What is good wrestling?

[Loss]

Yeah, I think the money thing is a copout. Yes, that's the goal of wrestling, but that's also the goal of films and the goal of music and the goal of books. Just because something is commercial doesn't mean it has no other merits or goals.

[JerryvonKramer]

Yeah, I think the money thing is a copout. Yes, that's the goal of wrestling, but that's also the goal of films and the goal of music and the goal of books. Just because something is commercial doesn't mean it has no other merits or goals.

 

Agreed

[Matt D]

At the least it's not a very interesting thing to talk about.

[Steenalized]

 

 

I like storytelling in wrestling as much as the next guy, but I think people go overboard with it. A real story gets rewritten a dozen times until it's any good. Wrestling is closer to improv than writing, and while it borrows story elements, the art of selling has more to do with acting than storytelling. I look at it as performance art rather than a storytelling medium. There's a narrative to most matches because they build from a beginning to an end, but they don't have the depth of a comic book and there's almost no lasting consequences or irreversible change. Ironically enough, when companies try to add depth like WWE it's often labelled as contrived or self-conscious. It's a medium that works best off the cuff unlike true storytelling which requires an inordinate amount of thought.

 

Another thing, it really does help if you're technically good. I like Lawler, though the Lawler I watch is dependent on his opponent rather than wanting to watch Lawler vs. anybody, but I could never rate him over guys who can work the mat. That's not fathomable.

I have a few problems with this. Wrestling definitely has a lot in common with improv, particularly when wrestlers call the action in the ring. But they also lay things out before hand, which improv does not have save for the start. You can call it a performance aren't and I don't think that's an incorrect way to look at it, I just prefer to avoid the term because of pretensions attached to it. Your post would make more sense if wrestling were just a series of singular matches with no context across shows, feuds, and so on. That isn't how it goes. Two wrestlers might have little deeper meaning to their match and might wing it out there to fill time. More often, they have a goal in mind. To get someone over. To make someone look dangerous. To tell whatever story it is they want to tell. That can be in one match or across multiple matches with each building on the last. The stories don't start and end the second a bell rings. The promos and vignettes tie in or at least should tie in. Poorly booked wrestling might have no lasting consequences, but that's true of any poorly made story. You don't have to use the WWE forced-epicness or the Chikara story arc style of depth to make wrestling mean more than two guys in a ring fighting each other.

 

As for the last part, are you saying that someone who is a technical wrestler automatically rates higher than someone who is not, even if that person is a great brawler?

 

 

I think most wrestling is wrestling for the sake of wrestling. There's nothing particularly episodic about the World of Sport, lucha or 80s Joshi I've been watching lately even when there are feuds. I get what you're saying about the set-up and pay-off between angles, promos and matches, but for the most part I think that's an ideal which is rarely achieved. The vast majority of wrestling is filmed houseshows. I agree that calling it improv isn't completely analogous, but I still think the greater skill in wrestling is selling/acting than storytelling since most wrestlers go through the same routines when it comes to match build.

 

Yes, a mat worker will always rate higher for me than a brawler. I think the actual skill of wrestling is both admirable and important.

 

Lots of wrestling is for its own sake, I'll concede that. But I think that's also a remnant of wrestling being a sports product too. If you watch a boxing card or an MMA card, whether it's a huge Mayweather PPV or a local show, you get matches to fill time. Even if the main event is 100% of the draw, people will be pissed if that was all they got. Maybe Mayweather and some big UFCs are the exception where one person is such a huge draw compared to the rest, but generally speaking people want more than that. Wrestling follows that. Even if two wrestlers are out there with little to no story or purpose, they can still make a story in the match. They might be improving, but they will still have a clear end in sight. At the very least, they have to build to some finish. I'm not trying to undersell the importance of selling though, I think it's vital to a good match and a key to pacing things right.

 

And that last part is interesting. I think having technical skill is a really nice plus. And if you're going to try to work that style, you better know what you're doing. But I'm a huge fan of brawling and I think there's just as much art to knowing how to pace yourself and control the flow of a match in a brawl as there is to working holds and locks and matwork. It's probably a less athletic feat, but if I wanted to watch great all-around athleticism for the sake of athleticism, I'd watch a decathlon.

[ohtani's jacket]

The trouble is a lot of what people call story in matches is what I'd call either the story element of characterisation or the "plot", so to speak. To me working the arm to neutralise the other guy's finisher, or whatever, isn't a story. The emotion and drama that Loss felt while watching that GAEA match, there's a story in there, but that type of match is rare in my experience. The stakes have to be high, but stakes can't be high all the time and so wrestling is mostly just wrestling. I think that's why I've gravitated towards technique over the years. I like brawls, maybe not as much as some people, but guys who can wrestle are tops in my book. I wouldn't rate Sangre Chicana or Negro Casas as high as some people as I don't think they're that good on the mat, and I'd rather watch pure shoot style with no UWF-i bullshit than any other form of Japanese wrestling.

[Coffey]

 

As for the last part, are you saying that someone who is a technical wrestler automatically rates higher than someone who is not, even if that person is a great brawler?

 

I think this part is definitely true. There is a bias, especially online (maybe not here) against certain style. And no match ever starts with each guy having a clean slate to impress. Wrestlers are definitely judged on past work & sometimes to their detriment. Sometimes guys get a rep for being a lot better than they are too (Kurt Angle comes to mind) and that also follows them over the years.

 

For example, a guy like Viscera has to go above and beyond to even get people to notice. Every match he's in is basically starting at -1 stars to anyone that rates matches or cares to do that. Meanwhile, for a long time, it felt like guys like Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit or Rey Mysterio, Jr. started with +3 stars. So they can just do nothing and it would still be rated "eh, 3-stars, nothing special but it didn't suck." Meanwhile Big Vis would go out & bust his ass and it'd be "dud."

 

The bigger wrestlers, that aren't Big Van Vader or Terry Gordy, definitely have to do more to stand out. It wasn't until just recently where people started to give Mark Henry credit.

 

That's actually one of my favorite parts about this forum is that people judge things independently. I mean, you can usually guess if a match will be good or bad based on who is in it but it's not a 100% exact science. Sometimes great wrestlers have a bad night & sometimes bad wrestlers have a good night. I think the posters around here call people out, regardless of their résumé .

[Matt D]

One of my favorite talking points lately is how John Tenta was the guy most negatively impacted by the love of workrate in the 90s-00s.

[goodhelmet]

It's true... i can't speak at all on his Earthquake run but he was solid against Sting at Starrcade 94 and was super fun in All Japan in 1989.

[dawho5]

So much good stuff here already...

 

I think good or great wrestling is one of the more subjective things anyone can talk about. It's like talking about music or movies or any kind of artform. That being aid, I'll start with my own personal experiences with pro wrestling.

 

I started watching WCW not long after the nWo thing started. Not because of that, was randomly flipping through channels and landed on either the cruiserweights or the Nitro Girls I imagine. Either way, I liked it (the wrestling, obviously) for two reasons. One: the cruiserweights did a lot of cool looking shit. Two: I had no idea why, but I really enjoyed it beyond that. I went from the cruiserweights being my favorite part of the show to guys like Benoit, Eddie and Malenko being my favorites. Sure, the cruiserweights could do all the flippy stuff, but these guys had something else going for them. Benoit brought the intensity, technique and the stiff chops, suplexes and the like. Eddie just had that really awesome heel persona to go along with the combination of smooth high flying and technical wrestling (with a hint of the Benoit snappy suplexes). Dean just had the answer to everything on the mat or in a suplex cinch-up. Hell, watching Dean Malenko vs. Ultimo Dragon, they seemed psychic with how fast they could go hold to counterhold to counterhold on the mat. It wasn't long after that when I started to buy Schneider Comps off DVDVR to see what I was missing.

 

That changed things a bit. Lucha libre was odd, had lots of the cool cruiserweight stuff, as well as a lot of really cool tricked out matwork that they decided not to put in the WCW version. Also, a lot of it was confusing and flat-out weird. I actually thought that added to it. Japanese wrestling was....it was like a light bulb had been switched on inside my head. The wrestling was more intense, the matches more contested rather than seeming like a dance, even a lot of the juniors matches. Eventually I saw a few All Japan matches and, yeah, that was right on the money. I had gone into it thinking along the lines of WCW and expecting similar things. There were some things they seemed to take from it, but a lot of the elements of puroresu really wouldn't play in WCW. I couldn't understand something like that at the time and started wondering why American wrestling didn't use some of the other aspects of Japanese wrestling, especially the heavyweight styles. Joshi blew me away with the sheer intensity and emotion the women brought into it. Feud matches were particularly nasty and I liked that. The more shootstyle stuff was great and it's something I never have a problem watching to this day. Battlarts is some amazing stuff and one day I will own a lot more of it than just the Schneider comp. matches.

 

In the midst of all of this, I got a little tired of seeing my favorite wrestlers always relegated to early matches while the announcers talked about the nWo and whoever they feuded with over the match. WWE was the alternative, but I really never cared for it. My buddy is a huge Rock and Cena fan, and I'll say that out of the WWE main event scene then up until now, beyond Stone Cold (and Daniel Bryan if you think of him that way) I'd say they were the guys you wanted to watch. So I watched my tapes, ordered the "best of" the guys I really liked and contented myself with that. Over that period, I was a big fan (still) of the cruiserweight wrestling style, lucha, juniors, AJPW and Battlarts for sure. I liked a lot of the more "external" parts of all of it, though. The stiffness, the flippy stuff, the weird submissions, whatever it may be. I had an inkling of the story, the psychology, the way certain feuds in WCW evolved, but it really hadn't occurred to me that those things were as important in determining what was happening in the ring (or ought to be).

 

After somewhere over a decade of not watching pro wrestling and throwing out boxes of wrestling tapes....pausing to curse myself here....I came to a little block in my wrestling booking game. I know, playing a booking game when I hadn't bothered to watch a match in years. So I started watching my Schneider Comps again. Damn, I still love this stuff. I watched a big variety of stuff and my tastes had really changed. Battlarts and shootstyle were still great. Juniors wrestling...eh. A few of the nagging things that bothered me about it (the tendency for every second or third move to involve a turnbuckle in the finishing sequences chief among them) really hit me hard. It's still something I like, and I'll watch in limited doses of a match or two. But beyond that things start to seem rushed and often overdone. AJPW is even better as I am starting now to see the element of "why?" added into the stiff brawling and technically sound, snappy suplexes and matwork. Lucha libre I like more as I see things like (former rudo) Blue Panther trying the tombstone on the rudo in the match, Negro Casas, completely turning the crowd around mid-caida, with Casas playing along only to have his boys run in and tune up Panther later in the same caida for a dq and turning the crowd right back around. Stuff like that would have been lost on me before.

 

My All Japan project has been really helpful in helping me look past the moves being used and more at what the match is saying. I am trying to look more at who is in control, why, what they are doing with it, what the other person is doing to counter it, why momentum changes, etc. Also, it is giving me a much broader look at WHY certain things happen. I'd have never thought that a Misawa elbow nearfall on Hansen in 1993 popping the crowd so huge was perfectly reasonable without watching the 1992 match where Misawa won the TC by elbowing Hansen. Or why in the '93 tag match a week after Kawada/Taue won the tag belts, Misawa and Kawada's intense exchange with each avoiding the other's now-signature spots and firing back with their own was so important. So when it comes to NJ juniors wrestling, maybe I have to one day buy myself a comp of important matches from Fujinami to early Liger on through the later 90s important juniors matches to really see the things that I don't care for as what they are meant to be. Also, I have this feeling that things like Flair/Steamboat '89 matches and '80s territories wrestling would have been very off-putting to me in the late '90s-2000s. Now the little bits I have seen make me wish that style was still prevalent here. Sure, they didn't have all the flashy moves and most guys used maybe 10-15 wrestling moves overall. But they still made incredible matches despite what a modern wrestling fan may call limitations. Rest hold is a modern term for a reason I think.

 

What it comes down to for me (now at least) is how I feel watching the wrestling match. Do I care about what is happening in the ring? To a lesser degree, does the crowd? If you can't draw people into your match just based on what it is you are doing, then like any other kind of art, t's probably not very good. For example: I love Stevie Wonder's music. Many people do, I know. But it took one or two songs for his music to hook me. I didn't need to hear an entire history of the music he had made or that style of music to know that I liked it. I could just tell from that first song or two that this guy knew how to make music that I liked. With wrestling it's the same way. If the wrestlers can't make you, me or the crowd care about what they are doing without an outside storyline, they will only be average at best when it comes down to it. Even if they are exceptional technicians (see: Dean Malenko) or brawlers.

 

As an addendum to that, I'll say that a lot of those early and midcard matches are (or originally were meant to be) booked without much story behind them as a result of that. You start out as a jobber. Can you make the crowd feel for you as you get the snot kicked out of you? If so, congratulations, now the midcarders still put the hurt on you but the jobbers end up eating a lot of your offense. Now you have to learn to make the crowd get behind your offense. And it doesn't hurt to show that you can sell moves properly to add to the match. You get good enough at that, you're right about middle of the card. You've got to get better at showing more subtle things in the ring now. Where do you have the advantage? Where are you at a disadvantage? When is a good time for a change in momentum? Can you make it look like a struggle for the other guy to put the hurt on you, making the match look more like a contest? Can you get your character across in your wrestling? You do some of that well enough, you'll probably move up the card to just below the main event guys. Now you have to refine all of those things into an artform, be able to tell different stories in the ring than the basics on a regular basis. You have to be able to take somebody who can't do those things and bring them up to your level. Or at least give the impression in the ring that they are. Once you can do those things, backstage politics notwithstanding, you ought to be a main event guy. Somebody who can draw the fans into your matches even with people who have no business in the ring with you. It seems like a progression similar to learning a martial art to me, beginning with the very basic foundations of the art (the crowd caring about somebody getting the tar kicked out of them) and building up off of that.

[kjh]

 

 

As for the last part, are you saying that someone who is a technical wrestler automatically rates higher than someone who is not, even if that person is a great brawler?

 

I think this part is definitely true. There is a bias, especially online (maybe not here) against certain style. And no match ever starts with each guy having a clean slate to impress. Wrestlers are definitely judged on past work & sometimes to their detriment. Sometimes guys get a rep for being a lot better than they are too (Kurt Angle comes to mind) and that also follows them over the years.

 

For example, a guy like Viscera has to go above and beyond to even get people to notice. Every match he's in is basically starting at -1 stars to anyone that rates matches or cares to do that. Meanwhile, for a long time, it felt like guys like Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit or Rey Mysterio, Jr. started with +3 stars. So they can just do nothing and it would still be rated "eh, 3-stars, nothing special but it didn't suck." Meanwhile Big Vis would go out & bust his ass and it'd be "dud."

 

The bigger wrestlers, that aren't Big Van Vader or Terry Gordy, definitely have to do more to stand out. It wasn't until just recently where people started to give Mark Henry credit.

 

That's actually one of my favorite parts about this forum is that people judge things independently. I mean, you can usually guess if a match will be good or bad based on who is in it but it's not a 100% exact science. Sometimes great wrestlers have a bad night & sometimes bad wrestlers have a good night. I think the posters around here call people out, regardless of their résumé .

 

 

I think this is a great post. It took years for Dave Meltzer to start giving Henry some praise as a worker, just on the basis of one crappy pay-per-view match against Angle in his crazy, banged up, drug addled phase with the knock on him always being even Angle couldn't carry to him to a good match, forgetting that he had a really good TV match with Rey Mysterio just one week prior to that bout.

[jdw]

Work rate is one of those Scott Keith inventions that he used to mean "no rest holds (even submissions) and lots of moves."

 

 

The term existed long before Scott Keith started writing about wrestling.

[jdw]

Yeah, I think the money thing is a copout. Yes, that's the goal of wrestling, but that's also the goal of films and the goal of music and the goal of books. Just because something is commercial doesn't mean it has no other merits or goals.

 

On the other hand, it is a slight flaw in the title of the thread.

 

Hogan-Andre, which you cited, was "great pro wrestling". From concept to angle to storyline to match, it basically was the best thing of the decade in delivering what pro wrestling is about: getting people insane about paying money to see a match.

 

Was the match itself "great work", or "good work"? That's an entirely different question. :/

[Jimmy Redman]

Every time I read this thread I try to come up with a post, and I can never do it. I can talk about something in a specific match I did or didn't like, and why, but trying to put it into the abstract and detail general tropes or concepts that I think are better than others is almost impossible. Wrestling is too broad. Whenever I consider something, it just makes me think of all the matches I liked that didn't have it and all the matches that had it that I didn't really like.

 

I don't like spotfests with no rhyme or reason or selling...except all of those mindless spotfests that I really love.

I like matches to tell a specific story...except all of those matches that don't have a cohesive story that I still like.

I don't like stiffness for stiffnesses sake...except those times when I think it's awesome.

I love intricate counter sequences and "learned counters"...except when I think those spots are contrived and eschew selling.

Consistent selling is super important to me...unless I can justify its absence to myself anyway.

I want to be able to suspend my disbelief...but I love the shit out of ridiculous comedy that burns kayfabe to the ground.

I hate finisher kickout overkill...except when it happens in matches that I like.

 

I can't get a handle on my own preferences, because there are too many exceptions to every rule. It's unhelpful, and not in the spirit of PWO to say "I like what I like", but that is as far as I can boil it down to. Good wrestling: I know it when I see it.

[marrklarr]

Every time I read this thread I try to come up with a post, and I can never do it. I can talk about something in a specific match I did or didn't like, and why, but trying to put it into the abstract and detail general tropes or concepts that I think are better than others is almost impossible. Wrestling is too broad. Whenever I consider something, it just makes me think of all the matches I liked that didn't have it and all the matches that had it that I didn't really like.

 

I don't like spotfests with no rhyme or reason or selling...except all of those mindless spotfests that I really love.

I like matches to tell a specific story...except all of those matches that don't have a cohesive story that I still like.

I don't like stiffness for stiffnesses sake...except those times when I think it's awesome.

I love intricate counter sequences and "learned counters"...except when I think those spots are contrived and eschew selling.

Consistent selling is super important to me...unless I can justify its absence to myself anyway.

I want to be able to suspend my disbelief...but I love the shit out of ridiculous comedy that burns kayfabe to the ground.

I hate finisher kickout overkill...except when it happens in matches that I like.

 

I can't get a handle on my own preferences, because there are too many exceptions to every rule. It's unhelpful, and not in the spirit of PWO to say "I like what I like", but that is as far as I can boil it down to. Good wrestling: I know it when I see it.

 

Potter Stewart

[Steenalized]

The man gave us a hell of a quote to shirk creating a unified theory on a topic.

[Grimmas]

If everything makes sense, there is good selling and a good story then it is a good match.

 

I don't care how cool the moves are, but if something happens in the match and I go "well that is stupid or that makes no sense" it completely takes me out of the match and ruins it for me.

[Fantastic]

if something happens in the match and I go "well that is stupid or that makes no sense" it completely takes me out of the match and ruins it for me.

 

Agree 100%, there have been numerous matches I've anticipated over the years which have fallen to this phenomenon. Big long awaited matches that end on all-out screwy Dusty finishes, for the sake of sequels are particular gripes for me. There's more than one way to create anticipation for a rematch.

[rainmakerrtv]

 

if something happens in the match and I go "well that is stupid or that makes no sense" it completely takes me out of the match and ruins it for me.

 

Agree 100%, there have been numerous matches I've anticipated over the years which have fallen to this phenomenon. Big long awaited matches that end on all-out screwy Dusty finishes, for the sake of sequels are particular gripes for me. There's more than one way to create anticipation for a rematch.

 

 

I think the Flair Vs Steamboat 2/3 falls match at the Clash did a good job of setting up the rematch without going into a full on screwy finish. I didn't feel cheated and felt like I had seen a great match but it still made sense for there to be another match.

[dawho5]

I know selling has been mentioned already, but I had a thought on what makes the brawls I really like good or great in comparison to the ones that I do not. The right balance of selling and no-selling. Enough no-selling to show fighting spirit or competitive fire, whatever you care to call it. But not so much as to make the other guy's offense look bad. And the selling can't be "death" for everything. To me, it has to be more nuanced, sort of build as the match does. As you progress into a brawl, then selling becomes more the norm than no-selling. That doesn't mean there can't be back and forth. Wrestler A hits a big punch/kick/chop, but because of the abuse they've taken so far they have to pause. This gives wrestler B time to recover enough to land his own equally (hopefully) big strike. Then both are down/leaning on the ropes, whatever. And I think selling also applies to "hulking up" type situations or exchanges as well. Just because you hulked up, doesn't mean you can't move a little slower to sell a leg or put your hand to your head and wince after knocking a guy on his ass. And I think Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi did strike exchanges right. They very rarely (if ever) completely nosold. It was always more of an absorb -> react to the pain then get intense -> return type of thing.

[Superstar Sleeze]

There are two things that really matter to me above all else. Are you wrestling with a distinct purpose in mind? I don't care if you want to beat this guy for a championship, looking at you sideways, because he hit on your girl or for a shampoo ad or just because you are booked together. There should be a sense of struggle because you both want to win. "Exhibition"-style matches can be great for getting someone over, but they should just be squashes.

Transitions are really key for me and it was separates good and great wrestling. A shine segment, heat segment and comeback are steady state wrestling. It is a relatively even keel. You are excited then you feel hopeful then you are roaring for your favorite. You are building layers, but transitions are where transients occur. That is when you can spike a really hot crowd or bring them way down when a babyface crash and burns to set up a heel heat segment. That's where the roller coaster comes in and their are dynamics to your match. If you can master the transitions, you have mastered wrestling.