How can changing up something simple make a difference?
A recent example was when I was wrestling James Storm for 4FW. We both started off as faces: I’ve been the face there before, he’s a guy from America that people wanted to see, so it automatically fitted into that role. We talked about doing something with the beer that would end up with me spitting beer in his face to turn me for the duration of the match. We switched it from what we were originally going to do with me just jumping on him when his back was turned, which I felt was a bit generic and didn’t really have any character stuff involved. We changed it to fit the character by getting the crowd to chant for me to drink the beer as well as for him to drink the beer and really getting the crowd into it before switching it and turning it.
It was only really in the ring doing the bit and drinking the beer that we finished tweaking it. In my head, I planned that I’d sip a bit and spit it straight in his face, but when I was drinking it I was thinking “If I just do that, the crowd’s going to know exactly what I’m doing and what’s coming and there’s not really any surprise to it.” So, I ended up drinking down half the beer before going into the bit spitting in the face. The difference that it made was from “Oh, this is going to happen” to them not expecting it at all and me switching it at completely the last second and the reaction that it got was instantaneous. Things like that often get telegraphed so that people really know what’s coming, but I think the longer you can leave things like that, people start questioning themselves and they think “This is what usually happens, but he’s not doing that” and the further you can stretch that to the point of them really believing you’re doing what they want you to do and then switching it is a really good way to throw that twist in there.
Are there any things that you should never change?
I find change works well in a lot of places, even going to the example of what WWE did at Survivor Series with Lesnar-Goldberg and having that end so quickly. You can’t even say “You can’t end a match quickly” because with the right build and the right story behind it, you can get away with it. I think I probably wouldn’t change something if it went against the story you are telling and the bigger picture. For example, if you’ve got someone you’re trying to put across as a big monster who no-one can stop, then in the first few matches you have with him you don’t necessarily want to take that away from them by, for example, in their second match having them go 15-20 minutes with someone.
What other ways can you avoid predictability?
In terms of things that are predictable, things like the International are quite a generic sequence that I feel I get more out of when I switch spots in it rather than just doing your standard tackle, dropdown, leapfrog, hiptoss. The other thing that helps with predictability is watching what other people are doing and talking to people about things that they are doing in their matches. I’ve been at shows where there’s been six matches and all six had a double-down about 10 minutes into the match. I found out at a recent show where I was on early that all the matches in the first half had started off with the guys shoving each other over and I felt “Oh, we dropped the ball a little bit there by not talking to each other enough.”
How important is it to keep up with WWE TV so you know which things might seem predictable to a crowd?
I think that’s important with any kind of crowd. There’s a lot of different mixtures and types of crowd around at the moment: certainly, a lot stuff I do is with a family audience where a lot of what they watch is WWE, so they’ll know the common themes and tropes. While there’s an element of having to show people some things that they expect because that’s what brings them in nice and easily, you have to switch some things up as well. I find it’s a very flexible artform that we have in terms of being able to use some of that predictability to your advantage by showing people where you are going and sometimes going there, but sometimes not.
Young wrestlers are often taught the shine: having the babyface dominate at the start to show they are the superior grappler in a fair fight. Should you always stick to that concept or can you still work a logical match in which the heel is clearly shown to be the better wrestler?
I think there’s a place for both of those. Again, it comes back to the story that you’re trying to tell. It depends a lot on the character of the heel because if you have a heel that does shy away from the fight, you want to tell that story and that the reason they shy away is not necessarily because they aren’t as good. A good example from my own experience is that there’s a couple of places where I’ve switched from face to heel. The fans there have seen me wrestle as a face so they know I can wrestle, they know where my abilities are and what I’m good at. If I suddenly shied away from the things that I’ve previously been good at [it makes no sense] — me being a bad guy doesn’t mean that I’m suddenly worse at wrestling, so I have to tell that story in a different way. Maybe I’m still good enough, but I’m only as good as the other guy and I can’t get on top so suddenly because it’s fairly even. Or maybe the face has to do something different or out of the ordinary to be on top.
It’s all about who you are wrestling, what their character is, what story you’re trying to tell and tying all these elements together. Certainly guys starting out getting taught [the shine] and that sort of story and philosophy is a good place to start but I think people are a little dogmatic about it and they feel “I have to do this here, I have to this there, because that’s how wrestling matches work” as opposed to thinking “We can change this up and do this differently as long as we’re getting the story across and the fans understand the characters enough.”
Part of that comes from knowing your crowd enough. I’ve heard people talking about putting together and booking matches and they’d actually sit there and look at the crowd coming in and think about how they want to structure the stories and even the entire card based on the people who were coming through the door.
What’s an unconventional way of playing with the audience’s expectations?
We get the thing where the ring announcer says “Scheduled for one fall” and the crowd shout “One fall!” I saw Ross Jordan at a show and he talked about how he started out by saying “This match will continue until one of the wrestlers beats the other wrestler” and then people couldn’t say it. I thought it was clever, but also it made me think “Actually, wrestling matches aren’t just scheduled for one fall” because it’s traditionally one fall, one submission, a knockout… it’s almost a trope that we’ve got into with ring announcers saying it because that’s what WWE ring announcers say.
If a move or sequence goes wrong, is it better to try to do it right, or to improvise something else?
I think there are arguments to both. I think it’s always better to find a different way into it, but that’s not necessarily always going to be possible. There are people who maybe aren’t experienced enough to do that. If things go wrong in wrestling, the worst thing you can do is panic and stop and just try to run the exact same spot again in the same way because people notice it and it becomes very obvious what is going on. I always found the best thing to do is to just grab the other guy and talk about where you’re going next.
I heard a really interesting take recently where somebody was saying how when things like a table match goes wrong and the table doesn’t break, how about when you’re thinking about a match you almost plan for what happens if things go wrong? They said that if you’ve got the spot where somebody’s supposed to go through the table but is doesn’t break, you could plan that you go for the same spot again but switch it so that the guy who was going to win goes through the table.
Obviously that depends a lot on what’s happening on the rest of the card and what it means to the story going forward as to whether that’s even possible to consider. But if you can, then it gets the crowd wondering “What was supposed to happen here?” because if the table had broken as planned then one person would have won, but then it broke on the second spot so the other person won, so… and it just leaves them questioning.
In the match with James Storm, we actually did a spot at the end where we wanted to make it almost look as if we had planned something else but we’d lost grip of each other and fell into the finish, so we’re playing with the idea that something has gone wrong when actually it hasn’t. I think there are lots of places you can go with that, especially now there are more smart, switched-on people who can spot those kind of things.
You’ve written about how something as simple as a schoolboy roll can be used in lots of versatile ways and contexts. Are there any other basic moves or actions that can be adapted to that extent?
There are tons. It sometimes takes a little bit of creative thinking around your basic movement and how you can find different ways into them and out of them. I think people quite often use something like a lockup and it’s either lockup and push them back into the corner, or lockup and then take a hold, and you don’t necessarily think about other ways that you can use that movement to tell a story: things you do when you take people down, you can almost push each other out of the ropes, you can do takedowns from a lockup where you stay attached to each other. There’s a whole load of different ways of using something as simple as that. You can always learn by going back to basics and then thinking about what you can do with those basics.
If you’ve got a spot planned and then see somebody else do it earlier in the show, should you rethink your plans?
It depends on the situation. If you think that it’s really important to your story but you’ve seen it already done, you have to find a different way to get the story over. I’ve certainly had it in the past where I’ve planned something and heard somebody else talk about something that’s not necessarily the same but similar enough that I know if I do my spot here in that way, it’s going to be difficult for them to do their spot later on and have the impact, and if they’re the main event I need to change that up.
But sometimes you can make the same spot look very different just by getting into it in different ways or tweaking little bits of it. Or maybe just the way the characters would do it differently is enough to make it different to the crowd. If it’s that important to the match to do it, you’ve got to find a way to make it not predictable. If someone’s been on first and done the International and you’re on last and want to do the International, I don’t think you’re going to lose the crowd because with those two spots on the card you’ve got different levels of people in there telling different types of story and the main event’s probably going to tell a lot longer and more involved story than the opener. But if it’s a really key story point like a cheap finish to the match or something that’s really important for the show, you have to find a way to make it less predictable.
Does the type of show affect how important it is to avoid repeating spots or routines?
Certainly with the WWE TV stuff or PROGRESS there’s often heavy storylines going on. With All Star, there’ll rarely be storyline other than something running through just the show you are on. With 4FW there’s a few more storylines now we’re running a few venues fairly regularly. You can get away with repetition when there’s a bigger story that you are telling because then the focus should be on that bigger story, not that individual element of the match.
When you’re planning a match and proposing ideas, how can you get across that you deliberately want to do a familiar spot differently rather than it seeming like you simply don’t know the correct way to do it?
That’s what elevates you enough for people to trust you to be more open to your ideas. I’ve been doing this 16 or 17 years and got to the point that when I’m discussing things backstage, even with guys who’ve been doing it 25 years or been doing it at the highest level, I can talk at the same level. They’re more open to just calling it out there because we’ve been doing it long enough that we’ve got the basics down well enough. It is important to get those things down because the more they are drilled into your head, the easier it is to tweak and change them and put those little surprises in. Without knowing how to do it in the predictable way, it’s hard to know how to change that up.
Personally, I don’t like over-planning matches because if I can get away with calling things out there, it looks a little bit more like things are just happening out there — partly because they are! You can tell that story a lot better with your reactions and expressions because part of it’s real.
Generally, if you’re trying to be a little unpredictable you’d have the conversation: not so much “I’ll do this at this point in time” but maybe just “At some point in the match I’ll probably do this and I want to go this way with it, is that OK with you?” If they say “No, I’d rather stick to the basic way of doing it” that can be better because you might be working with someone you don’t know and you’re not quite as aware of where each other’s movement and positioning is going to be, so they’re more comfortable doing it in the standard position.
