Terminology Question

[Matt D]

When writing about matches and breaking down common elements, we, as a community, have a lot of terms that are useful. Face-in-peril, heat segment, hot tag, shine, transition, cut-off, etc. These are all various narrative tools that we've found used in multiple matches, enough so that we decided to use terms to classify them. They help us understand what we're watching and portray it to others.

 

One of these is "hope spot," namely being when a babyface who is getting dominated by a heel (either in a standard heat segment or a face-in-peril scenario) fights back to the point where the crowd experiences hope that he'll be able to gain the advantage or make the tag. This ultimately ends in a cutoff spot where the heel stops the babyface and recovers the advantage. This is generally done multiple times to crank up the heat and make the babyface's final, successful comeback resonate more when it finally happens. The timing, number, and ingenuity of hope spots has a lot to do with how successful a match will be as, generally, the heat segment is the longest part of the match.

 

My question is this. What should we call the same functional idea as hope spots in a match that has a section where a face is dominating, usually by locking on a long, generally controlling or limb weakening hold? While it's usually structured with the hold as a base and the heel trying to escape and then getting cut off and put back into it, I don't think a hope spot is accurate. It's not about giving the fans hope. It's instead about showing the dominance of the babyface through the cut offs or countering the vulnerability of the heel by letting him make some strides in getting out. It's also, sometimes, just a way to kill time with them basically saying "this is the match." It can be comedic or be a way to rise the heel's ire and frustrate him to the point of brutality when he finally takes back over.

 

I'm just crowdsourcing for a better way of saying "hope spot" in this heel-in-peril comeback/cutoff scenario. "Transition tease" or "escape attempt" are the best I can come up with. The first is obtuse and the second isn't entirely accurate as it doesn't necessarily have to be a hold-based scenario. The face could just be beating on the heel in other ways.

[Loss]

Shine?

[Loss]

Actually, instead I would say that I think that posts like the one you just gave are far more interesting, informative and clear than the shorthand we've adapted for ourselves through the years, and as we've seen with recent threads like the one on pinball bumping, we use the phrases so much that people walk away with different interpretations of them. Maybe we should stick to describing what it is we are seeing and why it does or doesn't work for us so that there is less room for misinterpretation.

[JerryvonKramer]

The phrase I find myself using a lot Matt, if I've understood you right, is "can't get anything going".

 

You see this scenario a lot, where a shine spills over into an extended shine and the heel(s) repeatedly get cut off and "can't get anything going". I can think of quite a few Midnight Express matches where this happens. Mid-80s Ivan Koloff also worked like this basically 100% of the time. Would that sum up the idea you're trying to get at?

[Matt D]

It does. It's basically a heel hope spot (which is then cut off, though the idea of cut off is really implicit in the hope spot) which happens during a shine or a more extended heel-in-peril segment. Another good example which is full of them is the first fall of the Portland 2/3 Falls Race vs Martel match from the very beginning of 1980.

[ohtani's jacket]

I'd just call it a cut-off spot. Maybe it can be a no hope spot.

[marrklarr]

thwart spot?

[ohtani's jacket]

I tried taking a look at some synonyms for outsmart or outfox, but none of them sound that good with "spot" and it's generally not a big enough deal to call it a trump spot or something like that.

[tim]

thwart spot?

Thwarted comeback sounds appropriate and 'catchy' enough.

[Matt D]

Sometimes I want to write a lot about why I think matches work or don't work in general, sort of like my hope spot paragraph above, but it feels a little too pretentious, even for me. I like the idea of trying to classify wrestling though. Obviously, we don't want some sort of equation that tells you if a match is good or not; that's been done and it's always hilarious and ridiculous, but matches can be deconstructed and examined and I do think classified and organized. So much of what I enjoy in watching wrestling is trying to figure out why I or others enjoyed something or not, even more than actually enjoying it, because it works on a deeper level for me than just experiencing.

[Rob Allen]

I like to call the heel's hope spot "the doubt spot". They build up doubt that the face is going to maintain control as the heel looks to make a comeback. When the face cuts the heel off I like to call it the "reassurance spot." The face reassures the crowd that he/she's got this under control. I think that if you have a few of these spots in a row then you get Parv's "can't get anything going." I dunno. The terminology's not very sexy but it seems to make sense to me.