The art of the nearfall

[Loss]

I was on Jason Mann's Wrestlespective podcast tonight which will be posted within the next few days. Anyway, we got into a brief conversation about nearfalls and how they have changed over the years. To me, a great nearfall is less about kicking out of something no one ever kicks out of and more about timing the kickout at the best possible millisecond to get the largest reaction. The days of a two-count being so close that half the people in the building swear it was a three count are not something I would say is over, but it doesn't happen very often anymore.

 

I've decided that I think "2.9 Wrestling" is a misnomer -- a negative term used to describe wrestlers kicking out of everything. I'm not a fan of that approach either but real 2.9 wrestling -- nearfalls that get a reaction not because of the move done to lead to it but because the call was so close -- is pretty awesome. I think it takes a decent amount of skill to feel a crowd enough to pinpoint the best possible moment to kick out of something and get the biggest reaction.

 

I think Ric Flair was the master at timing his, and what I think worked so well about them is two things:

 

(1) He varied them. Raising a shoulder was appropriate sometimes. Draping a leg over the bottom rope was appropriate sometimes. An actual kickout proper was appropriate sometimes. He seemed to vary this based on what was happening in the match at the time.

 

(2) As much as people sometimes complain about the roll-up finishes in Flair's title changes, that approach played dividends in terms of having more ways to get heat. He dropped the title from an inside cradle or backslide a few times, and even Ron Garvin's top rope sunset flip on one occasion. As a result, there were more conceivable ways to end the match so an inside cradle would have the full attention of the crowd in a world title match where I'm not sure that would be the case for every world champion.

 

I love it when Flair's also able to get a really close kickout off of a side headlock in the opening minutes of the match. It typically gets a very unique reaction. No one really expects him to get beat with a headlock but there's that split second where he waits so long to roll over that he gets a mild "whoa" reaction when doing it.

 

Obviously, Flair isn't the only wrestler great at this, but because we were talking about a Flair match on the show, he was on the brain. What are some of your favorite nearfalls in wrestling matches? In the spirit of the thread, let's focus less on people kicking out of finishers and more on well-timed kickouts. Although this is a really good thread to complain about excessive finisher kickouts if you so desire.

[Jason Mann]

It's been discussed thoroughly already, but I think Mr. Perfect vs. Tito Santana at the 7/28/90 Saturday Night's Main Event is a perfect example of this. It's also impressive to get the crowd so riled at the idea of Santana winning the title, which was a pretty unrealistic possibility at that point.

[El-P]

Raven and his dog and pony show was pretty damn great at building to one or two (which is enough) credible nearfalls. He's one of the few US guys that can still make me pop for a true nearfall 15 years after the fact in matches I already know. Yeah. Blast me now.

 

Mariko Yoshida was amazing at kicking out at the very last extreme moment (with the help of Daichi Murayama who was a terrific referee), her body language and facials following the nearfalls were tremendous too.

 

Flair really never struck me as being great at building nearfalls to be honest. What you describe is indeed very cool stuff about Flair's work, but I wouldn't call the way he kicked out of headlock pins in the first stages of a match nearfalls. There was no way the match was ending there. And really, when I think about great Flair matches, the last thing I think about is great nearfalls. I dunno.

 

To me this is a lost art these days. One thing I hate is the "nearfalls" during a your-turn/my-turn sequence (usually in junior matches) where the guy pinning his opponent basically pushes him off at two to get into the next position. This is just awful, and guys like Malenko were doing it all the time. To me the guy has to kick out on his own. If he's not quick enough, too damn bad, but some guy basically get out of the pinning position by themselves.

[Ricky Jackson]

One of the best near fall kick outs I've seen recently is from Backlund vs Killer Khan, 12/29/80 MSG. During the match (a very good one BTW), Bob kicks out at 2.9 after Khan hits him with a knee off the top rope. A few things made this kick out special. One, for long time WWF fans at the time, the knee off the top would have brought back memories of Bruno losing to Koloff to the same move, and the crowd reflects this, as there is a hush after Khan hits the move and then an audible gasp when Bob kicks out. Second, watching a ton of Bob for Titans, it is no exaggeration to say this was the closest near fall anyone had got on him in at least two years. In fact, Bob would rarely even give up a two count to anyone ever, so it was shocking for Khan to get a 2.9.

[stomperspc]

To me, a great nearfall is less about kicking out of something no one ever kicks out of and more about timing the kickout at the best possible millisecond to get the largest reaction. The days of a two-count being so close that half the people in the building swear it was a three count are not something I would say is over, but it doesn't happen very often anymore.

 

I agree that with near falls, it is all about the timing both in the sense of where the near fall is placed within the match and the actual timing of the kick out. The second part builds off the first, I think. I have seen matches where guys do a really nice job kicking out late but the crowd doesn't buy it as a close near fall. That is usually because what came before it didn't do an adequate enough job of making people think that could be the finish. There needs to be a logical progression to the near fall(s). One counts turn into two counts, the moves get a little bit bigger, and the wrestlers get the match to a point where those watching believe that the right move delivered at that time could actually end the match. If they get it to that point, the final part is timing the shoulder lift or kick out just right and holding on just long enough to get that split second "maybe this really is the finish!" reaction. It is all about understanding where to take to the match to get to a point where the crowd will anticipate a certain move being the finish, then flipping the script on them.

 

I also think some of it as to do with how the near fall kick out is sold by both guys, although particularly the guy kicking out. I also love Flair's side headlock near falls. Part of what made them great was how he would physically and verbally sell the near fall. Not only did he get his shoulder up late, but he would shoot it up quick, roll over, and let out a loud, drawn out "Nooooo!" All of that together made a strong near fall in the sense that when it was over, you thought about how close the match just came to ending even if you didn't necessarily buy that Flair's shoulders were going to be kept down for the 3-count as it was happening.

[JerryvonKramer]

I don't wish to be a negative Nelly, but excessive nearfalls are one of the things that I really dislike about WWE Main Event style over the past few years and it's one of the reasons I really don't like the Taker vs. HBK matches that so many people rave about. But this is perhaps part of of the ways fans are conditioned: i.e. that matches can ONLY finish with a signature move.

 

The nearfalls in the Flair matches that Loss is talking about are more effective because it is CONCEIVABLE for a match to finish with, for example, a backslide.

 

I'd make a distinction between nearfalls of that kind (see also Savage vs. Steamboat) and nearfalls that are mainly *GASP* kicking out of finishers. The second variety do my head in.

[El-P]

I don't wish to be a negative Nelly, but excessive nearfalls are one of the things that I really dislike about WWE Main Event style over the past few years and it's one of the reasons I really don't like the Taker vs. HBK matches that so many people rave about. But this is perhaps part of of the ways fans are conditioned: i.e. that matches can ONLY finish with a signature move.

 

This.

[bradhindsight]

I agree about the impact of a 2.9999 nearfall. I'll give you a recent (and surprising) example: Batista kicking out of the RKO at WrestleMania was fantastic. You were conditioned to know it wasn't the end so even at 2.5 you were waiting but he was soooo close to 3. Best thing he's done in his return.

[PhilTLL]

I was rewatching Clash 23 and noticed some near-fall weirdness in the Windham/Scorpio match. Scorpio gets some incredible heat off of a couple of 2.9s from Windham's DDT, etc. But on at least a couple of what should be equally hot Scorpio near-falls (half-turn splash, slingshot 450), Windham kicks out at about 2.1 and the crowd just kind of blinks. I wonder if BW didn't want to give Scorpio the 2.9, didn't feel the time was right (which would be baffling), or if he just wasn't thinking very hard about it.

[PeteF3]

I think the All-Japan '90s guys skirted the line the best between throwing tons of near-falls at you without (for the most part) overdoing it. "Energy bar selling," as I've referred to it in the Yearbook threads. You can imagine a video game energy bar above each wrestler's head drawing weaker and weaker throughout a match--maybe occasionally they hit a Hulk-Up/"power-up" bonus and regain some. But as the energy bar weakens, the falls get more dramatic and the winning fall carries a sense of finality to it, rather than an arbitrary move that was booked to be the finish. And yet with all this there's still room for surprise kickouts and displays of "fighting spirit" that don't just involve finisher kickouts.

 

AJPW was good at this for a few reasons: everybody had multiple moves to put guys away with, so there was little waiting around because you knew that, say, Kawada wasn't winning until he hit at least 1 power bomb. I can't remember a '90s AJPW match that ever really overstayed its welcome in the near-fall department, which I can't say for various juniors, joshi, and modern indy/WWE main-event-style matches. They ran more finishes where a guy kicks out of one move but is then hit with another and pinned. U.S. wrestling up until the 2000s involved almost all matches ending with one finisher, a sudden counter-move, or some sort of screwjob/interference. That adds to the drama as well because they're not afraid to change with a formula to tease but not give one last comeback.

 

And then there are the tag bouts, which add another dimension with the use of saves. What would be sure match-enders are suddenly not, because now there's a game-within-the-game of having to neutralize a guy's partner if you really want to win. That can involve either knocking the guy out, just guarding the pin attempt, or possibly my favorite and most-dramatic knocking the partner out of the ring and then hanging onto him like a maniac to keep him from re-entering.

 

Good use of an energy-bar is what separates a match with great near-falls to the derisive "2.9 wrestling" term for me. When an energy bar is clearly depleted based on the selling, psychology, and overall story of the match and a wrestler kicks out anyway, just one excessive kickout can totally take me out of a match. I go from being emotionally invested in who's winning to, "Okay, go and run through all your near-falls, let me know when you're done," lightning-fast. It happened to me with Shawn vs. Angle at WrestleMania, and it happened to me with the widely-loved Bull vs. Masami match, and various others.

[PeteF3]

Some of my favorite kickouts:

 

- Kenta Kobashi in 6/5/92 Budokan tag. First he gets creamed by Jumbo and Taue doing the "backdrop+chokeslam" double-team, done possibly for the first time. Taue goes for the pin while Jumbo guards, but Misawa manages to *still* get through Jumbo to make the save. No problem, Jumbo just tosses Misawa aside while Taue hits a dead Kobashi with a power bomb, but THAT gets only 2. Two incredibly dramatic, "that has to be it" moments, but everything is so perfectly timed and Kobashi's selling so realistic and his mini-comeback so well-done that it doesn't fall into the overstay-its-welcome trap I mentioned above. That it was Kobashi doing this in his first big AJPW title main event just added to it.

 

- Chavo Guerrero in his Sam Houston Coliseum match against Mr. Olympia. Olympia puts a chain over his boot and levels Chavo with a dropkick, which as standard a finish as you get in Mid-South, except this time Chavo gets a shoulder up (or possibly a foot on the rope) at 2.999. This was great both because of the timing, the way Chavo kept selling the move even through the kickout, and because this type of false finish was far from standard in the early '80s territories.

 

- Randy Savage escaping the Warrior's finish at WM7. Oh, the five elbowdrops were nice but I knew watching that once he went up a third time that it was going to be a Hulk-Up routine. This was just a normally done kickout but it was a nice token to give Savage the chance to escape the babyface finish after Warrior killed his. Also a spot not normally done in the WWF.

 

- Jushin Liger is probably the king of the kickouts, with too many close ones to name in all of his matches, both by himself and his opponent. What Liger is particularly great at is struggling and bicycling and fighting to get out of various roll-up combinations and kicking out at the last second, both of which add weight to your standard juniors roll-up sequence. Liger "gets" the energy bar as much as anyone in wrestling ever has, which may be the single factor that sets him apart from all of his other juniors peers.

 

- This is an odd one, but the Barbarian at the '91 Royal Rumble. Big Boss Man hits him with his finish after a run of near-falls, but at the last second Barbarian literally gets two fingertips on the bottom rope to break the count. I totally bit on that and in a way it changed how I watched wrestling--as a kid I was just concerned about who won or lost, and like a young Vince Russo the squash-o-rama nature of television didn't have me looking at the journey to the result critically. That escape in particular got me into thinking about how a match itself can be a story with ups and downs and twists, rather than just a means to an end.

[funkdoc]

I don't wish to be a negative Nelly, but excessive nearfalls are one of the things that I really dislike about WWE Main Event style over the past few years and it's one of the reasons I really don't like the Taker vs. HBK matches that so many people rave about. But this is perhaps part of of the ways fans are conditioned: i.e. that matches can ONLY finish with a signature move.

 

omg this x 1000

 

i actually think 18 Seconds was their way of trying to make fans buy into all these mania nearfalls, but it's going to take more than just 1 match. and like you talked about, that was still a finisher that did the job!

[fxnj]

This is a question I've thought a lot about. To understand what makes a good nearfall is fundamental to finding the answer to such commonly discussed topics here as "why are 90s AJPW stretch runs the best," "what causes us to mark out," and "what is overkill." The key to answering it is in the conflict between what the viewer expects to happen and what he actually sees unfolding in the match. Everything is simply a matter of symbolic interpretation. If you've lived your life thinking things are going to end up a certain way and then it ends up completely different, the surprise you experience for the exact moment that happens is the strongest emotion humans can experience. That's basically what a good near fall does, taking prior audience expectations of the meaning behind the symbols exchanged in the ring and using them tell a story inducing those feelings of shock and awe. Wrestling gives us a middle point between seeing a plot twist in a movie we entirely know is fake and having something shocking actually happen to us in real life. The spectacle of legit violence wrestling strives to create gives a higher level of involvement than what we'd get from a fictional story, but there's also a level of detachment from just being fans that allows us to fully savor the emotions instead of getting entirely caught up in the moment. Best of both worlds.

 

This same thing is even at work in boxing, when guys take ridiculous loads of punishment without getting knocked down. In that moment, conceptions about what human limitations are are shattered and the boxer effectively elevates himself to demigod status. The will to power is consumated in its highest form and the fans living vicariously through the boxer are brought to that same fight-or-flight high of marking out. I remember a Youtube comment on Gatti-Ward saying something along the lines of "people would complain this was too fake if it was a movie," and that pretty well summarizes it. 90's AJPW is the best wrestling ever because it pushes the pscyhology of Gatti-Ward the farthest it's ever been pushed, entirely demolishing expecations for perseverence in so many of their big matches. This is why the concept of overkill is incomprehensible to me, aside from the fact that nobody can even seem to agree on what it is. It's perfectly valid to say that the guys just weren't doing enough to keep the match interesting and to keep the near falls engaging. There are tons of great selling details and such in Misawa/Kobashi 1/97 beyond just "finisher->kickout->finisher" that aren't there at all in actual finisher spamming shit like Cena/Rock II. The version I see more often is akin the "energy bar" thing seen previously in here, and that makes no sense to me since you do need to think a guy's "energy bar" is down for any of the kickouts or hope spots to even be engaging. Otherwise, you are just left with something like that token first suplex nearfall in an AJPW match where fans give a reaction out of respect but you can tell they aren't truly into it yet.

This also explains the psychology behind the 1 count and fighting spirit spots. Just like a boxing crowd doesn't need knockdown selling to see what's going on with a guy taking a barrage of hard punches, neither do wrestling fans need a 2 count and epic selling to know what happens when a guy gets dropped on his head. I've seen people here deride the psychology of matches like Shibata/Gotoh from January for killing finisher credibility, but I think a match like that is actually great at getting across finisher credibility. The visual of a guy leaping straight up from a move to show off his pride effectively skips right over "this move should really hurt" into really getting it into the audience's head that they should be shocked a guy is able to get up from it. When I was watching that match, I was legit amazed that they were even able to do that exchange and given the reactions from they got from the crowd I doubt I was alone. To cross over from just being a worked match and creating a shocked reaction as if it were real is exactly what a near fall should do.

[W2BTD]

The best guy these days is Kazuchika Okada. The dragon suplex in the Togi Makabe match is a great example, but he usually has one excellent last millisecond kickout in his IWGP title matches.

[dawho5]

As far as who was really good at this, I have an (maybe) unexpected response.

 

The Four Pillars were not great at the uber late 2.99999 nearfalls consistently. If you really look at a lof of the big move kickouts, they are barely after 2 in many, many cases. This is one of those areas where I feel that Taue was miles ahead of the other three. Across the board, though, NJ juniors and American wrestling are more consistently late in their near-falls than these guys. And I'm not saying that's a terrible thing, just an odd thing that's been creeping up on me as I watch more. The fact that it very rarely takes a lot away from a match is something I'm working on reasons for. I think fxnj and Petef3 hit on quite a few of them. I'd also volunteer my theory that the punishment they put themselves through on a regular basis may have something to do with not wanting to chance a 3 at the wrong time.

[Zenjo]

The referee also has a vital role to play in near falls. They need to have a convincing 2.9 count. For over 17 years in the WWE you'd hardly see a near fall in main events because Earl Hebner was so terrible at his job. At 2.1 you knew it was a kickout. He's still going at TNA, but it's such a useless promotion it hardly matters anymore. I know I often go on about Hebner, but the subtle damage he caused ended up being vast without people realising it. A bad wrestler can only mess up their own match. A bad referee hurts multiple bouts a show, often for years on end as there's little personnel turnover.