marrklarr Posted February 15, 2014 Report Share Posted February 15, 2014 This is meant to be a companion to the thread 'What is good wrestling?' I think it helps to answer the question of what makes wrestling good by coming at it from the other end and asking what makes wrestling bad. The short answer is LOTS of things. But here's an intereting thing to consider: What makes good wrestling -- whatever that might be -- turn into bad wrestling? If you like workrate-y wrestling, at what point does the action become all style and no substance? If you like sound, technical wrestling, at what point does it devolve into Dory-levels of fatal boredom? If you like story-driven wrestling with good psychology, logical ringwork, compelling characters, and well-crafted narratives, what makes these things go wrong? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted February 15, 2014 Report Share Posted February 15, 2014 Recommend to merge this with other thread since I think this is the flipside of the same convo. The good and bad define each other. I didn't see this when making my last post, but here you go: Things that I like in wrestling: - characters and great character work, and consistency in character work - awesome promos - angles that suck you in through the above - compelling stories in the ring, preferrably that build on the above - bumping and selling, I appreciate it when workers show vulnerability and make the other worker look good - consistency in selling an injury - heatedness and intensity - blood and brutality - structure, in particular breaking it down and analysing it - suplexes / bombs -- but not in a vacuum, they have to be built to within the overall structure - logical follow-up moves - a hot crowd Things I hate: - spottiness for its own sake - bad acting - fake epicness or drama - spots that seem overly stylised or choregraphed - long and boring matwork spots - workers who are selfish / don't sell as much as they should for opponents - a smart-ass indie crowd There may be one or two other things that have escaped my mind but that sums it up for me I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sidebottom Posted February 15, 2014 Report Share Posted February 15, 2014 To me, bad wrestling is the stuff of no significance - pro or con. Orton vs Cena at the Royal Rumble this year wasn't "bad wrestling" because I'll always remember it. Perhaps for the wrong reasons, but that's part of the fun, right? Lesnar vs Goldberg was wrestling at its best in many ways. Carny bull shit you'll never forget. Yes please! Far more memorable than a bog standard match they could of had. Now if they had a Goldberg / Steiner Fall Brawlesque classic, that obviously would have been the ideal situation. But I'll take dog shit over mediocre any day of the week. Bad wrestling = forgettable wrestling. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W2BTD Posted February 15, 2014 Report Share Posted February 15, 2014 Worked MMA. They invented highspots for a reason. Deathmatches where the participants maim themselves. Not sure anything is less appealing to me. Anything so sloppy that I can no longer suspend my disbelief. Redoing blown spots. See above. Drives me nuts and will take me right out of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim Posted February 15, 2014 Report Share Posted February 15, 2014 Worked MMA. They invented highspots for a reason. Now what exactly are we talking here? The stuff Sakuraba and untrained Gracie chumps are doing right now, or all shoot style? Even Battlarts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheapshot Posted February 15, 2014 Report Share Posted February 15, 2014 Worked MMA can be fantastic when done correctly. See the Yearbooks for lots of examples from UWFi / BattlARTS etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted February 15, 2014 Report Share Posted February 15, 2014 I'll let him explain what he considered worked MMA before I respond to that, just to make sure I'm not responding to a point not really being made. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steenalized Posted February 15, 2014 Report Share Posted February 15, 2014 I doubt it's what he's referring to, but when I say I hate MMA wrestling, I don't mean UWFi/BattlArts. I'm not a fan of that style either, but it's more the faux-MMA of Davey Richards/Kyle O'Reilly that drives me nuts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Cooke Posted February 15, 2014 Report Share Posted February 15, 2014 Worked MMA. They invented highspots for a reason. Now what exactly are we talking here? The stuff Sakuraba and untrained Gracie chumps are doing right now, or all shoot style? Even Battlarts? Shoot Style can have just as many high spots as any other style of match. I'd like to know what is being talked about here as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted February 15, 2014 Report Share Posted February 15, 2014 A guess: "What would really happen?" over "What is a good narrative for this fake fighting we're portraying?" maybe with an undertone of being embarrassed by pro wrestling? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregor Posted February 15, 2014 Report Share Posted February 15, 2014 But here's an intereting thing to consider: What makes good wrestling -- whatever that might be -- turn into bad wrestling? If you like workrate-y wrestling, at what point does the action become all style and no substance? If you like sound, technical wrestling, at what point does it devolve into Dory-levels of fatal boredom? If you like story-driven wrestling with good psychology, logical ringwork, compelling characters, and well-crafted narratives, what makes these things go wrong? The first match that this made me think of was the long Flair-Steamboat match from Saturday Night in 1994. That looked like a really good match for a while. I'd been afraid going in that they were going to look kind of sad trying to recreate something from five years ago, and that wasn't how they looked at all. They looked like great wrestlers fighting hard for the title. I really liked the way that Flair gradually got dirtier as the match progressed - not a brilliant bit of psychology or anything like that, but it's the sort of thing that keeps me into a match and ties it together. Then, at about the twenty-minute mark, they went into the finishing stretch, and they stayed there for something like fifteen minutes. It was just fifteen minutes of near-falls. They traded figure-fours, but those didn't change the course of the match at all; they were just near-fall spots. The stuff they were doing at the 33-minute mark was stuff that they could have been doing at the 23-minute mark. That bothered me more than anything - it's not that near-fall spots and close kickouts are cheap but that all of it was pretty interchangeable. Early on in his comeback, Steamboat did a top-rope chop to the floor, and ten minutes later he was getting two-counts off top-rope chops. They progressed all the way from doing a superplex spot to doing a top-rope superplex spot. For fifteen minutes straight, they were at one level, and I guess that's what brought it down from a match that was on its way to being great to a match that had a lot of good work but as a whole isn't something I'd call particularly good. To me, that's the sort of thing that can make a match go sour - when it no longer feels like it's going anywhere. It's not just near-falls; fifteen minutes of punches, or legwork, or flying that just beats the same point home the whole time without increasing in intensity or desperation or anything at all takes me right out of a match. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted February 16, 2014 Report Share Posted February 16, 2014 There are matches where I lose the narrative, and then I go back and try to find it and I can't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Sorrow Posted February 16, 2014 Report Share Posted February 16, 2014 There's always a narrative. Sometimes it's just "Stop looking for shit that ain't here, it's just a gig". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bix Posted February 16, 2014 Report Share Posted February 16, 2014 Worked MMA. They invented highspots for a reason. Like Loss, I'll wait for a full explanation before I can really respond more, but regardless, that's not what "highspot" means. A highspot doesn't have to be fantastical/unrealistic. It's about the timing and how it's positioned relative the the rest of the match. Plenty of "legitimate" moves can be highspots. One of the best highspots of one of the best matches of 2013 was the reenactment of the finish of the first GSP-Matt Hughes fight during Punk-Lesnar. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W2BTD Posted February 16, 2014 Report Share Posted February 16, 2014 I had the Gracie B-team New Japan nonsense in mind when I typed that, but since it came up i'm not a fan of shoot style either. And Bix, in that context I was referring to traditional pro wrestling style highspots. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted February 16, 2014 Report Share Posted February 16, 2014 There's always a narrative. Sometimes it's just "Stop looking for shit that ain't here, it's just a gig". Yeah, that's what I call a match that's not as good as a match with shit that is there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bix Posted February 16, 2014 Report Share Posted February 16, 2014 I had the Gracie B-team New Japan nonsense in mind when I typed that, but since it came up i'm not a fan of shoot style either. And Bix, in that context I was referring to traditional pro wrestling style highspots. Traditional pro wrestling style highspots can still be anything. I'm still not quite sure what you're saying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dylan Waco Posted February 16, 2014 Report Share Posted February 16, 2014 Highspots are very much dependent on the style and era in which they are worked. In DGUSA a top rope splash isn't necessarily a high spot because of the nature of the style, meanwhile there are Nishimura matches where butterfly suplexes are not only highspots, but extremely well built to and worked ones Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffey Posted February 16, 2014 Report Share Posted February 16, 2014 I was always pretty much of the belief that a highspot was just something off the top rope. Springboard or otherwise. I see no reason to change my definition of this term. Until right now at this very moment, I've never heard otherwise & I've been posting on the internet since the end of 1998. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marrklarr Posted February 17, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 17, 2014 I was always pretty much of the belief that a highspot was just something off the top rope. Springboard or otherwise. I see no reason to change my disbelief of this term. Until right now at this very moment, I've never heard otherwise & I've been posting on the internet since the end of 1998. Just goes to show you how slippery these words and concepts are. It feels like the more we talk about it, the more we sink into the quicksand. It sure is fun though. Discussions like this are enjoyable in themselves even if nothing ever gets resolved. I've really liked reading everybody's opinions on this topic. I wish I had something intelligent to contribute, but the smartest thing I can say is keep talking, everyone. This is fun reading. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fakeplastictrees Posted February 18, 2014 Report Share Posted February 18, 2014 Fake epicness/Drama is one of the things that I have HATED about a lot of Taker's recent Mania matches ESPECIALLY with HBK. HBK is the king of being OTT with the 'emotion' that just comes off as 100% acting and nothing more. HBK takes away from a lot of his matches the emotional stuff. I literally cringe and become LESS interested in something when I hear Michaels is going to be a ref of a match due to his OTT version of true emotion and the stuff he is being SO EMOTIONALLY invested in doesn't make that much sense to me for a guy to have THAT MUCH emotion. So yeah...shit like that takes me out of matches as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cubbymark Posted February 18, 2014 Report Share Posted February 18, 2014 Perhaps too simplistic of an answer, but TNA/Impact Wrestling. That shit is awful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goc Posted February 18, 2014 Report Share Posted February 18, 2014 Wrestling that is just two guys exchanging moves without ever building any kind of momentum or telling any kind of story. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El-P Posted February 18, 2014 Report Share Posted February 18, 2014 Wrestling that is just two guys exchanging moves without ever building any kind of momentum or telling any kind of story. Benoit vs Malenko, Hog Wild 96. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted February 19, 2014 Report Share Posted February 19, 2014 Anything so sloppy that I can no longer suspend my disbelief. That would be All Of Pro Wrestling for me: I can't "suspend my disbelief" for any of it, even the stuff I like. So... yeah... that one doesn't work for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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