So what makes for a great wrestling match?
We know this is a very subjective question but let’s look at it as objectively as we can and list things out.
So what exactly makes a match great?
1. The quality of the wrestlers involved: This is pretty straightforward. Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart will have a much better match, even if their hands were glued together, than Great Khali or the Giant Gonzalez.
2. The Back Story: Why are these people fighting? Why should the viewer care? Why should anyone give their money to look them fight? A great back-story does wonders to create the kind of atmosphere and tension that pro wrestling thrives on. Months of promo work, segments and story culminate to this point. This is why Stephanie McMahon and Brie Bella had such a good match in SummerSlam. Let’s face it, they are not exactly Manami Toyota and Gail Kim but their story was so engaging, they made it work.
3. Crowd: A raucous, fully engaged crowd will make anything and everything work. You can make Hornswoggle do a tomahawk dunk in the ring. If the crowd is behind it... It will work period. Making the crowd care about you is an art that every wrestler should master.
4. Commentary: “GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY!! GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY!! THAT KILLED HIM!!” Ah good ol’ JR, he had the gift in him to make any moment epic. You could feel the genuine care and concern that he felt towards the baby faces and the vicious hatred that he felt towards the heels. A great commentator can make anything epic. Heck, JR made Kurt Angle throwing cartons of milk at the Alliance epic. That segment would have bombed if anyone else had called it but that’s why Jim Ross is Jim Ross.
Jim Ross, in his podcast The Ross Report, was talking about the evolution of pro wrestling and how some facets of the art are dying away. And he was particularly referring to the art of “selling”. According to JR selling is THE MOST important aspect of the game that every superstar should master.
What exactly is selling?
Selling is the way you make the things that go on in the ring look real. Now that’s a very inelegant way of defining it but bear with me:
Selling is what connects the performer with the audience. It is what makes the crowd care about you.
And this doesn’t just apply to pro wrestling.
Ok... hands up if you loved the original Star Wars. Ok… now hands up if you loved the prequel saga.
If your hands are up right now then you are either below 15 or you are Hayden Christensen. If you are the later then screw you for dating Rachel Bilson!
Ok so let’s look at what made the original saga so great. Sure the story was better, the characters more defined and it had Harrison Ford! But most importantly… we cared for the characters... we truly felt for Luke, Han and Leia.
Since we are talking about pro wrestling here, let’s just look at the fight scenes.
Sure the prequel saga had more pretty fights, better graphics and fights on top of the lava. But it missed out on a very fundamental aspect.
You see… sure the Jedi were jumping around a lot, sure there were lots of fancy moves involved and ooooh look lightening from hands! Sure they look cool… but they feel so empty.
On the contrary look at Luke’s final fight with Darth Vader in "Return Of The Jedi".
At this point he was furious and in his fury he was just hacking away at Vader... not paying attention to any pretty techniques or what not. He was just fueled with passion and anger. He wanted to HURT Vader. Looking at this we truly cared about how Luke was feeling at that instant... and we were legitimately scared that he might go over to the dark side if he didn’t get full control over his emotions. You see just pure anger and emotion told with a superior backstory got the job done…not pretty acrobatics, lava and a cringe worthy story.
JR said on his podcast that he was recently looking a Ring Of Honor Match and he just couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. Sure, the performers are all super talented but they were doing 100 different moves a match. Now this writer will admit that looking so many moves and so many transitions and flurries are cool.
But
They should be an exclamation mark in your performance. Not the performance itself.
A great recent example of this is the brilliant CM Punk vs. John Cena match in Money in the Bank 2011. Now we all know the backstory of the match. The infamous “Summer of Punk” highlighted by the, now mythic, CM Punk shoot promo.
There was a particular sequence in the match where Punk went for a top rope cross body, which was reversed by Cena into an AA, which was reversed by Punk into a GTS, which was reversed into an STF, which was reversed into an Anaconda Vice, which was finally reversed into an AA from which Punk kicked out.
Ok you can catch your breath now.
The point is that this flurry and series of maneuvers worked only because by this time these two had sucked the raucous and passionate Chicago crowd into their contest via the use of simple ring psychology and back-and-forth minimalist yet effective action.
After all too much of a good thing is a bad thing.
So this is why it’s absolutely baffling when you see the performers trying to put in as many moves as they possibly can into a match. When you are doing so many things at once you are losing the crowd. The crowd can’t get into the match completely because they are confused. They do not relate to you in any emotional level. To them, you are but a robot churning out moves after moves and they won’t relate to you.
It’s not just the crowd. Even the commentators find it hard to keep track of all the moves being done in the ring. That makes them that hard to call the match and hence the quality of the show overall suffers.
So if the performers alienate 2 out of the 4 factors that make a great match, how can they possibly hope to make a connection with the audience?
Shawn Michaels is one of the greatest, if not the greatest performer of all time. Now, what made him so great? Is it the fact that he could churn out more moves than anyone? No. Was it the fact that he was good looking? No. Then what was it?
Simple.
You felt his pain.
Shawn Michaels has this absolute gift of making you feel his pain. He can make you laugh and cry with just a slight tweak in his facial expressions. Look at his match against Ric Flair in Wrestlemania 24. It was Flair’s retirement match and you could see the absolute pain that Shawn felt just before he hit the superkick. The sadness in his eyes as he says “I am sorry..I love you” was so powerful.
He just knew what to do to make the crowd care about the match. What exactly he needed to do to make even the most mundane of situations truly special.
Another great example of his impeccable selling can be seen in his legendary WrestleMania 25 match against the Undertaker. Let’s face it: everyone knew that Taker was going to win. Everyone knew that. But Shawn made all of us doubt the result. That in itself is a testament to his gifts. His look of determination as he resolved himself to beat Taker, his look of disbelief as Taker kept kicking out. The look of pain in Shawn’s eyes as he was running out of ways to beat his opponent.
They all came together beautifully like a gorgeous painting and made an instant classic. Every budding superstar can take a page out of Shawn’s book and learn this valuable lesson.
Sure hurricanranas are cool, we all love reversals and top rope maneuvers and shooting star presses. But what truly leaves an impact is an emotional connection.
At the end of the day the crowd wants to relate to their favorite superstars. To make the connection, the superstars need to show their human side. They need to show a degree of vulnerability. You need to show all this to seduce the crowd and make them a slave to your every whim.
That’s what makes a great sports entertainer.