Commercial Breaks and Rest Holds
 

Now this may just be me being nitpicky and a tad obsessive, but has anyone else noticed the tendency for matches on WWE TV to follow this routine in the middle of a match:

• Face gets in a flurry of offense
• Heel slips away to collect himself
• COMMERCIAL BREAK
• Heel has face in a rest hold and tv audience gets a brief recap of what happened during the break

Does that bug the crap out of anyone else here? Maybe it's just me, but I find it incredibly irritating. So basically we don't see the heel getting in any offense at all. It's one thing to do it on Raw when it's live but they do it on ECW (and I'm assuming Smackdown but I don't get to watch that) all the time.

It's like they've officially given in to the ADD crowd.

There's definitely a formula to some of the "in-match" breaks or even "pre-match", which usually goes as follows:

A.) Superstar or superstars shown walking to the ring in the back, sometimes with a split-screen for 2 or more, with the little "NEXT" thing that pops up.

B.) A participant in a match is making their way to the ring and the "NEXT" graphic pops up in the lower-left corner.

C.) (Most often I believe) Match goes eh, 90 seconds - 2.5 minutes or so, one person is getting in all the offense, one or both or all get thrown to the outside, they pan to a close-up of the superstars out of the ring, the commentators set-up the commercial, and post-commercial match hype, cue the "NEXT" graphic, fade to black.

But to answer your question, yes, it is very annoying.

Don't forget the classic throw to the outside.

:D:D:D

I could take this opportunity to teach you lot match structure, but I don't wanna.

You mean the basic psychology that the face gets the shine at the start to pop the crowd, the heel cheats to get the upper hand by cheating, thus demonstrating that he's inferior to his opponent and is willing to cut corners.

A face may get some more shines in during the match, to show he's still in the match, but generally the heel remains in control to give the perception that his cheating ways will pay dividends in the end

Eventually the face finds a way to level the playing field then you go to a finish

Yuppers

Then once you apply the notion that they workers no when the breaks are coming thanks to the ref BLAMO. This scenerio ensues. Basically the face is only back on offence when you come back from break because that's when they run a hope spot.

Now, you 'Coons are all wiser thanks to the resident Tpww workers. I'll pass around the hat to take up donations!

remember when they never had commercials during matches :o

Destor and Dave were talking about the classic match structure taking into account the face/heel dynamics, but I'd like to see that changed up from time-to-time. Occasionally we do see a more back-and-forth style match, but a face like Batista should occasionally dominate all his matches, even against big heels.

Let's use Batista vs. Randy Orton as an example: Batista will obviously start the match off stronger. But instead of cheating and then controlling most of the match, I'd like to see Orton occasionally cheat, only to be foiled by a face character that is not stupid enough to fall for it. This shows that the face is not only the more pure competitor, and the strongest, but also a smart and savvy one. Orton can then get lucky towards the end, and either cheat or even get a clean window of opportunity to take the win right out from under Batista. It'd create a "he got lucky" vibe, and would build to an eventual rematch.

Exactly. A bit of variety rather than 'same old shit' wouldn't hurt.

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/PWNQI65qD98&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/PWNQI65qD98&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Supreme Olajuwon, you only just noticed that now?

American commercial system in general pisses me off, they go to a break, come back you see a wrestler get interviewed for 20 seconds, then see some more "unseen footage" of 12 rounds then we get another break. What in the fuck is that about?

And as said above the "toss opponent out of ring to go to break" is getting incredibly tedious. Happens every motherfucking week. They seem to care more about having as many fucking commercials as they do promos, i was gonna say wrestling but lets face it theres more bullshitting in the ring every week than actual wrestling.

Is it so hard to space the breaks out more so they dont happen every 55 seconds or as soon as some cunt hits the mat on the outside of the ring? They may as well have some kind of built in commercial triggering system in the mats outside the ring.

Michael Cole: "And John Cena takes a big clothesline that sends him right out onto the Castrol GTX commercial mat - we'll be right back!"

ARE WE GOING TO HAVE A NEW CHAMPION, WE'LL SEE WHEN WE COME BACK!!!

er... I really can't remember the last time the belt (not the shitty IC belt these days that means fuck all) changed hands on RAW / SD. Unless it was cos of an injury and MITB cashing in.

Well why else would the title change hands on a RAW? To make the pay per view less valued?

OMFG. Not even gonna answer that as I take it u've not heard of mixing things up and the term 'unexpected'.

Perfect/Flair carrer ending match on raw was a good example of this. They do it 3 times for all the breaks in the show.

I would give anything to have half the ammount of commericals, even if they had to be twice as long. Watching US TV with their commercial straight cuts every 6 minutes all the time would send me crazy.

so...what your saying is....things have changed....rite?