goodhelmet Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 After the recent dust-up from the Main Event podcast this past week, do wins and losses matter to you? Should it matter if a guy eats pinfalls? I'd love to hear the explanations from you guys on why they do or don't matter. I was originally going to create a poll but thought that the answers wouldn't be as simple as yes or no. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karl Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 They very much matter...they are key to what wrestling is all about...the struggle for victory, winning titles, being #1, hbaving that victory snatched away from you by some nasty bastard. Its all about wins & loses. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigBadMick Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 It's tricky - when they don't matter to the company (and specifically Cena), it's difficult to get invested. BTW, Meltzer noted a while ago that part of the reason for Cena shrugging off loses is that McMahon hates ANY degree of complaining. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grimmas Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 They only matter if I care if the guy gets over or not. If Rusev lost every match this last year would he be over? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 Yes, they should matter. It should feel like a guy is moving closer to a title shot with a victory or is falling further away if he loses. That's part of what I enjoy about the UFC. You see that progression when a guy is winning. He slowly climbs that ladder and gets a title shot if he gets 3-5 wins in a row. Then you see those guys that get mired in limbo because they win 2 and lose 1 or you see guys that get released outright because they've lost too many fights in a row. There's a stake to every fight. Hey, this fight is between two fringe contenders but it could be the start of a winning streak for a guy that ends in a title shot so it could be important. The WWE has missed that feeling for a long time and I think it really hurts the product. I think New Japan and NXT have really excelled at making it feel like wins and losses matter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zoo Enthusiast Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 I think they do. In a company where the booking/writing is good, they don't matter as much because guys can be heated back up again if it's done correctly. Look at Brock Lesnar. He lost to HHH at Mania two years ago and no one even remembers it and he's an unbeatable monster in all of six matches (off the top of my head). Then on the other hand is a guy like Ryback, who is also is not as talented, obviously, and thus needed more help after his loss - and didn't get it. He has gotten over in the mid-card now, and hopefully will get pushed again (because I love the guy), but it was a long road for him. My opinion on this is a big part of why I am of the opinion that Reigns should win tonight. I think he'd be even more fucked than he already is, and the whole point of Brock laying waste to Cena and ending the streak, and Reigns beating Bryan and winning the Rumble, was for him to win. If the creative hadn't failed him so miserably along the way, the option of him losing would be there, but it is what it is. So... Yes they do matter, especially to guys who are trying to get over, like Steve said. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillThompson Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 Yes, they matter. They are not the end all and be all, they don't always play a role in my enjoyment. I don't base my view of a match on who wins or losses. In that sense my fandom of wrestling is far different than my sports fandom. I want John Cena to put on a good performance, and if he does that I will be happy. I want the Chicago Cubs to win, and when they don't I'm upset, though still a fan. Where the winning and losing of matches become most important is in the idea that pro wrestling is an athletic contest. It doesn't matter that we all know it's a work. Part of said work is the notion that inside that ring a legitimate sporting contest is taking place. To that end there must be a struggle, a desire to win, a drive to stay away from defeat. This is where winning and losing truly matters, because without it we're no longer watching a worked sporting contest but a worked ballet recital. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JaymeFuture Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 They absolutely matter - the biggest grossing teams in any sport are typically the most consistent winners, and it translates to wrestling. Casual fans pay money for the characters they can believe in (even in a fake world) and see as the stars, and stars don't lose often. Tyson didn't become a PPV phenom by losing. A guy you like and want to believe in failing time and again is deflating, its just not what people pay to see. It may not be the be all end all, but it's hugely important. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goodear Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 I'll be the Devil's Advocate. Wins and losses mostly matter in terms of moving people up the card and establishing their relative roles within the company. While this is an important thing, it is not the most important thing when it comes to wrestling promotion. I would argue that it is more important to fill roles up and down the card to have a cohesive tiered product. One of the main issues WWE has is that those tiers have become muddled with the amount of television produced week to week and so your IC champion is placed in a position where he jobs constantly because they don't have the depth of, say, WCW in the early 90s. Granted their problem was bloat and crazy contracts, but rarely would you see Cruiserweight Champions jobbing to Heavyweight Contenders just as a way to kill time. Anyway, back to wins and losses. After being established through whatever means (admittedly wins), people tend to stay where they are despite whatever happens next if they are good at their role. Mick Foley, Scott Hall and Daniel Bryan are good examples of people that were able to stay over and in their roles despite not coming out on top all the time. Perception is more important than reality here especially in today's internet age where people see wins and losses as company edict more than ever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strand Peanut Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 Any promotion that treats wins and losses as unimportant is one that won't last. Some wins, or a loss, are more important and drive the narrative. But not necessarily all. In sport, the less matches, the more narrative you can develop between the match. One win can be monumental in a 16 match league. Not so much with say 116. So it's maximizing how those wins matter. Depends a lot on the setup right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 A related thread from 4 years ago: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/13259-the-significance-of-a-big-loss/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shoe Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 Wow Parv it's like you have your own little data base on interesting topics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goodhelmet Posted March 29, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 Yeah, I think enough time has passed that the statute of limitations has expired on that thread. Shocking to see Parv dropping the old threads when I am used to jdw doing that gimmick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dylan Waco Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 I'm sure this will come up on tonight's post-Mania reaction show, but wins and losses do matter, most especially when you are trying to create new stars. If you want to argue that it doesn't matter whether or not The Rock beats Steve Austin you might have a point (though even there it depends on context to a degree), but it absolute matters whether or not older stars put over new talent, or whether or not new talent get sustained runs of winning or even steven booking. If they didn't matter we wouldn't have given a fuck about The Undertaker's streak, Rusev wouldn't have jumped out of the mid-card pack, et. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shoe Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 I thinks wins and losses are the life blood to wrestling. It's the best way to create stars. From Steamboat in 77, Goldberg in 97, and Rusev in 2014. Sure these guys had other qualities that made them stars, but wins helped them get elevated. Brock's 1st big push to the top in 2014 was based on a win. He ended the Undertaker streak. So yes wins and losses mean something in the past,present, and future. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 Yeah, I think enough time has passed that the statute of limitations has expired on that thread. Shocking to see Parv dropping the old threads when I am used to jdw doing that gimmick I just thought it might have made for interesting further reading, not that you shouldn't run the topic again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goodhelmet Posted March 29, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 From Parv's link, here are some examples of wins and losses meaning something... Goldberg vs. Nash HHH vs. Booker T Kurt Angle vs. Samoa Joe (TNA)Vader vs. HBK Hulk Hogan vs. Ultimate Warrior Bob Backlund vs. Diesel CM Punk vs. Randy Orton feud Steve Austin vs. Big Show Ricky Steamboat vs. Honkytonk Man Lex Luger vs. Yokozuna Lex Luger vs. Barry Windham GAB 91 Road Warriors vs. Arn & Tully Daniel Bryan vs. John Cena (Summerslam) + Randy Orton cash in Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JAC Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 Wins and losses matter immensely. It's true that there are times when someone gets over in a losing effort, perhaps even moreso that he would have in a winning effort. See Bret v. Austin at WrestleMaina 13. But these matches are the exception to the rule, and usually involve good booking and exceptional performances. If you throw guys out there and treat the question of who wins and who loses as being inconsequential, it's going to be hard for anyone to get over. A wrestling match is a competition, even if only in the kayfabe sense. It's not a figure skating exhibition. If winning and losing doesn't matter, why bother having a wrestling match? For the record, I listened to the WrestleMania 31 preview podcast that was the apparent inspiration for this thread. I uttered an expletive when I heard Sitterson say that. It's one of those ridiculous company lines that probably gets drilled into WWE employees' heads, not unlike referring to the fans as the 'WWE Universe' and pro wrestling as 'sports entertainment'. Utter crap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bierschwale Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 Yeah, because I'd say that this is unanimous as it gets, I'll say that obviously how you win and lose is a good way to distract from your actual record. Case study: If you lose via TKO after getting your head stomped through cinder blocks, you'll still look good. That's what it took to beat you; attempted murder. But if you lose because the hologram of a men's rights advocate distracted you, or because a tablet monitor inexplicably exploded in your face, you'll look like shit, because people will lose hope in your ability to ever actually win since your kayfabe agency has been taken away too often. You can lose "more than you should" and still make something of it. But if you seem cursed or doomed to fail, that's when you're fucked. Same with squashes and flukes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcmmnx Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 For unestablished wrestlers they do. Ambrose has lost like 6 or 7 ppv matches in a row. You can't expect guy to get over losing every damn match in a feud including the blowoff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJH Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 Put me in the "of course they do" camp. Simple case in point: if I take my three favourite matches of all time (6/3/94, 6/9/95 and 12/6/96) they simply do not work unless Misawa has been positioned where he had. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goodear Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 From that list, there are quite a few that stand out to me as not being important in the actual long term. I don't see any that really kept a guy from reaching a position he either reached later or couldn't reach due to issues other than the loss. Nash vs. Goldberg - Goldberg was predominately made by the fact that he never lost. I'm of the mind that booking people with undefeated streaks is a dicey proposition that fails as often as it succeeds. Goldberg is obviously the best case scenario of it working ever. However, he couldn't never lose and dropping a fall to Big Kev with a metric ton of interference isn't the worse thing in the world. It was far worse what happened after that, that reset the company to before Goldberg had the belt at all which was the problem. Triple H vs. Booker T was a major case of the booking being completely messed up and the wrong guy going over. But I never felt the loss hurt Booker T as it much as it fed into the Triple H is holding people down narrative. I don't think it really hurt Booker's heat or subsequent angles. Kurt Angle vs. Samoa Joe was in TNA who we have a thread calling the worst booked company in history. If he couldn't recover from a loss to Kurt Angle in 10 years with the company, the company must be awful. Oh wait. Vader vs. Michaels is Vader being past it and getting the quick push to a title match before people realized it. He never recaptured the magic after the Flair and Hogan series of matches. Hogan vs. Ultimate Warrior being on the list as far as hurting Hogan is funny considering the narrative has become Hogan scooping Warrior's heat at the end to put the spotlight on himself. Backlund vs. Diesel was starting to phase Bob out as he was a million years old. I don't think I would have booked it in 8 seconds and played it all over television like they did but Bob was clearly there just to transition the belt from Bret to Diesel. CM Punk vs Orton I don't even remember and I would not be able to tell you that Punk was leading the Nexus at the time if I didn't read it in the old thread. I can't imagine it hurt Punk any since he went on to much bigger things with no consequences. Steamboat vs. Honky was Steamboat on his way out of the company. His heat wasn't hurt at all showing back up in the NWA after. I'm going to be heading out soon so I don't want to keep going down the list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wade Garrett Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 I've always watched pro wrestling as a fan not a critic. So you bet your ass wins and losses matter. I want the guy I like to kick the guy I don't likes ass sideways. Isn't that what being a fan is? At least it was back in my day. I watch pro wrestling like I watch Football, Baseball, Golf, Horse Racing, and Bull Riding. I wanna see winners and losers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillThompson Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 Vader vs. Michaels is Vader being past it and getting the quick push to a title match before people realized it. He never recaptured the magic after the Flair and Hogan series of matches. His following run in Japan and his run for three or four months before the Michaels match pretty much disprove this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shining Wiz Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 Sometimes. Depends on the story, the stage and the careers of the wrestlers. Too many variables to really give a great answer, but if Rusev wins tonight, that's big. If Orton gets pinned tonight, doesn't hurt him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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