If I Could Be Serious For A Moment 04.21.09: The Art of Gimmick Matches

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Gimmick Gimmick More

The gimmick match: in all professional wrestling, no one concept can attract universal admiration and universal hatred so easily. Starting with things as simple as strap matches, progressing through ladder and tables matches and coming to today’s invent-a-stip matches, one could argue that no other aspect of the industry is so diverse and has evolved so much been created so differently over the last 25 years. But are gimmick matches good for business? Which ones work, and which don’t? Why do some work while others fail miserably? I’m glad you asked. On the heels of TNA’s all-cage PPV, it seems like as good a time as any to explore these questions and more.

Enough is as good as a feast

Traditionally, and with few exceptions, gimmick matches are used to blow off big feuds. In story terms, the hatred between two performers/teams/stables is so great that they cannot settle it in a normal match. With the Attitude Era and the Monday Night Wars, gimmick matches became more of a way to one-up the competition, but recently that has lessened significantly. In WWE, with the exception of One Night Stand/Extreme Rules, gimmick matches are usually held to one or two a pay per view, and are even rarer on free TV. A ladder match a week will eventually devalue the match, the achievement of winning it and the spots within it, but by keeping them for big occasions they feel special when they happen. As a result, the recent ladder matches we’ve had (Michaels-Jericho, Money in the Bank, even Taker-Edge) have had an air of anticipation about them that was somewhat lacking 10 years ago. It’s all about using them correctly and with the correct people. An even better example would be Hell in a Cell, of which there has been precisely one on free TV, and less than a dozen in total. In WWE terms Hell in a Cell is the ultimate feud-ender, and is used sparingly enough that it means so much more on the rare occasion that you see one.

You might think that TNA’s Lockdown event, where every match is a cage match, would fly in the face of this theory, but in fact it doesn’t. TNA rarely uses cage matches outside of Lockdown (although they have no qualms about using a multitude of others, but we’ll get to that later), and so an evening of them doesn’t feel like overkill when it happens. Lockdown has been one of TNA’s biggest events since they switched to the all-cage format, and some of the credit for that should be heaped on the novelty of the concept. TNA have also gone to great lengths to try and innovate with the cage, from the good (Lethal Lockdown, X-scape) to the average (Doomsday Chamber of Blood, reverse cage match) to the downright silly (Cuffs in the Cage, anyone?).

The first lesson to take from this is that moderation is important. I may be in the minority here but I think the Royal Rumble has started to suffer and lose some of its pizzazz because of the ridiculous number of Battle Royals in both major feds throughout the year. To make matters worse, these battle royals are often used to determine number one contenders for world titles. Although they don’t have the prestige of a WrestleMania title shot, it should be noted that in recent years winning the Rumble has NOT guaranteed that Mania shot. Using battle royals so much smacks of lazy booking, even if you do tack on TNA’s “last two go to pinfall or submission” to make it a little more interesting.

On the other hand, Money in the Bank is done once a year (well, twice if you want to include Feast or Famine in TNA), at the same time every year, and is pushed to the stars when it happens. It also promotes an ongoing story for the rest of the year as the winner(s) can cash their shot in at ANY time, so any beatdown of a champion could lead to a title change.

The biggest culprit of overkill has to be the [Insert City Here] Brawl/Street Fight. This has been a pet peeve of mine for a while, in that a Chicago Street Fight is the same as a Belfast Brawl is the same as a New York City Street Fight is the same as a no holds barred match is the same as a no count out, no DQ match…you get the idea. God knows how many names for the same match, and they happen ALL THE TIME. They also have the rare distinction of being frequently used at house shows, something you barely see with a ladder match, for example. Anyone who watches wrestling during the Monday Night Wars, when each promotion had a Hardcore belt, is thoroughly desensitized to these matches now anyway, and without the “falls count anywhere” excitement it’s very hard to come up with anything we haven’t seen a dozen times before.

Keep it simple, stupid

We touched briefly on TNA’s many forays into uncharted gimmick waters, and how some of these have worked while some fell flatter than a Hubbard joke. Lest you think I am jumping on the TNA-bashing bandwagon (and let’s face it, there’s not a lot of room left…), WWE has hardly been immune to this. We’ll get to them in a minute. Jeff Jarrett was quoted recently as saying that TNA needs to find ways to set it apart, and one of the ways they can do that is to keep innovating. He acknowledged some of their gimmick match ideas were awful, but also said they weren’t going to stop trying. It’s hard to argue with this mentality because some of their new matches, like the Terrordome (or whatever they called it the second time), King of the Mountain, Ultimate X and Monster’s Ball have been great successes that gave us some exciting matches. On the other hand you have the reverse battle royals, that God-awful tag team lottery tournament and the aforementioned Cuffs in the Cage which were all painful to watch and took longer to explain than some matches last from bell to bell.

WWE hasn’t exactly been a slouch in the innovation department, but they’ve had their share of dogs too. The Elimination Chamber (let’s forget that abomination they called the Extreme Elimination Chamber for the moment), the Championship Scrambles and Money in the Bank all came off very well in their early incarnations, and continue to be popular. WWE is under less pressure to innovate and distinguish itself, and as a result it doesn’t have to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. However, whatever they were trying to do with Jericho and Batista and THAT handicap match certainly did not stick, neither did the Punjabi Prison or anything involving bikinis, pillows or costumes.

The common thread with the matches that have been successful is that they have a simple concept: climb the ladder, grab the prize. Grab the X off the wires. Get the last pin within the time limit. If the fans have to think about why the match is not over on a tapout, or why the referee is not counting a pinfall, it’s probably not going to work. In the case of matches like the Doomsday Chamber of Blood, the thought comes very quickly and thus doesn’t hurt the match too much. Wrestling is supposed to be an escape from reality, a way to forget the mundane and enjoy a spectacle. If you have to tax your brain, the enjoyment is going to be lessened in most cases.

Look at the Makeover Battle Royal from TNA about a year ago. It involved a ladder, a title shot, a haircut, and too many women…and I’ve forgotten the rules. I do know it was confusing as all get out, and although it ended very strongly and wasn’t a bad match, the sheer complexity of it ruined my enjoyment. I was not alone in that.

One notable exception to this rule has been King of the Mountain, which to my mind is one of the most complex matches in wrestling but yet is very popular. The fans seem to get it, and they don’t seem to have resented the effort it took to understand it. Perhaps it’s a combination of being new and exciting that lessen the mental burden. Regardless, “you win by hanging the belt on the hoop above the ring, but you can’t hang the belt until you score a fall, and if you are the victim of the fall you have to go in the penalty box” is a hell of a lot more complex than “Beat him until he bleeds, pin him.”

One of a Kind

Certain gimmick matches will (hopefully) never be seen again. Most of them were created to fit a specific feud, and would not make sense in any other concept. Take the Kennel from Hell match between Al Snow and Big Boss Man, for example. The two were feuding over Al Snow’s dog Pepper, which Boss Man had served to Al Snow as pepper steak. This led to the match involving a cage surrounded by “vicious” dogs surrounded by a Hell in a Cell. It sucked. Then there was the Black Tie Brawl and Chain match between Jay Lethal and Sonjay Dutt, which centred on their feud over SoCal Val. The two were chained together, wearing tuxedos, and the match could end by removing the tuxedo or, inexplicably, by pinfall. There was also the Good Housekeeping match between Chyna and Jeff Jarrett, which was basically a hardcore match using appliances.

A couple of one-off matches just won’t happen again because they didn’t work or wouldn’t fit today. Cuffs in the Cage is
hopefully one of these, as is the electrified cage match between LAX and Team 3D. This was only two years ago and cast so many allusions to immigration issues that it damn near got TNA in trouble. WWE had that imminently forgettable pigpen match as part of the Redneck Triathlon pitting Eric Bischoff against Steve Austin, where you won by throwing your opponent into a pigpen.

On the other had, there was one gimmick match in particular that was really rather good but will probably never happen again because of the change in wrestling as it is presented. The Ultimate Submission match between Chris Benoit (problem one) and Kurt Angle (problem 2) was a wrestling masterclass that went 30-plus minutes (problem 3) and only allowed a fall to be scored via submission (problem 4). With submissions being greatly downplayed in WWE (unless your name is John Cena or Undertaker) and the diminishing likelihood of another match ever going over 30 minutes, let alone one with multiple falls, we are unlikely to get another.

Never do that again

No discussion of gimmick matches would be complete without the nefarious Pole match being mentioned. The darling of Vince Russo, my first recollection of an object on a pole match was Big Boss Man (WHY does his name keep coming up???) vs Nailz in a Nightstick on a Pole match. This was in 1992, well before Vince Russo was anything important anywhere. The stipulations vary, but if a weapon is involved the rules normally call for the person who retrieves the weapon to be able to use it, but in almost every case that ends up backfiring. Over the years everything from the relatively sensible (kendo sticks, nightsticks, brass knuckles, flags in a flag match) to the beyond silly (rat cages with live rats, Judy Bagwell, VIAGRA…) has been hung from a pole above the corner of a ring.

Pole matches get an unfair label. Hanging a weapon from a pole is not an inherently bad idea, but when you let either guy use the weapon it defeats the purpose of climbing after it. It’s when you start putting things that have NOTHING to do with wrestling up there that things get stupid. WWE has mostly resisted the temptation, especially since the departure of Russo. The last one I can remember, not including the Divas battle royale recently (which was more of a ladder match as it involved retrieving for the win) was a paddle on a pole match between Candace and Torrie in 2006.

The other universally-panned gimmick match is the blindfold match. These have been around for a long time, but most people’s first chance to see one would have been Rick Martel vs Jake Roberts after the Model had blinded Jake by spraying Arrogance, his body spray, in Jake’s eye. These matches are slow, plodding affairs which rely on the crowd to introduce any measure of tension, and normally end very quickly after the first contact is made.

Oh Gimmicky You’re So Fine

The bottom line is that gimmick matches add importance to feuds, WHEN USED CORRECTLY. You can’t just throw 4 random guys in a ring with a ladder and nothing on the line and expect people to care, nor can you throw two super heavyweights into a ladder match and expect it to be good, but if you build a feud between two guys who can fly and culminate it in a ladder match for a title, you have a winner. The right guys, the right feud, the right gimmick.

Gimmick matches have been around for years. Some, like strap matches and dog collar matches, have seen their popularity wane. The likes of Texas Death matches have disappeared due to changing sensibilities, and the Loser Leaves Town match no longer means anything. Cage matches and hardcore matches of all flavours are starting to die down too. That said, they’ve been replaced by TLC matches, Elimination Chambers, I Quit matches and the like. The point is that if you must try and make something new, make sure it’s easy to understand and that it might actually be watchable.

Moment over.