Psychology
& Transitions
04/23/98
"What the heck is Herb talking about when he uses words like
transitions and psychology when describing wrestlers and pro-wrestling
matches?" If you've ever asked yourself that question, you are not alone;
particularly in recent weeks, I've received a fair bit of e-mail asking for
explanations of those terms. With that in mind, it seems like readers of this
page would find it worthwhile for me to discuss those terms. I'm going to
assume very little here, so forgive me if I belabor
some obvious things.
The easiest way to simultaneously describe transitions and psychology is to
note that in the absence of these two elements a pro-wrestling match reduces to
a choreographed series of spots. The word spot is used to described
an event (or sometimes a sequence of events) in a wrestling match. For example,
a german suplex attempt
reversed with a go-behind into a german suplex might (not surprisingly) be called a german suplex reversal spot. A
high spot is a particular type of spot involving a wrestler flying through the
air in some way. In the 1980s in
To repeat then, in the absence of transitions and psychology, a wrestling match
becames little more than a collection of spots. Some
of the most glaring examples of this in my memory are the Eliminators vs.
In the context of pro-wrestling, I've seen psychology defined as doing the
right thing at the right time. Of course, that means doing the right thing to
build a match (i.e. keep the fans focused on the match, draw heat, etc.).
Psychology encompasses a lot of things, and sometimes seems to conflict a bit
with match booking, especially in this era in
* selling, reacting appropriately to the supposed impact of a move. It means
staggering for a punch and taking a bump (falling down) for the third punch,
say. It means using facial expressions to show pain or anguish while in a
submission move or as a tough match wears on. It means using mannerisms that
suggest that a body part is sore after a move that supposedly hurts it has been
applied (limping after a leg-lock, favouring an arm after an arm hold, etc.).
Now that long matches don't happen much any more in
To complicate matters, some guys develop into draws even though they do not
sell many moves. Sid (Vicious, Eudy) and Ultimate
Warrior rose to the top in an era that disregarded ability despite the fact
that they couldn't sell to save their lives. On the other extreme of the scale,
Curt Hennig developed a reputation for overselling
simple moves: who can forget those insane twisting bumps from a simple
clothesline (in recent times carried on by Goldust)?
And Terry Funk has turned his selling into a punch drunk comedic adventure.
* pacing, leaving the right amount of time between moves.
After a double knockdown spot, how long should a wrestler lie on the mat, how
slowly should he regain his senses, etc.? The best answer is that it depends on
the match, on how deeply the fans are into things, on the story that the match
is trying to tell. In this era of quick matches for short attention spans,
there have been some two-minute television matches that had enough action in
them to fill a ten-minute chunk and, with wrestlers with limited ability being
pushed, we've also seen ten-minute matches that really only merited two-minutes
of time for the story they had to tell.
Even in
* sensible moves. This is a function of booking these
days. It doesn't particularly make sense for a wrestler to perform moves that
affect lots of different parts of his opponent's body. From a story-telling
standpoint, it makes sense to settle down to a single body part or tactic to
build to a sensible finish. Some holds, like the facelock
in All Japan are used as generic wear-down holds that the fans accept as
fatiguing the recipient of the move; in this case, it doesn't much matter
whether a match ends with a power bomb or a submission because both are
believable. However, it's bad form to spend an entire match working over an
opponent's leg before ending the match with a surprise armbar
submission; this just doesn't happen in
All
Taking a broader view, my favourite series of matches from a story-telling and
match quality standpoint might well be the Naoki Sano vs. Jushin
Liger series from 07/89 through to 01/90. A detailed rundown is on the web. The
beauty of that series is how the psychology in each match was based on the
previous bout. From the intensity of the wrestlers to the moves and reversals
(and reversals of reversals), this series was a work of art the likes of which
we'll never see in North American wrestling. Remember the finish to WrestleMania XIV's Steve Austin
vs. Shawn Michaels main event? Superkick
attempt, stunner attempt, etc., with each guy trying to counter with his big
move. This same subtle "learning of an opponent's moves" comes into
All Japan pro-wrestling matches as well. Often, the counters are peppered
throughout matches. This means that somebody watching tapes of matches from
In WCW and the WWF, psychology is becoming a lost art. It's no longer about
building a match and telling a story through the actual wrestling. It's about
who'll run-in next and cheap heat from crotch-chopping. With the resurgence of
the brawling match and the increasing reliance on garbage wrestling, psychology
of the type detailed above is no longer a key match element. A North American
garbage wrestling match, be it in ECW, the WWF, or WCW, amounts to lots of
foreign object shots, with many creative objects coming into play, bleeding in
ECW, really limited selling, and no real pacing. I tend to call ECW brawls
nonsensical because they are rarely anything more than two guys whacking each
other with objects, staggering for a second, and cutting themselves. The only
exception to that same criticism in recent memory in WCW or the WWF is the
triangle brawl with Chris Benoit vs. Diamond Dallas Page vs. Raven. The reason
that Benoit is so great at any style is that he brings a lot of focus to a
match. If you examine that match carefully, perhaps comparing it to the Page
vs. Raven match at Spring Stampede, you see that Benoit had a focusing effect,
repeatedly returning the brawl to something sensible. (That doesn't necessarily
mean that he tried to use wrestling moves.)
Consider the much-beloved "table spot," wherein a wrestler crashes
through a table, be it in the ring or on the floor. The table spot where Bret
Hart was sent crashing through a commentators table was fantastic. Compare it
to a typical table spot: the table has to be set up, a wrestler has to be
plopped onto the table, the wrestler doing the spot has to get into position or
run off the ropes, somebody goes through a table. Throughout
all of this, time stand stills. It's not unusual to see a minute or two pass
wherein the victim of the table spot has to act comatose. Unless the person
doing the spot misses, it's nonsense. And if he misses time and time again, it
becomes nonsense for that reason. It's a great stunt, though.
I've often read that Terry Funk and Atsushi Onita are
masters of psychology. In a limiting sense, that's not a bad attempt to
describe them. The limit comes from the fact that neither
wrestler has many moves and, hence, package themselves as kings of
garbage wrestling. In that framework, moves are secondary and selling amounts
to bleeding (expect in WCW and the WWF, explaining Terry's reliance on the
punch drunk comedy as selling). Psychology reduces to pacing, something at
which both guys are indeed masters. But when things become that limited, I
often wonder if it even fits under the pro-wrestling umbrella. And, certainly,
in the case of Terry Funk, who once had all the attributes of greatness, it's
sad to watch him tarnish his legend, showing that he only has so few remaining
elements of what used to be such a complete package.
Transitions are the bridging maneuvers between spots.
They are the staple of pro-wrestling, the essential elements holding the spots
together to build a match. When somebody runs down a match, it often becomes a
list like "clothesline, body slam, suplex, pin." That disjoint list of moves sounds more like a
wrestling move exhibition than a wrestling match because the transitions are
not listed...because they aren't important, right? I don't think so; I think it
is very important to recognize the difference between a move exhibition and a
match.
In the early 1980s, when I routinely attended house shows at
I remember with amazement how Ric Flair or Ricky
Steamboat could work off an armbar for ten minutes
without a single "boring" chant. This was a time when the psychology of such action was clear to fans; don't get me
wrong: I don't want to see that today and I don't think it would work today. The
point was that they had dozens of ways to move out of an armbar
into a spot of some sort and then return to the armbar.
It's a tremendous skill that is lacking today in
Recall the Eliminators vs.
One of the worst spots that has surfaced in wrestling
in recent times is the top rope leg drop across an opponent who conveniently
sits on the second rope with legs out of the ring while leaning backwards into
the ring and holding on to the top rope awaiting the move. This was the
finishing spot in the
Jump to Jushin Liger vs. Shinjiro
Otani from 03/17/96; the match had phenomenal
transitions, the pacing was excellent, the selling was top-notch. The match
ended with Liger hitting a palm strike to Otani's
chin, knocking him senseless for the pin. To New Japan fans,
that finish instantly established the palm strike as a finishing blow. The
Observer called this a must-see match that was very close to match of the year
calibre. Since that time, Liger has used that blow as a finisher in many
matches, wrapping psychology and transitions around it, to the point that it
has become an integral part of Liger's offence. It allowed Liger's matches to
tease an over finisher while the reducing the number of crazy spots that Liger
has to do.
Since the majority of the brawling matches we see (here or in