What is Workrate? Does Workrate Matter?

[BillThompson]

Okay, I'm working on a couple of columns for the magazine I write for, The Tag Rope. One I already have pretty much laid out, why I think the WON HoF is pointless, but the other I was hoping to get some talking points from the board for. Essentially I'm going to be looking at workrate. It's evolution as I've been watching wrestling, why it mattered, does it matter as much today, what does it even mean, what are the other factors in defining quality wrestling, etc.? So, here's some of the questions I'd like some feedback on (and not to single anyone out but I'd really love responses from guys like Charles, Dylan, Matt (especially you), Parv, Ohtani, the Voices of Wrestling crew, and a bunch of others who regularly engage in debates about workrate.

 

How do you define workrate?

 

Is workrate important to you?

 

What elements make up a quality match for you, and how much of that is workrate?

 

Do we need to move away from workrate as a metric in evaluating matches?

 

How did the online communities view of workrate influence you earlier in your wrestling fandom?

 

Those are just the basics, I know I'm asking for a lot and I won't use every response, but I think if there was ever a place that could bring an interesting view of the idea of workrate it's the PWO crowd. Thanks.

[Matt D]

I'm not jumping into this note frothing at the mouth and throwing around "Workrate Dogmatism." I'll look at this in a couple of days after people say what they say. But I do want to repost this.

 

Again, I don't want to put words into anyone's mouth.

 

My idea of workrate is tied to 1999. When I think workrate I think SAT/Red vs Quiet Storm and Brian XL. I think go-go-go. Lots of motion. Working hard. Lots of action. Lots of stiffness and headdrops and hard hitting. Suplexes. Movez. Kickouts at two. Working hard and maybe working smart, maybe not. Fan chants. Fighting spirit. Kip ups which might be called Nip ups. Chopfests. Dives. Cardio. I think Angle vs Benoit from 03. I think Escalating finisher trading. Dynamite Kid vs Tiger Mask. Big bumping. Unprotected chair shots. Stiff kicks. Working hard. That move where you put your leg on the guy's head and flipover to hit a suplex. Working hard. Hot ending stretches. Power Bombs. Sabu vs Cactus Jack. Elaborate chain wrestling followed by a hesitation while the crowd claps. Great execution. High spots. Complicated moves that involve cooperation. Unnecessary rotations. Lightning Kid vs Jerry Lynn. Superkick reversals off the top rope. Working hard.

 

You know.

 

Workrate. It's not just one thing, but it's maybe less than three dozen?

 

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/24598-what-is-good-wrestling/&do=findComment&comment=5588073

[NintendoLogic]

The old RSPW FAQ defined workrate as the ratio of action to inaction (i.e., restholds) in a match. I think that's as good a definition as any. And it's not the end-all be-all, but of course it matters. I thoroughly despise mindless spotfest wrestling, but I think most people would agree that, all other things being equal, more action is better than less action.

[Timbo Slice]

There are plenty of wrestlers who know how to make a match compelling without all that action, though. Workrate and move set always seem to come up together in discussions I've seen. Or that they use a lot of cool moves. And then that becomes what fans think of when that term comes to mind and wrestlers who throw more nuance into their match get penalized in their minds.

 

To me, work rate has been what Matt's statement means. And because that's how I perceive the term, I truly believe it doesn't matter.

[NintendoLogic]

Which is why I said "all other things being equal." Savage/Steamboat is a workrate match, and it's awesome. And 90s All Japan had workrate and cool moves by the boatload, and that's as good as wrestling gets.

[Mr. Lacelle]

I always thought it meant how much stuff worked within the match. High work rate meant that the stuff that was attempted went off without a hitch. Thus I always assumed matches with low workrate were matches with poor exectuion and blown spots.

[FedEx227]

I'm a huge sports fan and a big reason I got into professional wrestling was that blend of over the top characters and physical activity. To me, it was sports on steroids (sometimes literally and figuratively) and had all the elements of a sport but ALSO with promos, great characters, etc. Very quickly I was attracted to guys who I considered to be great athletes, guys who jumped high, worked fast, looked good and made me think I was watching high-level sport. So allow me to tackle your questions a bit:

• How do you define workrate?
  

Workrate to me has always been the action going on in the right. As others have said, I always felt "restholds" or any transitional-type maneuvers weren't exactly workrate. It's very hard to give a clear definition here but I guess a high-level athletic display, action-based wrestling that makes sense in the context of the larger match and the story being told.

• Is workrate important to you?
  

It's everything to me. As I said in the opening paragraph, I got into wrestling because I was a sports fan and I wanted something similar to sport with the volume turned WAY up. Workrate to me, IS THAT. I define it the same way I'd define a good game of basketball. There's a blend between the Denver Nuggets of the 1980s/Phoenix Suns of the 2000s and the NBA's Eastern Conference in the early 2000s (very slow, deliberate, methodical, etc.) Those are perfect analogies for wrestling and my favorite lies somewhere in between. Sometimes the go-go-go can make your head spin and more often than not those teams don't succeed in the long run. The teams in the middle, the ones that know when to play fast and when to slow it down are usually more successful and provide a more entertaining brand of basketball. I don't see wrestling being any different. Give me match that's paced somewhere in the middle and I'm a-okay.

• What elements make up a quality match for you, and how much of that is workrate?
  

As I said, I prefer über-athleticism over working methodically, that's just me, it'll always be the style I prefer and it's the style I was attracted to the moment I started watching wrestling. The first time I saw Rey Mysterio on WCW TV (I'm 27, start watching for real in about 95/96) I was blown away, absolutely floored by what this guy could do. He immediately made the last two hours on Nitro look like a complete bore. Why do I want to watch Hogan doing a headlock if this guy is making me go "WOW!" all the time. Sure, there's more to it and as I've gotten older I've appreciated the nuance of wrestling more and more but to me, I'm always looking for the "WOW" I'm looking for the athletic displays.

• Do we need to move away from workrate as a metric in evaluating matches?
  

Perhaps, but but I won't. It's still the upmost importance for me and why I watch wrestling. I think a great match can cover a shit story but a shit story rarely if ever destroys what I consider a great match. Pair the two together and of course you have legendary stuff but I'll always think a great workrate match (how I defined it), is key. I do think there needs to be other ways to evaluate matches and I think a lot of the guys at this site HAVE done a good job of that but it'll always be my evaluation standard.

• How did the online communities view of workrate influence you earlier in your wrestling fandom?
  

Very little. As I said, even before I was on the internet I was blown away by what I considered the high workrate guys. As I got on the internet and got exposed to a lot more stuff, it certainly helped me discover new guys but I was already there. Seeing Ring of Honor for the first time didn't sway me to start liking workrate, being a fan of high workrate and seeing ROH made me a huge fan from the get-go.

[Lee Casebolt]

Workrate's just the amount of shit that gets done in the amount of time you have. It says nothing one way or the other about the quality of shit done. I like a varied tempo, myself, over pure workrate. There's such a thing (looking at you, Young Bucks) as working too fast. I think most fans need a chance to anticipate a spot before it happens, and to appreciate it after. Spot-spot-spot, no matter how well executed and sensibly put together, leads to getting jaded and making each spot less important.

 

Is it important? Sure. No one wants to watch two guys stand and look at each other for twenty minutes. But I'm much more concerned about the quality of execution, timing, layout, and all the stuff that gets laid out under "psychology" than volume of activity. There's nothing wrong with using workrate as an element of evaluating a match, but it's not important enough to be the sole, or even the primary element.

[evilclown]

Casebolt gets it.

 

Everyone else...lurk and learn!

[FedEx227]

Seems like a solid attitude to have about the subject/discussion.

[W2BTD]

Technically "workrate" simply refers to how hard the participants work, regardless of the quality of the work.

 

Obviously over the years though, it has become a word that has taken on several different meanings.

 

Many times when I write a review, I will say something like "the workrate here was very high, but the story didn't grab me", meaning i'm giving them credit for the physical element of the match even if the story being told (or lack of one) never connected with me.

 

By the strict definition, you can have a great low workrate match, or a terrible high workrate match. Over the years, the term has sort of morphed into meaning something eiher positive or negative based on the quality of the match as opposed to simply the physical effort.

[Matt D]

I actually kind of hate sports. I like baseball though. And I like books; books are good.

[Shining Wiz]

I can honestly say it's a word I have never said or typed.

 

I understand it to generally mean the speed with which wrestlers wrestle in their matches. I've never read someone saying "x has a high workrate" (first time for everything) to ever be a bad thing. Not a guarantee of a good match at all, but I can't think of a way where that would be insulting. Flipside of that would be that guys could have a low one and still be pretty enjoyable.

 

I also think it's a word that shows people overthink things.

[JerryvonKramer]

Alright, I'll answer this without reading any replies:

 

How do you define workrate?

It's action and movement. Everything from delivering or receiving a suplex to (for example) Flair flipping over the turnbuckle running across to the next turnbuckle and being slammed off the top.

 

Big bumps count as "workrate" to me. When Ricky Steamboat takes a punch and flings himself halfway across the ring. When Ricky Morton is working a fifteen minute FIP sequence and pinballing around the ring for the heels. It's all workrate.

 

Is workrate important to you?

Yes "to a point".

 

Like a lot of people here, I value good storytelling and to me workrate without a compelling narrative around it isn't all that interesting.

 

However, I also really value action and movement. I don't like things to feel too static. If I get the impression that a match is mostly guys lying around on the mat to kill time, I'll be generally down on it. I do like matwork, but I like it worked brutally -- I want it to have lots of struggle, and to look painful. I like it when guys throw nasty little punches even while they are in a hold. Lou Thesz did this a lot in that match with Verne Gagne, as did Billy Robinson in general. Dory Funk Jr is good on the mat in terms of positioning his weight and making it look painful. But despite all that, I still love a suplex just for its own sake. I love watching a nice 10-minute heel heat sequence where a guy might start with a few more basic moves but starts working through his offensive arsenal until he's hitting the bombs.

 

I even love a bombfest that doesn't have much structure (think Luger/ Sting vs. Steiners or Rick Martel vs. Harley Race from AWA) if it kind of makes sense for the match to be like that.

 

I'm willing to sacrifice some story for some cool action.

 

However, I do draw the line at the stereotypical spotty indie style or what Will calls "go go go". I don't like matches to be too "your turn, my turn". I don't like it when guys follow up a suplex with just another suplex (better to stomp, drop an elbow, go for a cover, or something). I don't like it when high spots lose their impact and just become transitional moves because the guys barely pause to sell them or because they are just trying to get their shit in. I don't like "flash" for its own sake.

 

And all of this stuff, I think, is enough of a defense against the charge that some might make of me as being a "spot monkey" sort of fan. I'm not one of those at all. But I do fucking love a suplex.

 

What elements make up a quality match for you, and how much of that is workrate?

Kind of said it all above.

 

But it's not an easy thing as there are all sorts of different matches. I value:

 

- Storytelling

- Structure

- Character work

- Connection between wrestler and the crowd

- "Workrate" - i.e. action, suplexes

- Selling - i.e. how well the guys make the moves look painful

- Intensity / level of brutality - I like wrestling to be violent if possible

 

Those are the things I'll always look for.

 

Do we need to move away from workrate as a metric in evaluating matches?

I think PWO is a place where that happened some time ago.

 

And yes, at one point it was stupid. Scott Keith de facto giving Earthquake matches DUD because John Tenta was fat.

 

Keith hated the fat guys because he perceived of them all having zero workrate. Workrate is just one aspect of wrestling, and guys can still be great workers without having a ton of it.

 

How did the online communities view of workrate influence you earlier in your wrestling fandom?

I have a different journey from many guys on this forum. I really rejected the "smart wrestling culture" from the off. I decided that I liked wrestling first and foremost as kitsch. This is why I have Sean Mooney as my avatar.

 

I believed that reducing wrestling to this endless search for "workrate" missed something that was fundamentally at the heart of it.

 

I still believe that, and I think the same is true if you simply replace workrate with "psychology" or "storytelling". It's about more than just those things. I think people who think it's only about either of those things strip the joy, heart and soul out of wrestling.

 

Look at this picture:

 

 

To me, wrestling is just as much about the individual elements you see there as it is about anything else. Don't think I need to say any more.

[Matt D]

What do the clouds represent?

[JerryvonKramer]

What do the clouds represent?

A big silly booming voice saying "what the WORLD is watching"

[evilclown]

Seems like a solid attitude to have about the subject/discussion.

 

Was a joke for the old school internet wrestling dudes. Relax.

[Loss]

Yeah, "lurk and learn" is a catchphrase of sorts that used to get rolled out by know-it-all blowhards to talk down to other people and make themselves feel superior. It was just being rolled out as a joke.

[dawho5]

A little history first. From 1996-early 2000s, I looked at stuff like Dean Malenko vs. Ultimo Dragon matches, Benoit, Eddy, NJ juniors stuff as some of the best wrestling you would ever find. All Japan was pretty sweet when I discovered it too. So I used to be (without really knowing it) a workrate fan. I still like watching a lot of that stuff, but some of it has really aged badly while some of it I still rate pretty high.

 

 

How do you define workrate?

 

Workrate is how much stuff the wrestlers in the ring are doing. That's the simple answer.

 

The more complex issue at the heart of this question in my mind is the use of the term "rest hold". If a guy slaps on a chinlock or side headlock and the two wrestlers lay there for a few minutes to catch their breath, then it is indeed a rest hold. If the wrestler putting on the hold cranks on it and the victim is trying different ways of escaping the hold only to get shut down, it's no longer a rest hold regardless of how basic it might be. Then it becomes part of the discussion on workrate if you ask me. As mentioned above, bumping around when the time comes is also a part of workrate. I've never used the term before that I remember, but if we're talking about it.

 

Is workrate important to you?

 

Somewhat. It has been downgraded in importance, but it is still a necessary part of a good match in the sense that the wrestlers involved need to be doing something that works towards the story the match is trying to tell or supports the psychology of the match.

 

What elements make up a quality match for you, and how much of that is workrate?

 

A coherent story from start to finish has become a real big thing for me. And by that I mean a minimum of wandering off into filler material before we move on to the next chapter of the story. Which I think a lot of the "stuff" I have seen in modern wrestling tends to do. Good psychology is pretty essential to a coherent story being told in the ring so it's pretty high up there. It also gets the crowd into the match, which can elevate the way I look at matches. Efficiency and simplicity in achieving the above elements is huge for me. Consistent selling is something I've gotten softer on, but I still look for it. Workrate can certainly add a lot of fun to a match when the "stuff" fits into the way a match plays out. It really becomes a combination of a lot of different factors, but some I'm willing to go easy on if the rest are strong. Workrate is one of those things in the more common view of the term.

 

Do we need to move away from workrate as a metric in evaluating matches?

 

As stated above, I think wrestling has to be judged based on a combination of factors. To ignore any of them completely is going to skew the way you look at wrestling as a whole. It's just as bad to ignore workrate as it is psychology, storytelling or selling.

 

How did the online communities view of workrate influence you earlier in your wrestling fandom?

 

It was the big thing at the time. I had been a fan of the more workrate stuff before I hit the internet, but it only reinforced my views when I read a lot of it. My feeling is that when we are younger we tend to want to know that other people share our views in order to validate them.

[ohtani's jacket]

 

How do you define workrate?

I was introduced to the term from the old RSPW FAQ. I think that definition is good enough, though I would probably substitute restholds for down time. To me, workrate refers to the amount of action in a match. It's closely related to pace as workers with high workrate tend to up the tempo and maintain a steady tempo, but can also refer to intensity.

 

Is workrate important to you?

It's important. I have low tolerance for wrestling I find boring. I get restless and start wanting to do other things. But it's a bit like Goldilocks and her porridge -- not too hot, not too cold, just right. I don't like matches that are too dense and have too many moves. I don't like matches which are unnecessarily long or too short. I don't like it in older matches when they stop working the mat to end a fall, and I don't like it when you have two falls of brawling in an apuesta match and a third caida of back and forth junior style action. In general, I like the action to escalate so that by the end of the match you have a sense of how far they've come from the first lock-up, but on the other hand I don't want it telegraphed. Like Goldilocks, I'm difficult to please.

 

What elements make up a quality match for you, and how much of that is workrate?

Matwork, selling, a basic structure, rhythm, timing, maybe a bit of acting and some basic narrative. All of these things are "working," therefore workrate is important.

 

Do we need to move away from workrate as a metric in evaluating matches?

Workrate was a more important metric when it was used to champion midcard workers. I don't think it's as relevant as it used to be. I don't think it's important what metric you use so long as you can explain what you like. Too many people hang their hat on some kind of psychology/character/story metric and rubbish workrate matches, but that's an easy target. If you can't criticse the stuff you like then it's no better than being a huge workrate fan.

 

How did the online communities view of workrate influence you earlier in your wrestling fandom?

It had a huge influence. It was my first introduction to work and workers. Without it I doubt I would have continued to be a fan. I may not be enamored with the same workers I was in the late 90s, but it provided the basic foundation for how I watched and view wrestling and ultimately how I judged it. There's a downside to that though. Before I experienced that influence, I was into practically everything that was presented in wrestling. Now I find it hard to enjoy a lot of stuff because I'm always critiquing it. But I was very much influenced by what I first read on the internet, yes.

[FedEx227]

Yeah, "lurk and learn" is a catchphrase of sorts that used to get rolled out by know-it-all blowhards to talk down to other people and make themselves feel superior. It was just being rolled out as a joke.

 

It's hard to recognize it as a joke when the person saying it is a know-it-all blowhard who talks down to other people to make himself feel superior.

[Matt D]

Alright, I've given it a couple of days for the most part. Let's spew some text.

 

How do you define workrate?

 

It's the amount of stuff done in the match, basically. Stuff/time is fine. That's where you get the rate I guess. I do see it as much more of a qualitative thing. It means something other than just that. And it's usually only discussed when it comes to someone with high workrate. You don't talk about a match having low workrate. A lot of it is a backlash to WWF main even wrestling in the 80s-early 90s, I think. It was a way to band together against what was presented in the mainstream and maybe to make people feel better about the aspects they liked. "Wrestling is dumb and fake," says person one from 1997. "Well, the stuff you see, but I like this stuff from Japan called puroresu, which has a really high workrate," responds person too as if that explains everything.

 

Is workrate important to you?

As a general concept? The fact the concept exists is important to me. It was much more important to me when I was younger. Now I generally see it as an unfortunately dismissive thing. Frankly, I think people who primarily enjoy workrate in wrestling look at wrestling in the laziest, least interesting way possible. I'm not saying this to be offensive or to be a jerk. It's the lowest common denominator to me. Workrate is candy. It doesn't involve thinking to enjoy. You can shut your brain off and watch guys huff and puff and run around the ring and hit each other in the face really hard and do elaborately planned spots very, very well, and that's great, but it doesn't take lick of intellectual engagement. Emotional engagement, sure, but not a intellectual engagement. You don't have to break it down, except for maybe in a "Well, how did he get the leverage to do that dive!"

 

What elements make up a quality match for you, and how much of that is workrate?

There's the what, the how, and the why of the what. The why of the what is psychology. It's why you do every thing you do in the ring, not just moves, but pauses, interactions, "character work," selling, everything. To me wrestling is symbolic. A punch is symbolic. It's not really a punch. It's something done that is supposed to have the effect of a punch. A legdrop has a specific effect both in a match and in the context of all matches. A punch isn't a punch anymore. It's a "punch." And it's all relative to everything else. Let me put it this way. Selling is so much more important than workrate, because selling defines importance, especially over time. Selling (as well as other aspects such as announcers and actual match results) help define things. John Cena does not have great looking offense. People consistently sell John Cena's offense as if it is great. Therefore, it is great and it is credible. Wrestling is symbolism and controlling perception. That means that at any point the facade can be broken though. It can't be broken through something that's done consistently. It can be broken by a break from that. Wrestling within your own personal limitations and understanding them is thereby far more important to me than wrestling hard. I love wrestling. Working a hold is important. If something's happening in the ring, you should be selling it. The more consistently you sell things, the more they matter. On the other hand, if you do a lot of stuff and none of it is sold, then none of it matters.

Do I want exciting stuff that looks cool? Sure, it's candy, who doesn't want that, but it needs to mean something. I'll take a logical match that really means something over an exciting match than means nothing anyday. I'll take a really clever match where they don't do a lot but they tell a great story, sell really well, and move the crowd, over a really exciting match where some things mean something and some things don't. I'd value a supremely clever match where everything means something and they really play with the storytelling tools of prowrestling and a really exciting match where everything builds and has weight and leads to something fairly equally, but I'd probably lean towards the clever match due to my own tastes and because I think it's more impressive to do more with less. I'll still really enjoy the other one though.

In general I won't call a match bad if it tells a story with some success, especially if it does the job I think it was sent out to do. I might not call it GOOD either, unless that story is interesting and compelling. i think a match can be great without having one high spot, though.

 

Do we need to move away from workrate as a metric in evaluating matches?

Here, we have for the most part. I appreciate how someone like FedEx feels. He likes what he likes and he likes it a lot and more power to him. To me though, manipulating a crowd and putting together a coherent narrative, especially an interesting and compelling one, is so much better than just being able to hit a bunch of stuff smoothly. A trained monkey could probably do that on command. To really understand hearts and minds and story, there's just so much more to that.

 

How did the online communities view of workrate influence you earlier in your wrestling fandom?

 

A ton. I came in through DVDVR, and their workrate reports, but they were only half about "workrate" I think. They were more about What Worked/What Didn't Work. Still, you could look at the basic assignment webpage I made for compsci 2a in 1999, one that was about wrestling and that defined workrrate and talked about how amazing Chris Benoit was because he worked so hard. I have it on a hard drive somewhere and it's the most embarrassing thing in the world. I liked the guys I was supposed to like and I lived for Cruiserweight matches with lots of moves and dives and whatever else. It wasn't until after 07 when I started to watch a lot of whole shows instead of just great matches and older shows, that I really started to look for patterns and try to understand how and why matches worked instead of just drooling at how fast guys were moving.

 

I don't think workrate is a useful phrase anymore, to be honest. I think it was, in part, a way to rebel against something that has long ceased to need rebelling against between the ease of availability and stylistic changes. If all you could get on TV was Superstars and Wrestling Challenge and Prime Time Wrestling, that was one thing. In today's day and age, forget it. I think it's also done far more harm than good as a concept since it made people look past the actual nuance and craft of wrestling. Part of that IS knowing how to do things, how much to do things, when to do those things, and how to make those things matter, and sometimes the answer really is "A lot," but it's a tool to a greater end, not an end to itself. From an aesthetic sense, Good Storytelling IS the end. (From a functional sense, making money is the end and part of that is being able to extend your career, but that's not what we're talking about). Workrate (as in how much you do or how many cool moves you do or how hard you work) can be a stylistic decision towards that end.

[KrisZ]

Workrate is a term that comes from boxing many many years ago regarding how active the boxer was in a fight regarding amount of punches thrown etc.

 

Wrestling fans took the term and added more to it but the origins are what they are.

[Matt D]

And that's a useful statement, and it probably speaks to the "sports" side of things. I first encountered it in 98/99, and what I listed above was the sense of I had of it. I think that's the sense a lot of other people had of it as well. A couple of generations of people. I know we've mined a lot over the years (and I saw some definite frustration in the standards notes, for instance), but I think there's actually more to mine when it comes to the relationship between wrestling, sports, and fiction.

[El-P]

People consistently sell John Cena's offense as if it is great. Therefore, it is great and it is credible.

 

No. If it looks like shit, my perception of it will be : it looks like shit but the other guy is selling it like crazy because he's John Cena. Giant Baba's offense looked like shit, but people were bumping hard for it because it was Baba. It didn't make his offense look any good. And it didn't change my perception of it looking like shit. Of course you can accept it and even find amusement in the fact it looks like shit yet it still sold like crazy. But it will change neither the fact it's badly executed (and the work of a pro-wrestler is also to make his shit look good) neither the perception that I have from it, which is that it looks bad. Yeah, I get the symbolism. But I don't watch a pro-wrestling match to get symbols. I want two guys who are pretending to fight, and if their execution suck, I don't care how "great" the "storytelling" is (and yeah, I'm putting storytelling under quotation marks, because in all honesty, the storytelling of a pro-wrestling match remains pretty damn basic at best), it's a bunch of goofs doing awkward looking stuff that just isn't very fun to watch. There's a reason why pretty much all the guys who are considered great workers are guys whose shit looks *good*. Would Lawler be loved as much if he punched like RVD ? Hell, not just the punches, but Lawler is a guy whose execution is terrific in general (and I don't love Lawler nearly as much as other guys around here). This is workrate too. The moves, the selling, the facials. And when you move like John Cena, punch like RVD and make facials like Edge, you're a pretty shitty worker to begin with in my book.