NOV 2020 WRESTLING DISCUSSION

[Elsalvajeloco]

3 hours ago, Ryan said:

Peach farming.

He's about to coach the Falcons? I'm lost.

[Hagan]

16-18 minutes is a good sweet spot for like 95 percent of wrestlers. 
 

 

 

[BobbyWhioux]

the big problem with mid match commercial breaks is that in order to keep them from being spoilers -- or, even worse, sending the message that this match/these guys don't really matter -- you have to start every once in a while having someone actually win the match during the break and show the replay when you come back, just to establish it can actually happen.  And that's dissatisfying too.

Same thing with attempting early flash pins.  Unless someone actually wins with a side headlock 3 minutes in every once in a while, everyone knows the side headlock is just a rest spot and/or time filler.  Or at the very least, the time limit (and the time limit draw) has to factor in often enough to make it plausible that guys would take desperate, low percentage fliers on stealing a quick fall.

 

2 minutes ago, Hagan said:

16-18 minutes is a good sweet spot for like 95 percent of wrestlers.

 

It's also the ideal length for having the specter of the Time Limit Draw rear up, without actually having the countdown/time remaining announcement becoming a spoiler that a time limit draw is coming (and thus also justifies a rush of near fall attempts/false finishes. As long as guys don't wast time stare at their hands incredulously when the opponent kicks out yet again, anyway).

[Matt D]

I think it's less about time and more about %s and balance. If you have a 15 minute match where the babyface shine is 10 minutes, it's probably not going to be great.

I'm not saying every match needs to be shine > heat > comeback, but a lot are. When they're heel-in-peril lopsided like that, you need a really brutal short heat to make the match work which I've only seen a handful of times out of thousands of matches. You have to ratchet up the pressure so you can release it and that's hard to do if the babyfaces take too much of the match.

Likewise, if a 25 minute match has a 15 minute finishing stretch, it's going to be unbalanced because it's all payoff and no set-up.

[The Natural]

Zelina Vega on her WWE release. Well done, Zelina standing on her own two feet to Vince McMahon.

[SirSmUgly]

1 hour ago, BobbyWhioux said:

 

I realize this may sound somewhere between ironic and hypocritical coming from the guy whose favorite gimmick stipulation is the Iron Man Match 

But we agree that thirty-minute Iron Man matches are better than sixty-minute ones, right? I would assume that you feel this way based on your preference for shorter matches.

Honestly, no one's ever done a better Iron Man match than Rude/Steamboat at Beach Blast '92, but my second-favorite Iron Man match is also thirty minutes long (Sasha/Bayley at that NXT show...was it Revenge?). 

[BobbyWhioux]

Wrestlemania 12 soured me on the 60 minute iron man match forever, so yes.

It also intrudes on/limits the rest of your card in a way that the 30 minute iron man match doesn't, so there's that to consider as well.

[Godfrey]

My preferred match lengths are 5 to 8 min for unbalanced/enhancement matches and 10 to 15 max for relatively even matches, with 20 to 25 being for big bouts and 30+ being the PPV main event level if they really need it. Although as Matt D says it is very dependent on how the match is structured.

[Curt McGirt]

The very logic of Iron Man matches doesn't work for me because the principle of 99% of matches is one fall to a finish. Most matches that go 30 minutes or over have a single pinfall, so struggling for multiple ones over the course of 30 minutes or an hour... no. 

That said I love love love Ricky vs. Rude, and as a kid I thought Shawn vs. Bret was the best thing ever. Watching it today after 20 or so years I probably wouldn't, though.

[SirSmUgly]

I hate the principle of one fall to a finish as the principle of 99% of wrestling matches, but that's a whole other thing.

 

Doing more multi-fall matches - not just Iron Mans, but two-out-of-threes - would be so much better for changing up match structures and protecting wrestlers in a loss.

[Curt McGirt]

The weird thing is I don't have a problem with 2/3 falls. I haven't thought about that. And I agree that it would help current (non-Mexican) wrestling a lot in that respect. 

[Just Dave]

I always thought the Lesnar/Angle 1 hr Ironman match told a cool story. Lesnar cheats to get out to a huge lead, then tries to "let the air out of the ball" as Angle mounts a furious comeback. Having Angle come up one fall short was a stroke of genius. 

[thee Reverend Axl Future]

9 hours ago, Casey said:

Yes. He’s friends with Gallows and Anderson. He did the same thing for the first show. A lot of WWE talent used the TalknShopAMania hashtag, too.

Thank you - the subtlety of irony/sarcasm online is often lost w/o context. I will look at this anew.

- RAF 

[thee Reverend Axl Future]

Spontaneous opinion due to posting errors: a card/TV show should have matches of several lengths, all long enough to tell a story w/o belaboring it. Looking at matches in isolation - although this is how many people watch wrestling much of the time - and making sweeping statements about an ideal length leads to generalization. Speaking as a viewer, a good 4 minute squash is better than a dragging 35 minute title epic, and vice versa.

- RAF

Edited November 14, 2020 by thee Reverend Axl Future
DoublePostMania is runnin' wild, brother

[SirSmUgly]

36 minutes ago, just drew said:

I always thought the Lesnar/Angle 1 hr Ironman match told a cool story. Lesnar cheats to get out to a huge lead, then tries to "let the air out of the ball" as Angle mounts a furious comeback. Having Angle come up one fall short was a stroke of genius. 

I think the core narrative was cool, I agree with you there. I just think that the execution of it dragged. If they had told that story in thirty minutes, I think it would have worked much better...kinda like Rude/Steamboat, where Rude cheated and cheated to get a huge lead (except of course, he choked at the end as Steamboat mounted a big comeback)

[Just Dave]

5 minutes ago, Smelly McUgly said:

I think the core narrative was cool, I agree with you there. I just think that the execution of it dragged. If they had told that story in thirty minutes, I think it would have worked much better...kinda like Rude/Steamboat, where Rude cheated and cheated to get a huge lead (except of course, he choked at the end as Steamboat mounted a big comeback)

There was some novelty value in having an hour long Iron Man match on free tv back then, but there were parts that dragged.

[SirSmUgly]

I agree, @just drew. It was cool getting one for free, but there were just too many dead spots. If Lesnar had spent eight minutes amassing a three- or four-fall lead using chairs, etc., and then had to hold on for 22 minutes to prevent a comeback, it would have flowed much better. 

I'm thinking about it, and I don't think that there's a WWE-produced hour-long Iron Man match that I think rises above "okay," and that's primarily got to be because they pace them poorly and leave too many minutes of dead space.

[notoriusvig]

3 hours ago, BobbyWhioux said:

Wrestlemania 12 soured me on the 60 minute iron man match forever, so yes.

It also intrudes on/limits the rest of your card in a way that the 30 minute iron man match doesn't, so there's that to consider as well.

You go away now for that opinion

That match is still my favorite WWE match. I thought wrestling was still real for that show and I cried everytime Shawn was working underneath. I had a fricken' Bible out praying that he'd win during the match. That's emotion, baby.

Edited November 14, 2020 by notoriusvig

[paintedbynumbers]

Funny enough ICW is doing an iron man death match tonight?  Not sure I've ever seen one of them before and kudos in advance to both guys who will likely bleed buckets for 60 mins.  Oh and Meng is also on the card!

[notoriusvig]

Just now, paintedbynumbers said:

Funny enough ICW is doing an iron man death match tonight?  Not sure I've ever seen one of them before and kudos in advance to both guys who will likely bleed buckets for 60 mins.  Oh and Meng is also on the card!

Now, I want to see that more than Turning Point. Is it just Meng beating the shit out of geeks with barb wire for 60 minutes?

[paintedbynumbers]

Meng isn't in the iron man match but he does have a match on the card. I think vs Shlak

[KidNatural]

Andrew Yang as Secretary of Labor would give Vince nightmares.

[Casey]

Realistically, Yang's name probably isn't even in the running for Secretary of Labor.

[SirSmUgly]

 

Hmmmm...

[Jenalysis]

4 hours ago, Godfrey said:

My preferred match lengths are 5 to 8 min for unbalanced/enhancement matches and 10 to 15 max for relatively even matches, with 20 to 25 being for big bouts and 30+ being the PPV main event level if they really need it. Although as Matt D says it is very dependent on how the match is structured.

 

I like those lengths as well, but with the caveat you have to be unpredictable sometimes.  One of my issues with NJPW is that you never really get a sense a match could end at any moment.  I think at least once a night a match should stray from the standard formula- the hot dog doesn't get made, or a match ends in 2-3 minutes with a roll-up, or a flash KO, or some other sort of unique finish.