Booking philosophies of match sequencing

[JerryvonKramer]

We touched on this in last night's show, but I wanted to go more in-depth on it here.

 

In the 1980s, it seems to me that most big shows -- at least those put on by the WWF -- were booked with a "peaks and troughs" mentality. You build to peaks and take the crowd up, then you give them a break, a chance to buy a drink, and bring them back down with a nothing filler match before taking them back up again.

 

In the late 1990s, Russo and co changed this general philosophy as the booking of live events became seconded to "writing for TV" and we got the philosophy of crash television filtering through to PPVs. This idea that there's always something unexpected around the corner, the 24/7 Hardcore title, Mae Young getting her bra out etc. etc.

 

In the 00s and into this decade, there seems to be more of a philosophy, especially at Wrestlemania, of stacking the card with big matches all in a row. Wrestlemania 29 is as good an example of this where you had THREE big matches in a row closing out the card: Punk vs. Taker, HHH vs. Brock, Cena vs. Rock. No matter what we think of the outcome, the INTENTION there was bam. bam. bam.

 

So, here's the thing I'm wondering:

 

Is it a mistake to move away from the "peaks and troughs"? I mean it was clear to anyone watching that the crowd was fried by the time they got to HHH vs. Brock. That match died partly because the crowd was burnt out. Now you could argue that HHH and Brock should have been able to overcome that, but why did the match sequencing put them in that position?

 

I want to contrast an early Wrestlemania card with the thinking at WM29. Here's Mania 6 as a representative example:

 

Rick Martel defeated Koko B. Ware via submission with the Boston Crab at 5:30 - trough, just an opener

 

Demolition defeated WWF Tag Team Champions Andre the Giant & Haku (w/ Bobby Heenan) to win the titles at 9:15 - peak, tag title change and Andre turn to pop crowd big

 

Brutus Beefcake pinned Mr. Perfect (w/ the Genius) at 7:47 after a catapult into the ringpost; during the bout, Mary Tyler Moore was shown in attendance; after the match, the Genius attempted to steal Beefcake's hedge clippers and sneak backstage but Beefcake caught him on the floor, rolled him back in the ring, put him in the sleeper, and then cut the Genius' hair (Perfect's first national TV pinfall loss) - bubbling over match, crowd is still on a high from last match, coming down a bit, but Genius haircutting would have been something to get excited about

 

Roddy Piper fought Bad News Brown to a double count-out at 6:47 when both men began brawling on the floor and Piper attempted to hit News with a steel chair; Piper had half his body painted black for the match; after the contest, both men continued brawling in the aisle all the way backstage - semi-peak / bubbling over match, this feud was featured and Piper was over. Would have been something to get up for and keep things bubbling over.

 

Bret Hart & Jim Neidhart defeated Nikolai Volkoff & Boris Zhukov when Bret pinned Zhukov following the Hart Attack at the 18-second mark - trough

 

The Barbarian (w/ Bobby Heenan) pinned Tito Santana with a clothesline off the top at 4:33 - trough

 

Dusty Rhodes & Sapphire (w/ Miss Elizabeth) defeated Randy Savage & Sensational Sherri at 7:31 when Sapphire pinned Sherri with a roll up after Elizabeth shoved Sherri as Sherri grabbed at her on the floor; prior to the bout, Rhodes introduced Elizabeth to be in his and Sapphire's corner; after the bout, Rhodes stole Savage's sceptor before dancing in the ring with Sapphire and Elizabeth (Miss Elizabeth's surprise return after a 3-month absence) - big peak, featured feud, crowd seeing Elizabeth would have been a big deal. Men and women fighting in the same match was a spectacle.

 

The Orient Express (w/ Mr. Fuji) defeated Shawn Michaels & Marty Jannetty via count-out at 7:36 after Jannetty had salt thrown into his eyes while on the floor - bubbling over match to keep crowd jazzed but with a heel going over to bring them down into ...

 

Jim Duggan pinned Dino Bravo (w/ Jimmy Hart) at 4:15 after hitting him with the 2x4; after the bout, Earthquake attacked Duggan and hit two sit-down splashes - trough. Duggan being killed by Earthquake would have brought crowd down more to set up for ...

 

Ted Dibiase (w/ Virgil) defeated Jake Roberts via count-out at 11:53 as Roberts was distracted by Virgil on the floor; after the match, Virgil returned backstage with the Million $ belt while Roberts hit the DDT on Dibiase and passed his money to fans around ringside; prior to the bout, Gene Okerlund conducted a backstage interview with Roberts regarding the match; stipulations stated the winner would earn the Million $ Belt - big featured feud with lots of build, DiBiase getting a DDT was a moment to pop for.

 

The Big Bossman pinned Akeem (w/ Slick) at around 1:50 with the sidewalk slam despite interference from Ted Dibiase before the match; Dibiase hid underneath the ring after the previous match - trough

 

Rick Rude (w/ Bobby Heenan) pinned Jimmy Snuka at 3:51 with the Rude Awakening; Steve Allen did guest commentary for the match - trough

 

WWF IC Champion the Ultimate Warrior pinned WWF World Champion Hulk Hogan to win the title at 22:50 with a splash after Hogan missed the legdrop; after the match, Hogan presented Warrior with the world title belt; both championships were on the line in the contest; voted Pro Wrestling Illustrated's Match of the Year - massive peak

 

---------

 

Now let's think about Mania 29. That had only 8 matches to the 14 we got at Mania 6. What happened to all the time would have been given over to the extra 8 matches? Simply put, they worked longer matches.

 

If you look at how Mania 6 was structured, the crowd couldn't possibly have been burnt out by the time they got to Hogan vs. Warrior. They'd seen two big matches already (Dusty vs. Savage mixed-tag match and Ted vs. Jake -- arguably the tag title match was a third big match), but there was a lot of cushioning in between those and the main event. The crowd had Bossman vs. Akeem and Rude vs. Snuka to catch their breath ready for the big match.

 

Mania 29 basically scrapped all such "buffer" matches. We went straight from Punk/Taker into HHH/Brock into Cena/Rock. Straight through, no real break apart from the welcoming of the HoF inductees.

 

On paper you'd think that a card that ends like that would be more satisfying than one that ends with two short nothing-y matches like Bossman vs. Akeem and Rude vs. Snuka before the main event, but in practice -- in terms of managing the crowd response -- it seems to me that 1989 way of doing things made more sense.

 

Do you agree? Disagree? What's your take on this?

[anarchistxx]

Wrestlemania 29 is a particularly weird one, in that they could easily have staggered out the big matches (and have done in previous years).

 

Half the problem now is that too many guys are presented as main eventers: in 1999 you have Rock, Austin, Undertaker and Mankind as conceivable marquee match wrestlers, with guys like Kane/Big Show/HHH as second level. There was a clear hierarchy, so you could pace the show nicely. It helped that they had a lot of really over guys on the undercard, so they could open the show with a hot lower level match without it infringing on the heat later on.

 

These days there are Rock/Lesnar/HHH/Cena/Undertaker/Punk/Orton/Sheamus/Jericho/Ryback/Del Rio as 'big match' workers, with Show/Kane/Swagger/Henry/Miz/Ziggler as former world champions. Whatever you book it is going to be big match after big match because they have built so many guys up to a top level. The hierarchy is gone - besides Cena and the lucrative part timers the rest are on the same level, and could conceivably have the marquee match on a show. It means less, and it hurts sequencing.

 

That was the main drawback of ROHs egalitarianism. It is all well and good presenting all wrestlers as credible, and trying to make every match fantastic for the fans, but it leads to burnout when you are having multiple finisher kick outs in the second match on the card. That is why someone like Jimmy Rave stood out, despite being relatively unflashy - he wasn't trying to have a workrate classic, and it gave the crowd a rest.

 

Wrestlemania X8 is a good example of pacing a stadium show - smaller matches in-between the big ones. Unfortunately you can't do that unless you have decent undercard acts like Trish Stratus or the APA. Zach Ryder is an absolutely perfect guy for breaking up big matches - over, but not seen as a threat and skippable if the crowd needs a break. Unfortunately that sort of act gets jobbed out and lost in the shuffle.

[Loss]

I do think there are multiple ways to layout a card that are equally effective, but I do agree that the afterglow of a really great match or big angle can make a good match that follows it seem anti-climatic, even if the work is good.

[WingedEagle]

Outside of placating egos and the related politics, I don't know if there's any valid reason for not giving the crowd a time filler in between main events. If they're wound up and going crazy for something they'll need an opportunity to come down and catch their breath before popping for something big again. Its basic cardio applied to a live audience -- crowds need that break between sprints to get their wind/enthusiasm the same way the wrestlers do.

[soup23]

I do think it would be interesting to see when they decided to scrap the 8 man match and where it would have been placed. I see it being between Taker vs. Punk and HhH vs. Brock which would have helped things at WM 29.

 

I can't decide which match structure I prefer as it honestly may be something like Halloween Havoc 1990.

[JerryvonKramer]

One of the reasons I included the WWF caveat in the OP is because I was thinking of all those Crockett shows where you'd get a great semi-main featuring, say, Arn and Tully going into a big main featuring Flair.

 

I'm not sure that Crockett or NWA ever did the peaks and troughs to the same extent.

 

We've definitely watched some Crockett shows where the crowd has been killed though -- the Chicago Starrcade in 87 springs to mind. Where you have The Road Warriors failing to win the tag titles from Arn and Tully and then a mostly dead crowd for Dusty vs. Luger and they are actively hostile by the time Garvin vs. Flair swings around.

 

I'd argue that main was great enough to turn around the crowd, but there's an interesting parallel with WM29 there in terms of a loaded card with a pile of big matches in a row.

 

I honestly don't know if any one philosophy is right because we've seen some legit GREAT semi-mains.

 

One argument might be that you can only do that sort of thing if you can count on someone like Flair in the main event.

 

Another is that the TYPE of match is important. The semi-mains in Crockett tend to be 12-15 minute semi-sprints whereas the main event goes long.

 

Arguably the crowd are brought down by the early matwork in the main before Flair and opponent bring them up again.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

It's easy to blame HHH-Brock's poor reception on the fact that it followed Taker-Punk, but I thought the biggest problem was that they did all the brawling at first and then went into a boring middle section of straight wrestling. And of course Brock getting knocked out messed things up too. If they had delivered a match as good as the Summerslam match, I doubt it would have received "boring" and "go home" chants. I was there live and after Taker-Punk I really wasn't that eager to see Brodus Clay and the Bella Twins, not to mention that with the video packages, there were almost 10 minutes between Taker's exit and HBK's entrance, so there was more than enough time for the crowd to cool down.

[Dylan Waco]

Biggest problem with Brock v. HHH is that HHH is a dogshit face

[jdw]

As Loss said, there are various ways to book a card:

 

New Japan Pro Wrestling

November 1, 1990 in Tokyo, Japan

Budokan drawing 14,014 ($630,000)

 

1. Osamu Matsuda, Takayuki Iizuka, Kuniaki Kobayashi, & Kentaro Hoshino beat Super Strong Machine, Hiro Saito, Tatsutoshi Goto, & Norio Honaga.

 

2. Osamu Kido & Kengo Kimura beat Bad News Allen & Larry Cameron.

 

3. Animal Hamaguchi pinned Masanobu Kurisu.

 

4. Shiro Koshinaka beat Seiji Aoyagi (4th Rnd) via submission in a "wrestler vs. karate" match.

 

5. Tiger Jeet Singh beat Tatsumi Fujinami via DQ.

 

6. Jushin Liger pinned Chris Benoit to win the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Title.

 

7. Hiroshi Hase & Kensuke Sasaki beat Keiji Mutoh & Masa Chono (16:56) when Hase pinned Mutoh to win the IWGP Tag Title

 

8. IWGP Champ Riki Choshu pinned Shinya Hashimoto (16:40).

 

The last three matches on the card were the big ones. They all had heat. The tag title had to follow a heated flashy Liger match with him winning the title back. The heavyweight title match had to follow a heated, terrific tag title match where those belts changed as well. The final match was different, built, and in the end was terrific and heated. They didn't need a Divas match to break things up.

 

All Japan Pro Wrestling

April 18, 1991 in Tokyo, Japan

Budokan drawing 15,960

 

1. Ismu Teranishi pinned Satoru Asako (5:44).

 

2. Rex King & Steve Doll beat Yoshinori Ogawa & Mitsuo Momota (8:39).

 

3. Dynamite Kid & Johnny Smith beat Richard Slinger & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi (11:18).

 

4. Andre the Giant, Rusher Kimura, & Mighty Inoue beat Masa Fuchi, Haruka Eigan, & Motoshi Okuma (9:16).

 

5. Doug Furnas & Dory Funk, Jr. beat Cactus Jack & Texas Terminator Hoss (9:20) when Funk forced Cactus to submit.

 

6. Kenta Kobashi pinned Dan Kroffat (10:39).

 

7. Akira Taue beat Toshiaki Kawada (15:53) via countout.

 

8. Stan Hansen & Danny Spivey beat Terry Gordy & Steve Williams (20:40) to win the All Japan World Tag Title when Hansen pinned Williams.

 

9. All Japan Triple Crown Champ Jumbo Tsuruta pinned Mitsu Misawa (23:17)

 

My recollection is that what aired of the Kobashi-Krofatt was heated and entertaining for the crowd. Taue-Kawada was a match the fans popped for, and the two worked their asses off. The tag title match was heated and entertained the fans. The main event had the crowd going, even through the match had now main evented 3 out of 4 straight Budokans, with a tag meeting between the two being the double main even of the other Budokan.

 

I don't buy into the notion that Japanese Fans are/were that radically different from US Fans where they need to have peaks and valleys in cards. They can watch 3 straight good matches that get them going. I suspect those of us who have gone to live cards can say the same thing: we've been to shows where there have been a stretch of good matches in a row.

 

Where "burnout" tends to come into play on some of those cards is when it's been a long card, or a Lot Of Stuff happened from early to late on the card and the crowd has gotten drained. In those case, there has been a layout issue, or people just didn't think things through.

 

But I've also been to a 5+ hour card with 13 matches for which most of them drew a lot of interest and/or crowd response, of which the 12th drove the crowd the most out of their minds despite going 30 minutes and having no finish. Even after that... the crowd wanted to get into the last match, but it was the workers (rather than the layout of the card) who did a poor job of laying out their own match. Anyway...

 

There is no Magic Number of 42 that explains the proper way to layout a match. It's usually far easier after a card to point out how things could have been handled differently than going into a card coming up with the perfect sequence and booking.

[Matt D]

Biggest problem with Brock v. HHH is that HHH is a dogshit face

Moreover, they wasted the brawling on HHH vs Brock when it's really what Cena vs Rock needed.

[NintendoLogic]

I tend to view cooling off the crowd between big matches as a crutch for wrestlers who aren't good enough or over enough to win the crowd over. The idea that you need breaks to keep the crowd from burning out strikes me as a self-serving canard along the lines of "the wrestling business is cyclical."

[anarchistxx]

A problem with WM29 was that all the marquee matches were worked almost exactly the same way. If you look at the NJPW card posted by JDW, the three last matches all had distinct styles, so you can transition them into one another without necessarily presenting the same product for ninety minutes.

 

At, say, WMX7 you have a wrestling match (Angle/Benoit) followed by a short women's grudge match (Chyna/Ivory) followed by a soap opera style clusterfuck that climaxed a major angle (Vince/Shane) followed by a spectacular spotfest (TLCII) and then you have a comedy battle royal leading up to the two last matches. A lot of major matches on the show, but major matches with a lot of variety so as to keep up the interest, plus a few filler things in between.

 

It is much tougher to sit through three matches of formulaic elongated WWE main event style at WM29, where the bouts really require an energetic crowd to pop for the never ending nearfalls, and almost invite the audience to be flat for the first 3/4s of the match where they are conditioned to believe nothing important will happen. This ties back in with what I was saying a few months ago about WWE workers not having a clue how to work the first half of a match anymore.

[jdw]

AJPW

February 28, 1993 in Tokyo, Japan

Budokan drawing 16,300 ($850,000)

 

PWF Junior Heavyweight Champ Masa Fuchi pinned Tsuyoshi Kikuchi (11:03).

 

Kenta Kobashi pinned Danny Spivey (16:59).

 

Stan Hansen pinned Toshiaki Kawada (24:02).

 

All Japan Triple Crown Champ Mitsuharu Misawa pinned Akira Taue (22:33)

 

Those were the last four matches. Dave went ****1/4, ***1/4, ****3/4 and **** on them.

 

One might want to try to say that Fuchi-Kikuchi was stylistically different from the others, but AJPW Juniors actually worked closer to AJPW Heavies at the time than NJPW Juniors. The other matches were generally stylistically similar. It's just that... Kobashi was great enough in 1993 to follow a match the crowd liked. Misawa was great enough to follow a wickedly great Hansen-Kawada match. A card later in the year had Kobashi-Gordy, Kawada-Williams and Misawa-Hansen all in a row... and all got the crowd going. Or...

 

We can pitch all of these overboard and look at the first Super J Cup where there was no Divas match to break stuff up Saskue-Liger and Sasuke-Pegasus, coming on the heels of a card where there was a ton of stylistic commonality. :/

 

John

[JerryvonKramer]

Question for jdw: to what extent did each of those matches have peaks and troughs (or valleys as you call them) WITHIN each match?

 

The principle holds true for match structure as it does for card structure.

 

I think one of the problems with Rock vs Cena is that it didn't build, it's basically one long finish sequence. I'd be willing to bet all those AJ matches were not all straight sprints. Even in a bomb-heavy environment like 90s All Japan there are still quiet moments and high spots in matches.

 

Maybe the real problem is that crowds can't get up for an hour and a half of near constant near falls?

[WingedEagle]

I'm not fortunate enough to have ever been to any shows in Japan, but from watching plenty of tapes there seems to be a different type of reaction, whereby they're much more restrained and respectful in their appreciation rather than becoming part of the match itself -- at least generally, obviously you get some matches at Korakuen or other buildings with different environments. But isn't it possible that cultural difference in Japan and how wrestling is viewed there as opposed to here also contributes to how a crowd views a given show/lineup?

[jdw]

Question for jdw: to what extent did each of those matches have peaks and troughs (or valleys as you call them) WITHIN each match?

 

The principle holds true for match structure as it does for card structure.

 

I think one of the problems with Rock vs Cena is that it didn't build, it's basically one long finish sequence.

 

I actually think you're mistaken on that, both for Rock-Cena and Trip-Brock. They weren't 24 straight minutes each of high spots. Neither was Taker-Punk. They have plenty of "troughs" where they're laying around selling the fuck out of spot... insert the popular phrase on this board about being self indulgent.

 

John

[JerryvonKramer]

jastrau97 - Cultural context has to play a factor. For example, take your average British crowd in a stadium or big arena setting. Most of the time, they are going to treat it like a soccer match -- by which I mean they'll be noisy and make their own fun REGARDLESS of what's happening in front of them.

 

Take that TNA show I went to last year, the crowd decided that night they were out to have fun. Most of the card was crap. The crowd were deciding who to cheer for on the fly. They'd sing songs if they got bored. On TV and to an American perspective it sounds like they are popping a lot, but that's not exactly what was happening. I don't really know how that would factor in to booking wrestling, because to a certain extent promotors are guaranteed a noisy crowd -- that's just what big British crowds are like -- but a crowd being noisy isn't necessarily an indictator they've done something right.

 

----

 

There is one thing that Japanese crowds do that I've never heard an American or a British crowd do, and that's laugh en masse at "comedy antics". Even if you look at stuff like Bundy vs. the midgets or Bam Bam vs. the Dinks, or Gobbledy Gooker or whatever, the crowd isn't really laughing its ass off. Yet in Japanese wrestling it happens fairly regularly and therefore you have the idea of a comedy match built into booking card structure.

[jdw]

I think fans laughed when Flair got shoved down by Tommy Young.

[JerryvonKramer]

Not audibly on TV. At least not on any Flair match I've ever seen. But it happened all the time in 80s All Japan.

[ohtani's jacket]

British crowds used to laugh en masse at Kellet, Breaks, Catweazle, Pallo, Johnny Kwango, Billy Torontos, Vic Faulkner, Masambula, Johnny Czeslaw and a host of others.

[Jimmy Redman]

Keep in mind that WWE now most often use video packages as a means to break up matches. Instead of a short undercard filler match they go 'video package - self-promotion ad - another video package - next match' instead. One of the reasons Rock/Cena felt so abrupt is because they went straight into it with no video introduction.

 

I think the problem has already been hit on in this thread, in that WWE have killed everything below main event level and thus have no properly over acts on the undercard to serve the purpose of a short or lighthearted match. Not only that, but everyone is so samey that they dont have any changes of pace - they used to have the Hardcore belt, the cruiserweight belt, and a lot more difference between divisions and individual styles to make the matches distinct. Everyone midcard and below is a generic jobber, and everyone above that level is a main eventer, so on a card you have 4 nothing matches and 4 "main events", with nothing in between.

 

And to be fair to modern WWE they usually do employ buffer matches between main events. WM29 is the exception rather than the rule. In fact in recent years WWE have taken the "break up matches" philosophy too far, and do things like putting an Elimination Chamber or a World Title match as an opener. If anything I would rather WWE try to get back to some semblance of card structure, with main events on last, instead of trying to break things up so much. You can have peaks and troughs while still building a card from start to finish. WWE cards nowadays just kind of jump around and have no flow at all. Mainly because, again, they go 'main event - nothing match - main event - nothing match - nothing match - main event'.

[KrisZ]

WWE was basically the only promotion to do the cooling off stuff and they have done it forever in the big markets but it wasn't really for cooling off back in the day but for curfew purposes.

 

Every other territory booked their cards in order of match status.

[JerryvonKramer]

British crowds used to laugh en masse at Kellet, Breaks, Catweazle, Pallo, Johnny Kwango, Billy Torontos, Vic Faulkner, Masambula, Johnny Czeslaw and a host of others.

I think that this might be to do with the type of venue and size of the crowd as well. I'd liken the old Joint Promotions shows to the sort of crowd you might get for a snooker match. The same is true of a lot of those 80s All Japan matches too though. More intimate venues, I'd say, are going to be where you can hear people laughing.

[ohtani's jacket]

Could be the venue size or it could be that the British workers were actually funny.

[JerryvonKramer]

I just watched this OJ:

 

I agree it was pretty funny and the crowd is falling about laughing. Les Kellet

 

I'll maintain that this is a very different sort of crowd from the stadium or big arena crowd I was thinking about earlier. Also never heard American crowds laugh in this way. Sure someone could dig up some obscure example of where it happens, but I'm not buying for a second that crowds were doing that at Flair's Tommy Young bump.