Back To Basics: Top 10 Changes Needed For WWE/TNA Matches

On the heels of a superb Wrestlemania 26 match between the Undertaker and Shawn Hickenbottom (aka Shawn Michaels,) I basked (as I am sure many did) in the afterglow of what some are already claiming to be one of the best—if not THE best—wrestling matches of all time.

On the grandest stage of them all, two WWE mainstays left it all in the ring.

It was streak versus career. The Undertaker’s 17-0—now 18-0—undefeated streak, versus Shawn Michaels' career that began over 26 years ago in 1984.

Something had to give, and that something was Shawn’s ability to kick out after a second thunderous tombstone from the deadman, who ended the match with his trademark pose and pin.

For the record, I have 30 years plus experience under my belt when it comes to watching and studying those behemoths who make their living dancing in the squared circle.

I’ve been in attendance at events for Grand Prix Wrestling and WWF/WWE and was an avid fan (among many) during the Monday Night Wars.

I have read the biographies of Eddie, Bret, Ric, Hogan, and various others.

As an IT professional and wrestling enthusiast, I was one of the early pioneers of the online dirt sheets, and I couldn’t get my hands on enough behind the scenes information.

The "wrestling is fake" bubble was burst for me some time ago, but my interest in the wrestling world and culture never wavered.

I still take in the PPV’s for the big two promotions (WWE and TNA,) and of course turn the dial to RAW and TNA Wrestling on Monday nights to watch what many hope will be the second incarnation of the Monday Night Wars.

It’s interesting to compare styles and differences between the product as I knew it growing up—knock down, drag out full contact wrestling—to what has become more spectacle than sport.

Gone are the days where squash matches were the norm and many high spots were only dug out if it was a special occasion.

Instead, during the course of a two hour wrestling broadcast, we’re served up four or five matches with most going five minutes or less.

Today’s fan is no dummy. In fact, I think wrestling fans may be some of the smartest fans on the planet.

They study their wrestlers moves, know who they’re dating, whether they have a nude picture on a website, or when their contract is up. 

Nobody follows baseball players or football players to that level of detail. It borders on cult status.

As such, they demand satisfaction and quality for their hard earned buck and today's wrestling is, well, mediocre at best.

Don't get me wrong, there are some talented individuals out there, but in their efforts to grab the brass ring, they are missing an opportunity to develop themselves and their persona further.

I suggest getting back to basics.

There should no longer should be an expectation for someone to do a 30 foot high moonsault just because they are in a cage match.

No more death defying dives through the second and third ropes out to the security rail.

No more top rope versions of any move they can think of.

It’s time to go old school, to get back to basics.

Below are my top ten suggestions for increasing the interest in the matches, and for providing a much richer environment to tell the story.

As you will notice, there’s nothing new here; in fact, there is little to prevent injecting these into matches immediately.

Read them, consider them, and then decide whether you think it would produce better matches, worse matches, or if it doesn't change your interest level and emotional involvement in the wrestlers and the match itself.

1. T ime limits for matches

What happened here?

Throughout the 70’s and 80’s, as part of the introduction to the match, the referee included a statement outlining the time limit for the match about to be performed.

When you heard 60 minutes, you thought "nah, don’t think it’s going that long."

If you heard 10 minutes, you knew something had to happen in a relative short period of time.

If it was a title match and was set for a 20 minute time limit, you knew there was a good chance the match would run to or near that 20 minute limit.

For the fans, the ticking of the clock provided a sense of urgency and seriousness to everything the wrestlers were doing.

Let’s say you had a face with the belt and a heel challenging. If the bad guy was on top with a minute to go, maybe getting ready to set up his finisher, your blood started pumping uncontrollably, almost inciting sheer panic.

How is the good guy gonna get out of this? C’mon! Hang in there! You only have 60 seconds left! You can do it!

Today we live in the era of the DQ. Back in the day, we had "regulation time has just expired."

I don’t know about you, but I would much rather see a match end with time expiring then to have one finish in a DQ because someone whacked the other with a chair, or because the champ simply grabbed his belt and left.

The time limit provided various different angles to utilize within the match. I think it’s long overdue that we get time limits back in the mix.

2. Valets

Does anyone care about the TNA Knockouts or the WWE Divas?

We currently have what I would consider the worst crop of female wrestlers in a long time, from a technical wrestling perspective.

In terms of looks, there are some absolutely beautiful women in the ranks. But in terms of content women’s wrestling is at an all time low. There are few who can convince the average fan that they have any sort of mat presence whatsoever.

Mind you, women have always played a role in wrestling. The one that they excel at is that of playing the valet.

Not a manager, but valet.

"Manager" seems to suggest perhaps that they are a former wrestler, or perhaps that they have some credentials to qualify her as a manager.

Valets are just wrestler eye candy. Someone to walk the aisle with and strut their stuff. Wrestling is still demographically a male 18-35 year old sport. That’s the core audience and they like to see hot chicks.

I suggest we get back to having valets for the top-to-middle-tier wrestlers.

They can always get involved in the matches, both in helping grab wins and in costing their respective wrestlers a loss.

Assuming in some cases two valets will be at ringside, they can take the opportunity to have a little catfight—a much better idea than putting them in the ring to do it.

They are not expected to show any real wrestling skills, but the possibility that someone may have a wardrobe malfunction in the process will draw eyes regardless.

3. Foreign objects (especially the good old brass knuckles)

Today’s wrestler uses too many big time props for foreign objects with ladders and chairs probably being the top two.

When I grew up, the foreign object that was used most often to secure victory, was ye old brass knuckles.

There always seem to be be at least one wrestler who had his brass knuckles conveniently tucked in his trunks from the very beginning of the match.

More than once during the course of the match, the wrestler with the knucks would to take them out of his trunks, which resulted in screams of hysteria from the crowd who could see this action going on.

They were rabid and he would stuff them back in ever so quickly. The ref would look to the crowd, then to the wrestler, who would profess his innocence.

The general formula was that the face (the good guy) is fighting the heel (the bad guy.) Momentum had swung all over the place during the match.

As the face is closing in on a victory, just when you think they are ready to execute their finisher, the heel worked the face into a position where the ref could not see him go to the trunks and get the knucks. Then whammo! The face topples over like a tower of cards, the heel makes the pin, and a bewildered ref counts the three to choruses of boos from the crowd.

There were other variations as well.

It was common for the heel to use the knucks once or twice on the good guy (not seen by the ref) only to somehow drop the knucks on the mat or what have you.

Then when the face picks up the foreign object to use it, the ref sees the good guy with the knucks, and promptly disqualifies him, thus giving the win to the baddy.

There was also a formula for tag matches where essentially one bad guy, when trying to hit the good guy, accidentally clocks his tag partner (after a well timed duck by the face,) thus allowing the good guys to get the pin covering the now, "knocked out" bad guy.

There were probably some other variations to this all, but my point is this, the brass knuckles allowed for one wrestler to always have a chance to beat the other wrestler.

The good guy might be 6’10" while the bad guy was a mere 6’ tall. You give the bad guy the brass knuckles and guess what? You begin to think that if he somehow can catch him with those knucks at the right time, he really could beat him.

4. Masked wrestlers

Now when I talk masked wrestlers here, I am not referring to Rey Mysterio or Kane. I am talking full fledged full face masked wrestlers like Invader 1, The Machines (Super Machine, Big Machine, Giant Machine, Hulk Machine, etc…), Blue Blazer, Wild Pegasus, Mr. Wrestling, etc… Not lucha guys, just masked wrestlers.

I have a favourite pairing in the Killer Bees (Jumping Jim Brunzell and B Brian Blair.)

Both had similar height, weight, frames, and both had similar styles to their wrestling. So what often happened in their tag matches was, when one was "hurt," the other would often hop in when the ref was preoccupied and they would switch out. Then the "new" masked man in the ring would continue on as if nothing had happened.

This allowed the tide to change as the seemingly "re-energized" masked wrestler would mount a comeback. It allowed for some interesting finishes, and as such, could be used as a means to take the titles off of another team via nefarious means.

This allowed the former champs to stay strong and lose gold due to the cheating (we as viewers assumed they would find out about the cheating until later on.)

Also having a couple of masked wrestlers allows you to have matches during which the opponent teases removing the mask once or twice. Someone would try to untie it and unmask the opponent to show the world who it is.

Typically fans go cuckoo over this. Removing a mask is always a big deal and you can make sure that whenever you do book the mask to come off, that you have a specific wrestler of your choosing wearing the mask.

Upon removal, you can have him give his big explanation to the world as to why he is wearing the mask, what made him put it on, what his beef is with the other guy, and so on.

Perhaps one of the face wrestlers gets legitimately hurt and creative writes it so that (for example) Sting is the guy who hurt him.

At some point, a masked guy shows up (appearing as if he is just a new guy on the roster), works his way up the card, and eventually gets a match with Sting.  At the culmination of the Sting match, the masked wrestler removes the mask to reveal himself as the now healed face. Shortly thereafter, your masked wrestler pins Sting for the win.

Pretty straight forward, but still seems to get over.

5. Hair pulling

Pretty basic and perhaps even silly, but I recall watching matches back in the day that started off with two wrestlers exchanging headlocks, trying to push off and run the ropes, and in the process, doing a lot of hair pulling.

Of course the referee is crucial in it all, as they are always asking about whether the person pulled the other guys hair or not, to which the bad guy denies and they go back in rest hold (head lock) and repeat about 5 times.

Eventually the bad guy finally gets caught and the hold is either broken, or good guy just says "screw it," and pulls the bad guys hair in retaliation, knocking him to his back.

Done properly, this can literally run about five minutes off the clock and get the crowd into things.

The heat that is generated is sometimes staggering. It’s sort of a face in peril type situation where you just get so emotionally involved thinking, "darn it, this isn’t fair! He keeps pulling his hair! C’mon ref do your job! Why can’t you see this!"

A very seemingly inconsequential part of the match, but done right, it can advance the rest of the bout significantly.

6. Running the ropes

Once upon a time there was a lot of running the ropes.

One wrestler would launch the other into the ropes and then the criss-crossing ensued.

Currently, it is more often into the ropes once, and then into a move. But some years ago, there was a lot of running the ropes, dropping to your stomach, leapfrogging, ducking, flying dropkicks, high knees, etc…

There are a whole variety of different ways the two opponents can pass each other by without making contact (thus prolonging the running sequence.)

Rey Mysterio is fairly good at this as is Chris Jericho.

I think this moveset is very entertaining and is quite complex and tricky.

As part of completing the running sequence, you can launch people out of the ring, high body drop them, clothesline them, shoulder block them, double axe-handle them, so many different things you can do.

My main point here though, is just that it would be much more entertaining to watch if the combatants bounced themselves off of the ropes about three or four times first, before initiating contact (rather then throw to ropes, knock down, done.)

As they cross paths each time, they can do something different, making it more entertaining and showing off the abilities of the athletes.

7. Pat downs by the ref

Just a little starter to the match.

It was standard practice for the wrestlers to be patted down when they entered the ring. About once every 6 months, the ref would maybe say, "hey, I found something."

Usually it was on a heel, and usually the ref wanted the heel to take out whatever the heck they seemed to have "felt" when doing the pat down.

Many ways to play it. You could either come up with the foreign object and it be something that was going to be used to injure the opponent.

You could go for gag humour and maybe pull out pink underwear, or a sock that had been used to "stuff" the crotch.

I have seen wrestlers who have "loaded" their boots, so that when they kicked their opponent, it caused additional damage as compared to a normal kick.

When the ref caught the party they disqualified them and as a result, a new opponent was awarded the match, letting you make an on the fly match of whatever you had in mind.

Just the seriousness of the checking of soles of shoes and wrestling tights, sort of gives the allusion that the ref has some legitimate role or something.

We all know we are watching "sports entertainment," but in the refs role, he is supposed to be convincing me he is the real deal.

And I guess I always thought that the pat down did just that, at least a little.

8. Tag team double team (missed tag)

Something that can be used (or that USED to be used) effectively is that good old tag team double team.

You know the drill. Tag Team A is working over weak partner on Tag Team B.

Tag Team B weak partner is creeping closer to making tag.

Just as he nears it, in comes other Tag Team A member.

As a result, the ref, goes over to get him out of the ring. In the meantime, Tag Team B guy had finally made it to tag in, but OH NO, ref didn’t see it.

As the ref argues and chases the Tag Team B guy back out of the ring, Tag Team A resumes putting the boots to the original wrestler.

Done well, this can be carried out multiple times within a single match. For some reason it never gets old. And the amount of frustration that can be built up as a fan is unbelievable. You find yourself screaming at the tv, "C’mon ref, that’s like three times, are you stupid? I hate those guys!"

9. The injured combatant (working him over for a long time)

This is a bit of a continuation of "tag team double team (missed tag)" above.

Simply put, this was the hallmark of the Rock N Roll Express.

More often than not, it was a case of Robert Gibson being beat from pillar to post for about 25 minutes of a 30 minute match, only to finally get a tag with little to no time left.

Depending on what direction the promoters wanted to go, the outcome would vary, but the guiding principle was simply.

One tag team focused on one member of the other tag team and worked one or more body parts for almost the whole match.

Now mind you there were many times when the double team came into play. This was what kept the drama in the match.

For me, I always found myself into things at first, then I began to get annoyed, and then I got really psyched and pumped when I thought that the injured guy would FINALLY get to make a tag.

This whole "gimmick" depends a lot on the wrestler. Not everyone can pull this off. It takes a special guy to be able to appear to take punishment for such a long period of time.

While we’d all agree the action is "measured" in terms of whether there is real harm being done, it is pretty safe to say the guy pretending to be beat around, will still have to have a lot of stamina, in order to last through this match.

There are a few guys who come to mind in terms of having been great feigners of injury. Dynamite kid did a fantastic job as a member of the British Bulldogs. Robert Gibson as mentioned at the start, was a top babyface who could play this "face in peril" role night in and night out. And perhaps the best of all time, Ricky Steamboat.

Ricky could go an hour and spend 59 minutes getting tossed around like a salad. The crowd hung on every step, they yelled, they got angry, they turned red, and some of them were so emotional watching the Dragon they flat out cried like babies. They truly believed he was getting the ever living daylights beat out of him. The guy could sell like it was no one’s business, and made many a wrestler look much better than they ever deserved to.

10. The sleeper

And last but not least is the sleeper.

When was the last time you ever saw someone submit to the sleeper???

Exactly, I have no idea either.

There is no one who currently uses this as a finisher (Piper doesn’t count as he is less than active in my opinion in terms of his career.) As soon as you see someone try and put it on someone else, you just sort of say, "yeah, like that will happen."

Once upon a time, that hold was a bonafide finisher for guys like Piper and Million Dollar Man. With the UFC fighters using a lot of choke holds in their matches, it would seem to make sense that the same holds would be utilized with some level of success in wrestling.

I mean, who among us has not watched the ref holding the hand of the wrestler in the sleeper hold up in the air, counting one… two…. Th…NO! He’s not out yet. Then without fail, the guy pumps his way out and all of a sudden shakes the hold.

On a rare occasion, you’ll see someone almost get out of the hold, only to be kicked or punched, and then the hold is re-applied. Then it is only a matter of time before the guy gets out of it. The cycle of almost breaking out can be repeated, but no one ever books the finish to be from a sleeper.

I think given the sheer science of choking someone out, it would make sense to have at least one guy in the company who should have this as a viable finisher that is capable of delivering victories.

Back in the day, it was really cool to watch what happened when the match was OVER. Usually the ref would be trying to get the losing wrestler to "wake up." There was usually banter from the crowd, the winning wrestler and the ref.

The ref would be asking the winner to "wake him up," and of course the winner didn’t want to, or took his sweet time.

He played to the crowd, "should I do it??"

Eventually the wrestler would do some special move (looked like a pinch to the shoulder muscle or something, whatever) and then the guy would come out of it with a big look of puzzle and bewilderment on his face.

In short, someone should be given the sleeper hold as their finisher, and they should be booked to get their victories from it.

The wins should be against all the roster, not just lower or mid carders. Let someone take down HHH with the sleeper. That would instantly give it the credibility it so rightly deserves.

So there you have it. Ten little, back to basics, that need to start getting back into the mainstream wrestling.

Right now the companies are so hooked on ladder matches, cages, and tables, all these high risk elements. They are at or near a point where there are only so many other wild and crazy things you can do.

When the audience peaks, they will start to disappear. That's why I suggest getting back to basics.

Let fans be interested in the simple things. Let them appreciate the talent required to make you emotionally invested in simple hair pulling.

The bar should not be set on how crude a show is, how big a woman’s chest was, how many feet someone was up in the air when they dove into a table. Nor should it be set on how many times someone could get clocked in the head with a chair, or how much blood got spilled in the ring from tacks, glass, and other objects.

I’m calling on all wrestling promotions to get back to fundamentals.

This will be beneficial to the fans, as well as, the wrestlers. The injury rate would definitely decrease if some of the above items were re-introduced given their low risk.

The biggest thing a company wants to do is make you care about their product. And their product is their people.

It can’t get any more basic than good and evil. The majority of the items I put forth simply enhance the talent as being either good or bad depending on the part they play in the execution of any of the suggestions.

Time for me to tap out. What do YOU think?