<< Wrestling (WWF) on the other hand, doesn't. Let's just say that intelligence doesn't play a key role in the act. >>
I really wish you'd be a little more knowledgeable with your mindless comments..The amount of psychology in a match (particularly the few GREAT ones we get in America every year, and the dozens that occur in Japan) is incredibly mind-boggling. But straight from the FAQ:
0.18 What is selling? What are ring psychology and transitions?
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 North America, exciting high spots were top rope splashes (Jimmy Snuka), top rope cross body blocks (Kevin von Erich), and top rope leg drops (Bobby Eaton); wrestlers like Ricky Steamboat and Greg Gagne were thought of and promoted as high-flying wrestlers. In the 1990s, moonsaults have become routine; Twisting dives, splashes, and cross-body blocks are now state of the art. Somersault topes (pronounced toe-pay, generic term for a dive out of the ring), corkscrew topes, and firebird (450) splashes are moves of top flying wrestlers.
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. Dudleys match from the Barely Legal PPV on 04/13/97, the Rob van Dam vs. Too Cold Scorpio match from the Living Dangerously PPV on 03/01/98, and Taka Michinoku vs. Aguila from the WrestleMania XIV PPV on 03/29/98. In each of these matches, the wrestlers glaringly moved from one spot to the next, essentially putting on a gymnastic stunt show.
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 North America where matches often have far more than the finish booked out in advance. As time passes, psychology changes: good psychology in the early 1980s may not work well in the late 1990s; matches are often shorter (even on PPV), loads of new moves have surfaced, and the style of wrestling evolves. In Japan, psychology plays an essential part in the story that a match tells; in North America, it's often an afterthought or forgotten altogether. Let's look at some elements of psychology:
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 North America, the idea of selling in the fifteenth minute of a match a leg injury that occured in the third minute is slowly becoming a lost art. Guys like Ricky Steamboat and Ric Flair were the masters of this idea in the 1980s. Of the top guys in this era, Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels stand out. Of the younger guys, really only the lighter weight guys with international experience have a deeper level of ability when it comes to selling.
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 doubleknockdown 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 North America, it is often said that matches have an initial "feeling-out" period as the wrestlers act more tentatively before going into the body of the match. In Mexican trios matches, the wrestlers often pair up: when A & B & C face D & E & F, we first see A & D trade a few moves, typically with one of them winning the battle for machismo that is lucha libre, then B & E take their turn, and then C & F take their turn, before we return to A & D. Only after those initial periods do we enter the body of the match. In the key Japanese groups, after a slow match body with some key spots, the match builds to a time interval in which hot moves are traded back and forth, with many near falls to build the excitement. All of these ideas have to do with pacing.
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 Japan. In North America, no effort is put towards this aspect of a wrestling match. While both the WWF and WCW have tried to establish various submission or finishing moves as devastating, with limited exception, they put very little effort into building to those moves. Diamond Dallas Page, Steve Austin, and Chris Jericho can hit their finishers from any position; the lure is when the finisher will come along not what needs to be done along the way to make sure it sticks. Is it any wonder that the typical crowd reaction for a match is a large pop at the start, mostly silence throughout, and then a pop for the finishing move? Or that bookers and wrestlers alike have increasingly little idea how to fill the match time between those two pops? All Japan pro-wrestling probably has consistently the best in-match psychology of any promotion in the world, thanks to the top four players in the group: Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada, Kenta Kobashi, and Jun Akiyama. A typical marquee match in the group lasts 20+ minutes, often with every move from the get-go meaning something; in other words, the match builds logically to the "near fall" spots that pepper the last few (sometimes ten) minutes. For example, who can forget the famous backdrop driver finish of the 08/31/93 Kenta Kobashi vs. Steve Williams match. Kobashi's selling at the end of the match was a masterpiece (in general, the top four guys listed above have a knack for taking a series of hot moves and getting up just a notch or two more slowly each time). The psychology of the match was great. 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 Japan better appreciates the matches once he's developed some understanding of the large assortment of moves that different wrestlers use.
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.
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.
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 North America. That ability to float from spot to spot seamlessly is what makes the top four All Japan guys so great. It's what makes the past half-year of Jushin Liger & co. vs. Shinjiro Otani & co. in New Japan so great. It's what made the 1988-or-so to 1994-or-so All Japan Women's product so incredible. In this latter promotion, the rookie girls were only allowed to use a few elementary maneuvers (dropkicks, slams, clotheslines) in their matches while they learned about psychology and transitions; only later, did they add in the modern moves.
Recall the Eliminators vs. Dudleys match from the ECW Barely Legal PPV on 04/13/97. I remember the raves that that match drew on the net. With a clear mind, watch the match and see how many times the wrestlers just stand there before moving into the next spot. It's like somebody took a tape of a match and cut out all of the transitions, replacing them with a shot of the wrestlers standing still. It's a highlight reel, not a match. The same is true of the other two matches mentioned at the start of this discussion.
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 La Parka vs. Psicosis match at Spring Stampede a few nights ago. The first few times I saw it (in ECW, by Sabu), the victim literally got into that position pretty much on his own, sometimes waiting forever for the bump. It's a horrible spot. La Parka tried to sell that he'd been crotched by the second rope and that he was losing his balance in the tangle, but it still came across weakly. I recall Billy Kidman being the recipient of this spot on a Nitro/Thunder show recently. In that instance, he was standing on the second rope, yelling at the crowd. He was dropkicked in the back, almost fell over the top rope, hung on, wobbled back towards the ring, lost his footing on the second rope, and held on to the top rope to avoid slipping all the way through. In the time it took for him to bounce around like that, his opponent (a Mexican wrestler) climbed to the top rope and hit him with the leg drop exactly as he was turning into the right position. That's the best transition into an this awkward spot that I've seen.
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 Japan) are deficient when it comes to psychology (the pacing in Japan is better, but that's about it), we're left looking for transitions from one nonsensical spot with poor selling to the next one. It doesn't really happen in ECW all-out brawling matches. In matches that mix in some wrestling, like the famous triangle match on 02/05/94 in ECW or the Masato Tanaka vs. Wing Kanemura match on 08/01/96 in FMW, a **** affair can result and receive level praise from some fans. Maybe those fans don't think that psychology and transitions are important, opting instead to judge matches like highlight reels or stunt man performances, but I find that too unfair an approach to the wrestlers that actually tell sensible stories with great matches. And that's why I comment about psychology and transitions when discussing wrestling.