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

[Matt D]

This is a tremendous aside in the midst of all of this but...one of my happiest moments as a wrestling fan was watching a Tully/Arn tag match where Tully hit the standing axe-handle off the second rope on a prone opponent. The opponent didn't get a foot up. It wasn't a transition move. It was an effective offensive move. That's the only time I've ever seen it work and it magically validated, to me, every other time I've seen the counter.

[MikeCampbell]

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

See Windham, Barry. Also Rhodes, Dustin.

 

BTW, I didn't just pull the Davey/Eddie example out of thin air when trying to give my definition of psych. I purposely used an example where leg work would be meaningful to the hypothetical match. For every match with meaningful leg work like that, there are probably 1000 where it's strictly filler and has no meaning or impact at all.

[Matt D]

It's so strange to me, on some level though, to realize that so many wrestlers have to be thinking "This is just what I should be doing right now" or "I have to kill x amount of time" without thinking about the why of what they're doing. Don't you think that would drive you nuts as a wrestler? To be doing something and not knowing why you were doing it?

 

I know it drives me nuts on my job. If I don't know what the point of some bureaucratic task I'm doing and how it fits in to the big picture, I go nuts. But then there are people in the office who just want to come in, do what they're told, get paid and go home, so I don't know.

[Ottar the Viking]

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?

 

I think it's more than just limited narrative tools. Two other things:

 

1. a match is SHORT, especially in terms of the narrative tools available. Short fiction relies on conventions of its genre to basically pull from a larger palette than it really has available.

2. there's a suspension of disbelief issue. The farther from everyday reality you are, the more important it is that you follow the rules consistently.

 

Finally, absurdist / Dada / surrealist theater is often pretty far from entertaining. It places demands on the audience, making them work very hard to interpret what they are seeing, or making them give up on interpretation itself. The wrestling equivalent - wrestling stripped of reason and structure and the conceit of an athletic competition - would be interesting as a sort of two-person semi-improvised gymnastic free-jazz odyssey, perhaps. Once.

[Jingus]

It's so strange to me, on some level though, to realize that so many wrestlers have to be thinking "This is just what I should be doing right now" or "I have to kill x amount of time" without thinking about the why of what they're doing. Don't you think that would drive you nuts as a wrestler? To be doing something and not knowing why you were doing it?

You'd be surprised. Part of it is that hindsight is 20/20, and it's much easier to criticize something afterwards than to be making the decision yourself in the heat of the moment. How many times have you groaned aloud at someone who made a stupid call on a game show, in a "how could they have possibly thought that was a good idea?!" manner? Same deal here.

 

But a lot of the time, guys do indeed let things slip which they really should have caught. Part of it can be sheer laziness or habit; once they get into the pattern of doing things a certain way, it's awfully hard to change. Once they have a comfortable formula, it's a hell of a lot easier to stick to that plan and rarely or never make any deviations.

 

Especially since this is really a pretty tiny part of their overall lives. The matches we see take up less than an hour of the 160 that makes up their weekly routine. Haven't you ever had your personal life get into your head and distract you from your job? Now imagine that your entire job performance is graded on three minutes' worth of work, and even a single mistake can get you labelled as a shitty employee. The infamous Trish/Jackie Gayda match, for example; go back and watch it, because the entire reputation of that match is really based on two hideously botched spots. But to hear people talk about it, you'd think it was like that truly unbelievable Sharmell/Jenna James holocaust, a jaw-dropping conga line of inexplicable fuckups on every level. Two blown spots basically killed Jackie Gayda's career in its cradle. That's a hell of a lot of pressure to be under, and some people respond to stress by turning into a deer in the headlights.

 

Also doesn't help that some wrestlers truly know jack shit about psychology. I guarantee you that the average poster on this board knows more about the history and theory of wrestling than the majority of guys in the ring. When you start doing something as your day job, it becomes very hard to keep learning new things about your vocation. It's much easier to go through the motions, collect your paycheck, and go home to your family and forget all about your job until it's time to go back to work. Furthermore, I this sounds odd, but most wrestlers don't watch nearly as much wrestling as the hardcore fans do. Imagine it in filmmaking terms: critics spend much more time watching movies than directors do, because directors are using that time to make movies. Roger Ebert has seen more films and knows more cinema history than Steven Spielberg does, because they devote their daily lives to completely different aspects of that medium. Same deal with wrestlers; Dave Meltzer knows more about the non-hands-on aspect of wrestling than Triple H ever will. And this is just talking about the guys who actually like their craft and want to know as much as possible. Imagine what the clock-punchers are like, the apathetic assholes who are only doing it for the money and don't give a shit about the art.

[Matt D]

Haven't we already seen Ken the Box?

[Loss]

Trying to think of who some of the known biggest tape-watching nerds in wrestling are.

 

Rey, Juventud, Waltman ... I'm sure there are others. Name them.

[NintendoLogic]

(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.

I agree with your overall argument, but I don't think this is entirely fair. Yes, Rey is trained and highly skilled. But so are John Cena and Randy Orton and Big Show and Khali (from a kayfabe standpoint). For Rey to be credible, he has to be presented as so much more skilled than his opponents that it makes up for the size handicap. It's true that wrestling shouldn't be seen like a shoot. But it isn't entirely fanciful, either. Just because people can buy Wolverine taking down men several times his size in a comic book doesn't mean they'd buy something similar in a wrestling ring. Hornswoggle could be the most skilled wrestler who ever lived, but presenting him as a legitimate threat to the heavyweights would stretch suspension of disbelief to the breaking point.

 

Also, the idea that a larger fighter has an advantage over a smaller one isn't something that Vince McMahon created out of whole cloth. The adage "a good big guy will always beat a good little guy" has been around in boxing for decades. That's why non-worked combat sports have weight classes. And in Japan, where the masses haven't been subjected to Vince's propaganda, guys like Jushin Liger and Naomichi Marufuji have struggled to get over when pushed in the heavyweight division.

 

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

 

FLIK and Gregor's responses when I made this exact point a couple of pages ago is a textbook example of the intent versus interpretation debate. I'd say they were over-intellectualizing something that Flair himself never seemed to put a great deal of thought into.

[ohtani's jacket]

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

See Windham, Barry. Also Rhodes, Dustin.

 

BTW, I didn't just pull the Davey/Eddie example out of thin air when trying to give my definition of psych. I purposely used an example where leg work would be meaningful to the hypothetical match. For every match with meaningful leg work like that, there are probably 1000 where it's strictly filler and has no meaning or impact at all.

 

It's not meaningful to the match unless there's something more going on than leg work. Leg work doesn't tell a story no matter how logical it may be. Bret Hart setting a guy up for the sharpshooter involves a logical progression of moves but it doesn't tell a story. Now if the guy he's doing it to kicked his leg out from under his leg and just happens to be his little brother, then you've got some sort of a story.

[NintendoLogic]

Trying to think of who some of the known biggest tape-watching nerds in wrestling are.

 

Rey, Juventud, Waltman ... I'm sure there are others. Name them.

CM Punk has clearly watched a shitload of tapes. I'd say that's true for most of the guys who have spent a significant amount of time in ROH, actually. It's just that most of them seem to be looking for cool moves and spots to lift rather than a better understanding of storytelling.

[Matt D]

Especially since this is really a pretty tiny part of their overall lives. The matches we see take up less than an hour of the 160 that makes up their weekly routine. Haven't you ever had your personal life get into your head and distract you from your job?

I'm sure John is going to come in and call me a rube BUT, a lot of the old timey guys say that during long car rides in the territory days one of the only things they COULD do was talk about wrestling.

[Matt D]

It's not meaningful to the match unless there's something more going on than leg work. Leg work doesn't tell a story no matter how logical it may be. Bret Hart setting a guy up for the sharpshooter involves a logical progression of moves but it doesn't tell a story. Now if the guy he's doing it to kicked his leg out from under his leg and just happens to be his little brother, then you've got some sort of a story.

One thing I thoroughly enjoyed about all the Demolition matches I saw was how Darsow and (especially) Eadie's constant pressure, making the babyfaces work for every single inch they got, provided the traditional babyface armwork during the shine period more meaning. In every one of those matches vs the Rougeaus or Killer Bees, it feels like they're just trying to CONTAIN the bigger wrestlers with the armwork, that they're just fighting for their lives because if they let the Demos get on offense it will go very very poorly for them.

 

It's not necessarily about setting up a finish, but to me it was a very clear, logical, and meaningful part of the matches and a lot of that played out in the little things that a guy like Eadie would do, both in selling and in constantly attempting to find a way to get on offense instead of just sitting down and taking it.

[Victator]

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.

Well he did win a World title one of the few times it worked, and getting caught never caused him to directly lose.

[Jingus]

I'm sure John is going to come in and call me a rube BUT, a lot of the old timey guys say that during long car rides in the territory days one of the only things they COULD do was talk about wrestling.

To an extent, yeah, but not really all the time. First of all, it's one of those "we wrestled four hundred matches a year and every match was a one-hour broadway" exaggerations about The Good Old Days that old veterans bring up whenever they're talking about how all the young wrestlers today suck. And considering how today's WWE guys spend much more of their travel time and social life away from each other, it cuts down on how much they can talk about it; rather than riding for twelve hours a day in the car, they're on a plane for a couple of hours maybe sitting next to random strangers, and lots of the young guys prefer to go sleep or play video games in their hotel rooms rather than hang around the bar all night.

 

But more importantly, even the most obsessive wrestling fan in the world can't talk about it forever. Sooner or later every conversation gets old. When you've been riding with the same guys literally hundreds of times, there's only so many times that you can re-tell the same stories before you want to give up and discuss something, anything else. That happens faster when guys get older; lots of aging wrestlers get burned out to the point where they'll grimace if anyone even tries to talk about wrestling outside of what's necessary for the job tonight.

[ohtani's jacket]

It's not necessarily about setting up a finish, but to me it was a very clear, logical, and meaningful part of the matches and a lot of that played out in the little things that a guy like Eadie would do, both in selling and in constantly attempting to find a way to get on offense instead of just sitting down and taking it.

The way I see it, that's just good wrestling. I've been watching these Tito/Orton matches were the work is mostly good, but you'd be hard pressed to say they have any sort of story unless you think Tito and Orton go to a draw is a story. I suppose my argument is that work is mostly just work and only sometimes gets elevated to storytelling.

[Johnny Sorrow]

It's so strange to me, on some level though, to realize that so many wrestlers have to be thinking "This is just what I should be doing right now" or "I have to kill x amount of time" without thinking about the why of what they're doing. Don't you think that would drive you nuts as a wrestler? To be doing something and not knowing why you were doing it?

 

I know it drives me nuts on my job. If I don't know what the point of some bureaucratic task I'm doing and how it fits in to the big picture, I go nuts. But then there are people in the office who just want to come in, do what they're told, get paid and go home, so I don't know.

I always love how whenever some doc shows some guys backstage going over their upcoming match it's always, "So I'll start and do my bullshit, then wham, wham, switch it, do some bullshit, hit that buckle spot, wham, wham, some bullshit and then we go home."

 

And then we watch it and use terms like, "Control segments".

[Matt D]

It's not necessarily about setting up a finish, but to me it was a very clear, logical, and meaningful part of the matches and a lot of that played out in the little things that a guy like Eadie would do, both in selling and in constantly attempting to find a way to get on offense instead of just sitting down and taking it.

The way I see it, that's just good wrestling. I've been watching these Tito/Orton matches were the work is mostly good, but you'd be hard pressed to say they have any sort of story unless you think Tito and Orton go to a draw is a story. I suppose my argument is that work is mostly just work and only sometimes gets elevated to storytelling.

 

Which is an argument for why it stands out so much and is more than just a "bare minimum" requirement when it does, no? There are a ton of meaningless shine periods in... well, 90% of all 80s tag team matches, no matter what company we're looking at.

 

(likewise with "playing a role." It wouldn't be thought of as anything special for a big man to play his role well, that is to know when to give and when not to give, to have offense that makes sense and uses his mass effectively, proper intimidation, etc., if every big man did it and did it well)

 

Since we're talking about Tito a lot, he had a very distinct view of how wrestling should work and he has voiced it.

 

Basically:

 

In the opening third, he outwrestles the heel (with no exception!), then the heel does something underhanded to get on top, and finally Tito has his big comeback. That seems to be the extent of thought he put into it.

[ohtani's jacket]

I can understand being impressed by a good bit of work and wanting to expatiate upon the bigger picture, but I think there's a limit to how much you can praise this sort of thing. I know you haven't said it's the case, but I don't think Demolition matches are good because they have captivating shine periods. I dunno, it just seems like mechanics to me.

 

But anyway, we all watch wrestling in our own way and care about different things at different times. Tito's philosophy is probably true of most wrestlers. Wrestling really is the same schtick every time, but as people have pointed out in the past it was never really meant to be watched on televisions and computers years after it was worked for a paying audience. Well, except for the forays into the home video market. Those Coliseum videos were made to last a lifetime, I'm sure. I don't think anyone was meant to watch copious amounts of Tito Santana matches in a row, though.

[Matt D]

I do tend to believe/agree that even when a bit of storytelling in a match really stands out, it's still only rarely because wrestlers were thinking of a bigger picture/story/"the why of the what."

 

I think a lot of the time they were either protecting themselves/their character/their image or simply doing what they knew worked. So sometimes when a match really sings storywise, it's because of the combination of those things (that is, sometimes, when both participants in a match are trying to make themselves look good, it creates a logical sort of competitive story/chess match OR things that move the crowd tend to move them for a reason, and sometimes it's a narrative one).

 

But I just can't believe it's like that all the time, or that it's just subconscious in the wrestlers all the time. Sometimes some wrestlers had to be thinking about it and it shows up in some wrestlers' work.

 

That said, at the end of the day, what really matters, I suppose, isn't the intention of the wrestlers but the match itself, and then how you as a viewer choose to watch and enjoy it. I like matches where I can overlay coherent narratives more than ones where I can't, all else equal. I think those matches are (subjectively) better than ones where I can't, all things equal. That's just me, though, but if I am going to discuss a match with someone, that's my bias.

[goodhelmet]

From the territory wrestlers, I know Foley said he and Hildebrand were big tape collectors.

 

Also, I think there has to be a differenc ewhen it comes to age. Territory guys were always jumping from one place to the next and technology wasn't up to speed so it had to be difficult to collect tapes and study "the game", Buddy Rose and Jim Cornette exempt of course.

 

If you look at guys 35 and younger, I am pretty sure they are avid collectors, or at the very least, watch matches when the opportunity presents itself. When I have been able to get wrestler comps to the older guys, the reaction is always the same... "thanks, I had no footage of my career." With the younger guys, the question is always the same... "Do you have footage of OLD WRESTLER X?"

[jdw]

You'd be surprised.

 

[...]

Very interesting post to read and think about it. Not in the "posters here give more thought" aspect, but the rest.

 

John

[jdw]

It's not meaningful to the match unless there's something more going on than leg work. Leg work doesn't tell a story no matter how logical it may be. Bret Hart setting a guy up for the sharpshooter involves a logical progression of moves but it doesn't tell a story. Now if the guy he's doing it to kicked his leg out from under his leg and just happens to be his little brother, then you've got some sort of a story.

The legwork and armwork in the Sammy-Ohtani told a story.

 

The legwork in Fuchi-Kroffat told a story.

 

Even in a match where it's discarded, there can be story aspects. We shouldn't be so narrow in thought to think a match tells only one story. I just watched a 42 minute episode of a lightweight TV show that told at least three stories, and possibly 4-5 if I thought more about it. And that's not even like I'm watching Deadwood where't they might be juggling a dozen stories / storylines in an hour... and perhaps two dozen if we want to pick it all apart given where we know all of these characters are going.

 

Looking even at the "throwaway" elements of El Classico:

 

* Misawa working Kawada's leg touches on a storyline going back to the 1993 RWTL (without thinking deeper)

* Kawada's working of Misawa's neck/back touches on a storyline going back to the 1994 Carny

* Kawada working Misawa's ear was pulled out of thin air to play off something that happened in the match

 

Do they play into the over riding storyline of the match (Kawada can't beat Misawa)?

 

I think the better question is:

 

Do they have to?

 

I'll point again to the Hansen-Taue match from Carny '94, which I'm really hoping makes the Yearbook cut. People need to see what a very well executed one-note match looks like. And then ponder whether they want every match to look like that.

 

As much as I think elements of the match are brillant, especially Hansen's *entire* performance, that brillance would vanish if it were a common match. 12/96, 6/95, 6/94... people's pick as the best Lucha, Lawler or Fujiwara are unlikely to be as one-note as that one, and it's unlikely that their Top 5 picks in any of those categories is remotely close to that single minded on storyline.

 

John

[jdw]

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.

Well he did win a World title one of the few times it worked, and getting caught never caused him to directly lose.

 

I'm aware of him making it work... though that famous win was due to the ref tripping Race.

 

But you're making a sports analogy that would be this:

 

I once had a hail mary TD that won a game.

 

In my next 100 starts, at the 7:30 mark of each 2nd quarter (our as close as I can get to it with possession of the ball), I'll toss a Hail Mary to "test" the defense.

 

So even if I throw 95 INTS, it's "worth it" due to the 5 times I'll connect for a TD.

 

That's kind of...

 

A Dumb Fuck QB.

 

Which is what I think we'd all agree if we analyzed Heel Champion Wrestler Ric Flair at any depth. Dumb, Weak and/or a Bitch in most of what he did.

 

John

[Loss]

Also, there was no heat on beating Flair. The heat was on taking the title from him, as that was harder to do. I think he hurt himself in some ways in that regard, because Flair doing a job didn't mean as much as it should have.

[Matt D]

Do they play into the over riding storyline of the match (Kawada can't beat Misawa)?

 

I think the better question is:

 

Do they have to?

To me, a more important aspect isn't whether or not they play into the over riding single story of a match, but whether or not they can be logically chained together to create something at least feasibly coherent. At the very least a framework. Does one chapter somehow lead into the next? After seeing the whole thing, does it feel like it all had some point? Or did it all just feel haphazard and disjointed?