Tim's Take 10.21.08: You Can't Sell What You Don't Sell

Posted by Tim Livingston on 10.21.2008

At some point, wrestlers are going to have to wake up and realize how to tell a story in the ring.

I won't go the cliché route and bring in the Webster's Dictionary definition of the term "selling," but I'm pretty sure that the crowd who comes to this fine site of wrestling journalism knows what I talk about when I say that word. For those who don't, selling is a way to define damage done to you by a move from an opponent, usually expressed in screams of agony, contorted body parts and facial expressions to match. Additionally, there is the idea of implied selling, where certain moves dictate that because of its importance and/or impact, the move should be sold in the long term

Is there a reason why the majority of wrestlers today have forgotten how to sell?

One of the great things about old-time wrestling is that while the moves were a big part of how the matches flowed, the selling was even more important. You had to be able to express pain and discomfort in order to make the moves mean something. One of the great things about something as mundane as the heart punch is that while in reality it's a light tap in the chest, you sell it as if it has stopped your heart. We might know the Claw looks dumb, but hell, if the guy is going down because a guy with big hands is literally squeezing his head like a grape, it's dangerous.

I guess that's where the idea of stiffness came from, mostly in Japan, where it's treated more like a sport and a lot of the moves aren't pulled. Guys like Shin'ya Hashimoto and Kenta Kobashi could turn your chest into hamburger, and you sold it not because you wanted the crowd to know it hurts, but because it actually hurt you.

I'm reminded of the fantastic WrestleWar '89 match between Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat, a match that was basic enough thanks to the fact that wrestling in WCW in 1989 wasn't too far advanced outside of The Great Muta, but still stands the test of time because of how everything went down. Steamboat found ways to work over Flair's arm that would keep a story going, but it was how Flair sold it that really made it work. On top of that, Steamboat was such a great seller of agony that when he got in trouble, he made sure Flair's offense looked like it hurt. In fact, the only thing I truly wished in that match that I didn't get to see, even though it had happened in their other matches before, is that Steamer didn't get to sell the knee for the bulk of the match.

But it's the end of that match that tied it all together. Steamer was able to get the double chicken-wing on and build off the earlier arm work, and Flair sold it like death thanks to him being submitted to it at Clash VI, but Flair was smart enough to get a leg into the ropes to avoid having to submit, and then when Steamer tried a slam, his leg gave out and Flair rolled him up to win the title.

It was 32 minutes of beauty. Not because there was a whole bunch of neato high impact spots (I'm looking at you, Briscoes) or a propensity to not sell any of the chest blistering chops that were thrown out there (I'm looking at you, Kensuke Sasaki from the dome match with Kobashi) but because everything thrown in that match meant something.

My latest wrestling viewings have taken me to two distinct places in time. One is Memphis in the 1980s, a time where the stipulations of the various feud blow offs were plentiful and the wrestling was somewhat basic, but the intensity of the work was what made it great. There was some really amazing selling from the wrestlers as well, and it came from a lot of the usual folk, like Jerry Lawler, the Funks, Bill Dundee, etc. The other took me to Japan in 2008. I watched two matches from Japan that had been heavily touted. One was Big Japan strongman Daisuke Sekimoto taking on former ECW Champion Masato Tanaka, who is the hottest thing going in ZERO-ONE MAX, and the other pitted NOAH golden boy KENTA against Naruki Doi, one of the stalwarts from Dragon Gate. Both matches were conducted in a similar manner, but both matches also hurt from a lack of selling in either fashion. Hard work from either wrestler in either match was blown off, just so they could all get their spots in.

This downturn has been happening in wrestling for a long time. The highspot generation of fans has come to events expecting bigger and better every time they come to an event, with the wrestlers knowing they have to go out and basically kill themselves to get over. Matches aren't being contested on the merits of storytelling and selling, but on high impact moves and highspots being the focal point. The nadir of this to me was the match from last year between The Briscoes and the Motor City Machine Guns, a match that looked like it would start out well enough, with the Guns trying to establish themselves as heels, but the problem would become pretty prevalent in the final minutes of the match, where highspot after highspot was thrown out with little regards to selling the damage these moves seemingly take.

Ironically, while many fans love matches that are full of that type of workrate, people tend to say that Bryan Danielson is the wrestler many call the Best in the World. Danielson seems to be the only wrestler today who can reel in the tendencies of workers expecting to throw out highspot after highspot, and try and work a smart match built around selling and telling a story. While fans will go nuts for the big moves, Danielson is the one guy who knows much more goes into a match than flashy moves.

I also have to applaud how the WWE brings along their talent. A lot of people criticized me after my Bound for Glory piece last week, talking about how I continue to talk bad about TNA without bringing up the bad things that happen in WWE. Did you guys SEE No Mercy? Compare that, a somewhat throwaway show in the big picture of what WWE presents, to the show that TNA touts as its biggest of the year. On top of that, they did the gimmick match better than TNA has EVER done in one of theirs!

I applaud the WWE because their talent knows what needs to happen in order to make a compelling match. They keep things somewhat simple, but when the difficult things need to be done, not only do they perform it well, but they sell it like it's a big deal. A simple headbutt led to Jericho winning the ladder match because it was treated like a desperation move that paid off, and Michaels sold it like one. It's seriously a big-time difference there between WWE and their "competition."

At no point in the present does it seem like wrestlers understand why the past was so successful. You're only going to pop the crowd for so long before they get tired and want bigger and better. The idea is making the bigger and better mean more. Maybe we won't be seeing KENTA kick out of any Muscular Bombs anytime soon because of it.