Working to the Crowd

[BillThompson]

Benoit/Malenko from Hog Wild '96 is up next in my "watch every PPV on the Network" project I have going on. I remember liking the match a ton when it first happened. This time though, I'm wondering how I will react to it. The reason for this is that while the guys worked a match that a lot of workrate people liked, they pretty much ignored the reactions of the crowd. That approach never used to bother me, but now it has started to become a problem for me.

 

My most recent example is Steamboat/Flair from Spring Stampede '94. I thought it's still a bottom level great match, but the first half of the match is hurt because both guys have decided they are working their specific match and the crowd will have to deal with that. Had both men worked to what the crowd wanted maybe the match could have been an all-time great.

 

On the other end of the spectrum is Benoit/Angle from Royal Rumble '03. The crowd was dead coming into the match and they remained dead for the first half of the match. Both guys worked the match they wanted to and didn't appear to change anything they were doing based on the lack of crowd reaction. Eventually they brought the crowd into the match, and by the end the crowd was losing their shit and even gave Benoit a standing ovation after the match. I know a lot of people at PWO don't like Angle's style, but I love it and felt this match was great through and through.

 

My question is, how much responsibility does a worker have to adapt to what the crowd wants? There are obvious cases where the workers do change things up to try and get the crowd going, and sometimes it works while other times the match still bombs. For me I think this is an issue that needs to be taken on a match by match basis. Benoit/Malenko is an example of two guys who needed to switch things up, and when they didn't match suffered terribly as a result. Benoit/Angle is an example of two guys working their match and dragging the fans into the match, and the end result produced a wonderful match.

 

Sometimes the workers should change things up, other times they need to go with what they want to do. That may result in some dead matches, and I will most likely be critical of workers who produce a tone deaf match because of their refusal to change. At the same time I see how my last sentence is hypocritical, and that's why I think this is an interesting issue without an easy answer.

[Loss]

Their primary goal is to get the crowd involved so I think they should adjust if they aren't. No rule in wrestling is hard and fast and some crowds are just impossible and suck, but one of my favorite things in wrestling to watch is seeing someone who knows what he's doing turn around an apathetic crowd, or one that is predisposed to react differently than the wrestlers want them to react.

[El-P]

Benoit/Malenko from Hog Wild '96 is up next in my "watch every PPV on the Network" project I have going on. I remember liking the match a ton when it first happened. This time though, I'm wondering how I will react to it. The reason for this is that while the guys worked a match that a lot of workrate people liked, they pretty much ignored the reactions of the crowd.

 

I had turned the corner a few years ago already on that match that I probbaly used to love in the late 90's, here's what I wrote about it when I rewatched some weeks ago :

 

"I'd rather stare at Liz and Woman in mini-shorts doing nothing for 30 minutes. This is just a bombfest with zero dynamic (your turn/my turn for 30 minutes) and no effort to involve a dead crowd. Yeah, worked in a vaacum. Ultimo vs Rey craps on this match so hard it's not funny. And the timekeeper announcing that only 5 minutes were left as a total giveaway made it even more annoying. It's telling that Woman interfering got the most heat. I don't blame the crowd. Most overrated match of the year."

 

Yeah, there are dead crowds that you can't get into anything. JWP crowds in the mid 90's were infamous for being silent while watching matches that would get tremendous reactions in front of your average Korakuen hardcores. But this wasn't one of them. Rey got them to cheer for him earlier on. Malenko is the picture perfect exemple of "working in a vaacum" most of the time, and that makes him amazingly frustrating to watch. Like Muraco is the greatest laziest wrestler ever (this side of Muto), Malenko is the greatest tone deaf wrestler ever.

[anotherspammer]

I generally think if the wrestlers have a match laid out, they should probably stick to their plan, with minor deviations if the crowd seems to react to some aspects better than others. It seems to easy for guys to just start dropping huge crazy spots and millions of near-falls if they decide to win a tough crowd over, which will likely hurt the rest of the card.

 

I think whether or not the wrestlers should change what they have planned also depends on what long-term plans there are, if any. For example, should Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio have changed their plans and start ripping masks and brawling all over in their Wrestlemania match? I don't think so, because it worked to set up their summer long feud.

[Migs]

The analogy is to a band playing a live show. Should they play what they want, or play what the crowd wants? On the one hand, the fans paid money and feel entitled to see the band play the big songs. But the band might also feel a responsibility to play a fresh show, not one where they go through the motions. And moreover, while some fans want to hear the hits, other people will love the band much more for playing the deep cuts or new arrangements of old songs.

 

Benoit and Malenko may not have given everyone what they wanted, but they clearly gave some people what they wanted (at least among the PPV viewers). A bunch of people loved that match. Now, not everyone did. Maybe they could have done things that would have made the bikers like it. But that might have made it far worse art for the people who loved it. Moreover, that match is such an extreme example that I'm not sure it proves any specific point. Most of the time, the workers putting on the artistic performance that they want to put on is going to create the most interesting art, even if it's not the most crowd pleasing. And if the art the worker wants to put on doesn't excite a good size fan base, they're not going to have a long career anyway.

[Loss]

The reason I don't think the analogy is entirely similar is because wrestlers work with the goal of working a crowd. Or at least they are supposed to.

[Matt Farmer]

It also depends on what part of the card they are on. A good booker will book the card like you book a match, you want peaks and valleys on the card or you end up with fans burnt out or bored. ROH used to be really guilty of this, I haven't been to a live event in a few years but it was after 3 matches you were burnt out and ready to go home. After hour 3 I was ready to never go to a ROH show again because I just saw every highspot ever invented.

 

A good booker will give directions to the undercard, and at times even restrictions. But a good lockeroom will also know their roles. Not every match should be a five star spot fest. And sometimes the heavy "work rate" guys were very guilty of having a good technical match in front of a crowd that wanted to see a fight.

[WingedEagle]

Their primary goal is to get the crowd involved so I think they should adjust if they aren't.

 

I love this topic as it raises a bunch of questions that I'm not sure how I'd answer, much less that there is any sort of definitive answer.

 

Which audience should wrestlers be working the match for? Is it always the live crowd or the TV audience? They can definitely work things differently to appeal to me at home with an HDTV as opposed to sitting in the 300 level at an arena. Then there's how much the live crowd helps or hurts a match for the TV audience. Just a quick hit right now as I don' t have the time to think back about various matches where these ideas stood out, but its always fascinated me. What if you're watching on mute -- is that a fair way to look at a match?

[BillThompson]

This can also be spun off into commentating, and when they decide to ignore the crowd. I'm of two minds on that issue as well, because technically the commentary team is there to talk about the product, not the fans. However, it's a given that the commentators will bring the crowd up all the time. Should the commentators ignore when the crowd isn't reacting to a match like they had hoped? Or, should they comment on the crowd's displeasure and work off of that?

 

I think the commentators should acknowledge the crowd, because nothing is more disingenuous to me than when a commentator tries to talk about the crowd loving a match when they are either sitting on their hands or actively shitting on the match. I do recognize though that the commentators are in a tough spot, because they can't really play up the product as crappy, even if it is, because that's just not good business.

 

Back to the wrestlers, I'm not sure how to look at who they are working for, the live crowd or the TV audience. I'm leaning towards them needing to work towards the live audience, because just about everything in the match feeds off of that live audience. If they get a live audience into the match chances are they can get the TV audience as well. Or, if they can't get that TV audience, then at least they have the live audience rocking and in their favor.

[Loss]

I don't think working a crowd and keeping them involved is as simple as getting up and doing a bunch of flippy floppy stuff when they chant boring at the matwork. I think it's about making them want something that they think was their idea, when the guys in the ring were the ones pulling strings the entire time. That's wrestling at it's best.

[fxnj]

I think it's dumb to not include the viewers at home when talking about "working to the crowd." If a large segment of PPV buyers enjoyed Benoit/Malenko and wanted to keep supporting the product, I don't see the problem if they didn't dumb things down for the biker fans.

[Johnny Sorrow]

I was a huge fan of Benoit and Malenko back then and even I was yelling at the TV for that shit to end.

[Loss]

I don't think that crowd is an example that can fairly or honestly be cited in conversations like these. Those weren't ticket-buying wrestling fans. It was an outdoor Worldwide Arena without cue cards.

[MJH]

I don't think that crowd is an example that can fairly or honestly be cited in conversations like these. Those weren't ticket-buying wrestling fans. It was an outdoor Worldwide Arena without cue cards.

 

This.

 

But it also wasn't much of a match anyway. A better, if hypothetical, scenario is had Benoit and Eddie done their 'sleeper' match in WCW, and worked to crickets, or even had the crowd viscerally behind Benoit rather than Eddie, would we be critical of the workers (who've had close to both's career-best match), or the crowd? Or something like Benoit/Regal where the latter blows out his knee and they have to switch it up, turning Regal from heel to underdog, the match as a whole clearly suffers for the switch (injury notwithstanding). I'm sure there are better examples, however...

 

Surely the answer is somewhere in between? You don't want a dead crowd, obviously. From both an atmospheric and a business perspective. At the same time, as a television viewer, and having tastes perhaps divergent from what the live audience on that particular night wants, I want what I want too, y'know? And, yes, WWE television is clearly worked to the cameras: entrances are to the hard cam, rope-running spots are very predominantly ran perpendicular to the hard-cam so they're better shot, even during tags the babyface will always take the top left (as we see it) corner so their faces are in shot waiting on the apron, etc. And there's definitely something to be said for the subtleties you can do to a single ringside camera that you wouldn't pick up live (and, conversely, of course, big visual spots for the cheap seats). The reality is, once you're being filmed, the television viewers are your bigger audience. And that's how the match will be remembered in posterity terms. To run with Migs' music example a little, a live gig can still be a good show even if the mix is terrible and the playing sloppy as fuck. But no one wants to hear it back afterwards.

[fxnj]

I don't think that crowd is an example that can fairly or honestly be cited in conversations like these. Those weren't ticket-buying wrestling fans. It was an outdoor Worldwide Arena without cue cards.

So you're saying it would be fair if it was an audience that actually was representative of their core fanbase? As in the same people at home who saw Benoit/Malenko and similar workrate stuff as great wrestling?

 

Notwithstanding shit like crowd brawling that's a cool visual for the camera but fucking awful for the 99% who he can't even see the wrestlers, I don't buy simply being there live somehow completely changes my tastes compared to if I was watching at home. I've never been to a live show and suddenly started loving the posing and heel cheating bullshit generally associated with "working with the crowd." If anything, it's the stiffness and workrate that comes across even better when you're seeing the physicality happening before your eyes rather than through a camera.

[Loss]

What I'm saying is that WCW didn't even charge admission for the show. They set up a ring in the middle of a bikers event that had no wrestling presence otherwise. So I wouldn't blame wrestlers for not getting a desired reaction on those shows. Any reaction -- good or bad -- doesn't really mean anything on a show like that because they aren't wrestling fans anyway, so it's not fair to use their behavior as an example of how wrestling fans typically act. I don't hear anyone calling Hogan a terrible heel for getting cheered in the main event, or praising Harlem Heat for working the crowd into a frenzy when it was only clearly because the audience was full of racists. So why single out Benoit vs Malenko?

 

That would be like criticizing WWE for setting up a ring on my sidewalk right now and having a bunch of matches that don't get my neighbors hyped.

[Matt D]

What I'm saying is that WCW didn't even charge admission for the show. They set up a ring in the middle of a bikers event that had no wrestling presence otherwise. So I wouldn't blame wrestlers for not getting a desired reaction on those shows. Any reaction -- good or bad -- doesn't really mean anything on a show like that because they aren't wrestling fans anyway, so it's not fair to use their behavior as an example of how wrestling fans typically act. I don't hear anyone calling Hogan a terrible heel for getting cheered in the main event, or praising Harlem Heat for working the crowd into a frenzy when it was only clearly because the audience was full of racists. So why single out Benoit vs Malenko?

 

That would be like criticizing WWE for setting up a ring on my sidewalk right now and having a bunch of matches that don't get my neighbors hyped.

 

This is one of those metrics where I might give someone points but would be less likely to take points away. If someone understands human nature and the psychology of wrestling enough to find a way to reach that crowd while still accomplishing the other, longer-term goals that he had to in his match, then I would give him credit for that, because I think that deserves credit.

 

Back in the 19th century when oration was a passtime of sorts, you would get people who could manage it, while getting forward their views, to the most and least educated of crowds. Wrestling is sort of the same thing. It's all about utilizing the tools of the medium for storytelling and crowd control.

 

That said, if you asked me if a match in front of a bunch of spot-happy misfits that was worked in a way that was hugely pleasing to them was a good wrestling match, I'd probably say no, but if they engaged that crowd while still hitting the marks that I cared about, I'd give them points for it.

 

So, to sum up, now that I've stumbled through it, it's a second-level quality to me. If I had two matches that I thought were just about as good, it might be a tie-breaker. Likewise, it might fit into the "versatility" category for how I judge a wrestler. Can he work a different sort of match in front of different crowds, etc.

 

I don't know. That all still seems sort of scattered, which is one reason I haven't said much until now.

[tholzerman]

The best example I can think of two guys possibly calling an audible and working with the crowd are Rock and Hogan at Mania X-8 (I say possibly, because fans seemed to have wanted to cheer Hogan from start, so perhaps that was the plan going in?). Cena's also wonderful at gauging a crowd and knowing when to work rudo situationally. Having a story you want to tell going into a match is well and good, and sometimes, that story is going to work the crowd into the desired reaction. I agree above that nothing [REDACTED] and Malenko were going to do was going to win over that crowd since it was full of people who may have cared about wrestling in a passing fashion at the very most. But there were crowds that would have eaten that up and did eat it up in the past.

 

But calling audibles and working with what the crowd is giving you instead of vice versa is what can elevate a wrestler from good to great, even if it's not necessary.

[The Chief]

Please don't bring that here, just say "Benoit"

[jdw]

I agree with the comments that Road/Hog Wild is a tough non-wrestling crowd to work if you're doing what Benoit and Melenko typically did in that period (outside of Benoit working with Sully). Worse, they were given 27 minutes to work, which is just batshit "Let's Fuck With Them" type of booking on someone's part.

 

All that said, if you want an even worse In The Bubble Match, Malenko had one with Eddy at the LA Forum a little over a month before. Technically solid, but Dean couldn't be bothered to work to the crowd, and Eddy let the match be a Dean Match rather than trying to force it to be at least half an Eddy Match.

 

Dean really was an odd pain in the ass in 1996 and into 1997. Very solid, but he could dominate Rey for 10 minutes before giving him 2 minutes to get his shit in before hitting the finish. The contrast to me always was the Dragon-Rey where Dragon did dominate the match via control, but he let Rey get his shit in via spurtty comebacks before cutting him back off. Dean... he's just keep people down when he felt like it. The Dean-Psic at WWIII was a mind numbing fuck up of a guy laying out a match without giving a shit about what his opponent could being to a match to make it entertaining for the fans and viewers.

 

John

[El-P]

The contrast to me always was the Dragon-Rey where Dragon did dominate the match via control, but he let Rey get his shit in via spurtty comebacks before cutting him back off.

 

Well, Rey and Ultimo worked the same non-wrestling-fan/non-paying customers/"racist" crowd at the same Hogg Wild 96 and they got their match over. Granted, it was much shorter and flashy spots oriented than the Malenko/Benoit "technical clinic" but they were still two japanese and mexican short guys in bright colorful attires. Not the stuff the biker crowd would easily eat up.

 

The Dean-Psic at WWIII was a mind numbing fuck up of a guy laying out a match without giving a shit about what his opponent could being to a match to make it entertaining for the fans and viewers.

 

 

Oh God I rewatched this a few weeks ago. They just killed the audience dead. Typical Malenko at his worst. Like I said, he's probably the greatest most tone deaf worker ever.

[BigBadMick]

I'm wondering how tone deaf a wrestler is allowed to become before someone steps in with a few 'suggestions'?