Babyface offense in US singles match structure

[ohtani's jacket]

He turned heel at Royal Rumble '94 when he kicked Bret's leg out of his leg.

 

[JerryvonKramer]

Oh shit, of course he did. How could I forget that promo. I look forward to watching this stuff again when I get to the 1994 yearbook in 2021. My memory must now be considered completely defective.

[JerryvonKramer]

Anyway, all this means is that my example wasn't a good one. Replace it with another of your own choosing. Bret vs. Davey Boy maybe.

[Matt D]

It starts with Survivor Series 94 when he's the only Hart eliminated. He was eliminated after crashing into Bret who had his bell rung and was walking around the apron. He comes back out at the end of the match but refuses to celebrate with them. There are a couple of weeks of frustrated Owen promos after that until they have Bret make an announcement that he's going to end his singles career and focus on a tag wrestler with Owen for the rest of his career. In order to bring the family back together, he's going to rededicate so that he and Owen can win the tag titles. They have these promos where Bret says something then Owen butts in front of him and says that he's going to carry Bret to the championship and now that they're together Owen will lead the way and nothing will stop them. Bret looks kind of bemused but tolerant in the background.

 

The best one of these is after Marty and 1-2-3 Kid win the titles on Raw when Owen is passive aggressive and pissy that their title shot vs the Quebecers at the Rumble is no longer a title shot while Bret is congratulatory. Owen, at this time, is handing out the pink shades like Bret, etc.

 

It comes to a head at the Rumble where Bret's leg gets hurt and when he starts to come back he goes after the Quebecers instead of tagging in. Eventually the ref stops the match and Owen destroys the leg post match.

 

All in all, it's a well done angle. The biggest problem is that they lost Lawler right before Survivor Series and given his animosity with Bret he would have gotten the angle over better than anyone. They lose Heenan right after Survivor Series too so you have Stan Lane and Johnny Polo and Bruce Pritchard (and for one Raw, Cornette) trying to sell the heel side of things behind the booth and it just doesn't work as well as it would if Lawler was there.

[ohtani's jacket]

They had some great sit down interviews with Vince:

 

 

Then they did a cheesy Christmas promo after getting back together.

 

This was a fun one:

 

[khawk20]

I think these kinds of matches should always be squashes. When they get dragged out (Bret vs Vince, Lawler vs Cole...well, all kinds of problems with that one), it's just terrible.

One exception would be the Buck Zumhofe-Bobby Heenan series from the AWA in the early 80's. They had Bobby dominate the offense in several of their matches, with a stip that if Heenan couldn't beat Zumhofe in ten minutes he would get stuffed in a weasel suit. The gimmick that they sold (and, to their credit, consistently throughout the existence of the belt, the "didn't make weight" stip made many bouts non-title over the years to set up "at weight" rematches) was that Heenan weighed so much more than Zumhofe that it would make a significant difference in who would get the advantage in the bout. And, they booked it that way, with Buck being on the defensive against Heenan in their bouts, with Heenan throwing the kitchen sink at Buck trying to get the pin and avoid the Weasel suit.

 

Heenan could actually wrestle so him showing off an offense was ok. He was a very credible wrestler. With most Managers this would not have worked at all.

 

I agree with your initial assessment overall, Heenan-Buck is just an example of how an exception to the concept can actually work ok.

[Matt D]

I think these kinds of matches should always be squashes. When they get dragged out (Bret vs Vince, Lawler vs Cole...well, all kinds of problems with that one), it's just terrible.

One exception would be the Buck Zumhofe-Bobby Heenan series from the AWA in the early 80's. They had Bobby dominate the offense in several of their matches, with a stip that if Heenan couldn't beat Zumhofe in ten minutes he would get stuffed in a weasel suit. The gimmick that they sold (and, to their credit, consistently throughout the existence of the belt, the "didn't make weight" stip made many bouts non-title over the years to set up "at weight" rematches) was that Heenan weighed so much more than Zumhofe that it would make a significant difference in who would get the advantage in the bout. And, they booked it that way, with Buck being on the defensive against Heenan in their bouts, with Heenan throwing the kitchen sink at Buck trying to get the pin and avoid the Weasel suit.

 

Heenan could actually wrestle so him showing off an offense was ok. He was a very credible wrestler. With most Managers this would not have worked at all.

 

I agree with your initial assessment overall, Heenan-Buck is just an example of how an exception to the concept can actually work ok.

 

How did they work the Pringle vs Von Erich matches?

[JerryvonKramer]

Paul Jones was booked quite strong in matches as a manager. I guess you can do that with former wrestlers to an extent. I actually thought Mr. Fuji could have done with being a tiny bit stronger in the Wrestlemania handicap match vs. Demolition. Probably one of your all-time psychological favourites Matt

[Matt D]

I don't have much to say about it but I do love the Fuji-running-a-marathon stuff in the build.

[JerryvonKramer]

This thread is worth revisiting, I'd love to hear some takes from some of the newer faces around here.

[dawho5]

My feeling is that structure is a starting point. It's something used for less experienced workers to have something to fall back on when they get stuck. It also makes the story easier for the audience to follow. It seems like most movies have a very similar structure to your shine-heat-comeback setup. I get why, it's a good basic story. The good guy shows you why you should like him, the bad guy finds a way to circumvent the good guy's strengths to get the advantage and the good guy rewards our faith by coming back. If you're going to go with "good guy vs. bad guy" as your basis it's a strong narrative despite being as basic as it is.

 

I think a lot of the time face control tends to be filler, but that doesn't necessarily make it bad. If it's treated by the wrestlers in the ring as not worth their time, why is it worth mine or anyone else's who might be watching? But there are ways it can be done that make a match better.

 

Let's say that the heel misses an elbow drop and comes up holding his elbow and the face notices. Since the heel has probably proven in the past that he is a dangerous opponent, it only makes sense that the face attacks said arm to weaken the heel despite their finisher having nothing to do with the arm. You're still wearing the opponent down and it gives the idea of an athletic competition. If your opponent in a competition shows some kind of weakness you attack it. Then later in the match the face can keep the heel from cutting him off by going to the injured arm when nothing else works. This would work especially well in matches where the heel was higher up the card than the face. It shows the face may be overmatched, but he is resourceful enough to find a way to stay in the fight.

 

This is one example of how a variation on the structure can work. Very often the deviations from the shine-heat-comeback formula are very heavily dependent on context. What is the history between the two wrestlers? Does the face have an injury they need to protect that might cause them to deviate from their normal offense and use what might be termed as "rest holds" to control the heel? How far apart are the wrestlers involved on the card? Do these wrestlers have a lot of matches against one another that would require different structures to set them apart?

 

One feud that this site has turned me on to has been Valentine vs. Tito. One of the things that makes it great is how the matches are different from one another. Tito comes in with his leg all taped up and ends up beating the shit out of Valentine for the majority of the match with teases of Valentine getting the advantage by going after the leg. But he never quite does. There are several things that make this structure work. First and foremost is Tito's character. He's a guy who will get fired up and destroy an opponent when they piss him off. Secondly, the execution is pitch perfect. Valentine spends any time he gets on offense trying in vain to get ahold of Tito's leg. It's way off classic match structure but it works both as a single match and within the feud. I will say though that in context that match becomes far better than just as a singles match because of all the why involved in that match structure.

 

To sum up, I think that as wrestlers get more experienced they ought to be able to execute more variations on classic American match structure. It's a basic template that can be rearranged effectively by wrestlers who know their craft. But given that the "big leagues" in the U.S. script all of their matches to a fault it's something I feel will become a lost art.

 

Edit: Does anyone else think that classic American match structure has a lot to do with the lack of national TV for so long? It seems almost designed to work for any audience, context or no context, that would fit a regional promotion. People in one part of the territory wouldn't have seen the rest of the feud unless it happened on TV. So the matches would tend to be fairly simply laid out rather than matches in a feud evolving as the feud continued.

[JerryvonKramer]

Sleaze: listening to the latest Tag Teams Back Again, and I think you might have had this thread in mind.

 

I wasn't attacking shine sequences, but babyface control sequences later in the match, which you'd typically see in a longer match. See above for more.

 

I was asking a question:

 

 

 

What troubles me a little about about my own critique there is if it holds then basically all babyface offense that isn't shine, hope spot or comeback is essentially a time kill.

Is that really true?