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THE MAKING OF A MATCH
If there's any one argument guaranteed to exist forever on the
internet, it's how to rate matches; that one person's five-star
classic is someone else's garbage-y mindless brawl is axiomatic at
this point. But oddly enough, I rarely see it discussed in depth on
message boards what exactly it is that constitutes the underpinnings
of a quality match, what elements must be present to produce a top
quality encounter and which of them deserve primary consideration in
determining the overall quality of a given performance. Virtually
everyone tosses around snowflakes, than declares that they mean
nothing and are completely subjective if someone disagrees with
their rating. Frankly, while that's true to a point, I've never
bought the concept that it's impossible to have an at least somewhat
objective ratings scale, provided that the criteria for such are
defined and laid out ahead of time; and so I thought I'd have a go
at doing just that. Not that I'm the be-all end-all of match raters
or anything like that, but I've seen enough matches from enough
places to think I have a descent grasp on what constitutes
quality. Or at least an inflated sense of my own importance =). But
here's what I go by, in rough ascending order of importance:
X-factors. Various factors may influence the way a match is
perceived. A match may be raised or lowered in perceived quality by
some special atmosphere which surrounds it, either immense heat (or
an utterly frostbit audience) or some other circumstance. A fine
example would be the 2000 Observer match of the year, Atlantis
vs. Villano Tercero, from EMLL's 3/17/00 pay per view. This match
was raised from "very good" on the basis of the work alone to a true
match of the year quality performance based on the mask versus mask
stipulation which pitted two immensely historic masks with decades
of life in them against each other. People can be seen crying in the
audience at the end, when Villano removes his mask and declares his
true name for the first time ever in the ring. As well, if a match
has an immensely obvious winner beforehand, the workers involved
will be hard-pressed to create an effective sense of drama within
the match. Overbooking may kill a match dead faster than you can say
"Vince Russo"; anyone who remembers the anticipation going into
Storm/Awesome at New Blood Rising or Hart/Benoit at Mayhem '99, or
more recently Jericho/Regal at this year's Backlash show, and
remembers what happened to those matches as a result of mass run-ins
and random rules changes can see the problem here. Beyond these,
there may be a million other factors which may play a small role
into how a match ought to be rated. Essentially, this is the
category of additional factors which effect to one degree or another
the following components.
Moveset. I'd wager 90% of the people on the net would have this
higher. My placing it this low is reflective of personal taste,
obviously, but here's my argument: using only those other components
listed below and an eminently basic moveset, a wrestler could have a
truly spectacular match, even one considered an all time classic: I
submit any HHH pay per view match or Kawada/Sasaki from the Tokyo
Dome last October as proof, not to mention the vaunted
Flair/Steamboat classics of yesteryear. But moveset alone will allow
a wrestler to create little more than a flashy, WCW cruiserweight
type spotfest, which is fine for what it is but which has none of
the depth of the truly classic encounter. This is essentially icing,
while what's below is the cake.
Selling. The engine which makes a match go, it is the medium of
exchange by which every move in a match is valued. Short term
selling is what draws a fan into the match, as the interest of a
match is fundamentally predicated on the idea that both participants
can be hurt and that either can win or lose based on the effect
which move or events may have on him. Part of what makes loads like
Sid so awful (and, conversely, Vader so good among superheavyweights
for his opposite approach) was their inability or unwillingness to
sell effectively for their opponents. If a man apparently cannot be
hurt and is rarely in trouble, where is the interest factor in his
matches? Long term selling, meanwhile, is the necessary component
for much psychology, and is extremely important in holding together
the logical side of a match; it become noticeable, and not in a good
way, if a man subjected to a brutal beating directed at a particular
bodypart suddenly begins to use that bodypart without
restriction. That said, a match considered excellent may have little
in the way of effective selling under certain circumstances, usually
those of a garbage brawl: I submit Benoit/Sullivan Great American
Bash 1996 or Nasty Boys/Cactus Jack and [Partner] 1994 as
proof. Both of those substituted stiffness for selling effectively,
in the way some All Japan matches do; if the blows themselves are so
believably tough that the crowd will buy them as damaging even
without reaction on the part of the struck wrestler, then that
wrestler's no-selling is actually beneficial as a means of getting
him over as a legitimate tough guy.
Pacing. The current stateside master of this is Triple H, and it's
a large part of what makes him an excellent worker. Each move in his
match has a logical purpose and builds to something. And just as
importantly, he paces them to have the maximum effect on the
crowd. He interacts with the crowd at certain points to maintain
crowd heat, but without going to the extremes of RVD (a chief
offender in this area) and killing off the actual flow of a
match. More generally, this refers to the correct timing of big
spots and comebacks so as to maximize their importance within the
context of the match. The lack of this is part of what hurts Jeff
Hardy and many cruiserweights as workers, since they apparently have
little idea how to maximize the importance of their own offense,
instead throwing out highspot after highspot with little rhyme or
reason. That approach results in each of those moves becoming
devalued by their commonness within the match, and the fact that
they come so often that they cannot be sold as truly
devastating; it's no accident that Hunter's knee drop gets more
reaction than Jeff Hardy's corkscrew bodypress. It's simply that he
paces it better.
Effort. Because the term "workrate" is such a loaded one, it might
be better to use this. Basically, do the wrestlers involved appear
to be putting forth an effort in what they're doing? A match might
have excellent psychology surrounding an injured neck, for instance,
but if the work itself is 90% chinlocks, the match is nothing much.
Psychology. Just down the ladder from Storyline in terms of
importance is this nebulous quantity. Everyone defines it in their
own way, and my personal definition is this: the structuring of a
match in such a way that it makes logical sense within the accepted
"rules" of that form of wrestling (people being forced to run the
ropes on a whip, the fact that highspots are used in many styles,
moves known to be devastating are sold as such, etc.) and has an
element of reality in it. Not reality in the sense of a Pride or UFC
match, but realism in the sense that once the universe of what is
possible within a match is established, the performers work within
those rules believably and logically to create a coherent
performance. Perhaps pro wrestling's greatest advantage is its
ability to define the rules on which it operates, not merely in
terms of how many falls, but in more fundamental ways such as what a
match should look like. There is no logical reason why a man should
be forced by a simple shove to run back and forth between the ropes,
but because the rules of wrestling say he must it is accepted by
fans. Once these rules are established, psychology may take many
forms; the most obvious in the American style is working a body part
for a submission, but in Lucha it might take the form of faking a
low blow, since those are grounds for immediate disqualification. No
matter what the form taken though, this is an essential quality to
every match.
In-match storyline. If a match might be compared to the
psychological concept of the tree of human desires, this is akin to
self-actualization: the final level of ultimate potential, difficult
and rare to achieve. By an in ring storyline I mean something more
than "wrestler A works on Wrestler B's knee to prevent his finishing
move"; that would fall under the rubric of psychology. By in match
storyline I mean something more on the level of the Austin/Rock main
event to Wrestlemania. That match took advantage of its out-of-ring
backstory to create compelling, deep in ring drama. The
backstory: In 1996 Austin exploded on the scene with a character who
was cocksure, the new blood, certain he was the best. Better than
the old stars like Bret Hart who were on the card above him. In
time, his character was proven right about his place in wrestling
via his victories over Bret and others, and was diverted into the
anti-authoritarian direction it took for most of 1998 and 1999.
But once the surgery happened, the confidence "Stone Cold" had
always taken for granted evaporated; an opponent had hurt him badly,
snuck up on him the way he had snuck up on Bret and taken him
out. Doubts began to gnaw at him. When he came back, he managed to
best the man who ran him over, which restored his confidence
somewhat; but behind that man was what Austin really feared, Triple
H, one of the men who had taken his place as the top guy while he
was on the shelf. Austin wondered to himself: have I lost a step? Am
I now the old guy ripe to be knocked off for good? He needed to
prove he wasn't that guy, prove he was still the top man in the
business; for that he needed to be champion. He had always said
anyone who wasn't in it to be champion was wasting their time, but
now that old line of his took on a new psychological urgency. His
drive back to the top started at the Royal Rumble, where his victory
once again eased his doubts; but his loss to HHH, the young lion who
had carried wrestling while he was out, sent him back into
turmoil. He needed to be champion now, at any cost.
The match: at Wrestlemania Austin threw everything at the other
young lion, the Rock, every move and trick he had learned which had
taken out everyone else, had even finished off the Rock before. But
this time was different; things had changed while Austin was on the
shelf. Nothing worked, nothing would keep the younger man down. Even
the Stunner failed. So Austin made a deal, a deal with his own
private little devil on his shoulder for the past three and a half
years, ever since he first made it as a top guy. He would pay the
price of his individuality for the sake of prolonging his glory
years, become McMahon's tool if it meant a few more years on top, a
few more years of hanging with the young lions. As the match
progressed Austin became more and more visibly frustrated, pounding
the mat and intimidating the referee. He demonstrated his inability
to beat the Rock on even terms. He utilized moves like the cobra
clutch, which he hadn't used in years, playing up for fans his
identity as a veteran and the old man of the match to Rock's
youthful champion. And finally, he culminates the story of the
Austin character's selling out to compensate for diminishing skill
and eroded self-confidence by having the McMahon run-in only after
Austin has tried everything else. The turn thus makes psychological
sense, as the Austin character has to be driven to the farthest
exigency before he will betray what he has stood for. This match to
me was one of the best examples of such story telling in North
America in quite some time, and one of the reasons I considered this
an excellent match.
So if you've made it to the end of all this, you're asking yourself
"so? What's his point?" Here it is: when was the last time you asked
yourself exactly what makes up a good match? When was the last time
Wade Keller, or Dave Meltzer, or Scott Keith or whoever actually
elucidated point by point what they rate matches in general on, and
what they saw in a particular match? We seem to have become so
fixated on placing a given match somewhere on the snowflake spectrum
that we sometimes lose sight of what it is that we truly appreciate
in wrestling, not to mention what it is that actually constitutes
quality wrestling at the fundamental level from an artistic
standpoint. At the very least it behooves those who would make
judgments about the quality of wrestling to have a clear set of
criteria to which they refer, and which they can explain if
asked. Lacking this, I question the value of their opinions as being
anything more than that- opinions; and ill founded ones at that. At
most, I suspect those who focus on developing a clear understanding
of the components of wrestling excellence will have a much easier
time discerning why some wrestlers are considered "not
ready" despite state-of-the-art offense, while others derided as
one-dimensional brawlers with limited offense are routinely at the
top of WWF cards.
I crave feedback like a drug, so hit me up y'all. Responses for
all! Promise!
Shaddax
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