Tropes in pro-wrestling that you loathe

[Jingus]

Some guys truly didn't know/understand the work until they'd had a few matches. A guy I know who trained at the USWA school told me about it; they basically taught the guys how to do moves and protect themselves on bumps, but kinda acted like it was just a part of an elaborately stylized method of combat which was designed to let guys fight every night without getting seriously hurt. Even in the dressing room, the veterans tended to kayfabe the greenest rookies. And most curtain-jerking kids were flatly told not to punch or kick, period, usually with some explanation that they had to learn good old-fashioned technical wrestling first. (Hell, this part still happens in WWE developmental to this very day!) Their opponent was either another green kid who had no idea what they were doing, leading to a clusterfuck; or a veteran who basically ate the rookie's lunch and kept him down on the mat for most of the match.

 

It still sounds awfully weird, but I've heard it too many times from guys I trust for it to be a complete myth. "I had my first match before being smartened up" really happened; although, it might not have happened nearly as often and consistently as some back-in-my-day veterans claim. Maybe they just did it to the overly credulous, particularly markish trainees who would swallow that bullshit without asking questions.

[Matt D]

Does Heel In Peril work better when the heels are the tag team champs? Especially if the faces are larger.

[PeteF3]

Does Heel In Peril work better when the heels are the tag team champs? Especially if the faces are larger.

I don't know the specific answer here but you beat me to a point I wanted to make about how much better AJPW seemed to be about when Heel in Peril was worked. The standout example for me would be Hansen & DiBiase (and yes, they were tag champs) defending against Yatsu & Nakano, a sleeper bout from the '80s set. The foreigners are on the defensive almost the entire match, with DiBiase working a bum knee while Hansen is played up as this lurking, devastating tornado on the apron...until he gets tagged in and promptly hurts HIS knee, and suddenly the underdog natives look to have a real chance. The whole thing seemed like the two natives just barely hanging on by doing all the right things, strategy-wise, rather than an excuse to bitch out the heels as seemed to happen so often in WWF tags. It was the wrestling equivalent to Bill Parcells' Giants beating the offensive juggernaut Bills by playing conservative, run-it-up-the-gut football and keeping that offense off the field (until they ran into a Hansen Lariat, but the thought was there).

 

My first instinct is to say yes, it is more effective with heel champs, but I don't know if the babyfaces being bigger has anything to do with it. I would say just the opposite--that "cutting the ring in half" is a more effective storyline when it's the heels who have the size advantage. To use a shitty example, any team challenging the Colossal Connection would obviously want to keep Haku in the ring as much as possible. That's smart strategy from a kaybae standpoint and in a real-life standpoint it keeps Andre (or Warlord, or some other shitty partner you care to use) from seeing any meaningful action.

[Strummer]

Some guys truly didn't know/understand the work until they'd had a few matches. A guy I know who trained at the USWA school told me about it; they basically taught the guys how to do moves and protect themselves on bumps, but kinda acted like it was just a part of an elaborately stylized method of combat which was designed to let guys fight every night without getting seriously hurt. Even in the dressing room, the veterans tended to kayfabe the greenest rookies. And most curtain-jerking kids were flatly told not to punch or kick, period, usually with some explanation that they had to learn good old-fashioned technical wrestling first. (Hell, this part still happens in WWE developmental to this very day!) Their opponent was either another green kid who had no idea what they were doing, leading to a clusterfuck; or a veteran who basically ate the rookie's lunch and kept him down on the mat for most of the match.

 

It still sounds awfully weird, but I've heard it too many times from guys I trust for it to be a complete myth. "I had my first match before being smartened up" really happened; although, it might not have happened nearly as often and consistently as some back-in-my-day veterans claim. Maybe they just did it to the overly credulous, particularly markish trainees who would swallow that bullshit without asking questions.

the first cast of Tough Enough (11 years ago!) seemed particularly markish. I'm not going to outright claim that some of them thought wrestling was real but by some of their reactions you had to at least wonder. That little smart mark Josh Mathews was rolling his eyes in disgust at the rest of the cast all the time.

 

and Les Thatcher on WOL years ago said every new class he gets a high percentage that say they want to be the Ultimate Warrior or Hulk Hogan where they just bulldoze the other guy in the ring.

 

Years ago there was a thread at DVDVR about meetings and dealings with marks and I remember almost crying from laughter

[Jason Mann]

I'm pretty pro-Peril. My sole dislike of it would be 80s WWF-style Heel In Peril in tags where you get way too much Heels being put in peril and just not enough of the time being spent with the faces in Peril. That's just poor stuff.

 

John

Just curious, but what's a good example of an '80s WWF-style heel in peril tag match? I'm not sure if I've seen one, and I'm a pretty big fan of mid to late 1980s WWF tag teams.

[Matt D]

British Bulldogs were really bad about it. They took way too much of the match as their own.

[Negro Suave]

Another trope I loath:

 

Old time wrestlers talking about "not getting smartened up to the business until..."

 

You always wish they would explain what the fuck the mean by that.

 

Didn't know that it was entertainment dressed up as fake sports?

 

Didn't know that you stamp your foot when throwing a punch, and make sure to not throw the punch like you do in a real fight to avoid knocking your opponent goofy?

 

Seriously... how could someone by their mid-teens not know it is what it is? Honestly, I never knew how people past "The Easter Bunny Is Real" age could watch wrestling and not see the obvious stuff that gave away the ghost on it.

 

So...

 

What aspect of pro wrestling were you "Smartened Up" to at that point?

 

John

I think you are being needlessly high and mighty on this one. It is very easy to look at things in 2012 and say how gosh darn blatantly obvious it is that there is mroe "working" as opposed to "wrestling". However you are taking things way out of context when you you just can't understand how people couldnt see that it was "fake" even the boys. Pro wrestling carnies was all about making money. Until you proved yourself you were just a mark. So they beat up and stretched the hopefuls and which ever ones were stupid enough to keep at it got actual training.

 

And thinking that it's all fake is the worst mindset for a professional wrestler to have so if you scare the shit out of a kid and make him beieve that everythign is real you'll either get a tough as nails kid out the other side who can keep that image alive, or you get a kid who runs back home and tells everyone that he couldnt do it because it was too real.

[jdw]

I think you are being needlessly high and mighty on this one. It is very easy to look at things in 2012 and say how gosh darn blatantly obvious it is that there is mroe "working" as opposed to "wrestling".

I was born in 1966.

 

Wrestling was on TV in Los Angeles in the early-to-mid 70s, as was Roller Derby.

 

They were blatantly obvious Fake to me... when I was 6-7 years old... after barely watching either of them.

 

Which I why I said this:

 

Honestly, I never knew how people past "The Easter Bunny Is Real" age could watch wrestling and not see the obvious stuff that gave away the ghost on it.

I didn't need to know the details of How it's Faked (a/k/a worked). It's a bit like Magic: the chick in the box wasn't getting sawed in half, so it was faked. Didn't need to know how the illusion was created to know that it was fake... frankly never have given a shit about how magic is faked as it just doesn't interest me.

 

Didn't care about how wrestling was faked when I was a kid because I was then, as now, a "real sports" junkie. I only started caring about the process of Working when I got into pro wrestling in 1986 as a drunk stoner college kid who started getting a kick out of Flair and Cornette on TBS while pulling bong loads and I began to appreciate the "Entertainment" of pro wrestling. Orobably the only positive that came out of smoking weed.

 

Anyway, if it's high and mighty in tone, I apologize. I don't think that anything in my initial post, nor in this one, is claiming that "Only The Smartest Kids" thought that pro wrestling was Fake, because the sense I got was that Every Kid at my elementary after a certain early age knew it was Fake. I get that there are kids in other schools, and quite possibly kids on this board, who got to the age of 10 believing pro wrestling was Real (as opposed to not very far below the surface knowing it was fake but Wanting To Believe enough to con themselves). I don't quite get how they could believe it was real, but what the heck... it happens.

 

What I 100% don't get is how people going into the business claim that they weren't Smartened Up to the Business until what is ridiculously late. Jingus' post is informative... I'm not sure I can grasp those wrestlers get that far... I suspect that even Jingus drops his jaws over it.

 

John

[goodhelmet]

I'm pretty pro-Peril. My sole dislike of it would be 80s WWF-style Heel In Peril in tags where you get way too much Heels being put in peril and just not enough of the time being spent with the faces in Peril. That's just poor stuff.

 

John

Just curious, but what's a good example of an '80s WWF-style heel in peril tag match? I'm not sure if I've seen one, and I'm a pretty big fan of mid to late 1980s WWF tag teams.

 

British Bulldogs vs. Beefcake and Valentine from Wrestlemania 2. Bulldogs control most of the match and it worked out fine. I love that match.

[jdw]

I'm pretty pro-Peril. My sole dislike of it would be 80s WWF-style Heel In Peril in tags where you get way too much Heels being put in peril and just not enough of the time being spent with the faces in Peril. That's just poor stuff.

 

John

Just curious, but what's a good example of an '80s WWF-style heel in peril tag match? I'm not sure if I've seen one, and I'm a pretty big fan of mid to late 1980s WWF tag teams.

 

Walked through some of them in my WWF thread:

 

10/03/87 Strike Force vs Islanders (10:47)

http://www.otherarena.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=9193#9193

 

But you're quickly faced with this being WWF Style Tag Work, which means that Hot Face Opening and the Heel In Peril stuff eats up a ton of the match. This is just a 10:47 match, and that part of the match eats up 6:20 of it.

 

That means we're going to have to sprint through the Face In Peril material. There is some nice stuff in there, such as Tama's jumping back elbow, Haku's dropkick shoulderbreaker, and Martel eating a payback bump to the floor from Tama. But there tag heel stylings such as the distraction spots, cutting off the ring and whatnot are all pretty rushed. Highspots over more basic tag work, but that's going to be the case when the Face In Peril section goes just 3:20 in length

 

08/28/89 Brainbusters vs. Hart Foundation (15:58)

http://www.otherarena.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=3258#3258

 

First 10 minutes are HIP, only 3:30 of FIP before it's time to work towards the finish.

 

 

12/28/84 Adrian Adonis & Dick Murdoch vs Briscos (26:45)

http://www.otherarena.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=3222#3222

 

My times:

 

00:00 - 10:05 Heels In Peril

10:05 - 12:36 Gerry In Peril

12:36 - 15:45 Dick In Peril

15:45 - 17:39 Adonis In Peril

17:39 - 21:06 Gerry Eating Big Moves

21:06 - 26:45 Faces Trying To Win + Brawl Finish

 

4/07/86 Dream Team vs British Bulldogs (12:02)

http://www.otherarena.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=2937#2937

 

Odd match in retrospect. This is straight WWF Tag Heel In Peril work as the Bulldogs dominate the first ten plus minutes. The heels have a minute here, forty seconds there where they have the advantage, but don't sustain it.

 

09/18/82 Johnny Rodz & Jose Estrada vs Tony Garea & Steve Travis (14:16, 3:46, 3:11)

http://www.otherarena.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=9047#9047

 

That walks through how even prelim WWF tag matches fell to Heel In Peril.

 

I didn't deal with a ton of tag matches in the thread: set them generally aside to watch later.

 

One can find FIP matches, including one of the Dogs vs Harts that had a lot of FIP. It's just that the WWF in the era has an odd amount of Heels getting put into segments that were oddly similar to FIP... except the Heel(s) was (were) the one(s) in peril for abnormally long stretches relative to the length of the matches and the amount of FIP they contained.

 

John

[Jason Mann]

Thanks for the examples. I really like the Hart Foundation-Brain Busters match and had always thought of that as a good deviation from the standard tag formula (though I'd never heard the term heel in peril until this thread): The Harts dominating when things are fair and coming close to winning (with the crowd going crazy for the close calls), only for the heels to steal it in the end. It's probably more the exception that proves the rule, though.

 

I haven't seen Bulldogs-Dream Team since I was a kid, but I liked it then. I'm anxious to check out the others.

[Jingus]

What I 100% don't get is how people going into the business claim that they weren't Smartened Up to the Business until what is ridiculously late. Jingus' post is informative... I'm not sure I can grasp those wrestlers get that far... I suspect that even Jingus drops his jaws over it.

Suave's post includes one important part to help explain it:

 

 

Pro wrestling carnies was all about making money. Until you proved yourself you were just a mark. So they beat up and stretched the hopefuls and which ever ones were stupid enough to keep at it got actual training.

Wrestling training in the old days (at least, not in the Buzz Sawyer type of school of "two or three lessons in a back yard, immediately followed by graduation") tended to share some characteristics with military training. It's brainwashing, plain and simple. There's still some of that today, especially the majority of the "respect da bizness!" indoctrination that gets drilled into everybody's heads.

 

But back then, the physical liberties that a trainer could take basically made him into the trainees' lord and master. You've typically got a class full of young impressionable superfans who've wanted to be wrestlers their whole lives, and now they're training under a guy who is perfectly willing and able to stretch the shit out of them on a daily basis. If a guy keeps telling you over and over again "Wrestling is real!" and he will break your fuckin' bones if you disagree, that sort of thing eventually seems like truth. Repeat any message over and over again from a position of absolute power, and eventually people will believe it whether or not it makes any damn sense. That's why dictators always post so many pictures of themselves all over their countries and encourage the masses to worship El Jefe, because enough people will actually fall for it (or, at least, not bother openly disagreeing) that it makes the tyrant's job easier and discourages rebellion.

 

Also, trainees were essentially seen as still being marks until they'd proved themselves in the ring. And if there's one thing that old-timey rasslers hate doing, it's smartening up a mark. They didn't want any of these kids to go back home to their friends and brag about how they'd learned all of wrestling's inside secrets. You weren't allowed in the club unless you were already in the club, if you take my meaning. If a rookie could manage to make it all the way through training and show some potential in their first matches, only then would they be inducted to the next level. Masonic rituals and hierarchies are kind of run along the same lines, from what I've heard, and certainly for the same reasons. It's all about molding the rookie into someone who can be expected to follow orders, at least to an extent.

 

Finally: don't underestimate the number of really stupid and/or really crazy people who go into wrestling. Some poor bastards are willing to believe anything. Once you've got enough of those in one business, there will inevitably be a shitload of true stories about guys who weren't smart before they wrestled.

 

Addendum: not ALL trainers were like this, of course. Lots of guys look back with fondness upon their teachers, who treated their students with (relative) dignity and respect. But "wrestling school trainer" is the exact sort of position which would be highly appealing to sadistic personalities who enjoy bullying people.

[FLIK]

Wish i'd gotten actual details of this but my Grandmother on my father's side once briefly told me a tale about how an uncle of mine tried to become a wrestler in the 70's down in Texas and some Mexican wrestlers who were runing things as she described it "beat his ass and ran him off".

 

For myself personally it wasn't until I was probably 12 or 13 when I finally accepted wrestling was fake. I recall getting in arguments in 6th grade with other students and staff, defending the business against their claims that it was.

[Dylan Waco]

Down here the common talking point was that the great majority of it was fake, but some of it was real. I remember kids in middle school being livid at me for insisting it was all fake, because Bret Hart matches were "obviously" real.

[Matt D]

Down here the common talking point was that the great majority of it was fake, but some of it was real. I remember kids in middle school being livid at me for insisting it was all fake, because Bret Hart matches were "obviously" real.

You were difficult even then, huh?

[artDDP]

Down here the common talking point was that the great majority of it was fake, but some of it was real. I remember kids in middle school being livid at me for insisting it was all fake, because Bret Hart matches were "obviously" real.

When I was in school everyone insisted everything but the title matches were fake.

[FLIK]

Okay, so on the subject of fake can someone give me an answer to this. Why, in this day & age do so many non fans not realise that most wrestling fans do know & accept that it's not real now?

 

Like NOTHING makes a non wrestling fan happier then to tell you "you know it's all fake right?" if you reveal that you're a fan to them.

Don't get it at all....well, I do, but it's stupid....

[Loss]

I think the reason you get that reaction on something like wrestling more than something like a movie or TV show is that non-fans think wrestling doesn't admit what it is and tricks people into thinking it's real. The only people who could be fans are those who fall for it.

 

People are sheep, long story short.

[Ditch]

Most non-fans still say WWF. We live in somewhat of a bubble about this.

[Slasher]

I think it is more that non fans look down on pro wrestling as some sort of inane thing they don't understand how anyone can be a fan of it. In that attitude they try to impose some kind of intellectual superiority by declaring it to be fake... little do they know or want to admit we are in on the joke ourselves.

[MJH]

Okay, so on the subject of fake can someone give me an answer to this. Why, in this day & age do so many non fans not realise that most wrestling fans do know & accept that it's not real now?

 

Like NOTHING makes a non wrestling fan happier then to tell you "you know it's all fake right?" if you reveal that you're a fan to them.

Don't get it at all....well, I do, but it's stupid....

More to the point... what wrestling fan doesn't react to this with a 'well, duh...'?

[JerryvonKramer]

I also think it comes down to the fact that people tend to have knee-jerk responses to things. It's one of a handful of things they've learned to say whenever wrestling is brought up.

 

You see it in other things too. Take Bob Dylan, for example. There are LOADS of people whose learned response whenever Dylan is brought up to say "well, I think he wrote very good songs, but he couldn't sing".

 

That's what you call a RECEIVED OPINION. It's a little deflection tool that prevents the person ever having to interrogate the issue further. It's lazy is what it is.

[flyonthewall2983]

I never liked the "10-count with both guys down in the ring" which I squarely blame Stallone for because it's quite obvious the spot was taken from the Rocky movies.

[Matt D]

Can anyone prove otherwise on that? Was that spot never used in the early-mid 70s?

[Exposer]

I think the reason you get that reaction on something like wrestling more than something like a movie or TV show is that non-fans think wrestling doesn't admit what it is and tricks people into thinking it's real. The only people who could be fans are those who fall for it.

 

People are sheep, long story short.

That's exactly the issue. They hate that wrestling still "tries" to preach that it is all real. With movies and television everyone is told it's fake. That really bothers a lot of people and I understand that. I just tell them that ship sailed years ago and I watch wrestling to the closest explanation they can understand. And that explanation is I tell them I watch wrestling like a movie critic watches movies. I feel that's a fair explanation.