Offense vs. Selling

[Microstatistics]

I mean if you interpret this as selling in a broader way the debate is pretty meaningless since a lot more of what constitutes a wrestling match is selling than offence so naturally it's going to be more important.

 

Agree. I was going for the traditional, confined definition of selling.

[cad]

In the smaller, more traditional sense, selling is the idea of "registering the effects of physical damage." Why would you cordon that off as opposed to "registering the physical or emotional effect of anything that happens in the match." It's using your body to register consequence.

 

It feels like a really artificial fabrication to only look at how a wrestler responds to the effects of physical damage, even if that's the traditional metric.

 

I don't care if if invalidates the debate(though I mean, I do appreciate that concern. And I think it can be mitigated if we extend offense/selling to "action/reaction."). I'm arguing that we, as a critical community, don't define or examine the idea of selling correctly and frankly never have.

But a lot of the stuff being pointed to as selling already falls under other commonly used categories, like psychology or acting, or offense. If you stretch the definition of selling to include anything with some sort of intent behind it, then you might as well just call it "pro wrestling". Pro wrestling minus shooting, botching, and rear chinlocks where the purpose is to work out the next few spots of your match. Giving selling a more specific meaning is a good thing. It's more meaningful to say "I saw a macaque" than to say "I saw a monkey", and it's more meaningful to say "I saw a monkey" than to say "I saw a thing, it definitely wasn't a dishwasher".

 

I also don't agree that nonselling reactions are undervalued. It doesn't seem so unusual for someone to write off a match because of cheesy acting, illogic, poor character work, the wrestlers failing to make the audience care, and on and on. Also, selling gets its own little domain because specificity in words is better and because it's what separates pro wrestlers from lesser performers like actors. I'm sure Willem Dafoe could convey the heartbreak and disappointment of losing a match, but could he convey that his knee hurts? Has there ever been a debate on which of the Stooges was best at making the eyepoke look real? It's an idea that's very pro wrestling, and that's why it has its own pro wrestling term. If you have an issue with the idea that selling is everything, the solution isn't to change the definition of selling so that selling IS everything, it's to argue that there's much more to wrestling than selling. Maybe you could vote for offense in the poll.

[Matt D]

I was going to respond with a quip about how Johnny Sorrow could tell you about the stooges and leave it at that, but I'm not mobile anymore.

 

I think expanding the definition selling is the way to go. I understand why you don't, to some degree. I disagree, namely because your post didn't really show an understanding of what i was saying.

 

It's not anything. It's any physical reaction to stimulus. There's a difference. I suppose we can further hone in from that point on, but I think that misses the distinction that's different than how we have traditionally looked at things before.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Larry.

And that brings up long term selling. Some folks are too obsessed with it. Larry would sell the eyepoke, but he didn't spend the rest of the short moaning about his eyes. Because that's not entertaining.

Think about Ricky Morton. He'd sell that he was getting murdered for a long time before he'd finally get that hot tag to Robert. Then Robert comes in, the heels both run in and Ricky is right back in there helping to fight them off . A lot of it is about selling pain in the moment.

[cad]

I was going to respond with a quip about how Johnny Sorrow could tell you about the stooges and leave it at that, but I'm not mobile anymore.

 

I think expanding the definition selling is the way to go. I understand why you don't, to some degree. I disagree, namely because your post didn't really show an understanding of what i was saying.

 

It's not anything. It's any physical reaction to stimulus. There's a difference. I suppose we can further hone in from that point on, but I think that misses the distinction that's different than how we have traditionally looked at things before.

I understood your book just fine. There was another book I had responded to earlier to that was listing everything under the sun as selling. Such is life, I guess, when people try to affix their own meanings to words with commonly accepted definitions.

 

Anyway, it's a needless redefiniton operating on the fallacy that people view wrestling only in terms of offense and selling. There is no "offense/selling duality". These were just two (of many) aspects of wrestling listed in the opening book, and no one tried to make them into anything more than that. Well, except for the people who tried to turn selling into more than it is. If you want to write a treatise on how everything a wrestler does falls into two categories, acting and reacting, power to you. Please don't call it selling. That word already has a definition.

 

(I'm kind of worried that people don't take posts on wrestling message boards seriously enough, so I've decided to categorize them as books so that they get regarded with the importance that I think they deserve. Sorry about any confusion this may have caused.)

[Matt D]

Yeah. I'm still leaning towards "not speaking entirely the same language and responding to that by talking more slowly and more loudly like an American in another country." But you're writing entertaining and hostile posts about it so I'll continue on it anyway.

 

Couple of actual things: for Transparency sake, it's very well possible that I'm making this distinction because I think offense (not physical selling) has been heavily overvalued over the years and I think it's because people make an artificial distinction between selling and reaction. I get that it would invalidate this poll (again, sorry). That's sort of the point though. I'm not 100% sure there but I want to at least admit it as a possibility.

 

More importantly, we already do it. I'm not sure if it was on an older BtS or Marty and Kelly's podcast but I heard at least one instance yesterday where a wrestler was described as "selling" the crowd interaction with him. That's how we describe the Mongolian Stomper putting his hands over his ears when it comes to the crowd or Paul Orndorff dealing with Paula chants or someone bitching to a ref about a two count. We already call that selling. Why? Because that's exactly what it is. It's literally trying to get the crowd to buy that something had an impact upon you through a physical reaction. That's the term we already use. It's just when we try to categorize it, we put it in "Character work" or something, which no one is satisfied by, but the very term we generally use to describe it is already selling. We just drop that when it comes to this classification. I don't think we gain accuracy at all. I think we lose it.

[JerryvonKramer]

I think it's all very simple:

 

Offense: suplexes and shit

 

Selling: bumping, and getting over pain

 

Character work: encompasses facial reactions, working the crowd, and other such things.

 

If we are talking about how a guy works a headlock, does he crank it or just lay there, then I guess it's part of offense,

 

If we are talking about how a guy takes that headlock, it's selling.

 

If the guy giving the headlock looks up and talks shit to someone in the crowd, it's character work.

 

To me there is no reason to complicate these three categories.

[Matt D]

Just from that list alone, I would say that character work is closer to selling than it is to bumping.

[JerryvonKramer]

I see some hard distinctions on this.

 

I think Jack Brisco is phenomenal at selling, one of the all-time best, better than even someone like Arn. Brisco is better at getting over something like a full nelson than practically anyone I've ever seen. His character work is not all that, arguably better when he becomes heel and has that smirk on his face.

 

Arn has phenomenal character work of course.

 

Selling a full nelson is somewhat different from reacting to the announcement that Steamboat is the mystery partner.

 

In fact Steamer is another one with next level selling but "okay" character work; Steamboat's character work is quite goofy at times.

 

I think we lose something if we dispense with the obvious distinction between these obviously different skills.

[Matt D]

I think, ultimately, and this is a compromise of sorts, I want to cordon off the reactive elements of character work as you've listed them, tie them under a large umbrella with the reactive portrayal elements traditionally in selling, call this now "selling" and make hard subdistinctions under that new umbrella. I think that would be a more accurate classification than what we already have.

 

Edit: what I might be trying to make a distinction between athleticism and acting as two of the three major umbrellas.

[JerryvonKramer]

I think I want to see more appreciation in general of things I'd classify under psychology, which don't get talked about enough, less "storytelling" and more the mechanics of psychology:

 

Feeding: this is most easily seen when a heel is feeding a hot baby face. I've talked extensively about this in reviews of Dibiase matches, but this is a much underrated skill and he was one of the very best at it.

 

Timing: this is knowing when to time the gear shifts, transitions, hope spots, comebacks, etc. Again much underrated and not talked about that much when I read reviews.

 

Crowd control: less your mouthing off at guys in the front row, and more knowing how to bring them up and down. Bock vs Hennig is the textbook example. This is something I find often sorely lacking in modern stuff, but it's difficult to have sensible discussion about it because people prefer to see old man yelling at cloud. Or talk about accepting a new reality or whatever. This is one of those things I don't think the 00s indies guys ever fully got.

 

Rather than expanding the definitions of words, I'd prefer to build out the grammar of a pro wrestling match in this way.

[Matt D]

My entire philosophy of wrestling analysis is to look for patterns over matches and try to identify them so I don't disagree. I just think it's skewed at the top right now.

[PhilTLL]

I think the choices here should really be Athleticism (movez~, bumping, etc) and Acting (selling, structure, character, motivation, etc). The former is kind of empty without the latter.

[cad]

Couple of actual things: for Transparency sake, it's very well possible that I'm making this distinction because I think offense (not physical selling) has been heavily overvalued over the years and I think it's because people make an artificial distinction between selling and reaction. I get that it would invalidate this poll (again, sorry). That's sort of the point though. I'm not 100% sure there but I want to at least admit it as a possibility.

 

More importantly, we already do it. I'm not sure if it was on an older BtS or Marty and Kelly's podcast but I heard at least one instance yesterday where a wrestler was described as "selling" the crowd interaction with him. That's how we describe the Mongolian Stomper putting his hands over his ears when it comes to the crowd or Paul Orndorff dealing with Paula chants or someone bitching to a ref about a two count. We already call that selling. Why? Because that's exactly what it is. It's literally trying to get the crowd to buy that something had an impact upon you through a physical reaction. That's the term we already use. It's just when we try to categorize it, we put it in "Character work" or something, which no one is satisfied by, but the very term we generally use to describe it is already selling. We just drop that when it comes to this classification. I don't think we gain accuracy at all. I think we lose it.

I'm not sure I buy the "we" in that second paragraph. I believe that it's not just you. If I listened to wrestling podcasts, maybe I'd realize how widespread this is, but on the other hand maybe that would be the case only if I listened to a specific few, all coming from people who run in the same circles. On the same note I don't buy the term character work being satisfying to "no one".

 

In its own way, a wrestler getting shoved to the ground off a lockup by a larger opponent, and then futilely attacking after the bigger guy has turned their back is accomplishing the same thing as the wrestler begging off after the shove. I don't see what is gained by lumping these together. I'm not sure that even you would lump them together, as the former is more active, but then I don't think categorizing everything as either active or reactive is particularly common. Bumping and selling often accomplish the same thing, too, and listing them together confuses more than it clarifies, because often they don't accomplish the same thing, and plenty of wrestlers are good at one but not the other. The same is true of (traditionally defined) selling and acting (in direct response to something). Mogur is a wrestler I'd list as terrific at the former and not really interesting at the latter. Splitting the difference and saying that he's average at selling is less descriptive, IMO.

 

Yeah. I'm still leaning towards "not speaking entirely the same language and responding to that by talking more slowly and more loudly like an American in another country." But you're writing entertaining and hostile posts about it so I'll continue on it anyway.

Stop. Disagreeing is different from not understanding. It's not a particularly complex point that you've made. Not that I didn't deserve the insult, as I was plenty snide and dismissive in my previous books, but let's not flatter ourselves either.

[Matt D]

Let's cut out the insults then. Glad to do so from my side.

 

Some of this was thinking out loud for me, and I think where I've ended up is more of an Athleticism vs Acting divide as the top level one, which does, amongst other things, separate bumping and traditional selling as I agree these things should be separate.

 

As for character work, I'd like to say a few people here have been vocal about not finding it satisfying (OJ, maybe?). I've seen it enough that it feels like an issue. It's only problematic to me when people dismiss it upon reading it which is something I've seen.

[ohtani's jacket]

I personally don't make a distinction between character work and selling. It's all part and parcel of performing as far as I'm concerned. If you're good at one and not the other then you're not a great performer. Jack Brisco was a great wrestler, but I don't think you'd compare him to a Jim Breaks or a Negro Casas when it comes to performing. But, hey, sometimes being a great wrestler is enough. Not everyone has to be a Fujiwara or a Satanico. Look st s guy like Marty Jones. I wouldn't say he was great at character work but he had a discernible character and was charismatic partially because of how good a wrestler he was. Thesz is a guy who has grown on me tremendously because of the way he wrestled. But that's me. I have a lot of respect for wrestlers who can actually wrestle.

 

To draw this back to the original question, if all you can do is sell or do interesting character work then you better be pretty damn good at it. If all you have going for you is offense then I hope you can wrestle. If you can do both you have my patronage. If you can only do one I hope you're a great wrestler. So while I value selling over offense if you can only do one or the other I hope you're s wrestling machine like a Keith Haward.

[JerryvonKramer]

When you say "can actually wrestle", do you mean the hold-counter-hold stuff I'd usually gloss in my reviews as "some amateur stuff now"?

 

I tend towards seeing guys like Thesz or Inoki as ideologues hanging on to some weird dream of purism, which now gets its expression in 2016 in statements like that.

 

What do you make of Kurt Angle OJ?