The Grand Stage 01.08.11: The Manager

Bobby “The Brain” Heenan. Jim Cornette. Captain Lou Albano. Paul Bearer. All of these names and more are veritable legends in professional wrestling. These men aren’t known as wrestlers, they’re known as managers. We’ve seen a decrease in managers as of late, but why? Is it because they’re no longer useful? I say no! That’s the subject of this week’s The Grand Stage.

Bruce L gives his two cents:

“Kings of Wrestling: They stand atop the tag team mountain as very credible champs, but enjoy too much crowd support for heels and don’t do enough to turn it away.”

This kind of old-school mentality doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Especially in RoH (where the fans will cheer for pretty much anyone who does their job well), a heel is a heel because of what he does, not because of how the crowd responds to him.

Frankly, I never understood why heels always feel the need to berate crowds for cheering them. (“Don’t patronize me!” “I don’t need your help!” “Shut up; I don’t want you scumbags cheering for me!”) If anything, I would think most heels — and the Kings of Wrestling fit this to a T — would bask in any adulation they might receive.

To me, the hero/villain dynamic is very important in telling the story of a match. The crowd is supposed to be on the side of the protagonist, and we’re really telling the protagonist’s story. If the crowd is on the side of the bad guys, then they become the protagonists, the “good guys” are now the villains, and the whole thing is turned on its head. If you are cheering both sides, then you lose a lot of the tension in a match and a storyline. Even though I think hero/hero matches and villain/villain matches can be great, it’s a lot more difficult to get to that same level of tension that you can reach with a hero/villain combination.

On you second point, obviously a real life villain would welcome whatever praise he gets. Wrestling villains berate the crowd so they can get the response they want: boos. I don’t think any villain who knows his job and does it well wants to be cheered. They know that their place in the story is to get on the crowd’s bad side and so they go for that.

Guest 2413 has something to say:

Also, Davey Richards is great in the ring, but a great character? The man can’t cut a promo to save his life. He tells a personal story about where he grew up and still sounds like he’s reading cue cards.

I disagree with you on Davey Richards’s promos. Again, in my opinion, you don’t need to do a long and involved promo for your promo to be good. All it needs to do is encapsulate your character and get your message across. Furthermore, one of the reasons he’s so great in the ring is because of his character as a hyper-intense hunter. That portrayal shines through everything he does.

SS87 has a comment of his own:

“Very rarely do we get someone who is “just a guy” in WWE, which is a big plus.”

Ummm….you serious? Do Ted Dibiase, Drew McIntyre, Heath Slater, Mike McGillicutty, Evan Bourne (sadly), Tyler Reks, DH Smith, and Yoshi Tatsu ring a bell? And that’s only recently. Think about these generic CAWs that the WWE has brought up and thrown on tv for the past 6 or 7 years. They’re pretty much experts at that.

Ted DiBiase is running a fortunate son gimmick. Drew McIntyre is the Chosen One, though admittedly he’s not doing much with that yet. Yoshi Tatsu is a bubbly Japanese guy. Reks is some kind of crazy dude. DH Smith was, until recently, part of the Hart Dynasty. Heath Slater and Michael McGillicutty are part of Nexus, which includes sort of being blackballed by the rest of the roster. Evan Bourne and Daniel Bryan are “just guys” in the WWE. That is, their whole deal is that they are wrestlers, full stop. But even with those two, you have excellent aerial skills to set Bourne apart and excellent technical skills to set Bryan apart, both of which have been viable personas in the past.

Many people have considered managers in pro wrestling a lost art. Indeed, a WWE Classics roundtable devoted to managers said this quite explicitly. I believe, as that panel did (which included wrestling greats in Joey Styles, Michael Hayes, J.J. Dillon, Jimmy Garvin, and good ol’ Jim Ross), that this loss is a travesty. Even in an age where we expect more wrestlers to do their own talking, I believe managers can add quite a bit to the product in any level of the pro wrestling or sports entertainment business.

One of my favorite parts about MMA and boxing entrances that pro wrestling doesn’t have is the entourage on the way to the ring. Of course, in those sports they serve a purpose as cornermen, helping to prepare a fighter for the next round of action, a purpose not present in wrestling. In addition to this essential function, their presence during entrances gives the fighter an aura of being larger than life. The entourage is an important part of that presentation that gets the audience hyped up for the fight that’s about to take place.

Managers can serve the same purpose in pro wrestling. A hot valet or a hated manager can do a lot to get the crowd riled up one way or another, and in a match, a strong reaction from the crowd always helps the action along. A match’s story can be excellently told and executed in front of a dead crowd, but it’s not going to seem as good if nobody cheers or boos. On the other hand, even a subpar match can seem worlds better with a hot crowd closely following every punch, slam, and pinfall. At ringside or backstage, the manager can do a lot to amp up the energy of the crowd. Just like a boxer’s cornermen have their duties — coaching, cutting, delivering water, and so on — a manager can fulfill different functions. The difference is that usually a wrestling manager’s functions are broader in scope, less focused on the wrestler’s physical condition, and rolled into the one person.

The Many Faces of the Manager

The functions I list here are the product of my own observation, not a be-all end-all categorization of what a manager can do. Obviously, most managers will fulfill more than one function over time, and even several at the same time. What I want to do here is to illustrate the utility and versatility of the manager.

The MOUTHPIECE is perhaps the most notable function of a manager in the casual mind. That is, if you say “manager” with regards to wrestling, most people will instantly think of someone who talks for a wrestler who can’t talk well or isn’t supposed to talk. Talking is definitely an integral part of pro wrestling, but it’s not strictly necessary to have the person who fights in the ring do all his talking. Just watching any real sport will prove that there are successes who are devoid of the type of charisma wrestling fans associate with its superstars like the Rock and Steve Austin. There have been great wrestlers in the past and present who are not great on the microphone, but that shouldn’t hold them back if they have a good mouthpiece to work with. Bobby “The Brain” Heenan is one of the most lauded managers in wrestling history and a great deal of his popularity and success is based upon his ability to talk for his charges.

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The INSTIGATOR is a manager instrumental in getting their wrestler into conflicts. Many managers of “monster” wrestlers fit this function, as it’s really them who is feuding with their (usually heroic) opponent and using their charge to get the job done in the ring. Pretty often, an instigator is a mouthpiece as well, but I’m separating them here merely because the actual function is different. That is, a mouthpiece doesn’t always have to be an instigator. An instigator is usually seen as the “brains of the operation.” In the 80s and 70s, very commonly a big match involving a villain with an instigator manager would be fought to give the hero the chance of five minutes in the ring alone with the manager so he could give the hated manager the beating they deserved. Vickie Guerrero recently had a turn as an instigator when she set up a handicap match pitting herself and her client/boyfriend Dolph Ziggler against John Cena.

The TARGET is virtually the opposite of an instigator, though in some respects they do the same thing. While the instigator is actively putting the charge into conflict, the target is a passive participant, usually playing the “damsel in distress” role so that the hero can come save them. A manager is often a vulnerability in their opponent. Villains tend to exploit this vulernability outside of matches in order to force the hero into compromising situations. Heroes usually exploit it inside a match to help neutralize the nefarious teamwork of the villain and his manager. Perhaps the classic example of a target manager is Miss Elizabeth, who rarely spoke but provided many villains the opportunity to get inside the head of her client “Macho Man” Randy Savage.

The DISTRACTION takes the opponent’s eye off the ball and lets their client get the upper hand. This is a pretty much match-only function focused on giving their charge the edge when things are looking bleak. A wrestler that needs a distraction is being portrayed as unable to get the job done on his own merits, so you’re pretty much guaranteed to see this type of manager with a bad guy. Still, as this manager isn’t getting directly involved, the villain tends to have the physical tools to win the match. Male managers are pretty much always putting themselves at risk when they distract opponents, as guys are fair game for any kind of offense that an opponent might wish to dish out. Females like the lovely Debra, on the other hand, get away with this behavior scot free no matter how much an opponent might want to get his hands on her or her world famous puppies.

The ENFORCER is like the distraction, except they actually do physical damage to the opponent as opposed to just taking their attention. The classic picture of “an enforcer” is a big guy who looks like he can take care of business, but for the purposes of this function, anybody who gets involved in beating up the opponent while not being part of the match is an enforcer. Weaker villains tend to have prototypical enforcers to help them match the power of some stronger opponents. Though he became a WWF Champion in his own right, Diesel made his name in the WWF as an enforcer for Shawn Michaels.

The EFFIGY is there to get beaten up in place of his charge. Though managers of faces might get hit, they are not being used as an effigy. A manager serving as his charge’s effigy takes the opponent’s finisher or other big move when their charge has run away, either just to the outside or all the way to the back. At the moment, the hero can’t get to the villain, so he and the fans settle for laying the smack down on the effigy with the promise that they’ll get the villain next time. While he’s not a strictly a manager, RAW play-by-play announcer Michael Cole did a stellar job in this role very recently. Hell, let’s look at a clip, ’cause I like watching Cole get beat up.

The Advantages of a Manager

We just took a look at a variety of functions a manager can perform, showing just how versatile a manager can be. In all cases they serve to enhance all performers involved with them, but especially their charges. They help to make a wrestler seem larger than life by their mere presence, but also by talking for the wrestler, cheering their charge on, and sacrificing themselves in order for their client to succeed. They can be the catalyst for a storyline and they can be the payoff. Their usefulness in driving stories is very understated in modern pro wrestling, but it’s still present and possible to get the most out of one if used properly.

Vickie Guerrero is probably the most successful modern manager. She is intensely hated by the fans, so any association with her cements a wrestler as a bad guy. Her ability to make matches simply adds fuel to this fire. She performs nearly all the managerial functions I highlighted. She has helped to elevate Dolph Ziggler and has become an integral part of his character. Not every manager/wrestler pairing is going to work, as evidenced by the flop that was Eric Escobar, but Vickie has proved to be an asset in storylines whether she’s being a manager of a wrestler, general manager of SmackDown or Raw, or just a general nuisance.

One of the greatest lost arts in WWE and TNA is the ability to keep a villain hot. Bad guys tend to lose very often, or get beaten up, and this decreases the anticipation for that final moment when the villain gets his comeuppance. This goes to managers as well. I believe the Miz has benefitted greatly from having Alex Riley around as it allows the good guy to get a victory without actually beating the Miz. That distance keeps the Miz hot because, even though the hero gets a win, we still want to see the Miz get beat and that hasn’t happened yet. In some ways this is a workaround, allowing them to keep pushing the heroes without giving them the payoff yet. However, it does work, and the Miz has seemed all the more contemptible for putting his lackey into situations in his stead.

In my opinion, one of the reasons managers have seen a dip in WWE is a lack of emphasis on the villains. If the villain is rarely going to win it’s less necessary for them to have an edge in the form of a manager. However managers can do a great deal to enhance storylines and wrestlers, both villains and heroes. Villains benefit from having that added advantage, but heroes benefit from showing that they can overcome the odds. In a three act structure, you’ve got to have the hero go through trials in the second. Whether serving the villain as a crony or serving the hero and being subjected to the bad guy’s schemes, the manager can be an integral cog in the story’s wheel.

Well, that’s it for the Grand Stage this week! Before we close out I’d like to throw out a few plugs:

Michael Ornelas and Ryan Byers square off with cash money in mind as they Buy or Sell six questions about the indies and international wrestling.
Steve Cook and Chad Nevett searched for the truth in this week’s Fact or Fiction.
Two Instant Analyses this week, with Sat & Chad Nevett covering the Impact IA and Byers doing the Raw IA.
It’s apparently Byers Week at 411 as he finishes up his Into the Indies Top News Stories of 2010 with part 2.
And Matt S. gives us another thoroughly enjoyable edition of Ask 411 Wrestling.

With that, I’m outta here! See you next week!

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