Wrestling Myth Busters

[khawk20]

At any rate, I do remember in the Meltzer WC posts thread that Verne offered to put the AWA title on Hogan and Hogan turned it down given that Hogan also worked New Japan, while Verne had an agreement with All Japan, and Hogan didn't want to give cut of his Japan earnings to Verne.

 

Assuming what Dave said is true, one has to wonder what Verne's mindset was... if he believed he could send fans home happy without having to actually let Hogan win the title, or if he thought the constant reversals would be along the lines of "the money is in the chase" with his ultimate intent to put the title on Hogan once and for all.

 

Either way, it was flawed thinking because fans can only tolerate so many reversed decisions.

As I remember reading about it, the "Ok, Hogan doesn't get the title" scenario happened the day of the show. Not a lot of time for more than on-the-fly thinking if that is indeed true.

[khawk20]

The Hogan chase ended up blowing up in their faces since they ended up jerking the fans around with the Dusty Finishes having Hulk win the title then reversing it (aside: how is that finish associated with Dusty when Verne was far more guilty of abusing it?).

From my experience, the NWA with Dusty booking/involved is discussed a lot more frequently than Verne booking the AWA is. The term "Dusty Finish" was likely coined first and then further exploration into the subject showed other promoters being just as or even more guilty of employing the practice than Dusty was. The whole concept didn't just spring up overnight, it's been used forever in wrestling. The frequency of use seemed to increase in the 80's due to a larger TV audience seeing the same thing happen, and thus it seemed like it happened more.

 

Verne was using the tactic a ton in the 70's, particularly in his tag division. Bockwinkel left the ring without the belt and got it back on the local TV show the week after all the time, too. Difference was it was local TV, in a time where you could run exactly the same angle/match/title screwjob on every card for a month, and have the same rematch on every card the next month. And obviously Verne wasn't the only one doing this.

 

It was also the safest alternative to actually switching the title every month or two that the larger bodies with "World" titles could employ. If they make every switch straight-up, it was Jerry Lawler's 8 million Mid-Southern title reigns across the board.

 

It's the reason I laughed so hard when Dale Gagner's AWA tried to write in Hogan as a two time champion a few years back in a title history revision they did. Hold true to that pattern through the years and Nick Bockwinkel held the AWA title about 50 times and the tag title with Ray Stevens about the same.

[Bob Morris]

The talk about having a face chasing a heel in a territory is fine, but I'll say it again: Flair was set to drop the title to David Von Erich with the idea that David was the guy who could hold the belt for the long term.

 

How well David would have done in that spot is purely speculative, but that was still the plan.

 

After the title switch and back with Kerry, they started looking again. Supposedly Magnum T.A. was the guy, but once again, the guy they looked at was no longer wrestling.

 

The whole idea behind who got the NWA title had little to do with "money is in the chase," even if the theory was something promoters bought into. It was regarding who the majority of promoters believed was the guy who could carry the belt and do good business against whoever was the top guy in a particular promotion.

[sek69]

Considering the way the business was heading (Crockett buying up all the NWA territories and taking control of the world title), I don't think David would have gotten too much more of a run with the belt than Kerry ended up getting.

[Ditch]

I can't imagine how one would do a touring babyface world champ for a decent length of time. I just can't. The "local babyface gets momentum, feuds with world champ and is screwed by local heel" storyline is classic because it's hot before the champ comes AND after he leaves. If you do face champ coming in to face top heel, well, if the face champ wins then there's nothing to build off of. Face vs face is hard to pull off and could make the local face look second-tier.

 

Compare to having a long-term face champ in one company, where you can build up heels to face him and when the face wins he's still on your next show, ditto if you do face vs lesser face.

 

I don't think I've seen any of the old-school wrestlers/bookers discuss this before. Could be wrong.

[Jkeats]

I'm not sure if this is a myth or just a really big pet peeve of mine. It's certainly something that people in wrestling have convinced themselves of:

 

"Fans won't accept wrestlers who aren't jacked up"

[Resident Evil]

I'm not sure if this is a myth or just a really big pet peeve of mine. It's certainly something that people in wrestling have convinced themselves of:

 

"Fans won't accept wrestlers who aren't jacked up"

They will accept them. There's no doubt about that but someone who is jacked up a little bit gives off more crediblity. It's only natural just like in sports.

[Jingus]

"Fans won't accept wrestlers who aren't jacked up"

Sadly, some fans won't. Hence all the fatass jokes about Samoa Joe. Never mind that he's a perfectly decent athlete who can work hour-long matches, he doesn't have shredded muscles, therefore he's a couch potato to some people. Years and years of the WWE and everyone who copied them constantly giving us roided-up monsters as "real athletes" and "looking great" have conditioned plenty of people into that exact mindset.

[Jkeats]

"Fans won't accept wrestlers who aren't jacked up"

Sadly, some fans won't. Hence all the fatass jokes about Samoa Joe. Never mind that he's a perfectly decent athlete who can work hour-long matches, he doesn't have shredded muscles, therefore he's a couch potato to some people. Years and years of the WWE and everyone who copied them constantly giving us roided-up monsters as "real athletes" and "looking great" have conditioned plenty of people into that exact mindset.

 

I think that's all in the presentation. Again, like you mentioned, it takes conditioning of the audience. Pro Wrestling has that luxury though. Even Edge comes off well and he's got a lean, athletic body. I do think, had Joe been booked better, he would be taken seriously and accepted. When he was in ROH and first coming into TNA I don't remember nearly as much talk about his lack of muscles as there is now that he's a knife wielding whiner.

[Death From Above]

Sadly, some fans won't. Hence all the fatass jokes about Samoa Joe.

Or Misawa. Even before he actually was fat.

[Tim Evans]

"Fans won't accept wrestlers who aren't jacked up"

Sadly, some fans won't. Hence all the fatass jokes about Samoa Joe. Never mind that he's a perfectly decent athlete who can work hour-long matches, he doesn't have shredded muscles, therefore he's a couch potato to some people. Years and years of the WWE and everyone who copied them constantly giving us roided-up monsters as "real athletes" and "looking great" have conditioned plenty of people into that exact mindset.

 

I think that's all in the presentation. Again, like you mentioned, it takes conditioning of the audience. Pro Wrestling has that luxury though. Even Edge comes off well and he's got a lean, athletic body. I do think, had Joe been booked better, he would be taken seriously and accepted. When he was in ROH and first coming into TNA I don't remember nearly as much talk about his lack of muscles as there is now that he's a knife wielding whiner.

 

Well there's also the fact that he absolutely sucks now and has gained at least 50 pounds.

[sek69]

I'm not sure if this is a myth or just a really big pet peeve of mine. It's certainly something that people in wrestling have convinced themselves of:

 

"Fans won't accept wrestlers who aren't jacked up"

 

 

 

 

"I'mma bust that myth, if ya weeeeel"

[S.L.L.]

The more I think about it, the more I think I've been approaching the whole "money is in the chase" thing from the wrong angle. It's not that there's no money in the chase. There definitely can be if you do it right. It's that the chase is really a tangential issue to the real source of money: the man. Like I said before and JDW pointed out again, Austin proved that actually having the belt isn't always necessary to be a big draw. What I think is important is being perceived as "the man", and the fans being happy with that. To that end, it helps to be...

 

A. The champ, and...

B. A face...

 

...but the latter is really more important than the former, because usually, your long-term draws are the guys fans actually like, whereas actually being the champion isn't always necessary to being the star of the show.

 

That's why the NWA could get away with - and in fact benefited from - having long-term heel champions. The NWA itself wasn't really a wrestling promotion, at least not in the way we think of one. It was an umbrella organization for a bunch of other actual functioning wrestling promotions, and it recognized one guy from all of those promotions as World Champion. But while the NWA champ was "the man" in a certain sense, he wasn't the day-to-day star of any of the actual functioning promotions (not strictly true, I know, but bear with me), so having him reign forever wasn't a problem. The focus was always on "the man" in any given promotion, and the NWA champ provide a good aside every now and then, putting "the man" up against "the other man", and usually the action confirmed that the local "man" was the real "man" in the eyes of the fans, while the NWA champ got to retain his "official man" status because he hit "the man" in the balls/threw "the man" over the top rope/just barely held "the man" to a time limit draw/etc. so he could keep traveling the world fulfilling his function as wrestling's most high-profile plot device. It's OK, because that guy is gone, and your guy is still here being the man. Sure, Kerry got shafted out of the NWA Title by Flair again, and it sucks, but we can't worry about that now...The Freebirds have struck again!

 

It's also the reason Baba could get away with drawing out very long title chase scenarios without losing the audience. Yeah, Kawada and Kobashi chased Misawa forever, but it's not like the fans were in any great rush to abandon Misawa as "the man". Same with Jumbo/Misawa. Yeah, people booed when Jumbo got too rough with the Super Generation Army, but I don't get the sense that the fans at large were genuinely eager to see him unseated as "the man". I'm sure they wouldn't have minded, and I'm sure they expected it to happen in time, but I don't think Jumbo Tsuruta was Hollywood Hogan.

[Jingus]

I don't think Jumbo Tsuruta was Hollywood Hogan.

I don't have anything actually substantial to add at this point which has not been already covered. I just want to mention how that phrase somehow struck me as being bizarrely hilarious.

[MikeCampbell]

I don't think it really matters whether the champ is heel or face, or even if there is a champ. But in order for there to be money in "the chase" it simply needs to be between two wrestlers (or teams) who are genuinely over.

[S.L.L.]

I don't think it really matters whether the champ is heel or face, or even if there is a champ. But in order for there to be money in "the chase" it simply needs to be between two wrestlers (or teams) who are genuinely over.

Well, it's like I always say (or at least like I always think to myself), there are no bad ideas, just bad execution. I guess what it really comes down to is that chases are a fine idea, but all chases must end someday. The questions are, when it's all over, will the fans be happy with how it turned out, and will they pay to see what follows.

[sek69]

So at the PPV tonight, the heel that beat up the face's wife twice won the title, and the face who lost got the "goodbye" song sung at him by the crowd as he was stretchered out.

 

I know WWE will probably decide the crowd tonight just didn't "get it", but I don't think a face can fail harder than that when the fans are happy to see you get punted TFO by the guy that abused your wife.

[kjh]

But while the NWA champ was "the man" in a certain sense, he wasn't the day-to-day star of any of the actual functioning promotions (not strictly true, I know, but bear with me), so having him reign forever wasn't a problem.

Actually the fact that the NWA champs usually played babyface in their home territory (the Funks in Amarillo, Brisco in Florida, Flair in the Carolinas until Dusty arrived, etc) aids your point, rather than compromises it.

 

So at the PPV tonight, the heel that beat up the face's wife twice won the title, and the face who lost got the "goodbye" song sung at him by the crowd as he was stretchered out.

 

I know WWE will probably decide the crowd tonight just didn't "get it", but I don't think a face can fail harder than that when the fans are happy to see you get punted TFO by the guy that abused your wife.

To be fair to Hunter, it probably didn't help that both his wife and his father in law had long runs playing the Evil Owner trope, before hurriedly transitioning into babyfaces to fit this storyline. And well Shane prancing about acting like he's still young and cool is a bit sad really.

[sek69]

That is true, but Hunter is constantly pushed as one of the all time greats, and it was pretty embarrassing to see fans cheering him getting punted into unconsciousness.

[tomk]

I think you’re looking for something inherent in the structure of chase story when the real answer is just folks are lazy.

 

I’m fascinated by the world of beekeeping. Along with the story about penis piercing, stories of how “Before the bees were Africanized, my grandfather raised bees which could produce hallucinogenic honey” were my favorite stories that every herbal healer told. I’ve posted a bunch on bees on organizational theory web sites and wrestling web sites over the years and am kind of pissed that I haven’t effectively converted folks to the world of bee keeping analogies.

 

Used bee keeping in arguments as to how “passing the torch works”, as explanation of why don’t like face v face title matches, as explanation of why Smackdown was more effective at creating new challengers than Raw, etc.

 

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Modern-Home...ers-Primer.aspx

 

The easiest way to raise queens, and the one most often used by hobbyist and backyard beekeepers, is the Sommerford system, which was named after the Texas apiarist who developed it at the beginning of this century. This simple and natural technique allows the bees themselves to choose the brood cells in which they'll nourish and rear a new queen, insuring production of a strong, healthy ruler that's especially adapted to a particular hive in a particular location . . . unlike a packaged queen, which may be unsuited to her new environment.

 

To raise one or several queens the Sommerford way, first select your best and busiest hive, then remove two frames of brood comb (sealed cells filled with eggs) and another frame that contains honey, the queen, and a number of adhering bees. Next, install them all in an empty hive or a nucleus (a small, temporary hive, usually called a nuc, that's used just for this purpose), tucking the brood frames snugly in the middle racks. It's much better to do this during a good honey flow . . . that is, when many nectar-producing flowers are in bloom. If that isn't possible, provide the deprived parent hive with a feeder of sugar-and-water syrup or thinned honey. Then leave the hive alone for nine or ten days. The deserted bees will soon become aware that their queen is gone and will start building queen cells in the remaining brood frames.

Hives are organized around one queen. Whole social organization built around feeding and caring for one queen. How do you reorganize a hive around a different queen?

 

The whole WWWF/WWF transitional heel champion is a really good system. You get new top face in place (move old queen to supporting role) without having to change social structure much.

 

On some level the “money is in the chase” should read as there isn’t a social structure there to support the new guy who wins the chase. He doesn’t have a system of rivals and guys to feed him in place. It’s hard work to create that. It’s easier to be lazy and not bother.

[tomk]

It should be said that all of this involves on some level accepting Meltzer's myth that you need a Michael Jordan/Tiger Woods superstar figure (guy with no real rivals) on top.

[Jkeats]

Some great stuff in this thread...

 

For me, "money in the chase" just meant not to hurry a storyline along. There IS money in the chase if, as mentioned many times, it's a wrestler people care about chasing a heel they want to see beat. It's the same concept as not wanting a movie to resolve itself in the first 10 minutes. You want to go along that journey, even if you know what the outcome is (which is another problem that seems to jump up more frequently in recent years...not everything needs to be a "swerve". Just because an ending is "predictable" doesn't mean it can't be good. People still love the Orndorff turn on Hogan years later, even though you knew he was going to turn. That's called good story construction. But I digress...). If it's a story well told, you buy into it and enjoy the ride. In wrestling, that ride can result in money. Even the McMahon three match formula was a chase of sorts. The champ couldn't get a conclusive win over the heel challenger for two matches and triumphs in the third.

 

It's certainly not the only way to tell the story or make the money, though.

[jdw]

I think sometimes you guys are looking at things a little too cynically. "The money is in the chase" wasn't something created to make Ric Flair look good or to justify a heel's position on top (not that it can't be used for that).

I don't think anyone believes that. Was someone in the thread indicating that the concept was created for Flair?

 

It's a promotional adage that goes back decades. And tons of succesful territories have used the theory. It's more of an Eddie Graham idea than an internet creation.

I doubt it's even Graham.

 

Is it absolutely the only way to promote pro wrestling with no exceptions? Of course not - WWWF is the best example of that. They went about things the complete opposite way and were hugely succesful.

Which is a point people were making - different things work for different promotions.

 

 

But the whole idea of the NWA champion was based around guys from different territories chasing him.

Not exactly. Often times it was just someone getting built up to challenge. The next time Thesz came to town, it could be someone else entirely. Lou didn't hit a lot of the territories very often. So Los Angeles may get only 1-2 challenges in a year. Snyder might be built up as the top face, get a shot, and before Lou comes out the next time has already moved on elsewhere.

 

In contrast, someone like Dusty might park in Florida for years. So he ends up "chasing" the title. Similar to Fritz in Dallas.

 

 

All Japan made great use of this psychology in the 90's - Kobashi and Kawada spent years chasing wins against guys higher up the totem poll than them.

They actually burned this out. AJPW was declining in fans outside of Tokyo by the time Kawada finally beat Misawa. Even in Tokyo the fan base was likely down, setting aside the Dome attendance (though they likely would have drawn more at the Dome in 10/92 for their "first" match of the era than they did in 5/98 for the allegedly "climactic" match). The base was also down to the point that Kawada's win didn't do anything to heat up attendance - they quickly paniced and went to Kobashi, which also fizzled at the box office.

 

Once can "over chase" and miss striking when things are hot.

 

Jack Brisco chased the NWA title for years. The Von Erichs chased Flair. It's just an idea of a way to book. Not an absolute but it can work.

Agreed.

 

John

[KrisZ]

Race was really the last NWA champion that would work heel challengers on a sparse basis because Flair would defend against the heels of Jim Crockett Promotions but other than that he defended against only babyfaces although there were rarities.

[Jkeats]

Race was really the last NWA champion that would work heel challengers on a sparse basis because Flair would defend against the heels of Jim Crockett Promotions but other than that he defended against only babyfaces although there were rarities.

He seemed to work heels a lot in World Class as well, IIRC