Mad Dog Posted July 9, 2012 Report Share Posted July 9, 2012 I kind of got thinking about this with some of the RoH chat in the other thread. This post is mostly about how a lot of indy promotions try to reinvent the wheel and how wrestling seems to work best when you stick to the basics. I didn't really what else to name the title of this thread so forgive me if the title kind of sucks. Anyways, here are a couple of areas where I feel people like to try and tweak wrestling and it makes everything fall apart. So let's take a look: 1. Face/Heel alignment. This seems to be a favorite place for indys to try and reinvent the wheel. You go to some show and you have a bunch of guys trying to be tweener douches or cool heels. You don't have any pure heels or faces on these shows. I hate this when a promotion does it. You NEED faces and heels to be strongly defined, otherwise you lose a certain dramatic tension over time. For me, I need someone to root for. I may like the heels but I need this structure to keep my interest. I look at the modern shows that I tend to stick with like NWA Anarchy, Chikara or NWA Hollywood and those promotions have a strong face/heel structure where guys don't turn sides very often. Promotions I don't like, RoH, have really muddy waters and you're never really sure what side of the fence a good number of the roster is on. 2. Play to the crowd stupid. There's a big segment of modern workers that come into the ring and just hit a bunch of moves and that's it. They never really create a big connection with the crowd past people that like touching themselves to the number of suplexes used in a match. Stopping to be a dick as a heel is always better than showing off your workrate skills. It doesn't take much, hell you could probably just push the referee and shit talk and that's enough. 3. Not every match has to be an epic. I admit in my younger days I fell into this mindset for a couple of years. Then Ring of Honor came along and showed me the error of my thinking. It gets tedious really quickly when every match is trying to up the ante on the last match. 24/7 came along a few years later and I really learned to appreciate how shows used to be structured. Every spot on the show served a purpose and it all built into the main event. Few people seem to use match placement as well as they used to. I had a few more and my mind totally blanked after this. Maybe I'll remember tomorrow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blehschmidt Posted July 9, 2012 Report Share Posted July 9, 2012 I think part of the problem with your first point, especially in Ring of Honor, is that the fans no longer want to play along. Steen to me is a prime example. They have done everything they can to make him the bad guy, but the fans cheer him no matter what. At this point he could piss on the belt, and the crowd would pop for him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dylan Waco Posted July 9, 2012 Report Share Posted July 9, 2012 Steen's "cooler than you" act and in match stand up comedy really undermines any supposed attempt to make him a hardcore heel. That's to say nothing of his look which would have obvious appeal to many a wrestling nerd. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jingus Posted July 9, 2012 Report Share Posted July 9, 2012 I think part of the problem with your first point, especially in Ring of Honor, is that the fans no longer want to play along. Steen to me is a prime example. They have done everything they can to make him the bad guy, but the fans cheer him no matter what. At this point he could piss on the belt, and the crowd would pop for him.Yeah, but he's the exception, not the rule. It's easily solved: just turn him face already. "That guy is too popular!" is not exactly a horrible problem to have. Much more worrisome is when the crowd doesn't give a fuck about someone they're supposed to be cheering. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted July 9, 2012 Report Share Posted July 9, 2012 What Jingus says. If a heel gets over with the crowd cheering for him, turn him. Stone Cold at the end of 1996 heading into 1997? No reaction is a problem. It's rare to turn a no reaction wrestler / character into one who gets heat by flipping him. Honkytonk Man is something of an exception. But there have been loads of "cool heels" who turned well. Savage, Jake, Razor, Shawn, Diesel (granted, he didn't draw big... but to the fans who stuck around, they liked him), Stone Cold, Rock, etc. That's just one company, and leaving out a lot of other guys who did well on a lower level (Piper for example was a lower level because he didn't really work fulltime after going face, nor get a truly massive push since he was heading back out). John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blehschmidt Posted July 10, 2012 Report Share Posted July 10, 2012 Point taken on just turning Steen, but RoH has also had the problem for a while where the crowd turned on everyone they put the belt on. Morisihima, Nigel, Lynn, Black (although I blame them for taking too long to put the belt on him in this case) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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