

Well, if the crowd loses their shit over it, the thought process worked... at least at the moment. I still tend to think it's shit on a level, but Sabu's thought process on the moment might not be totally fucked up.

 

You're going 20 minutes. You can be like Kenta Kobashi and just work a spot-o-rama because your working of holds is for shit. Or you can be like Tito, who doesn't have 20 minutes of highspots like Kenta opposite Misawa, so you need to find 7 minutes of stuff to do when you're topping early in the match. You do know how to work the leg in a way that keeps the crowd engaged *if* your opponent is good and willing enough to work the holds with you from the bottom. Reasonably smart psych in filling the body of the match until it's time to pick it up? Hmm... Tito knows the figure four to come back to late in the match to, if done right, play off that legwork if anyone is paying attention? Yeah... reasonably smart. But even if people don't remember, you've at least found an effective way to kill 7 minutes if you do it well.

 

Wrestling cards are 2 hours. You can't have a card of 8 matches going 5-8 minutes of Nitro-style matches that everyone now seems to be giving snowflakes-o-plenty to. Some of the folks need to go longer. And few of those folks can pull off spot-o-ramas like Kenta. So they need to put a little thought into filling that time. Whether they pull it off well or not... that's something we argue about.

 

John

[El-P]

You're wrong. It is pych. The pych is to fill a section of the match and/or kill time. If it's well done by engaging the crowd, it's effective even if it has dick to do with the finish. It might not be "great pych", but there is thought there.

I see your point. Still, I've watched a countless Tommy Rich matches from 89/90 lately, something I wouldn't wish on anyone, and basically, Tommy Rich would always do the token armdrag/armbar/elbow on the arm routine that every babyface of the era would do. In every match, no matter if it was a squash (and Rich's squash matches are the dullest and the most boring you can get) or a competitive match. I always feel he's doing it because that's what a babyface is supposed to do at that time. I don't see any thoughts about it. His finisher (the shittiest Thez press ever) doesn't have anything to do with it. He doesn't work holds worth a damn (contrary to a guy like Arn, whom you felt is trying to hurt his opponent for the sheer fun of it). It doesn't lead to anything in particular and isn't very engaging in any way shape or form. So, how can I call that ? Lazy psych ?

 

I tend to think that triple table spots are bad because the force the guy going through the table to lay around far fucking too long. But the pych is:

 

"This is a COOOLLLL MOTHERFUCKING SPOT that the CROWD WILL LUUUUUUUVVVVVVV!!!"

 

Well, if the crowd loses their shit over it, the thought process worked... at least at the moment. I still tend to think it's shit on a level, but Sabu's thought process on the moment might not be totally fucked up.

Well, it also works with Flair getting thrown from the top.

 

You're going 20 minutes. You can be like Kenta Kobashi and just work a spot-o-rama because your working of holds is for shit. Or you can be like Tito, who doesn't have 20 minutes of highspots like Kenta opposite Misawa, so you need to find 7 minutes of stuff to do when you're topping early in the match. You do know how to work the leg in a way that keeps the crowd engaged *if* your opponent is good and willing enough to work the holds with you from the bottom. Reasonably smart pych in filling the body of the match until it's time to pick it up? Hmm... Tito knows the figure four to come back to late in the match to, if done right, play off that legwork if anyone is paying attention? Yeah... reasonably smart. But even if people don't remember, you've at least found an effective way to kill 7 minutes if you do it well.

I understand your point, although in both cases, the result is either action packed match with good spots or slower but logical match. In Tommy Rich instance, to pursue with my exemple, I don't see anything but lazy automatic routine babyface stuff which isn't engaging and leads to nothing. When Ricky Morton does it, his execution and quickness make it fun because it's Morton being quicker than his opponent, catching him from every corner and then keeping him down to not get hit. Then doing it again, and throwing variations into the mix. Of course, Morton was a great wrestler while Rich was blah.

 

Whether they pull it off well or not... that's something we argue about.

Yeah, pretty much.

[jdw]

Well, it also works with Flair getting thrown from the top.

Totally agree.

 

It's an effective spot. The psych is that Ric is a Dumb Fuck, tries something, and the face out smarts him to catch him. Effective comedy spot the fans love.

 

On a deeper level if you happen to watch 10 matches where Ric gets tossed off the top in all ten? If you think a second about it from "Wrestler Ric's" perspective rather than Worker Ric's perspective, it's kind of stupid: going to the top fails to work roughly 95% of the time for Ric. If Ric were truly the best wrestler in the world that he claims, he wouldn't try something that fails 95% of the time.

 

But like I said... the pysch is that Ric is a Dumb Fuck.

 

 

John

[S.L.L.]

Not to complicate Jerry's upcoming response further, but I'm throwing in the next part of my argument now.

 

And as a side note, that really made this thread all the more confusing to me. Workrate/"wrestling" is overrated. Psychology, logic, and storytelling is overrated. What's left to rate?

All the non-wrestling aspects of the product: the promos, the angles, etc As I've said before.

In other words, matches are overrated?

 

Well, you already know that I and everyone else here doesn't buy that, but I remain unconvinced that you really believe it either. From the older thread:

 

Let's get back down to Earth: for me the ESSENCE of wrestling is not the ***** workrate classic, it's the crowd going absolutely bananas when Virgil beat The Million Dollar Man at Summerslam '91. Or when some dork in the crowd was so incensed by The Million Dollar Man that he actually tried to jump on the cage and punch him.

 

This is why I'm still ranking Watts/Stagger Lee vs. The Midnights very high on the Watts set. There's nothing but punches in that match, two of the workers involved are basically immobile, but the crowd is just absolutely nuts. The post-match shenanigans with Cornette in the diaper are as much "wrestling" to me as the match itself.

 

For me, once you start taking that stuff out. Once you abstract it to who did the least botches and who's had the most 45-minute chain-wrestling epics, then you lose something of what wrestling is all about. I think you lose the very thing that got us all into it in the first place. You kind of take the joy out of it.

 

Ergo, if the "essence" of wrestling is not the matches but something else, then - back to the title of the thread - to what extent do you need great matches to be considered an all-time great?

4. Apparently, an awful lot. You say that the essence of wrestling is not the matches, but you illustrate that point by pointing to DiBiase vs. Virgil, DiBiase vs. Savage, and Watts/Lee vs. MX....three wrestling matches. So, yeah, I think it's safe to say that's where the essence is.

You can throw Sheik/Steamboat in there as well. You can't downplay the importance of wrestling matches by pointing out the importance of wrestling matches, and since you keep doing it, I'm inclined to think they're a lot more important to you than you let on, maybe even more than you're aware of.

 

"psychology, logic and storytelling" all refer to in-match things. "Psychology" means psyching an opponent out or working the crowd, "logic" means following an attack on the arm with another attack on the arm, "storytelling" is "this arm injury has put worker A at a serious disadvantage, especially as he needs this arm to do his finisher"

 

...

 

How would you define those three terms then? And how would your definition differ from what I outlined above?

Psychology: The Campbell/Williams definition is the correct one - why the wrestlers do what they do. If a wrestler thinks psyching their opponent out or working the crowd would be in their best interest, that's psychology.

 

Logic: Exactly what it says on the tin - things making sense. Obviously, being a medium of fiction, allowances are going to be made for suspension of disbelief, but within reason does everything make sense. Working the arm if you've already started attacking it would be a logical approach, but not necessarily the one you have to take. However, if your arm has been worked over, and you suddenly start throwing clotheslines with it with no ill effect, we have a problem.

 

Storytelling: Exactly what it says on the tin - telling a story, and the nature of the medium is such that all matches do this automatically. If absolutely nothing else, a wrestling match will, by default, tell the story of two or more people who are trying to win a martial arts competition against one another. Usually, this built-in story is kinda unremarkable on it's own, though, so we often look for additional story to be piled on top of it. "This arm injury has put worker A at a serious disadvantage, especially as he needs this arm to do his finisher" would be an example of such a story, though it's hardly the only one. But it elevates it above the basic "two fighters fighting" and can make the match pop and stand out from the pack more.

 

Wrestling matches are supposed to be entertainment. Why would I ever want to watch a wrestling match that I didn't think was entertaining? Why would "entertainment" and "wrestling match" be mutually exclusive? Yes, there are assholes out there like Scooter Keith who might treat it that way, but we're not them, and you'd think he'd know that by now. Why is he still talking to us like we are?

I've been taking part in the DVDR project -- admittedly late on board with the All Japan set. But I've read through many comments in Too Short on the Mid South set too.

 

People do draw a distinction, whether explicitly or implcitly, between "I really enjoyed this" and "this was a great match". I can't point to individuals, but there IS a tendency to draw a line between FUN on the one hand, and QUALITY on the other.

 

Flair vs. Jumbo is QUALITY

 

A chaotic 6-man tag from 88 is FUN

 

Do you think this distinction doesn't exist? And do you think I'm mistaken to point to it?

I think you're mistaken as to what it means. I don't want to speak for everyone, but when I say a match is "fun but not great" or something like that, it doesn't mean that great things aren't also fun. I enjoy greatness. That's what makes it great. But not everything I enjoy is necessarily great. You look at my iPhone, you'll see I listen to a lot of really cheesy, embarrassing 80's music that well and truly enjoy, but I would be very squeamish about calling great. But that doesn't mean I don't genuinely enjoy all of the actual great music I also have on there. People are saying that thus and such match is enjoyable but not great, but are any of them saying that thus and such match is great but not enjoyable? These people are making a distinction, but it doesn't mean what you think it means.

 

So Loss, are you saying there is no scope for the wrestling equivalent of absurdism? Or Dadaism?

Oh God, no! Look, wrestling's narrative tools are limited. Very, very limited. Maybe more limited than any other medium of fiction in existence. It does not have the weight necessary to embrace high artistic concepts. And even if it could, does anyone actually want to see that? Do you even really want to see that?

[Jingus]

This is a damn fine thread, gentlemen. This is probably the single best board I've ever seen for deep analysis and wide-ranging discussion of this topic; and even by those standards, this discussion rules. Good work, everyone.

 

There's nothing praiseworthy about a guy working over someone's knee because it was injured on the outside. The other day I watched a great movie called Mamma Roma by the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini. It tells the story of an ex-prostitute trying to start a new life so that she can raise her teenage son properly. Early on, there's a scene where the son and another character talk about whether they're afraid of death and the son says he's not. From that piece of information I'm sure you can all figure out what happens to the son in the end. It's a nice piece of set-up, but that's all it is -- set-up. You don't praise a movie for its set-up and you shouldn't praise a wrestling match just because of a simple bit of action that took place. A guy working over another guy's knee doesn't tell a story anymore than the Mamma Roma set-up.

That's true to an extent, but the difference is that you can do something different with the film setup than the the wrestling setup. In the film, maybe the son doesn't die, but someone else close to him does or he gains a fear of death through some other manner. There's different places you can take that other than the obvious. In wrestling, if a guy hurts his knee on the outside, "work the knee" is pretty much the only thing that makes sense to do next. I guess you could theoretically build a storyline around some honorable babyface who refuses to take cheap advantage of an accidental opening, but I can't think of any easy way to do it which wouldn't make the face look like a goody-two-shoes dumbass.

 

I think it was Jingus who once mentioned how difficult it is to have a compelling match centered around legwork because one of the wrestlers is spending most of the match lying on his back or hobbling around.

Yeah, that was me, thanks. It does slow the match waaaaay down when it's based around legwork. There's only two ways you can take that: in the first, one guy spends the rest of the match moving in slow motion, and it's easy for the action to drag. The only other choice is to make like a NJPW juniors match and just blow the work off later, and that's annoying too. It's like halfway through the match, they zap you with the Men In Black memory eraser and just pretend that the earlier limb work never happened. Yes, it does fill time, but it's a shitty way to fill time because it's insulting our intelligence. Even a storytelling medium as traditionally stupid as wrestling shouldn't expect us to forget something that we just watched five minutes ago.

 

But if they really hate each other and have some sort of vendetta, then you've at least got the makings of a story.

That can backfire too, though. Remember the boring-as-hell Morton/Gibson match from Bash '91? That's a grudge match which should've been a crazy fiery brawl, with the wronged Robert trying to beat the evil out of his turnabout partner Ricky. But they went work-the-leg instead, and took forever doing it, and ruined what might've been the only good match on paper for that card.

 

I always hated it, though, because in real life a knee injury would sideline a worker for months and they're right back at it the next night.

That's a good point, actually. I could play devil's advocate and argue that it does kinda go with the territory, because in real life you'd also be sidelined from getting punched in the face a hundred times, which tends to happen in plenty of matches. But still, it does get annoying when you've got stuff like HHH/Jericho from Mania 18 where they go overboard in how ridiculously injured the leg must be. Logically speaking, by the end of that match Jericho should've been able to take Trip's leg back to Canada with him and drink beer out of it in celebration. But I bet that by the time we got to next week's Raw eight days later, HHH probably wasn't even limping.

 

But I do want to be the first person in history to compare the Chamber of Horrors match from Havoc 91 to Pasolini's Salo. Not sure which one is the more horrific.

Hey, that sort of fits! "If you engage in any ordinary act of conventional wrestling, you will be severely punished. Now go do all these hideously unnatural garbage spots!"

 

 

Also worth noting: If you look at the percentage of great wrestling to bad wrestling, the bad wrestling percentage is way higher. I'm not sure if the ratio of bad books, bad movies and bad music to good is higher (it very well may be), but sometimes, basic competency receives praise because basic competency is not something that's a given. The bar is admittedly low sometimes, because there's so much bad stuff out there. On a show with 8 matches, if one match is generally logical, it's going to receive praise -- maybe more than it deserves -- because it's surrounded by so much crap. Proper context matters a ton.

It's more than just Sturgeon's law though!

 

I think most bad books, bad movies, etc... most of them have basic storytelling logic. They're bad in execution, but most bad novels, for instance, at least tell a story. Most bad movies can be followed. Not all, but most. Basic coherence is "square one" element for most narrative mediums. It's a starting point. You almost can't not have it.

 

It's not like that with wrestling. As wrestling has developed in the US, for one reason or another, it's not "square one." It's just not.

 

If you read 8 random novels from this year, I bet at least 7 would make sense. Some might be good. Most would probably be bad, but a huge majority would have basic coherence. as you said, on a card, you might get one match out of eight like that.

 

THAT is why it stands out so much. In almost every other medium, it's a given. In wrestling, it's anything but.

 

The percentage of great to bad is the same in any medium. The difference between wrestling and other creative endeavours is that at every stage of the creative process be it scriptwriting or songwriting or even shooting a film there is the chance for revision. Basic competency in these endeavours doesn't come easily but you can achieve it by reworking what you've created. If I rewrite a screenplay a dozen times it's going to be a lot more competent than the first time I wrote it regardless of how good I am at structuring a story. In wrestling, you can only really improve your match by doing it again and even if you do the same match night after night on the houseshow circuit you still need to produce your improved performance live. It's a much different discipline. Wrestlers don't labour over a match for a year like writers do with a screenplay. It doesn't take two or three years to produce a match like it does a film. The closest analogy is probably a prolific songwriter, but they still craft their work far more than a wrestler does. But really, most wrestling sucks because it's not important. Aside from matches that disappoint, there's no reason for most wrestling to be any better than it is. Take the Tito/Bossman match I watched earlier tonight. Theoretically, Tito and the Bossman had a great match in them but there was no reason to have one. Thankfully, some wrestling environments are better than others when it comes to the motivation or incentive to have a great match, but 90% of the time it's missing.

Even though you're arguing against each other, I feel like you're all correct. Most wrestling is indeed crap, like most entertainment in any media tends to be crap; but wrestling has a higher crap/gold ratio than most, for several good and not-so-good reasons which you've outlined.

 

Anyway, back to wrestling. At some point (long time ago), I thought too that a guy working on a leg or an arm was sufficient enough to be call psych. I was wrong, of course. Most of "working on a leg/arm" stuff is just spending a little time before the end run, and only in good matches does it play any actual role.

You're wrong. It is psych. The psych is to fill a section of the match and/or kill time. If it's well done by engaging the crowd, it's effective even if it has dick to do with the finish. It might not be "great psych", but there is thought there.

 

I tend to think that triple table spots are bad because the force the guy going through the table to lay around far fucking too long. But the psych is:

 

"This is a COOOLLLL MOTHERFUCKING SPOT that the CROWD WILL LUUUUUUUVVVVVVV!!!"

 

You've done a great job in explaining how bad psych isn't the same as no psych. Here's an example: Teddy Hart. His ideas of psychology are very different from yours and mine, because we're humans from Earth and Teddy is some kind of weird alien robot. But he does actually have ideas. Ever notice his really odd manner of selling injuries? Ted's whole mindset is that he wants to sell injuries in the same way that athletes do in real sports. They fall down and go boom, and then there's a period where they're frozen in pain and just go "OW! FUCK!" while trying to gauge just how badly hurt they really are. And then after that, they get right back up (quickly, maybe even too quickly for their own good) and try very hard to mask the fact that they're in serious trouble. It doesn't make much sense from a wrestling psychology standpoint, but there's a reason why he does it.

 

On a deeper level if you happen to watch 10 matches where Ric gets tossed off the top in all ten? If you think a second about it from "Wrestler Ric's" perspective rather than Worker Ric's perspective, it's kind of stupid: going to the top fails to work roughly 95% of the time for Ric. If Ric were truly the best wrestler in the world that he claims, he wouldn't try something that fails 95% of the time.

The weird thing is how Flair sometimes goes through a period where he'll actually hit that double axehandle at least 50% of the time. I noticed it especially in his last big babyface run in the WWE, he was hitting it all the time.

 

So Loss, are you saying there is no scope for the wrestling equivalent of absurdism? Or Dadaism?

Oh God, no! Look, wrestling's narrative tools are limited. Very, very limited. Maybe more limited than any other medium of fiction in existence. It does not have the weight necessary to embrace high artistic concepts. And even if it could, does anyone actually want to see that? Do you even really want to see that?

 

Wrestling's a very inarticulate manner of expression. It's one of those "a picture is worth a thousand words" sort of deals. It's often hard to coherently describe the emotions that a great match incites in us, because the two aren't very comparable. Wrestling appeals to a primitive and animalistic part of the brain, which is partly why the crowds at these events often look like a horde of testosterone-fueled drunken cavemen. You really do have to at least partially relax your intellectual standards and kinda just turn off your brain in order to completely enjoy it.