Let's Talk About Match Structure

[Stevie Ray Von Erich]

In an attempt to better understand general wrestling psychology, and to try to figure out why certain matches and wrestlers were better than others, I've been doing some research about match structure. I feel like the way a wrestling match is organized by component parts is still one of the more protected and kayfabed parts of wrestling, but there are also some available blocks to understand what is happening, and why, during a match.

 

The basics I keep coming across are: lockup, face shine segment, cutoff, heel heat segment, hope spot, down and down, and the finish.

 

I'm curious if that's it, though?

 

Also, I think there is huge potential in using these component parts to breakdown specifically why great matches are great, and specifically where they are great. Same with wrestles. Folks almost certainly do this now, but I feel like it's rare around here.

 

For instance, lots of Dustin Rhodes's matches in the early to mid nineties are great because he was so excellent are garnering sympathy in heat segments and showing great fire in hope spots. There are certainly lots of other reasons he is/was awesome, but I feel like a lot of discussions like this lack organization, and using match structure might be a more clear, enlightening way to talk about and explore THIS NERDY SHIT WE LOVE.

[Jingus]

The basics I keep coming across are: lockup, face shine segment, cutoff, heel heat segment, hope spot, down and down, and the finish.

 

I'm curious if that's it, though?

That's just the basic version. "Shine-heat-comeback-finish" is the shorthand label for the general formula; and it's not just wrestling, you can see the exact same storytelling progression in most Hollywood movies as well.

In reality, there's much more to a match than just that. A bad match can happen all by itself, but a great one always has a context. That's partly why the big climactic matches in All Japan in the 1990s are still considered to be so special; because Baba & Co. were pretty meticulously detailed in the way they built up long-term storylines. Things that happened years ago would still influence what was happening now. Paul Heyman's best-booked matches in ECW tended to have several different storylines happening to intersect at once, creating a multi-car pileup effect which could be spectacular to watch.

Point is, the match isn't just the match. It's also the angle and the hype and the promos and the entrances and the announcing and the differing personalities and the differing body types and the contrast between their in-ring styles and a hundred other things. The Rock already has the people on their feet and "electrified" before ever making physical contact with his opponent. And if you ever want to hear a crowd roar in a manner to make your hair stand up, just go find any of the old Mid-South tag matches where Bill Watts is in one of his post-retirement comeback tag-team revenge matches and finally manages to catch Michael Hayes and punch him right in his stupid mouth.

[supremebve]

I spent 4 years backstage for a local indy. I got in the ring maybe 20 times in front of an audience haha

My favorite setup was the "Rule of 3 slams" -

The smaller wrestler tries to slam the fat/giant heel. The first time he falls over and gets pinned. The second time he gets the heel up but cops a poke in the eye or a pull of the hair.

Then finally, after 2 failed attempts and a big beatdown, he hits the slam and gets ALL the momentum.

The beauty is this can roll into the face hitting all his spots and coming away with a big win OR hitting most ofhis spots but getting cut off at the last minute and being crushed by the giant's finish.

Cena was doing this to perfection back in his "Monster of the Month" phase.

I recently watched Hart vs. Michaels from Survivor Series 1992 and they do both a rule of three slams and a reverse rule of three slams.  I watched it and noticed that Hart went for two different spots three times in the match, one of them he hit the first time and missed the last two and the other he missed the first two, but hit the third.  They were used as transitions, but it was a really affective way to build the match.  It was like we could see exactly what Bret Hart's strategy was, and we could see why he was going for certain moves.  I thought it was a really smart way to work a match, but didn't recognize that it was a recurring trope.  Honestly I think it is a trope that if used creatively could add a little something extra that a lot of current wrestling needs.  There are too many matches that don't seem to be built on anything, but adding little things like this would help a lot.

[cwoy2j]

I always thought that Hogan was the best at babyface comebacks. Of course we all know the "Hulk up, three punches, big boot, leg" formula but the beauty of Hogan's comeback is that he would let the heel build heat and THEN do a mini-comeback that would fail and then the heel would build up more heat.

[Stevie Ray Von Erich]

 

The basics I keep coming across are: lockup, face shine segment, cutoff, heel heat segment, hope spot, down and down, and the finish.

 

I'm curious if that's it, though?

That's just the basic version. "Shine-heat-comeback-finish" is the shorthand label for the general formula; and it's not just wrestling, you can see the exact same storytelling progression in most Hollywood movies as well.

In reality, there's much more to a match than just that. A bad match can happen all by itself, but a great one always has a context. That's partly why the big climactic matches in All Japan in the 1990s are still considered to be so special; because Baba & Co. were pretty meticulously detailed in the way they built up long-term storylines. Things that happened years ago would still influence what was happening now. Paul Heyman's best-booked matches in ECW tended to have several different storylines happening to intersect at once, creating a multi-car pileup effect which could be spectacular to watch.

Point is, the match isn't just the match. It's also the angle and the hype and the promos and the entrances and the announcing and the differing personalities and the differing body types and the contrast between their in-ring styles and a hundred other things. The Rock already has the people on their feet and "electrified" before ever making physical contact with his opponent. And if you ever want to hear a crowd roar in a manner to make your hair stand up, just go find any of the old Mid-South tag matches where Bill Watts is in one of his post-retirement comeback tag-team revenge matches and finally manages to catch Michael Hayes and punch him right in his stupid mouth.

 

 

Oh, I totally agree. So much so, actually, that this sort of build and payoff in storylines built inside actual matches feels like something else entirely, like another level of the craft. Almost like comparing a fun pulp novel to something like LoTR. Yeah, they're both books, but one is working on a few more levels than the other (but this is not to say we should enjoy one more than the other).

It's the reason why, though I enjoyed the Cena/Owens series, I felt like we missed a couple matches. That first match was such a spectacle because of all the moves and seeing Owens, a cocky upstart, match Cena move for move and eventually beat him. Part of this is the desperation and high stakes WWE main event style tries to build with multiple finisher kickouts, but I feel like that first match COULD have been something like those All Japan classics if we had gotten the first two acts. As it was, we basically got the same really good third act match three times with, I think, diminishing returns.

 

Now, as far as that basic structure is concerned, I feel like it, like it was designed to over years and years, can do a great job of engaging and entertaining an audience as long as the parts are placed and paced well. A big criticism of the Reigns/Wyatt match at Battleground (aside of starting with headlocks and ignoring the story they'd built to start) was Bray's boring heat segments which relied a lot on a couple of long chinlocks. I really liked this match, but I feel like Bray certainly needed to build heat with different, impactful-looking offense, if only based on Reigns's character as someone who can take a punch. Bray, though, is AWESOME at cutoff spots and Reigns has developed into a really good hope spot and comeback guy, in part because almost all of his signature moves pop the crowd, look painful, and can be pulled off from a variety of set-up positions. This match has historical context with the Shield/Wyatt feud, previous singles matches between the two, and a storyline promoted on tv. But it pretty much ignored those things. Still, there is a way to dissect the match using its component parts that really makes me feel like I'm understanding what's happening on a fun, new level.

 

Dean posted this match in the 2015 INTERNET MOTY thread, and I feel like it does a really great job of telling the story of that basic match structure without a bunch of context. Or, if it's there, as someone without that context, I still really enjoyed this match out of Quiet Storm, who I haven't seen wrestle since the early days of ROH, and Mikey Nicholls, who I've only ever heard mentioned on the board.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ylit0_mikey-nicholls-vs-quiet-storm-noah-sem_sport

 

It tells a simple story, both guys do a good, not great, job of telling their part of the story, and I think it works.

[S.K.o.S.]

It's the reason why, though I enjoyed the Cena/Owens series, I felt like we missed a couple matches. That first match was such a spectacle because of all the moves and seeing Owens, a cocky upstart, match Cena move for move and eventually beat him. Part of this is the desperation and high stakes WWE main event style tries to build with multiple finisher kickouts, but I feel like that first match COULD have been something like those All Japan classics if we had gotten the first two acts. As it was, we basically got the same really good third act match three times with, I think, diminishing returns.

 

Felt just about the same way as you, but I really want to see someone (not necessarily in this thread) break down those matches in detail and do a compare/contrast.  All three matches had each guy using just about the same offense, and I'm just curious about the placement of those big moves in each one, whether they were trying to tell a different story each time out, or what.  Granted I may be looking for something that's not there.

 

In the original post, what does "down and down" mean?  Google's not giving me anything relevant.  Is it just the face comeback?

[Stevie Ray Von Erich]

From what I understand it's the moment where both guys are down and at an "even" point in the match, both fatigued and looking for any advantaged. The type of thing that HHH and HBK got grilled for doing way too much in their early 2000's matches together.

[Jingus]

I've usually heard it called "double-down". And it's not a necessary spot in all matches, you see it way more often in tag matches where both their partners on opposite corners are going crazy in their "TAG ME, DAMMIT!" routines in order to give the crowd something to look at besides two guys just laying there motionless. Like Cory said, it can easily bore the fans if you overuse it, much like HHH and HBK did in their 2004 Sell In A Cell match (fifty-two minutes; Shawn, I love ya, and Trips, I don't hate ya; but seriously, kiss my ass for THAT one).

I like it when matches have different "segments", where you can kinda tell that guys have shifted into a higher gear. Not that I mean the action gets faster, I mean it just gets more intense one way or another. Like, for example, Austin vs Angle at Summerslam 2001. The match is already awesome by default, because it's motherfucking Angle vs motherfucking Stone Cold in both of their best in-ring years. But you can tell something different starts happening about halfway through the match, when Steve drags Kurt outside and proceeds to ram his head into the turnbuckle post six times in a row. Kurt gets busted open, and spends the next several minutes looking like he's barely even alive. Austin at one point proceeds to lean Angle against the apron, and basically use him as a punching bag; and a simple series of punches (something you'd see several million of, in every Stone Cold match ever) feels incredibly vicious and sadistic, because of the previous actions setting up that Austin was vivisecting his opponent a piece at a time.

One thing I wish that MOVEZ-based wrestlers would do more often is to use Finishing Before The Finish. What I mean by that, is to take a page out of Akira Taue's book. Specifically, the chokeslam off the apron he started using in 1995. Now, since old-school All Japan never did falls-count-anywhere matches, the chokeslam to the floor was never the finish of the match per se. But if Taue managed to hit it... usually, it meant he was eventually gonna win. That movie took SO much out of his opponent that there was just no coming back from it, and Taue's victory afterward was almost inevitable.

Why I specifically mention that spot monkeys should steal that shit is thus: how many times have you seen some scramble-cruiser-whatever match where the biggest, most impressive moves are NOT the finish? That happens with depressing regularity, where the Quadruple Moonsault On Fire gets a two-count and then eventually the pinfall happens on a fucking roll-up. That's just bad psychology, when it's used indiscriminately in a match where it seems like nobody cares HOW one fighter beats another fighter, they just wanna present a visually spectacular series of moves and a bunch of 2.9999~! kick-outs to pop the more easily-impressed marks in the crowd. How I wish they'd take just a little bit of time and effort to make it clear to the crowd: "Okay, this Shooting Star Piledriver Through A Table might not result in an immediate pinfall; but if this guy hits it, it's a 90% certainty that he's gonna win the match afterwards, because his opponent is DONE and has lost too many hitpoints to mount an effective comeback."

[Jenalysis]

I really wish , at least for TV, one match a show would deviate from standard match structure, because running the same structure every time takes something out of it for long-time watchers.   I'd book things once a week where a midcarder would just squash another midcarder- either win a flash pin 30 seconds in, or just a 4-5 minute steady win.  2-3 times I'd do it in the main event.  I'd even have a heel win with a rollup in 30 seconds once in a while.   Doing that would make fans sit on their seats a bit more knowing it's less predictable.

[Jiji]

*snip*

 

Why I specifically mention that spot monkeys should steal that shit is thus: how many times have you seen some scramble-cruiser-whatever match where the biggest, most impressive moves are NOT the finish? That happens with depressing regularity, where the Quadruple Moonsault On Fire gets a two-count and then eventually the pinfall happens on a fucking roll-up. That's just bad psychology, when it's used indiscriminately in a match where it seems like nobody cares HOW one fighter beats another fighter, they just wanna present a visually spectacular series of moves and a bunch of 2.9999~! kick-outs to pop the more easily-impressed marks in the crowd. How I wish they'd take just a little bit of time and effort to make it clear to the crowd: "Okay, this Shooting Star Piledriver Through A Table might not result in an immediate pinfall; but if this guy hits it, it's a 90% certainty that he's gonna win the match afterwards, because his opponent is DONE and has lost too many hitpoints to mount an effective comeback."

 

I think there was an Adam Cole vs. Kevin Steen match a few years ago that was more or less Exhibit A in what you're talking about, Jingus. Steen hit him with what I think were four apron powerbombs and a bunch of goofy indy shit then drops the fall after a super kick and a roll-up. Just no psychology at all. I want to get into post-2005/06 ROH but every time I try, there's just so much move spamming with such little thought put into it.

 

As far as things clearly escalating within a match, Japan's usually been really good with it to the point that modern New Japan can get pretty tedious because they tend to follow it religiously. Start off with some chain and mat wrestling, somebody hits somebody with a stiff strike, bringing us to the heavy strike section, then they go outside for a bit after hitting some of their mid-range moves, they then come to a double down and that leads us into the worst of all things puroresu: the lame strike exchanges, then you get the finisher reversal spam and the fall.

 

All Japan probably had it best in the post Choshu invasion era up until Kobashi and Misawa killed the style off with their over-the-top shit by around '95/'96. It always felt like a competition and/or a fight but you had clear stages to the match, layered storytelling relying on both the personalities of wrestlers and their past, and had some of the most thrilling finishing stretches imaginable. When modern New Japan is really on, then they can bring forward a lot of these best qualities with them.

 

I think part of the reason why I love Stan "The Man" Hansen so damned much is that he was chaos personified. His matches rarely felt the same and things could happen at any time. Dean Ambrose spoke to something similar on Jericho's podcast, in that things shouldn't always have to work out the same way all of the time. Maybe you take something that's traditionally used in the finishing stretch of a match and use it at the very beginning. I feel like he's gotten away from that in the little I've seen of him in 2015. Part of that is likely due to WWE's insistence on everybody getting their shit in for every single match.

 

Part of the reason I may have a hard time getting into lucha libre (though I loved a lot of the early '90s stuff with El Dandy and Negro Casas from what I've seen), is that momentum changes can come so quickly and suddenly, that the shifts in the match from gear to gear happen almost randomly. The slower, mat-based grappling of the early '90s was phenomenal though.

 

I really wish , at least for TV, one match a show would deviate from standard match structure, because running the same structure every time takes something out of it for long-time watchers.   I'd book things once a week where a midcarder would just squash another midcarder- either win a flash pin 30 seconds in, or just a 4-5 minute steady win.  2-3 times I'd do it in the main event.  I'd even have a heel win with a rollup in 30 seconds once in a while.   Doing that would make fans sit on their seats a bit more knowing it's less predictable.

Absolutely. NOAH did this back in the day with Jun Akiyama finally winning the GHC title and then losing it to that rat shithouse Ogawa via a rollup. It was the wrong time and place to do it but I think the idea of a main event or title match ending abruptly adds a lot of drama to future matches.

[Charlie M.]

Yeah, I'd like to see more one-sided matches between evenly matched guys and more finishes legitimately out of nowhere.

 

It's a very small thing that can go a long way in making the matches feel more like competitions instead of performances.

[Jiji]

Yep. Another small thing is get secondary finishes over on lower card guys. Submissions as well. Anything to build more drama into big matches.

[RandomAct]

I think that's my biggest turnoff with current WWE.  There really doesn't feel like the structure is there.  For one, they have all but killed off the idea of a traditional heat segment in singles matches.  It makes it harder to build to a satisfying conclusion if everyone fights even.  That bleeds into another issue, in that everyone has to hit "their moves" in EVERY MATCH.  It kinda kills suspense when you know the match isn't over, because Cena hasn't done the 5 knuckle shuffle yet.  I saw this all the time whenever I see a perfect match like Zayn/Neville or Sasha/Becky....it is astonishing how simple pro wrestling is.  Whenever it's done right, it's because no one tries to reinvent the wheel, and keeps everything simple.  True depth in a match comes from doing things organically and reading what the crowd is reacting too, NOT shoehorning in a bunch of 2.9's and huge moves, or "working methodically".

[Jiji]

The heel in "WWE style" has a slightly different job than in traditional rasslin' psychology. Jericho talks about it in his second book. In WCW, you sold the babyface's offense consistently, whereas in WWE you get up and feed far more regularly and not just for comebacks and transitions. The heat in a great many WWE matches has been so oversimplified and dumbed down that it's basically a 2-5 minute chinlock segment. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it's treated as a rest hold in WWE. The chinlock was the match in that awesome Windham/Murdock match that was rated either #1 or #2 on the UWF/Mid-South '80s set. They told a story based around the chinlock for ~25-30 minutes and it was fascinating! Wasn't a rest hold at all.

[RandomAct]

I think that just boils down to WWE always being far more babyface focused in it's approach.  Both in match structure and booking, whereas WCW(and pretty much any southern based promotion) has always been more heel focused.  Probably why heat was so much more important everywhere else.  I've mentioned it before, but no one current does heat like say, a prime Sting.

[JCM]

Most everything outside of Brock feels so samey on the main roster in WWE right now. Becky/Sasha was the most well put together match(and not for dirty reasons) in WWE this year. Excellent psychology, great selling, and a finishing run that didn't over stay it's welcome by 5 minutes. Why can't we have more of that and less zomg movez, finisher kickouts 2.9 fests(yes I'm directing a lot of this at Cena)?

 

How many F5's will Taker kick out of? How many tombstones will it take to pin Brock? Will anybody give a fuck when it's over?

[Go2Sleep]

I think a big problem is that there's not enough emphasis on portraying one's character or angle through the lens of a match anymore. Everyone is just going out to have epics (which are great at times, don't get me wrong) whether or not it actually makes sense for a given angle. Like why was Orton/Sheamus at Battleground going so long and having finisher kickouts? A 50/50 brawl with a flash finisher (be it RKO or Brogue Kick) would work so much better there. It's getting to the point where the best WWE matches are the short, simple ones that end on one finisher.

 

And don't even get me started on tag matches. When was the last non-squash that didn't feature a hot tag?

[Burgundy LaRue]

The heel in "WWE style" has a slightly different job than in traditional rasslin' psychology. Jericho talks about it in his second book. In WCW, you sold the babyface's offense consistently, whereas in WWE you get up and feed far more regularly and not just for comebacks and transitions. The heat in a great many WWE matches has been so oversimplified and dumbed down that it's basically a 2-5 minute chinlock segment. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it's treated as a rest hold in WWE. The chinlock was the match in that awesome Windham/Murdock match that was rated either #1 or #2 on the UWF/Mid-South '80s set. They told a story based around the chinlock for ~25-30 minutes and it was fascinating! Wasn't a rest hold at all.

 

I was listening to a podcast today, and they talked about when is a headlock more than a rest hold.  They mentioned how during their Battleground match, Wyatt had Reigns in a headlock that didn't disguise what Wyatt was doing.  While Wyatt worked the crowd with his talking, he was on his side the whole time and allowed Reigns to be on his side.  Basically, Wyatt did nothing more than cinch in the headlock pretty good.  It didn't advance the story.

 

Go forward to the Reigns-Harper match on the following Raw, and it's so different.  Harper also did a headlock, but he continue to work Reigns' arm and made it look like he was choking Reigns with his own limb.  Harper also had Reigns sitting up, which made it look like the air was being squeezed out of Reigns. And during this headlock, Reigns was able to do some great selling--one of his best traits.

 

It was good insight into the psychology of a match.  Wyatt didn't do anything wrong.  But Harper remembered to narrate the story, allowing Reigns to do some quality work and making his comeback more meaningful.  It's a color book picture vs an oil painting. 

 

That revelation wasn't groundbreaking, but hearing someone say it directly put it in perspective.

[Jiji]

I think a big problem is that there's not enough emphasis on portraying one's character or angle through the lens of a match anymore. Everyone is just going out to have epics (which are great at times, don't get me wrong) whether or not it actually makes sense for a given angle. Like why was Orton/Sheamus at Battleground going so long and having finisher kickouts? A 50/50 brawl with a flash finisher (be it RKO or Brogue Kick) would work so much better there. It's getting to the point where the best WWE matches are the short, simple ones that end on one finisher.

 

And don't even get me started on tag matches. When was the last non-squash that didn't feature a hot tag?

I blame Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, and Kurt Angle for the first part anyway.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Go listen to Big Show on the Steve Austin podcast. He talks about them doing a series when they toured England back in 2001. He and Austin are the main event. Austin is over massive and Vince says "Steve, tonight Show gets the win."

Austin talks to Vince and Show about how "people paid to see Stone Cold hit some Stunners and drink some beers" so Vince changes his mind and decides Austin is going over.

They have their match, Show controls is from start to finish, and Austin hits the Stunner out of nowhere. "Kiiiick ooout" he whispers to Show. And Show is like WTF? But he does. Now Show has no idea what the finish is but Austin hits another Stunner as sson as Show stands up - "Kick oooout".

7 Stunners. Austin hit Show with 7 Stunners in a row before the 3 count.

Now he did that because he says he read the crowd. They knew he was going to fire up and kick wham Stunner for the win so Show kicking out got a pop. Then each consecutive Stunner got the place louder and louder until the match ended and both men got a standing ovation.

Austin hit almost zero offence in the match. He literally spammed his finish to wear Show down but the crowd ate it up because it was nothing they had ever seen.

Austin gets over as a guy that can take a beating but still get all the momentum with a single move, while Big Show earned respect by kicking out of 7 damn Stunners

At that time, Austin could do whatever he wanted in that situation. He was untouchable. And that wasn't on TV, as well.

[JRV]

I like that so much, though. General formulas developed over the decades in accordance with what generally works in front of crowds. Wrestling crowds tend to respond well to well built tension arcs, the simplest of which would be that shine-heat-comeback. What's cool about the Austin thing is it's that old school style where you'll have a general idea for the match, but you're so good you can improvise and start calling things on the fly, when you get a sense from the crowd that they'd pop even harder if you deviated from that original plan.

[JCM]

There's a difference between a 7 foot 500lb monster kicking out of your ace's finish and undercard cruiserweight types like Stardust and Neville doing it. I don't remember the Rougeau's kicking out of Hogan's legdrop or Ciclope and Prince Iaukea kicking out of the jackhammer. I can buy Cesaro or Ambrose doing it, but it should be done for special occasions to show how tough those guys are, and realistically they should lose the match soon after. Somebody like Owens or Rusev I can buy kicking out and eventually making a comeback, but it should involve them rolling out of the ring or using a cheap tactic to buy some time.

[Greggulator]

The Rule of Three is in every sort of artform to some degree. It's so rooted in human history -- The Father, The Son, The Holy Ghost. Theater and is always in three acts. A lot of jokes and references comics use come in threes. There's a famous scene from The Simpsons in a Sideshow Bob episode where he keeps on stepping on rakes. I think he does it 18 or 21 times -- a multiple of three.

There are two really good "Rules of Three" in wrestling I can think of at the top of my head.

The first comes in a Santino/Emma vs. Fandango/Summer Rae match from NXT. It's a comedy match and all of the dance-offs and goofy bits are in threes. It's really magical to see.

Another is The Shield vs. Wyatts classic from Elimination Chamber. There are three clearly defined acts. The first is their initial battle which ends in a total draw, with all six men laid completely out. The second is heightened violence, with The Wyatts winning the battle. The third is Roman Reigns dying on his shield (sorry) trying to fend off his group's only equals.

I am sure I can find many more. That is also why I love 2-out-of-3 fall matches so much.

[Greggulator]

Also, I don't know lucha at all. But Mexican culture is so rooted in Catholicism and its iconography. Maybe there's something to their six-man structure (Father, Son, Holy Ghost) and two-out-of-three fall structure rooted in all of that.

[stro]

 

 

The basics I keep coming across are: lockup, face shine segment, cutoff, heel heat segment, hope spot, down and down, and the finish.

 

I'm curious if that's it, though?

That's just the basic version. "Shine-heat-comeback-finish" is the shorthand label for the general formula; and it's not just wrestling, you can see the exact same storytelling progression in most Hollywood movies as well.

In reality, there's much more to a match than just that. A bad match can happen all by itself, but a great one always has a context. That's partly why the big climactic matches in All Japan in the 1990s are still considered to be so special; because Baba & Co. were pretty meticulously detailed in the way they built up long-term storylines. Things that happened years ago would still influence what was happening now. Paul Heyman's best-booked matches in ECW tended to have several different storylines happening to intersect at once, creating a multi-car pileup effect which could be spectacular to watch.

Point is, the match isn't just the match. It's also the angle and the hype and the promos and the entrances and the announcing and the differing personalities and the differing body types and the contrast between their in-ring styles and a hundred other things. The Rock already has the people on their feet and "electrified" before ever making physical contact with his opponent. And if you ever want to hear a crowd roar in a manner to make your hair stand up, just go find any of the old Mid-South tag matches where Bill Watts is in one of his post-retirement comeback tag-team revenge matches and finally manages to catch Michael Hayes and punch him right in his stupid mouth.

 

 

Oh, I totally agree. So much so, actually, that this sort of build and payoff in storylines built inside actual matches feels like something else entirely, like another level of the craft. Almost like comparing a fun pulp novel to something like LoTR. Yeah, they're both books, but one is working on a few more levels than the other (but this is not to say we should enjoy one more than the other).

It's the reason why, though I enjoyed the Cena/Owens series, I felt like we missed a couple matches. That first match was such a spectacle because of all the moves and seeing Owens, a cocky upstart, match Cena move for move and eventually beat him. Part of this is the desperation and high stakes WWE main event style tries to build with multiple finisher kickouts, but I feel like that first match COULD have been something like those All Japan classics if we had gotten the first two acts. As it was, we basically got the same really good third act match three times with, I think, diminishing returns.

 

Now, as far as that basic structure is concerned, I feel like it, like it was designed to over years and years, can do a great job of engaging and entertaining an audience as long as the parts are placed and paced well. A big criticism of the Reigns/Wyatt match at Battleground (aside of starting with headlocks and ignoring the story they'd built to start) was Bray's boring heat segments which relied a lot on a couple of long chinlocks. I really liked this match, but I feel like Bray certainly needed to build heat with different, impactful-looking offense, if only based on Reigns's character as someone who can take a punch. Bray, though, is AWESOME at cutoff spots and Reigns has developed into a really good hope spot and comeback guy, in part because almost all of his signature moves pop the crowd, look painful, and can be pulled off from a variety of set-up positions. This match has historical context with the Shield/Wyatt feud, previous singles matches between the two, and a storyline promoted on tv. But it pretty much ignored those things. Still, there is a way to dissect the match using its component parts that really makes me feel like I'm understanding what's happening on a fun, new level.

 

Dean posted this match in the 2015 INTERNET MOTY thread, and I feel like it does a really great job of telling the story of that basic match structure without a bunch of context. Or, if it's there, as someone without that context, I still really enjoyed this match out of Quiet Storm, who I haven't seen wrestle since the early days of ROH, and Mikey Nicholls, who I've only ever heard mentioned on the board.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ylit0_mikey-nicholls-vs-quiet-storm-noah-sem_sport

 

It tells a simple story, both guys do a good, not great, job of telling their part of the story, and I think it works.

 

The Cena/Owens series is nonsense. There is no structure, no internal story, barely even an external story. It's a standard indie "let's hit all of our cool big moves and kick out". The first match started out like the 30th match in a long term always cycling feud. The second and third matches were slightly better at least due to SOME story of moves being countered due to familiarity and moves being teased before hit and kicked out of. People losing their minds of it can't even tell you why it was good or what story was being told. The only reason people are into the Cena indie sprints this year is because they're with actual indie guys they like. The match with Rusev at Fastlane was signifcantly better in every way to the Cena/Owens series, but people thought it was boring because they didn't get what was a very basic story and structure.

 

I find that Japan has pretty much always been the best at clear structures that work. From the JWA days on. I love those JWA/early NJ/AJ matches which is basically the 70s NWA style at a faster pace. Most usually went 2/3 falls, first fall going to the face or native worker, generally focused on one or two holds and not trying for big moves. Second fall generally went to the gaijin or heel, usually with an impact move fairly early into the fall and generally the impact move was something built up the entire first fall. Fall three is more even with both guys trying to score the win any way they can, always selling the first two falls, often trying for what won their other falls. 

 

You get like...Inoki/Sakaguchi vs Thesz/Gotch and just study it. Or Baba vs Destroyer from JWA and AJ. Or even the hour long Bruno vs Baba match. I don't think it is a coincidence that every great NWA guy from the 70s and 80s would be even better in Japan. The structure was perfect from the start. Even when AJ went crazy with the head drops in the 90s, they still used the basic structure as the core of matches. WWE has never done matches like that. Their version has always been "do some chain wrestling and mat work for 5-10 minutes, then get back to normal signature moves trading and finisher kick out". Indie companies do the same thing, or try to emulate the Japanese still without actually have any idea of how or why it works.