Who's The Beatdown?

Bear with me. Game strategist and theorist Mike Flores once wrote a seminal article on high-level play of the card game Magic: The Gathering entitled Who's The Beatdown? (link, for those who know the game) in which he defined the two roles in a 1-versus-1 match of that game: beatdown and control. In a nutshell, the beatdown player wants to be as aggressive as possible, with the intent of winning the game as quickly as possible. The control player, meanwhile, wants to stem the assault of the beatdown player through more defensive tactics, and win once the beatdown player's resources are depleted. The most common mistake ("yet subtle, yet disastrous" according to Flores) in competitive Magic is failure to understand your role. Think that you're the beatdown when you'd be better suited to control, or vice-versa, and you've more-than-likely lost.

The theory is pretty detailed in relation Magic, but the basic idea - the importance of recognising the dichotomy between aggressive and defensive play, and which one you're better suited to in a given situation - is applicable to many games, from real-time strategy (building walls and defensive turrets versus early tank rushes) to online shooters (sneaky, hit-and-run guerrilla warfare versus frontal assaults) to even backgammon (pushing to get all of your counters to your home board versus denying your opponent the ability to do the same). And guess what? I'm fairly certain the same thing can be applied to wrestling. When commentators talk about grounding or slowing down an opponent, they're talking about one competitor taking over the role of the control player.

One of the most common mistakes I see in match writing is a failure to take the participants' fighting styles into account. Even people with a good understanding of storytelling, ring positioning and psychology can often end up writing every match as if it was Triple H versus Edge, all strikes and clotheslines and brawling. Part of this, I'm sure, is simple unfamiliarity with fighting styles not common on WWE or TNA programming, which is fair enough. But it's definitely something worth learning if you want your matches to be as good as the can be. Watch different promotions from around the world and find out how people with different backgrounds fight. Learn whether luchadors favour kicks or punches, how a small high-flier sets up for their big moves, or how a British technician and a Canadian technician will differ in how they escape a hold.

More than just moveset, one's fighting style affects one's approach to combat. Another key term in Magic: The Gathering theory which I'm going to borrow is tempo, or the pace of the contest. It's difficult to define easily, but at heart, a beatdown player wants to speed up the pace of the game and the control player wants to slow it down. Translated to wrestling, the beatdown wrestler wants to speed up the pace of the match and the control wrestler wants to slow it down. Fliers with a lot of high-damage, high-risk diving or jumping attacks are looking to speed up the pace of a match, keeping the opponent out of breath and unable to catch up with the assault. By contrast, a technician with good conditioning wants to slow down the match, letting the opponent wear themselves out, before taking control.

A key attribute of many great wrestlers from Ric Flair to Triple H to Eddie Guerrero is the ability to change their pace to suit the match. Against large, slow, physically dominant people like Big Show or Kevin Nash, guys like this would speed up their assault, understanding that their role here is the aggressor - the beatdown. Against fast, tricky opponents like Jeff Hardy or
Shelton Benjamin, they'll become much slower and more defensive - the control - understanding that their role is to weather the assault and let the match run to a point when they can take over safely.

Extend this concept and in each match, one competitor becomes the beatdown and the other, the control. Think about the characters' movesets, country of origin, background and fighting styles, and try to work out who wants to be the early aggressor and who wants to be the defender taking the match to the long game. Please not this doesn't just mean one wrestler gets all the early offence in and the other turns round and dominates later on - individual exchanges can (and should) go either way. What I mean is to pay attention to what each participant's overall strategy ought to be. Get it right, and your match will flow much more smoothly as a believable contest.