Booking Philosophy: Are you purely face vs. heel?

[Chad Olson]

Nov 25, 2020 11:10:33 GMT -5 TDalton said:

Good topic.

I think it's easier to do villain-villain, because fans would just want to see them beat the crap out of one another. Plus, you could see jealousy and conflicts arising more easily between bad guys with compromised morals.

Hero-hero is a little tougher, but I've done it primarily in title situations where someone is clearly the top contender and deserves a shot. Usually little or no "out of the ring" action which you would expect from two good guys who are there for the sake of competition. But if the good guys are, for example, Wolf and Renegade, I just let them go assuming that's what they would consider a "fair fight" given their styles.

I agree! The second show I ever in 1986 went to had a 4 team tournament for a shot at the British Bulldogs' title the next month. They did face vs face and heel vs heel in the first round. The Killer Bees and Rotundo & Spivey went to a draw in their match, and the Sheik and Volkoff beat the Dream Team in the other half of the bracket. Now, I hated the Dream Team, they defended the belts against the Bulldogs earlier in the year at the first show I ever went to. I was so excited when the Bulldogs won the belts at WrestleMania 2. What this youngster failed to realize is how much more the fans hated Sheik & Volkoff! Volkoff sang the anthem, the Dream Team hit the ring and jumped them, and the fans went crazy. Beefcake in particular, played it up to the crowd. The Dream Team were definitely the faces in that encounter.

When we've run face vs face matches in IPW, the crowd isn't always into the matches, because they want to cheer and boo somebody. If no one is breaking the rules, the average fan isn't always going to get into the match.

[Chad Olson]

I just listened to this week’s episode of Breaking Kayfabe with Bowdren and Barry. They have Gerry Brisco on, and he discusses the Brisco's run against Youngblood and Steamboat. Interesting take on the face vs face discussion!

[TTX]

It is interesting. I know when I've gone to indy shows where it's not clear whose face and whose heel and people just sit quietly not knowing what to do. I guess we've been conditioned to the point of not knowing who to cheer if no one is cheating unless we particularly like one competitor or the other.

[markyhitch]

Nov 26, 2020 6:56:43 GMT -5 TTX said:

It is interesting. I know when I've gone to indy shows where it's not clear whose face and whose heel and people just sit quietly not knowing what to do. I guess we've been conditioned to the point of not knowing who to cheer if no one is cheating unless we particularly like one competitor or the other.

I grew up on the British product, World of Sport. We had recognised faces and heels but many wrestlers didn't fit either category so they were treated as faces, even when they wrestled each other. They would wrestle as faces. And both wrestlers would get a round of applause at the end of the bout.

[ajcostello]

I do like to have a face-v-face match... or a series of them... end up in one of the babyfaces get angry or embarrassed by losing and snap. Instant heel heat!

Now, that being said, heels can always change over, too. I just try not to do a lot of that or have wrestlers bounce back and forth too frequently. For me, it makes sense to keep the wrestlers consistent for the fans. Even if all the fans exist in my head and therefore will cheer or boo who I want them to.

A good story that I ran one time involved a heel team called "Pain & Suffering" (Ox Baker & Necro Butcher... managed by Percy Pringle) attacked the Road Warriors and the resulting injury cause them to lose the tag titles. The team that beat them was, in turn, beaten by "Beauty & The Beast" (the team of Gorgeous George & Bruiser Brody). After George and Brody eventually got dethroned I had George and Brody do an interview where the Gorgeous One accidentally let slip that he... a beloved babyface at the time... was behind the attack on the Roadies because he didn't think he and Brody could beat them in a fair fight. The resulting feud between George and Brody was epic in my opinion. Of course, the attack on the Roadies happened as a result of a random roll on the Feud Table but that gave me the kernel of creativity to make George a secret heel just waiting to be sprung upon the world.

I like letting the dice give me some direction. What I like more sometimes is arranging a storyline in the write-ups to make those random results seem like it was all my brilliant booking mind look all that much better.

Back on topic: I'm all about face-v-heel. I don't always let the history of any given wrestler dictate to me who is face and who is a heel at all times.

Some wrestlers are just too good (and too familiar to me) as heels to ever end up being to serious about being good guys.

All that said, I don't purely do face-v-heel religiously. Sometimes faces have to wrestle and the heels have to fight each other to keep things moving logically.

[DK II]

I am sure this was likely said someplace in this thread...but I didn't read through it so, here goes-->

Typically I am a face vs. heel (I still pretty much stick to the Official storylines), HOWEVER tournaments, SuperCard Special Events, and #1 contender matches are fully open to "face vs. face" or "heel vs. heel".

[awffltony77]

I often struggle with this, amongst other things.
My instincts lean towards a sports based presentation and setup. But then I feel like it needs a set system or schedule of matches, which I love, but it's hard to stick with one sometimes.

Then once I finally do and get a few dozen cards in, I start to long for those of you who book your own matchups and are more storyline driven.

So I start cobbling ideas together for a project like that, and next thing I know, I'm sitting on the floor of my livingroom buried beneath 400 cards that I'm "looking at".

[Gunslinger]

Dec 10, 2020 10:30:08 GMT -5 awffltony77 said:

I often struggle with this, amongst other things.
My instincts lean towards a sports based presentation and setup. But then I feel like it needs a set system or schedule of matches, which I love, but it's hard to stick with one sometimes.

Then once I finally do and get a few dozen cards in, I start to long for those of you who book your own matchups and are more storyline driven.

So I start cobbling ideas together for a project like that, and next thing I know, I'm sitting on the floor of my livingroom buried beneath 400 cards that I'm "looking at".

I can't do sports based. Without storylines, I feel like I'm just rolling matches. You could do quarterly tournaments to get your sports based fix and have storylines spin out of that.

[Rex Havoc]

Depends on the type of fed you want to run. For example, My New Galaxian Pro Wrestling fed is based off NJPW where you see face vs face and faction vs faction members in singles or tag team matches all the time. If you run more of an old school style like says 80's then yes you would want more of a face/heel booking style. I think you get more to play with storyline wise when you really don't focus to much on factions not fighting each other for power in the group. It can sometimes make for some unexpected twists and turns in a storyline that just bring the fed further then you were before.