The way Jim Cornette tells it, a pro wrestling booker should be able to give 30 seconds, or less, of instructions on how a match should go, whether’s it’s a job match or a main event, and let the wrestlers take it from there.
“The booker is the football coach, and he’s calling the play. And he’s letting his talent, as Dutch Mantell always said, run the fucking play,” Cornette said this week on his “Jim Cornette Experience” podcast.
Great analogy. As with the execution of a football play, there’s the design and then practice, but when it comes to seeing it on the field, it’s up to the players to make it happen.
The way Cornette explained it, in the territory days, the heel called the match live in the ring, based on what he’d been told beforehand by the booker, which wasn’t much.
In modern wrestling, the competitors often share the same locker room, and can – and often do – work out their matches beforehand, move for move, ahead of heading out to the ring.
The first time I saw this in person, backstage at the AEW “Night of the Legends” pay-per-view in 2011, it was a surreal scene – wrestlers paired off in twos and fours (for those in the tag matches) a few feet apart, going through the sequencing of their matches all at once, like watching a TV show on fast forward.
And we were working with some of the game’s top veterans – guys like Kevin Nash, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, Terry Funk and Tommy Dreamer.
The result might be cleaner compared to what you saw in the territory days, which Cornette admits could look “a little rough around the edges,” but what we also got back in the good ol’ days was “spontaneous and somewhat more credible.”
In the territory days, there were two locker rooms – one for the heels, one for the faces – because of kayfabe.
The guys couldn’t work out what they were going to do ahead of time backstage, at risk of being seen collaborating by fans who almost to a person believed that wrestling was real.
And so, the booker communicated the way things were going to go to the heel locker room – how the match was going to go down, “what was supposed to be accomplished out of it, what the point was that you’re supposed to end up, who’s supposed to go over, what are the thoughts the fans are supposed to be left with. Do we get an object over, did we get a title over personal issue further, some guy, whatever the fuck,” Cornette said.
“All the booker had to do was communicate the tone of what he wanted, and a good heel would then produce that match,” Cornette said.
As he got into the depth of the instructions, this is where my ears perked up.
“If I tell that heel, beat the fuck out of him and beat him, that’s it’s a job match, a squash match, as the kids call it these days,” Cornette said. “He’s in here with a job guy, and it’s to showcase my heel, and have him to do all his stuff that makes him look like a badass, beat the fuck out of this guy and beat him.”
We don’t get too many of these type matches on TV these days.
Squash matches used to be standard, both to get heels and faces over with fans.
I don’t know that the move away from squash matches has helped the business move forward, personally.
“If I tell the heel, have a match, and beat him, then that means that I don’t want him to just treat the guy like a piece of shit. I want him to have a match with him, and then beat him,” Cornette said. “And maybe that’s, you know, the first time, the squash match is four minutes, maybe this is six minutes. And that’s another thing that the booker will tell is the time, and the heel will know, OK, in four minutes, it’s a squash match, in six minutes, I got time to give the kid a couple spots. I’ll miss something, let him fucking have some offense, cut him off, give him a little bit of a comeback, and I’ll beat him with my finish.”
We really don’t see even this type of match all that often today, though we should.
Give the guy who’s going to lose some offense, not a lot, but some, and keep the shine on the guy going over.
“If I tell the heel, have a good match, and then beat him, that means I want him to have a good match, because not all matches are supposed to be good. Have a good match and beat him means while you’re gonna get an extra minute or two, and let’s get up and down, let’s let the kid show what he can do. And then you’re still going to beat him. So, that means it’s going to be kind of competitive,” Cornette said.
This is the standard match today on the AEW YouTube shows.
Every match on the “Dark” and “Dark: Elevation” series is competitive, whether it should be or not.
“If I tell the heel, have a real good match and fuck him, then that means that I want this heel to make this babyface look competitive, have an exciting match with him, and then because he’s tried a time or two to beat him and it didn’t work, he’s going to have to cheat, he’s going to have to fuck him, and then he’s gonna beat him. But he had to cheat, because the babyface was that good,” Cornette said.
Don’t see this one too much, though we did last night with MJF’s first AEW world title defense against Ricky Starks, an excellent old-school back-and-forth match that ended with MJF beating Starks after delivering a low blow behind the ref’s back.
Classic stuff.
“Then if I say, have a great match with this kid and slip him over, then that means we’re elevating this guy,” Cornette said. “I want you to have a great competitive match with him and give the people plenty of doubt about who’s going to win, and make the kid look real good, and then slip him over, as they you say, and Vince McMahon hates that phrase, but it’s widely used. Which means that out of nowhere, someway, the babyface capitalizes on a heel mistake, he’s in the right place at the right time, he’s resourceful, and he fucking gets a win and slides out of that ring before the heel can get up and turn around and go, what the fuck, I’ll kill you.
“You slip him over, but he won, and the people should be ready for that, and if the heel is giving him a good match, they will be, and this is one of those where you don’t even give the heel a time, you just say, get it right. Which used to be Dusty’s favorite thing. He’d have a time for all the underneath matches, and he knew his last two, just get it right, which means, you guys go out and have this fucking match and get them where you want them to be and then take it home. It’s up to you because I trust you.”
This we also saw last night on “Dynamite,” when Chris Jericho, days after dropping the Ring of Honor world title, put rookie Action Andretti over in a 1-2-3 Kid-like shocker.
The final tier here is the “great match.”
“I could tell the heel, this kid, this babyface, we want to make this kid have a great match, and put him over flat in the fucking middle,” Cornette said. “And that’s the last final fucking thing you can do where this heel is going to have the best match he can have with this guy, and he’s going to put over all the guy’s shit, and he’s going to fucking get some heat on him so the kid can sell, and then he’s going to give the kid a big comeback. And in some way or another, that babyface, coming out of nowhere, is going to beat that top heel flat in the middle with his fucking finish, 1-2-3.”
That’s all you had to say to guys, Cornette said.
“And yes, especially detail-oriented individuals like Bill Watts or Eddie Graham would give more complicated finishes, especially in big angles or important matches,” Cornette said. “I mean, the joke has been that, you know, Eddie Graham would spend five minutes telling you the finish, and part of it would be three dropkicks. And he’d watch the match, and if you only did two, but everything else was perfect, you came back, he’d say, where was the third dropkick? And Watts was the same way.
“That was at the upper echelon of things on the big shows or the things that they were shepherding and overseeing and producing personally that the territory hung on. But the idea that the booker tells the wrestlers what foot to put in front of another, I didn’t know was that prevalent that people thought that these days,” Cornette said.
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