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Wrestling Tropes You Love / Hate


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I don't remember what exactly got me thinking about this, but I thought it would be a fun topic to discuss. What are some wrestling tropes you love and/or hate?

I'd have to say one of my favorites is when a heel (usually a large one) will do a double bicep pose, and they're not muscular at all, to a chorus of boos.

One I hate, is when someone wins a title match via DQ and celebrates with the belt, only to act surprised to find out they didn't actually win the championship.

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Love: Old school cheating, like using tag ropes to choke their opponents, using the ropes for leverage(either in the submission holds or for pins)

Hate: The 20 min long rambling heel promo to start show, and any evil authority angle.

Full disclosure, I haven't watched wrestling on a regular basis since around the turn of the century, so . . . . .

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On 1/31/2021 at 6:59 PM, The Natural said:

Don't powerbomb Billy Kidman. Man, that annoyed me. Wrestlers who wouldn't normally use said move conveniently do for Kidman to counter.

Any "signature defensive move," really. Like when women who had zero flying offense would always somehow be struck with a sudden need try a second rope maneuver against Trish and then they'd get hit with that handstand headscissors.  Wow, what were the odds?   

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On 1/31/2021 at 9:03 PM, Kuetsar said:

Love: Old school cheating, like using tag ropes to choke their opponents, using the ropes for leverage(either in the submission holds or for pins)

The heel-assisted abdominal stretch is my favorite iteration of this

 

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Love: Babyfaces falling for cheating heel tactics, even though the heels do the same thing in every match.  I mean, Sting should have been smart enough to figure out what was going down if he was wrestling Flair and the other Horsemen came to the ring.  Probably the same thing that happened in the previous 372 Horsemen matches.  Did that make Sting pause or alter his strategy in any way?  Nope, he did the splash then put on the Scorpion Deathlock and made sure to face away from the other Horsemen - even though the Deathlock took what seemed like a few minutes to apply and no one but jobbers ever submitted right away.  Oh, and Arn Anderson was in his blind spot while the ref argued with JJ Dillon and couldn't call the tap-out anyway.

I dug Sting as a kid (and Surfer Sting is still a top 10 guy for me), but I could never figure out why he didn't try to beat Flair with a rollup or some other flash pin so he could hopefully get the three count before the Horsemen jumped him.

Hate: Anything to do with entrance music.  Not sure what's more annoying: heels who become hypnotized and stop paying attention to the match as soon as the guy they're feuding with's theme plays (even though the wrestler himself is either not in sight or at least 50 yards away) OR babyfaces who do impromptu run-ins to save other babyfaces from heel beatdowns, but still take the time to have the sound guy cue up their theme, 

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1 hour ago, Nineteen said:

I'm a total sucker for the Dusty Finish, even got to see one in person once, Nigel vs. Claudio at Final Battle '05

I was there for that as well. Claudio should have gotten a run with the Pure title.

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4 minutes ago, droneking said:

Hate the trope specific to the Royal Rumble, wrestler gets tossed, tosser immediately turns around instead making sure the tossed actually hits the ground, then gets surprised when the tossed wrester hasn't been eliminated.

A lot of Rumble specific tropes are getting overexposed by having 2 rumbles on one night/show

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15 hours ago, BobbyWhioux said:

Hate: tag team partners who hate each other.

Love: mismatched tag team partners who look like they shouldn’t get along but actually do (ala Whipwreck/Tajiri and Kiss/Janela)

I especially hate when its two guys fighting over the top belt and then they go and beat the tag champs and it just takes away from whatever semblance of a tag division there is.  Did Shawn and Cena really need that for their program?

Edited by Nineteen
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oh don't even get me started on HBK's one man war against Tag Team Wrestling and the dozens of championships he won but never lost in the ring because he either was feuding or started to feud with his championship partner.  (cue Kevin Nash calling them "a pittance" and effectively Making It So)

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on a lighter note, the one tag team breakup trope I do like is the Leader/Follower Tag Team where the workhorse lackey eventually gets fed up and turns face by turning on his oppressor (i.e. Virgil/Dibiase, Richards/Raven, Sandow/Miz).  When timed just right, it's beautiful.

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I hate the "I beat the champ in a match so I want a title shot" trope. It's lazy writing.

I also hate the "Two singles guys team up to beat a tag team" story.

I want more managers building stables. They almost started something with Vega, Lana and Maverick all on RAW for a while. I think it would have been cool to see them try to sweet talk different wrestlers into signing with them.

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28 minutes ago, Nineteen said:

I especially hate when its two guys fighting over the top belt and then they go and beat the tag champs and it just takes away from whatever semblance of a tag division their is.  Did Shawn and Cena really need that for their program?

 

19 minutes ago, L_W_P said:


I also hate the "Two singles guys team up to beat a tag team" story.

Most iterations of the Dusty Classic have really been drug down by this. Two upper card singles guys teaming up and going on a winning streak only to be beaten by an established team of two guys who might not been that much of a force on their own, but are able to win because they're so much better at tag team wrestling isn't a bad match layout, but not when it's done at the expense of the division as a whole.

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25 minutes ago, L_W_P said:

I hate the "I beat the champ in a match so I want a title shot" trope. It's lazy writing.

I also hate the "Two singles guys team up to beat a tag team" story.

 

they're great if you do them once every 3 or 4 years and thus let them work as a historically significant fluke.  You can't just say "the established team has the advantage over two first-time partners", you have to show it play out that way the other 99% of the time.  Failure to put that frame in is, like you say, lazy writing.

if you do them compulsively like the WWE has done for decades, they're not only garbage but they kill your undercard belts, like the IC title becoming so synonymous with an immediate losing streak they actually euthanized the belt for a while in the early 00s.

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4 hours ago, Eoae said:

I dug Sting as a kid (and Surfer Sting is still a top 10 guy for me), but I could never figure out why he didn't try to beat Flair with a rollup or some other flash pin so he could hopefully get the three count before the Horsemen jumped him.

So, you didn't see him winning the WCW World Title (in 1990, his first) by reversing an attempted Figure 4 into a Small Package?

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