New Raven Column

[Guest BrokenWings]

http://www.theraveneffect.com/journal

 

Good read, very interesting. I agree with him, for the most part. I still dislike Shane's TNA work, however.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

1) He's generalizing. The "critics" whom I read are nothing like that.

 

2) "A good wrestling match is determined by the crowd response" is kinda silly. Yes, wrestling was made for entertainment purposes - other wise it wouldn't be worked - however entertainment is subjective. If the Chris Benoit vs. Steve Austin match from Smackdown hadn't been from Edmonton - would they have gotten the same crowd heat? Same match, same wrestlers, different town, different heat.

[The Buzz 0]

Best piece wrestling column I've read in years. AMEN

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

I'll edit in my full reply to the article that I posted at the TotalNonStop TNA folder, as it pretty much displayed every reason I find fault with this rant, and stance.

 

Basically, what it comes down to is the older guard will always tell the newer guard to slow it down, mostly due to the fact that the old guard realizes the newer guard is getting a better reaction during their matches.

[Steviekick 0]

"A good wrestling match is determined by the crowd response" is kinda silly. Yes, wrestling was made for entertainment purposes - other wise it wouldn't be worked - however entertainment is subjective. If the Chris Benoit vs. Steve Austin match from Smackdown hadn't been from Edmonton - would they have gotten the same crowd heat? Same match, same wrestlers, different town, different heat.

I kinda agree with Raven on this one. No matter how great the match is, if the crowd isn't into it then the match doesn't seem as special. Rock/Hogan at WM XVIII isn't necessarily a great match, but the fact that they had the live audience eating out of their hands and waiting on every move definitely made the match much better to watch.

[CanadianChris 0]

Actually, I loved the one he wrote right below that on giving back. He hit the nail right on the fucking head with that one. That's exactly why HHH will never be the next Ric Flair.

[Guest Douche]

Actually, I loved the one he wrote right below that on giving back. He hit the nail right on the fucking head with that one. That's exactly why HHH will never be the next Ric Flair.

What has Ric Flair done for the new guard exactly? He's still around and has a belt. The guy should have left in 1996.

 

As far as Raven, I don't see where he's coming from. This debate was done back in 1999, if not earlier, when all the wrestlers were going spot crazy because of the Attitude era. Most smarks hate spots although I do know most reviewers hype indy wrestlers who can't work as good wrestlers (Low-Ki, Sonjay Dutt, etc.)

[Guest Jimbo]

"A good wrestling match is determined by the crowd response" is kinda silly.  Yes, wrestling was made for entertainment purposes - other wise it wouldn't be worked - however entertainment is subjective.  If the Chris Benoit vs. Steve Austin match from Smackdown hadn't been from Edmonton - would they have gotten the same crowd heat?  Same match, same wrestlers, different town, different heat.

I kinda agree with Raven on this one. No matter how great the match is, if the crowd isn't into it then the match doesn't seem as special. Rock/Hogan at WM XVIII isn't necessarily a great match, but the fact that they had the live audience eating out of their hands and waiting on every move definitely made the match much better to watch.

Bah, only if you were actually there to see it does it make that much of an impression on you or the match. I suppose if you turn the volume waaaaaay up on your television set the crowd will influence the viewing of the match, but it's hardly powerful otherwise.

[Guest Max Peter David]

Actually, I loved the one he wrote right below that on giving back.  He hit the nail right on the fucking head with that one.  That's exactly why HHH will never be the next Ric Flair.

What has Ric Flair done for the new guard exactly? He's still around and has a belt. The guy should have left in 1996.

He only has a title because WWE wants Evolution to have all the belts.

 

Ric Flair has jobbed to HHH, Undertaker, Chris Jericho and fucking RICO. That's what he's done for the new guard.

[Guest Bottled Black]

He jobbed to Rico? I must have missed that one

[Guest Douche]

What has Ric Flair done for the new guard exactly? He's still around and has a belt. The guy should have left in 1996.

He only has a title because WWE wants Evolution to have all the belts.

 

Ric Flair has jobbed to HHH, Undertaker, Chris Jericho and fucking RICO. That's what he's done for the new guard.

And again I ask what did it do for them?

 

He jobbed to HHH. Wow. No one saw it as anything big and everything thought he was the shittiest opponent to use to justify HHH's new title.

 

He jobbed to Undertaker. That's new guard I tell you.

 

He jobbed to Jericho and it did exactly diddly for him. Austin and Rock jobbed to Jericho and it did WAY more for him. Midcard Benoit jobbing to him did more.

 

He jobbed to Rico and that didn't help Rico at all. Regardless of capitalizing on that no one thinks "Wow Rico beat Flair" they think of it as "Wow that's a cool fun fact".

 

The fact that Flair's still around is more of a hinderance than a help.

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

Most smarks hate spots although I do know most reviewers hype indy wrestlers who can't work as good wrestlers (Low-Ki, Sonjay Dutt, etc.)

Not familiar with Ki/AmDrag from RoH Round Robin Challenge, are we? Of course, you could always reply with "Dragon carried Ki," but that's a blatant lie, since the match was incredibly even in who did what amount of work.

 

Anyways, I'm pretty sure a crowd is more responsive to a spotfest between two unknowns than a punch/kick encounter between two unknowns, so gimme another one.

[The Metal Maniac 0]

Anyways, I'm pretty sure a crowd is more responsive to a spotfest between two unknowns than a punch/kick encounter between two unknowns, so gimme another one.

 

I think that's the heart of what Raven's talking about.

 

Wrestlers these days use spots to get themselves over, intead of having actual, well-defined characters that someone can get behind.

 

Some wrestlers are good enough that they can walk out in front of a crowd of people who've never seen them before, and simply by wrestling, without all kinds of flying stuff, can get the fans behind (or against) them. It's all in what they do in the ring.

 

But it's just so much easier to do a moonsault then it is to use psychology to acheive the same effect, so that's what you get.

[Guest bort]

Low-Ki is not all about spots, he can do alot of great matwork as evident by his matches with Amdrag and Homicide and many others

[Steviekick 0]

"A good wrestling match is determined by the crowd response" is kinda silly.  Yes, wrestling was made for entertainment purposes - other wise it wouldn't be worked - however entertainment is subjective.  If the Chris Benoit vs. Steve Austin match from Smackdown hadn't been from Edmonton - would they have gotten the same crowd heat?  Same match, same wrestlers, different town, different heat.

I kinda agree with Raven on this one. No matter how great the match is, if the crowd isn't into it then the match doesn't seem as special. Rock/Hogan at WM XVIII isn't necessarily a great match, but the fact that they had the live audience eating out of their hands and waiting on every move definitely made the match much better to watch.

Bah, only if you were actually there to see it does it make that much of an impression on you or the match. I suppose if you turn the volume waaaaaay up on your television set the crowd will influence the viewing of the match, but it's hardly powerful otherwise.

I know what you mean, but great audience involvement really makes a match stick out. You can tell that something is getting over by how the crowd responsds to it.

[Michrome 0]

His comments about Eddy-Dean are laughable. HCS is better than anything Raven has ever done by miles and miles. Remember Benoit-Malenko from HW 96? It was GREAT, and the fact that the inbred biker idiots only wanted to see Hogan should not make their performance any less noteworthy. 6/3/94 is the best men's singles match ever in front of that Japanese crowd or in front of the HW 96 crowd. It just doesn't matter.

 

By the way, isn't the drop toehold to a chair a highspot? What makes that any better than a tope con hilo? Raven's matches have been disgustingly formulaic for years, he has no business talking others down for being spotty. He's far more spotty than CM Punk or Chris Daniels.

[Guest JacK]

Uhh . . . isn't the whole X-Division thing supposed to be High Spot match's? Isn't it about spots? So why is it good that people in the X-Division . . . like the champ Shane . . . don't do that? Isn't he like killing it by not doing any spots at all?

[Guest Loss]

The crowd heat *does* make a difference. Heat (not just noise, but actual heat, meaning caring about both participants and following their stories and wanting one to win and one to lose) and emotion are what wrestling is. If you factor the crowd heat and emotion out of a match, all you're left with is acrobatics.

 

To me, psychology is telling a story that an audience can find meaning in, not just not forgetting to sell an arm all the way through a match.

[Steviekick 0]

To me, psychology is telling a story that an audience can find meaning in, not just not forgetting to sell an arm all the way through a match.

I'm more of a fan of the story telling psychology than the latter definition of it. I'm forgiving of blown spots and such as long as the match as a whole is coherent.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

But Crowd Heat can be effected by external factors - hometown, big return, cheap heat before the match, etc - all of which can be independant of the match itself. Hell, if you had 50 Cent vs. Ja Rule in a wrestling match, infront of a crowd of hip hop fans, and they proceed to do nothing but punch and pander, the crowd will still go fucking balistic despite the match sucking.

[Guest Loss]

But Crowd Heat can be effected by external factors - hometown, big return, cheap heat before the match, etc - all of which can be independant of the match itself.  Hell, if you had 50 Cent vs. Ja Rule in a wrestling match, infront of a crowd of hip hop fans, and they proceed to do nothing but punch and pander, the crowd will still go fucking balistic despite the match sucking.

I have no doubts that Pat Patterson could lay out such a match and make it watchable. He's been doing it for Vince the past few years. He did it for Hogan and Rock, too.

 

And the hometown return and outside factors can actually make a match better because it is part of the story the match could be telling.

 

No rule states that great matches can only be a product of what's going on in the ring. Atmosphere is a big part of it.

 

EDIT: What I wrote above needs clarification. If the crowd heat is reflective of the story being told in the ring, meaning the crowd pops at the right times for the right things and totally "gets" the match, then yes, the heat can actually make it better. It's not going to be what makes a match bad or good, but it could make the difference between good and great, or bad and horrible.

 

As was mentioned before, if you look at Benoit v Malenko from Hog Wild '96, technically, they wrestled a beautiful match that 99% of wrestling crowds across the US would have really gotten into. The crowd they were in front of didn't. The carelessness of the crowd and the bitching over the time limit getting extended actually did take away from the match because it was distracting.

 

Compare that to Michaels v Jericho at Wrestlemania this year, where because the build did such a good job explaining the history of the two, the crowd noticed things like Jericho reversing the pin attempt off of a flying bodypress and popped accordingly. The story was well-received.

 

So, while technically, Benoit-Malenko was a better match than Michaels-Jericho, the entire presentation of Michaels-Jericho made it a better match because the goals set were actually accomplished.

 

This is not foolproof, and I'm not trying to argue that it is. Sometimes, "goals" are not necessarily the right ones (i.e. bury Booker T in Houston or end Hogan/Sting with a screwjob after 18 months of buildup), but the merits of those matches are rarely argued anyway.

 

As for a match being entirely based on punching, we've seen some vicious, intense brawls in the past that actually follow this concept and come off well. If the babyface times the comebacks properly and the heel has any sense of how to put sympathy on the face, then yes, you could actually wrestle a match with nothing but punches and tell a good story. It wouldn't be a ***** match obviously because the offense would be lacking, but it would be a smart match.

Edited December 29, 2003 by Loss4Words

[Steviekick 0]

EDIT: What I wrote above needs clarification. If the crowd heat is reflective of the story being told in the ring, meaning the crowd pops at the right times for the right things and totally "gets" the match, then yes, the heat can actually make it better. It's not going to be what makes a match bad or good, but it could make the difference between good and great, or bad and horrible.

That was the point I was trying to make. I just couldn't figure out a better way of explaining it.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

But Raven is saying "The object of a match is to entertain. If they are not entertained, it was not a good match." What *I* am saying, is that things _other_ than the match itself can effect the fans' entertainment value. So how can you call the match "good" when the match itself -the content- isn't doing the entertaining. The Ja Rule/50 Cent example was the extreme case, but it applies very well. I'm not arguing Raven's points on storytelling, infact I agree with him on them whole-heartedly, but judging a match soley by the crowd's enjoyment/entertainment (saying a match is "good" because the crowd responded favourably) - is, well, wrong; because of the circumstantial/environmental/external factors.

[Lil' Bitch 0]

 

For a second there, I thought that was Regal.