The Internet is Hurting The Business: Part 1

[Perfection 0]

He makes some good points IMHO. One of the things that I especially get annoyed with while watching TNA is the super rush feel of the matches, even after the show went to 2 hours. It just looks dumb for everyone to hit all these huge impact moves yet only sell things for just a few seconds before they move on to their next spot. I saw an interview with Ole Anderson saying something along these very same lines and I was thinking at the time I saw it that he was exactly right. Just because you can come off the top rope and do all these gymnastic type moves doesn't make you a good or great in ring wrestler.

 

Selling is ABSOLUTELY what helps make a match good. It adds drama and believability but when you have no selling at all from moves that should keep you down for more than 5 seconds there is no drama. This is what made wrestling so good back in the nwa/80s. It wasn't just about one high spot after another, it was about being more realistic and selling your opponents offense longer than it takes to whipe your ass.

 

 

[Corkscrew_Senton 0]

If you watch Rey vs. Juvi at Big Ass Extreme Bash in 1996, the match started slowly, picked up speed, and then turned into a high-spot trading show for the last five minutes or so.

 

Rey had another ECW match where his selling really sold the match and made it memorable, the Mexican Deathmatch against Psicosis. His selling WAS the match. I went on a rant about this on the CTDWAT, but Disco's right about selling. I can't watch guys like the Briscoe Bros., Super Dragon, Kevin Steen because it's like a damn video game: big move after big move with minimal (at best) selling.

[Guest RyechnaiaSobaka]

Selling and working are the art form of wrestling. And yet it seems like the only praise people get sometimes is if they don't sell (a/k/a acrobatics) or if they're stiff (which means they're legit or something -- I say go to MMA, tough guy).

 

Now that I think about it, the only MMA I would watch is if Scott and Rick Steiner were going up against some of those guys. Just to watch them get their asses kicked. I'd enjoy that.

 

Disco's kind of a joke and I dunno what he's talking about this stuff for when he's pretty much been acknowledged as somebody who was pretty uninterested in his work, at least the time I remember him in WCW, but I guess he is right about this stuff.

[cd213 0]

This was a pretty good read. He did make some valid points about selling. I like both types of matches, the fast paced spot-fest and the catch-as-catch-can mat wrestling. Maybe he should have also watched the TNA PPV because there was one match that was great with a ton of selling and a great stoy being told, and that was EY vs James Storm (this one really stood out to me). Storm worked over one body part, EY's left arm (most of the time at least). EY sold it like a million dollars. The thing I loved about this match was it was built up nicely with EY getting the upper hand at first from his sneak attack and then the tide turned when he went into the post. For the rest of the match he sold his arm. He had trouble doing movies with his arm. It told a great story and had good psychology and SELLING, exactly what Disco said was missing. I wouldn't call this a 4 star match, but it was a good match and was a stand out on the PPV for me.

[NoCalMike 0]

The question though is;

 

Is it the fact that these guys don't know how to sell, ala, they weren't trained properly, or is the fact that the guys booking the show basically tell them before the match, "ok guys you have three minutes and thirty seconds to show these people what ya got, go out there hit all your moves, and end it with this...."

 

I mean, lets get real, I have seen sell-jobs last twice as long as some entire matches on TNA wrestling shows, the workers simply don't get the match time to work those types of matches.

[theintensifier 0]

Selling is what makes a match. It's hard to incorporate selling into a 3 minute match, which is kind of pointless anyway. Because unless it's a squash match, no one will give two shits about a three minute match. It's just a throw away match to begin with, so why bother yourself with complaining of horrible selling?

 

If you want to see good selling, watch some puroresu for fucks sake.

 

Selling is one of the things that bothers me the most about big gimmick matches, like a TLC match. Remember when Matt Hardy and Bubba Ray Dudley went flying out of the ring on the two ladders and crashed into a stack of tables? They were running around like nothing happened a few minutes later. That's completely ridiculous.

[Corkscrew_Senton 0]

NoCalMike, I agree 100%. I was a huge TNA fan in the Nashville days because of the X Division, and back in the Styles-Lynn-Ki days those matches got a good 20-30 minutes. Same goes for the AJ-Joe-Daniels matches from '05-early '06. That's what made TNA entertaining for me, but that's gone now because it's just a bad WWE imitator. You're right, in that case it's not on the workers so much as it is on the bookers for giving guys 3 minutes for a 12 minute match.

 

Intensifier, I'm with you as well. It's video game wrestling.

[Guest jobberforlife]

There's a great interview with Jimmy Jacobs up at The Cool Kids' Table in which he responds to Gilberti's comments about his match. He actually queues up the match at one point and does play by play to refute what Gilberti says about him. He's not really in defense mode because he wasn't offended... the interview is more funny than anything.