Understanding wrestling terms

[DR Ackermann]

With the internet anyone who is more than a casual wrestling fan knows and understands a number of basic terms (heel, face, workrate, heat, etc.) The more advanced your understanding, the more terms you know. I've learned a lot about wrestling from this message board, and I'm at a point where I'm encountering a lot of terms that I'm not sure I completely understand. So, I thought I would just go ahead and ask what they mean here.

 

Sprint: My understanding is that this is a fast-paced, shorter match.

 

Southern Tag: What exactly makes a tag match a southern-style tag? Is it the basic face gets worked over, is in peril and finally makes the hot tag? Is that it?

 

Heat: I know what it means in the context of "getting heat" and having "heat" and all that, but I saw "double-heat" a lot when people are talking about AWA and maybe I don't understand the term entirely.

 

Base: I read (and/or heard on a podcast) about Cesaro being a good base. Does that mean he's a good opponent for a variety of wrestlers to work their spots on?

 

I've got a lot more questions, but that's all I can think of right now.

[goodhelmet]

Sprint - you are correct

 

Southern tag - Usually starts with a face shine followed by a face in peril segment with the hot tag that leads to a finish soon after. Mix in the hope spots in the face in peril section and you have a formula for success.

 

Double heat- In the AWA, you would see the above formula but with both faces ending up in peril during the match.

 

Base - It means he is a good big worker for a lighter worker to fly around or on.

[JerryvonKramer]

Heat: I know what it means in the context of "getting heat" and having "heat" and all that, but I saw "double-heat" a lot when people are talking about AWA and maybe I don't understand the term entirely.

The "Heat" segment of a match is basically another name for the heel control section. Think Hogan formula matches when the heel is on top.

[JerryvonKramer]

I broke this down somewhere ... here: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?s=&a...t&p=5560607

[DR Ackermann]

Thanks a lot, guys. I've checked out that post before and it was really helpful. Are there other distinct styles of tag matches? I know you have tornado tags like in ECW and I guess the southern tag doesn't really happen in lucha.

[Matt D]

With the internet anyone who is more than a casual wrestling fan knows and understands a number of basic terms (heel, face, workrate, heat, etc.) The more advanced your understanding, the more terms you know. I've learned a lot about wrestling from this message board, and I'm at a point where I'm encountering a lot of terms that I'm not sure I completely understand. So, I thought I would just go ahead and ask what they mean here.

 

Sprint: My understanding is that this is a fast-paced, shorter match.

 

Southern Tag: What exactly makes a tag match a southern-style tag? Is it the basic face gets worked over, is in peril and finally makes the hot tag? Is that it?

 

Heat: I know what it means in the context of "getting heat" and having "heat" and all that, but I saw "double-heat" a lot when people are talking about AWA and maybe I don't understand the term entirely.

 

Base: I read (and/or heard on a podcast) about Cesaro being a good base. Does that mean he's a good opponent for a variety of wrestlers to work their spots on?

 

I've got a lot more questions, but that's all I can think of right now.

Some of this is tricky, because a sprint can be a match but it also can be a section of a match with a lot of rope-running.

 

Heat can be the section of a match where the heel is on top and the babyface is garnering sympathy, but that can also be face in peril. Generally, a face-in-peril only works in a tag match, building to a hot tag but a heat segment can be in any match. At the same time, the heat can be the actual emotion of the crowd itself, angered at the heel. Or it can be a legitimate dislike between two wrestlers, or that one wrestler has with the locker room/crowd.

 

Base, I personally use most to describe a hold or series of holds targetting a specific bodypart or telling a specific story that wrestlers go back to in structuring a match. A lot of times you can have a match where a lot of the meat of it is based around working in and out of a headlock, or in WWF matches, a chinlock. USUALLY it's found in the first part of the match, because if in the middle, that'd really be more likely to be a heat segment. So again, tricky.

 

And yeah, a base could also be a wrestler who a second, flying wrestler can work against and that can catch all of his moves and make his logically low impact flippy stuff look good.

 

I love classification. Deconstructing matches is so underdeveloped as a field that it's like the Enlightenment whenever we try, in that a lot of what we can do is try to classify, qualify, and quantify common elements between matches.

[bradhindsight]

With the internet anyone who is more than a casual wrestling fan knows and understands a number of basic terms (heel, face, workrate, heat, etc.) The more advanced your understanding, the more terms you know. I've learned a lot about wrestling from this message board, and I'm at a point where I'm encountering a lot of terms that I'm not sure I completely understand. So, I thought I would just go ahead and ask what they mean here.

 

Sprint: My understanding is that this is a fast-paced, shorter match.

 

Southern Tag: What exactly makes a tag match a southern-style tag? Is it the basic face gets worked over, is in peril and finally makes the hot tag? Is that it?

 

Heat: I know what it means in the context of "getting heat" and having "heat" and all that, but I saw "double-heat" a lot when people are talking about AWA and maybe I don't understand the term entirely.

 

Base: I read (and/or heard on a podcast) about Cesaro being a good base. Does that mean he's a good opponent for a variety of wrestlers to work their spots on?

 

I've got a lot more questions, but that's all I can think of right now.

Some of this is tricky, because a sprint can be a match but it also can be a section of a match with a lot of rope-running.

 

Heat can be the section of a match where the heel is on top and the babyface is garnering sympathy, but that can also be face in peril. Generally, a face-in-peril only works in a tag match, building to a hot tag but a heat segment can be in any match. At the same time, the heat can be the actual emotion of the crowd itself, angered at the heel. Or it can be a legitimate dislike between two wrestlers, or that one wrestler has with the locker room/crowd.

 

Base, I personally use most to describe a hold or series of holds targetting a specific bodypart or telling a specific story that wrestlers go back to in structuring a match. A lot of times you can have a match where a lot of the meat of it is based around working in and out of a headlock, or in WWF matches, a chinlock. USUALLY it's found in the first part of the match, because if in the middle, that'd really be more likely to be a heat segment. So again, tricky.

 

And yeah, a base could also be a wrestler who a second, flying wrestler can work against and that can catch all of his moves and make his logically low impact flippy stuff look good.

 

I love classification. Deconstructing matches is so underdeveloped as a field that it's like the Enlightenment whenever we try, in that a lot of what we can do is try to classify, qualify, and quantify common elements between matches.

I think a Kindle book going into all the terms as well as deconstructing matches would be pretty entertaining. I enjoyed your responses.

[Matt D]

To extrapolate a bit, when I spent my year in London ten years ago, I spent a lot of time at the British Museum. I was getting a Masters at the London School of Economics and while we had a brand new, spiffy, award winning Norman Foster designed library there, it was a pain in the ass to study at. The elevator was always crowded. The stairs were designed in a way that you were always going up with the same foot, annoyingly so, and there was no real private study space like I was used to. Moreover, it was too far away. I lived in the heart of the city, in a dorm, but it was a fifteen minute walk, at least. A five minute walk, on the other hand, was the British Museum, and within the British Museum was the Reading Room, just opened to the public a few years earlier, with hundred and fifty year old chairs and tables that Oscar Wilde and Karl Marx had studied a century before. I did most of my studying there that year, so I spent a lot of time in the Museum. During that time, they opened the Enlightenment gallery, which so far as exhibits go, isn't nearly as interesting as some of those of less modern design. It falls along the cultural history lines in a lot of ways, which means it's a little of a lot instead of a lot of a little, but it does really give you a sense of categorization and organization being the first step in our history of scientific understanding.

 

 

Budding amateur scientists would collect bugs or birds or skeletons or mammals and add them to their personal collections, finding the commonalities and the differences and document everything and search for patterns and theory why the exist or why they don't exist, and everything sort of tumbled from that.

 

Sometimes I feel like that's what we do.

 

As for a kindle book, I don't know, there's such a mentality of outsiders not knowing anything in wrestling and there's so much variation in terms and meaning and etymology (and the carny roots that make up the etymology of wrestling are fascinating, not just about things like heat and marks and what not, but something like Full Nelson or pronouncing su-plex vs su-play, etc), it seems like it'd be a lot of work. Fun work, but still. Maybe someday. I am going to be breaking down a couple of Dustin's comeback matches for a friend's magazine in the next month or two as part of a broader article, and I might try to see if I can do so in some way that's deeply analytical. Or I might totally fail to finish the thing.

 

If someone wanted to walk me through the nuts and bolts of how writing a book for kindle worked, I'd probably listen.

[Loss]

Wrestling is filled with messy contradictions. I think that's awesome.

[JerryvonKramer]

I'd like to co-author a book with Matt D one day called The Taxonomy of Professional Wrestling in which we break down all 457 different varieties of match structure, 35 varieties of faces and 57 varieties of heels.

 

jdw could provide the afterword in classic academic fashion by shitting all over the preceding book with his best petty quibbling. I have hopes of it being a best seller.

[jpchicago23]

The only term I think I don't fully understand is in Japan you have guys work a Kings Road style. What is that exactly?

[Loss]

The only term I think I don't fully understand is in Japan you have guys work a Kings Road style. What is that exactly?

It doesn't really mean anything except that it's the All Japan style. The All Japan style is more similar to the American style than the New Japan style. It just modernized and evolved in ways the American style never quite did.

[JerryvonKramer]

Is there a difference between 85-9 AJ style and 90s AJ style? By which I mean are they typically given different names?

[Loss]

In terms of names, no.

[ohtani's jacket]

Is there a difference between 85-9 AJ style and 90s AJ style? By which I mean are they typically given different names?

They didn't start calling it King's Road until the 90s.

[jpchicago23]

Ok i thought maybe it had something to do with no selling a few moves until they got completely destroyed but something vicious. Thanks for the clarification.

[Ryan Faulconer]

Here's one that fans confuse both the origin and the meaning.

 

Strong Style

 

People think this means wrestling like they did in All Japan during the 1990s. As far as I know it was coined in New Japan by someone like Choshu. It doesn't mean ANYTHING besides describing the New Japan style of wrestlers. That's not the style of wrestling they use because the term moves with the times to fit whatever New Japan wants their wrestlers to be. It is the NJPW equivalent of "WWE Superstar".

[Matt D]

Here's one that fans confuse both the origin and the meaning.

 

Strong Style

 

People think this means wrestling like they did in All Japan during the 1990s. As far as I know it was coined in New Japan by someone like Choshu. It doesn't mean ANYTHING besides describing the New Japan style of wrestlers. That's not the style of wrestling they use because the term moves with the times to fit whatever New Japan wants their wrestlers to be. It is the NJPW equivalent of "WWE Superstar".

That's one where the meaning has sort of shifted, though, no? What's more important, a more official "correct" meaning or how something is generally used most of the time? Is it confusion or misguided reapprobation? I'm with you in that the origin is important to know.

[cheapshot]

People don't seem to grasp what a dirtsheet is (I dislike the term personally). Rovert has been on a one man crusade on twitter to educate the masses on the correct use of the term.

 

Also you don't hear the term vignette as much any more, maybe because there aren't as many!

[DR Ackermann]

When people talk about a wrestler having good transitions or something being a good transition move or spot, what do they mean exactly? Is the spot that moves from the babyface shine segment to the heat segment a transition?

[goodhelmet]

Transitioning from one plot point to the next. Sometimes a great transition happens in the middle of a heat segment where a face gives you a hope spot but injures his knee on the turnbuckle so the heel starts attacking the knee. Sometimes, there is no transition or spot that logically allows a babyface or heel to take over. They just decide to switch who is in control.

[JerryvonKramer]

When people talk about a wrestler having good transitions or something being a good transition move or spot, what do they mean exactly? Is the spot that moves from the babyface shine segment to the heat segment a transition?

If you're watching All Japan or a Bob Backlund match, this is another name for a piledriver.

[Ryan Faulconer]

Transitioning from one plot point to the next. Sometimes a great transition happens in the middle of a heat segment where a face gives you a hope spot but injures his knee on the turnbuckle so the heel starts attacking the knee. Sometimes, there is no transition or spot that logically allows a babyface or heel to take over. They just decide to switch who is in control.

I remember WWE in the 90s using really lazy looking transitions a lot of the time. They were usually really goofy looking punches with what seemed like the exact same number of blows thrown in every single transition. When the action was taking place in the middle of the ring it felt like the only way offense could shift was through a series of punches. WWE tag team transitions to this day can be annoyingly predictable. Everybody has to do the short-arm-style clothesline when they take over control.

 

When I watched Dragon Gate until 2005 they had their share of head scratching transitions. Some guys would go back on offense immediately after kicking out of a two count.

[marrklarr]

One question on this topic: is it possible to distinguish between the terms that originated within the business (among the wrestlers and promoters, etc.) and those that were coined by outsiders who have analysed the matches?

A term like "heat," of course, has been around forever and started within the business. But what about "shine?" Or "control?" Or "hope spot?" Are these insider or outsider terms?

When the defenititve lexicon of wrestling terms is written, I think it would be helpful to include this sort of background information.

[Bix]

One question on this topic: is it possible to distinguish between the terms that originated within the business (among the wrestlers and promoters, etc.) and those that were coined by outsiders who have analysed the matches?

A term like "heat," of course, has been around forever and started within the business. But what about "shine?" Or "control?" Or "hope spot?" Are these insider or outsider terms?

When the defenititve lexicon of wrestling terms is written, I think it would be helpful to include this sort of background information.

Sometimes. Shine is from wrestlers. Control and hope spot are from fans.