I saved the post long ago for future uses (of which there have been many). It's from 2011 and in response to another poster, but you'll get the idea.
Post from 2011:
And there it is, the explanation I knew was coming, the one that exposes your ignorance.
Re-read your post. Notice how EVERYTHING you mention has to do with "moves". Everything. According to you, the only thing that makes a good wrestler is moves. So, according to you, I can take one of those old wrestling buddies the WWE used to make, go in my backyard, do some moves on it, and I'm a great wrestler, right? After all, according to you, all you need is moves to be a good wrestler. Do you see how silly that is? What you said has NOTHING to do with being a good pro wrestler.
Being a good pro wrestler has to do with 5 things: Storytelling, Psychology, Workrate, Selling and Charisma. That's what makes someone a good wrestler. I'll explain those five things in more detail.
Storytelling: Pro wrestling is about entertainment. Whether it's ROH or AWA or WWE, the fact is people watch for the story being told in the ring. Now, that story could simply be a competitive struggle between two world class wrestlers, or it could be the classic heel vs. face match the WWE likes to have, or it could be like Hart vs. Austin from WM 13 where two guys hate each other and pull out all the stops to beat each other up, to the point where one guy forgets the man he always tried to be, and the other guy would rather pass out from pain than give in to his rival. That's storytelling.
Storytelling is an area where guys like Hogan and Cena excel. Hogan was the master at taking a beating by the bad guy, making the fans think their hero was going to lose to the villain, and then when things seem the darkest, Hogan draws upon the power of the fans, and wills himself to victory. Hogan was the master of that story, but it wasn't the only one he could tell. Look at his match against Warrior at WM 6. That match was a story of the greatest wrestler ever putting over his successor. If you notice, that match was all about how equal the two men were. Take the "Test of Strength" they engaged in...that's a great example of what that match was all about. At one point, one man was stronger, and then in the next moment, the other man was stronger. And they went back and forth, both men raising the bar, and then meeting what their opponent did. And in the end, Warrior proved he was every bit as powerful as Hogan, and JUST a little bit more. Which meant that, in the fans eyes, they now had their new hero, a guy who could take on the forces of evil with every bit as much ability as Hogan had for years. That's storytelling at it's finest. That's part of what makes a good wrestler.
Psychology: Psychology is all about the character the wrestler plays. In the old days, guys would NEVER refer to themselves as "playing a character", because in their minds, they WERE characters. When they got in front of an audience, they weren't actors, they were literally the crazy people fans saw. But, for the ease of this tutorial, we'll say wrestlers play characters.
Psychology deals with how that character would think and react to situations, in and out of the ring, and how those characters are played mean so much in trying to get the character over with fans. For example, take Stone Cold Steve Austin. Imagine if he had worn a fancy robe to the ring, and had pranced down the aisle to "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Would we have bought him being a tough redneck who flips the bird and rebels against authority? Of course not. But when Austin comes out in plain black trunks, wearing a leather vest, and he's storming to the ring looking pissed off, we know he means business. When Flair walked to the ring in a fabulous robe, with beautiful women lining the aisle, we knew he was the Nature Boy. When Sting was "Surfer Sting", and he came to down the aisle full of energy, howling at the fans, slapping everyone's hands, we knew he was pumped and excited for the match. That's psychology.
But it doesn't stop once a guy gets in the ring. Psychology is all about what you do in the ring as well. So many ignorant people in the IWC think that psychology is about working a leg to set up a Sharpshooter, or something equivalent. It's not. It's not at all. Psychology is playing the part of your character in the ring. Let's use Hogan again as an example (since I told you I would explain why he was a great wrestler). Picture John Wayne, the real man's man and American tough guy, in professional wrestling. Would he have stepped into a bar and used a drop toe hold, sliding over to a front headlock, and turn that front headlock into a hammerlock? Not a chance in the world. You say a cross word to John Wayne, he's going to plant his feet, ball up his right fist, and lay one right on your jaw. That's the American style of fighting, or at least that's how Americans like to glorify their fighting.
That's what Hulk Hogan was...he was American style fighter, who had huge muscles, and he got in that ring to fight you with his fists, not a bunch of fancy moves. That's what Hulk Hogan, the character, was. If Hogan had spent 3/4 of a match using wrist locks, Indian Deathlocks, Bow and Arrows, etc. type moves, it would have been completely ridiculous for his character. So Hogan used moves which made sense for his character, he threw a lot of punches and kicks, he used his strength with slams, etc. That's good psychology.
Now that's just speaking of character psychology. There's more that goes into psychology than just character psychology. Match psychology plays an important part too. Let's look back at that Hogan vs. Warrior match I mentioned earlier. The whole concept of that match was about how equal those two guys were, about how they were two unstoppable forces battling it out. If they had gone back and forth, but Hogan was hitting big power moves, and Warriors was responding with cheap shots, and arm bars, would the story of those two guys being equals have worked? Of course not, that would have been poor match psychology. When the two guys use the same moves on each other, and respond in kind to one another, that's good match psychology, which makes up good storytelling.
Workrate: Too many ignorant IWC fans mistake the true meaning of workrate. They think the faster a guy moves in the ring, the greater the workrate, and that's just false. Workrate is not the speed in which you work the match, that's pacing. Don't confusing the pacing of a match with the workrate.
Workrate is easily explained. Surely you've heard the terms "shoot" and "work", where a shoot is something legit happening in wrestling, and a "work" is something wrestling wants you to think is real, but is actually pre-planned. With that in mind, "workrate", is simply the wrestler's ability to work a crowd into suspending their disbelief. It is literally the rate at which the wrestler can work the crowd.
I can use Hogan as an example of this all day long, with his getting beaten down to the point fans thought he might lose, and then making his come back, but I'm going to use a different example. Think of this year's Royal Rumble (2011). When we saw Del Rio eliminate the last guy, we thought to ourselves "wow, HE'S the winner?", but the next thing we know, we see Santino rolling back in the ring and we remembered he hadn't been eliminated yet. Now Santino is basically a comedy act, and he's little more than a jobber with a popular crowd following, but in the moment Santino rolled back in the ring behind a celebrating Del Rio, wrestling fans everywhere legitimately thought this jobber would be going to a title match at Wrestlemania. The fans in the arena were going nuts, people in the LD here on WZ were going nuts...everyone was excited to see Santino win. The WWE WORKED the crowd into thinking this jobber could go to a Wrestlemania main-event for a title. They made the fans suspend their disbelief that a nobody like Santino (even though he's popular, he'll never be more than a midcard jobber) could actually go to the grandest stage of them all. That's working the crowd.
I have another example for you. Take your thoughts on what makes someone a WRESTLER. You've been worked by pro wrestling to think that a guy who does holds and locks is a good wrestler. That myth has been propagated for years by pro wrestling; a guy who does classic technical wrestling, complete with locks, holds, suplexes, etc. is a good wrestler, and guys who punch and kick and slam are just brawlers who get by on their strength. The fact is that's just a myth, and it's one that pro wrestling has always sold fans, to help sell the storylines of the promotion. Go watch some old videos where Gorilla Monsoon and Jesse Ventura are calling the action. You'll constantly hear Ventura selling that myth. It's how they sold storylines and how they still sell storylines. Pro wrestling has WORKED people into think that to be a good "WRESTLER", you have to do a bunch of holds. And the fact is it's just not true.
Selling: Selling is one of the most important, and almost always overlooked, aspect of a pro wrestler. Remember how I mocked you for only talking about offensive moves when describing a pro wrestler? Well, selling is the reason for that. Let's say I were to punch you in the head, and you started to rub your thigh. Then I put your in an arm bar, and you started hopping around like your foot was asleep. Would anyone buy my offense as being believable? Would we be able to "work" the audience like that? Not a chance in the world. For an offensive move to look good, you have to have someone sell the offense. If you've seen Tough Enough, you can see how a bad bump makes a move look phony.
Once again, let's use Hogan as an example. People always criticize Hogan and his "hulk up" routine, which is silly, because it always worked. And the reason it worked is because Hogan sold his opponent's offense so well. If fans didn't believe Hogan was legitimately hurt, then they wouldn't have been worked to believe Hogan could lose. And without being worked to believe Hogan could lose, they wouldn't have erupted in such huge pops when Hogan made his big come back. Selling is SO important to pro wrestling. Guys like Hogan, Cena, Styles, Hart, HBK...those guys are some of the best sellers in pro wrestling. Now, I know that the typical IWC response to calling Cena a good seller is to point out his WM match vs. HBK, but the fact is, if you watch that match, Cena doesn't no-sell HBK's offense, and for reasons I won't get into now, there was nothing wrong with what Cena did. But I digress.
Selling is one of the most important aspects of pro wrestling, because the guy who is selling the move is almost always working harder than the guy who is doing the move. Take, for example, your basic hip toss. The guy performing the move just has to stand in one place and roll his shoulder over. The guy selling the move has to actually do the flip, land properly on his back to minimize pain, and then roll around like he's hurting. The seller does far more work than the guy putting on the move.
Charisma: Charisma is the ability of a pro wrestler to connect to his audience. Charisma is NOT the same as good mic skills, although it's hard to have good mic skills without having good charisma. However, you can have good charisma without having good mic skills. I think Goldberg is the best example I can give you for that. But simply put, charisma is the ability to get fans emotionally invested in your character, and making them care about who you are, what you're doing, and whether or not you win or lose. I don't think I even need to explain how great Hulk Hogan was at this, he is without a doubt the most charismatic worker in wrestling history.
Now, there are other things which contribute to good matches. For example, let's talk about my "spot monkey" comment. I'm guessing, and this is based on years of discussing wrestling on forums, you think a "spot monkey" is someone who does a bunch of flips and jumps off high places. That couldn't be further from the truth. To properly understand what a spot monkey is, you have to understand what a spot is.
A spot is ANY pre-planned moment of a match. It COULD be a high spot, but it could be as simple as planning to have a moment where the heels staggers into a corner, the face climbs the second rope, and lands 10 punches to the heel's face. A spot is any moment of the match which is planned ahead of time. A guy like Ric Flair loved to boast he only worked with two spots in a match: the start of the match and the finish. The rest he called on the fly. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have a guy like Randy Savage, who loved to plan out numerous spots in a match, and work towards those spots. For example, his match with Ricky Steamboat at Wrestlemania 3 was almost entirely planned out and rehearsed before the show. There is nothing wrong with being a wrestler who likes to plan spots before a match.
The trick with spots is how you get to them. Let's say we have a match, and we plan two spots. The first spot is a simple spot. You put me in a headlock, I whip you into the ropes out of the headlock, and hit you with a Randy Orton powerslam. The second spot we plan is me on the floor, you on the top rope doing a crossbody block on to me on the floor. Those are our two spots. Now the question is, how do we get from the first spot to the second? If I power slammed you, ran outside the ring, watched you pop up, climb the top rope, and then do your move to me, that would look pretty stupid, right? That would be an example of a poor transition from spot to spot. That is what a spot monkey is. A guy who cannot transition well from spot to spot.
So when I call ROH guys spot monkeys, I assure you it's well earned from the numerous matches I've seen. Their ability to go from spot to spot is terrible often times. It's nonsensical, and completely out of line with their character's psychology, and worse, it makes no sense within the story of the match, and even worse yet, it absolutely KILLS the work rate of the match. I once wrote a review for a match between Nigel and AmDrag (possibly from Unified?) and one of the exchanges they had was a "chain wrestling" display. It's been a while, but if I remember correctly, Nigel had Danielson in an armbar (spot #1) and at spot #2, Danielson had reversed the hold into a hold of his own. Now that's pretty typical in wrestling, but the transition from spot #1 to #2 was absurd. Because what happened in the transition was Danielson did like 3 rolls, two flips, twisted numerous times, ate a pizza, called his grandmother, served food to a starving baby, and finally reversed the hold. Or at least that's how long it seemed. And all the while Danielson's doing this, Nigel is just standing there watching him do it all. And I think to myself "how fake can they make this? Why doesn't Nigel just clothesline him when he's doing one of these silly flips?". That's poor transition from spot to spot.
And that's just an example. Anytime you watch a match and you find yourself waiting for a spot to happen, you know the wrestlers had poor transition to that spot. Because good wrestling never has you waiting on a spot, it has you saying afterwards "I wonder if they planned that". That's what a good wrestler does. That's why a guy like Ricky Steamboat was so good, because he could work a 35 minute match, and you'd never realize he'd been working that long. His transitions from spot to spot were smooth as silk, his workrate was phenomenal, and his character psychology was impeccable.
Like I said, there are other things which factor into good wrestling, but they all fall into the category of those five things I mentioned above. The offensive moves a wrestler uses has absolutely nothing to do with how good a wrestler is. Now I hope you'll surprise me, you'll read what I've written and say to yourself, "You know, I've never thought of things like that before, but it kind of makes sense", but, based on my years of posting on forums, I doubt it. Which is a shame because it's all true, and it doesn't matter who you ask in the business, if they've ever been successful, they'll tell you it's true.
