Booking Sports Entertainment vs. Pro Wrestling

[HighDefOverDose]

So, I am currently in a transition in my death of WCW save of turning WWF from the attitude era, to my vision of a new era (I don't have a catchy name for it) but it's basically more of a focus on smaller wrestlers who are good in the ring, and I want to book their TV in a radically different way, I'm just not sure on how to do that exactly, having only really watched WWE on a regular basis, although I have been watching ROH almost every week since before Christmas. The reason I am doing this is because having caught some of NJPW earlier this year, and I was very impressed by the whole presentation and the matches, and ever since I wanted to do a western version of modern NJPW, and the WWF at the time had a fantastic roster to build around, although I do have like 20 in ring workers I want to get rid off, ha.

 

So I have some rules that I'm going to follow, like no magic camera segments (reality tv style segments in the locker room), shorter promos, I cap them at 10 minutes if it's two main eventers trading words in the ring, no spooky shit, no explosions, car chases or any Hollywood style stuff, so I think I know what I'm doing in terms of promos, but what are the key differences in booking matches TV for pro wrestling instead of sports entertainment?

[kingjames]

So, I don't know necessarily about booking in a Japanese-style manner. But! If you're looking for some inspiration from an American company that was more about in-ring product, you could check out something like the AWA (minus the WrestleRock Rumble, of course). It's not the fast-paced, trading move after move style you'd see in NJPW, but the presentation is more akin to what you're talking about - no long, drawn out monologues, all backstage stuff is with an interviewer, but it still allowed people with charisma like Nick Bockwinkel to express themselves within those confines. Which, given the charisma of some of the performers you'd still have available in 2002 WWE, would be a nice bonus on top of the in-ring work.

 

So maybe AWA booking might give you some unexpected inspiration? There should be tons of stuff available on YouTube, if you don't have the WWE Network. If you do have the WWE Network, they've got a big AWA archive. I'd look towards the 70s and early 80s, and not the death throws of the late 80s.

[iruleall15]

I play as TCW in the CV. i run a hybrid company. I run angles and alot of storylines. But I also base my company off good wrestling instead of just pure entertainment. The better the wrestler the more you get pushed. But I also dont push anyone if they cant talk since I dont use managers really. So my top workers are usually low 70s Mic/Charisma but also very good in ring.

 

Thats how I run it atleast. I usually try to keep it 1:1 ratio with Matches vs Segments. But I also run an 80% match product so angles are not the majority of my company but still a very big part used to advance storylines. But matches are what I use to show workers ability to my fans.

[lr10540]

<p>I try to keep my matches without the hokey pokey bs finishes. That alone makes it lot more pro wrestling. The distraction finish where a guy is more concerned with someone 20 yards away instead of the guy 2 feet behind him baffles me. And while I quite enjoy the spooky stuff in angles, I generally hate it in the confines of a match of it's a means to get a tainted finish. </p><p> </p><p>

To me, the match is about the 2 in the ring. There's plenty f finishes you could do to advance stories that wouldn't take it from pro wrestling to sports entertainment. As long as you stay away with the Hollywood type special effects and such, you should be free to book whatever you'd like within those rules.</p>

[Defmall]

<p>I think you've gotten some good advice here so far.</p><p> </p><p>

Use promo's purely as "interviews"...and use them only to get workers and angles over. Keep the "action" in the ring. </p><p> </p><p>

Hire strong workers and use your Agent Notes to create good stories in the ring. (Work the Crowd, Story Telling, etc)</p><p> </p><p>

AWA is indeed a good example of 'booking style', although the work rate was quite different back them. I haven't watched PWG in some time, but IIRC correctly there are/were very few "angles"...just hot matches. (If you want something a little more modern. It's closer to ROH than AWA in way of work rate)</p><p> </p><p>

Not knocking AWA - I'm a bit older and some of the guys/matches that came out of there were VERY good!</p>

[HighDefOverDose]

<p>All great advice, but the question I meant to ask was, what matches do I book? Do I just book squash matches, with a main event possibly having some sort of stake, like a number one contenders match, or midcard/tag team title match.</p><p> </p><p>

I do watch ROH fairly regularly (although have been put off by the price of their PPVs, which is what made me stop watch wrestling in the first place, the WWE network got me back into it) and have a feel for their format, 2 squash matches and a main event, but with me doing a 2 hour (well, I do 90 minutes, as when you watch old shows on the network they tend to range between 1 hour 20 and 1 hour 40) I feel like I need to do more, so should I do like 3 or 4 squash matches, a sub main event and a main event? So like both the last two matches have some reason to it, like either a title match (I currently have 6 titles, World, IC, US, European, Tag, Cruiserweight, but will be unifying US, European and IC and just have the IC title, so will be just 4, but may introduce a 6 man tag title for something to defend on TV regularly) or some sort of number one contenders match. Thoughts?</p><p> </p><p>

One thing that ROH does that I plan on doing, is using stars sparingly, each week has a focus on different guys, NXT does this too, I like that The Young Bucks, Jay Lethal, Colt Cabana, Christopher Daniels and others aren't on every week, but, could I still do that with 90 minutes to book every week? My roster is a lot larger then theirs, and I have changed my product to performance being much more important to popularity, so I could still do good TV without booking my 85+ pop guys every week.</p><p> </p><p>

I have also trimmed down my number of pay per views, to Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, King of The Ring, Heatwave (was Great American Bash in 2001, Heatwave in 2002, will probably be something different in 2003), Summerslam, Unforgiven (again will probably be something different every year) Survivor Series and Starrcade, so I have enough time to build things without having my various champs on every show.</p>

[alvarasus]

Since you stated you have WWE Network. I will tell you watch Mid-South 82 to 83 episodes. Because its basically what your looking to do.

[TheRyanLee]

There's a lot of fantastic advice here. I am actually going to implement some of these practices into my current game and clean it up a bit. I think this will help narrow down my focus and mission, so that I'm not all over the place. Thanks guys!

[Jaysin]

Since you stated you have WWE Network. I will tell you watch Mid-South 82 to 83 episodes. Because its basically what your looking to do.

 

I second this. Mid South/Bill Watts UWF is nearly exactly what you're looking for. It had a great format and made the stars in use feel important.

[sabataged]

Book it like a UFC. You could have top 10 rankings for each belt. When the Miz and and Kalisto fight in a random match on RAW it's because Miz is ranked #3 for the IC title and Kalisto is #8. Both are trying to get to #1 contender.

[ZMAN]

<p>Wouldnt it be a set up similar to this?</p><p> </p><p>

Key - Tradition</p><p>

Heavy - Pure</p><p>

Medium - Mainstream, Modern</p><p>

Very low - Comedy, Risque, Hardcore, Daredevil, Lucha</p><p>

Ratio - 80/20</p><p> </p><p>

I believe that this set up will make fans picky when it comes to the type of angles, matches, and finishes that you run.</p><p> </p><p>

Might be hard to keep your popularity though right? So if he wanted this new style to be the industry standard, should he also change the area setup to favor traditional and pure over the others?</p>

[Kanexus]

I wanted to book more realistic wrestling, but looking at the angles, all of them would be boring. For a realistic style approach, I want to choreography wrestling moves for ratings. Would be hard to program that because so many things make a good match. '

[cappyboy]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="kingjames" data-cite="kingjames" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="43618" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div><p> So maybe AWA booking might give you some unexpected inspiration? There should be tons of stuff available on YouTube, if you don't have the WWE Network. If you do have the WWE Network, they've got a big AWA archive. I'd look towards the 70s and early 80s, and not the death throws of the late 80s.</p></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> Not that the later days of the AWA were all bad as such. But by then, you're getting to the point where Eric Bischoff is in the company and cutting his teeth. And while some scenarios like the looming (but never culminated) breakup of The Destruction Crew had potential, those certainly weren't done in old school AWA style.</p><p> </p><p> Something else you might consider is going down to the Mods forum and checking out the new Story Browser by jjglvz. Among the stories taken from past story packs he has in the data file are the 70's and 80's storylines D. Boon's Ghost had in his classic Death Of The Territories mod. Some of them go back to the days when guys like Pedro Morales and Superstar Billy Graham were king. Granted they might not all fit what you want to do but they could serve as a jumping off point. If nothing else, they'd give you a taste of how bookers were thinking before sports entertainment was king.</p>