>>15801236Actual wrestler here, who has been trained by people that coached at the PC, taken seminars from legends all over the world, and has been on (jobbed) TV.
Wrestling psychology can mean a lot of different things, but in general it is the story that is physically being told in the ring. Not to be confused with the storyline explaining WHY the wrestlers are fighting, but that does tie into it.
>>15801243These are some examples of it, but everything is supposed to work together to get the wrestlers characters across to the audience.
>Example: A gaint powerhouse heel vs a mat technician Babyface.The heel should get out wrestled by the babyface, but is able to use his pure strength to overcome that and get the advantage, possibly by bending the rules. The Babyface then has to overcome a stronger opponent by enduring the beat down and trying to win using his wrestling skills.
The heel should not be chaining back and forth with the Babyface because that clashes with each man's unique selling point. This is one reason why wrestling is suffering in terms of character work. Every wrestler wants to be able to prove that they can do it all, but that means very few people are unique. Why should I care about Kofi Kingston doing a dive when I just saw a man 3x his size doing a moonsault in the match before.
Some argue this is an old way of thinking, but this is just a basic example. Guys don't need to work like it's the 80's, but they should keep that mindset of telling a physical story instead of just doing sequences of epic moves or aiming for "epic" moments.
It's the subtleties that keeps an audience invested and get characters over. It's the reason Darby Allin is so over. His wrestling fits his character perfectly. He has a high pain tolerance and just throws himself at his opponent over and over until they can't take it. He doesn't do flips because his character is never seen as a top athlete, just a skater who is used to the pain of falling.
