TPWW Forums - View Single Post

**hb2k** · 04-09-2006, 10:14 AM

There's a lot of ways to look at psychology. Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart are two very good examples of the variations of wrestling psychology.

Bret was very realism based, making everything mean something in the context of the match itself, and used that realism approach to bring the crowd in.

Shawn is very audience based, and actually very old-school. Even though he does things that that don't convey realism as strongly as Bret, he does the right thing at the right time to get emotion out of the audience. You'll never see a time when Shawn does the nip-up and it gets no reaction, for example. He knows how to convey things to the audience in a way that will drag emotion out of them, whereas Bret is more match based in terms of his psychology.

Kurt Angle is an interesting blend, because he does a lot of things that are unbelievably physical and intense, but at the same time knows when to do things, like all of a sudden getting up like nothing is wrong and running up the ropes, to get emotion out of the crowd and still have it add to the drama of the match.

It's a very multi-layered thing, and hard to truly describe as there's so much, and as you don't have a legendary wrestler on the forums, I guess there's only so much we can learn being on the outside looking in.

04-09-2006, 10:14 AM	#4
hb2k Do Unto Others... Posts: 2,086	There's a lot of ways to look at psychology. Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart are two very good examples of the variations of wrestling psychology. Bret was very realism based, making everything mean something in the context of the match itself, and used that realism approach to bring the crowd in. Shawn is very audience based, and actually very old-school. Even though he does things that that don't convey realism as strongly as Bret, he does the right thing at the right time to get emotion out of the audience. You'll never see a time when Shawn does the nip-up and it gets no reaction, for example. He knows how to convey things to the audience in a way that will drag emotion out of them, whereas Bret is more match based in terms of his psychology. Kurt Angle is an interesting blend, because he does a lot of things that are unbelievably physical and intense, but at the same time knows when to do things, like all of a sudden getting up like nothing is wrong and running up the ropes, to get emotion out of the crowd and still have it add to the drama of the match. It's a very multi-layered thing, and hard to truly describe as there's so much, and as you don't have a legendary wrestler on the forums, I guess there's only so much we can learn being on the outside looking in.