Scurll on US wrestlers not wanting to lose by submission

[héad.casé]

"That was one of my struggles coming to America to make a name for myself. My finish or my special would be the crossface chicken wing submission. And I'd find, a lot of guys, it would hurt their ego if they had to tap out, which I found shocking because in a real fight, like I told you from my shoot experience, if we had a fight right now, Jim, it would be much easier for you to catch me in a submission and tap me out than it would be to pin my shoulders to the mat for three seconds. Do you know what I mean? It's believable to catch someone in a submission. It happens to everyone. You see Brock Lesnar and he tapped out. In his first fight! It happens. It happens, so if he's going to tap out, I'm pretty sure we can all do it. Do you know what I mean? It's a weird psychology."

Source: The Jim Ross Report

[Baldobomb-22-OH-MAN!!!]

he's not wrong. you can probably blame WWE for making tapping out seem like the worst thing ever.

[Mozenrath]

I think the attitude around submissions has changed, and it's less damaging to submit now than it was even 5 years ago, but it's still a work in progress. It does still get presented as a more total defeat than a pinfall is.

[TGM]

The mindset seems to be: if you tap out, you're saying that you can't continue this match and your opponent is better than you.

[HMARK Center]

Good God, do I agree.

The whole aversion to submitting has led to these spots where guys will stay in holds way too long, trying to sell themselves as tough, when what it ends up doing is hurting the aura of the submission and making the match drag.

I'd love to see the industry as a whole shift back toward submissions just being a fact of life and using varying psychology to explain why you might give up more quickly in some situations than in others.

[Alice Syndrome]

Even Hulk Hogan tapped out 3 times, and Brock Lesnar tapped out in MMA once, what do people seriously have against it?

[111111]

Wrestlers are such marks.

It's 2018, nobody takes wins and losses serious,people just want to be entertained.

[Tenshigure]

Nov 22, 2018 7:43:39 GMT -5 Alice Syndrome said:

Even Hulk Hogan tapped out 3 times, and Brock Lesnar tapped out in MMA once, what do people seriously have against it?

The literal idea of 'giving up' versus being too tired to muscle your way out of being held down is seen as two different things, I guess.

Now given, there are times where I've seen people tap when it honestly made no sense for them NOT to hang on for dear life (ie Sasha tapping with 3 seconds left on the clock in the Ironwoman Match against Charlotte at Roadblock 2016 when she was ahead 2-1, losing in OT), but stipulations like that are so few and far between at this point.

[thecrusherwi]

What is weird is that I never remember submissions being presented as the worst type of loss before physically tapping out became a thing in the late 90s or early 2000s. It seemed like lot more guys had submission finishers before then too.

[corndog]

Nov 22, 2018 5:50:04 GMT -5 Baldobomb-22-OH-MAN!!! said:

he's not wrong. you can probably blame WWE for making tapping out seem like the worst thing ever.

This is definitely the problem, but it's also the way WWE books them. When someone taps out before a hold is completely applied, it does make them look like a bitch. But if someone struggles, trying to get out of hold or get to the ropes for at least a little bit, it looks much better.

[Allie Kitsune]

As long as there are "You Tapped Out" chants, it's probably not going to change as quickly as people would like.

[Deleted]

What hurt submissions in the past are the announcers telling us how such-and-such top guy is locked in a Boston crab or something...
"HE WON'T GIVE UP! HE'LL NEVER SUBMIT!" As if their balls are too big to do so. (Announcer Vince was one of the worst with this.)

That, and like a previous guy stated, it's a finality. You can slink away getting a cheap pin on someone, but you can't do that with a submission.

[MrElijah]

Didn't some announcers put over that fact giving up might be the better choice due avoiding serious and/or permanent damage?

[OVO 40 hunched over like he 80]

When did Marty debuted in the us? Because everyone I remember lost to Bryan by submission.

True Dragon also had the stupid mma elbows finisher but that was in ROH for the most part, in the rest of the indies everybody tap to wither the either the cattle mutilation or the chicken wing crossface.

[corndog]

Nov 22, 2018 11:07:49 GMT -5 MrElijah said:

Didn't some announcers put over that fact giving up might be the better choice due avoiding serious and/or permanent damage?

Kevin Kelly and Don Callis are very good at this. While Gorilla Monsoon would often say certain wrestlers will never tap out, often times when a wrestler would submit in a match, he would say "they will live to fight another day".

[Deleted]

Nov 22, 2018 11:37:03 GMT -5 corndog said:

Nov 22, 2018 11:07:49 GMT -5 MrElijah said:

Didn't some announcers put over that fact giving up might be the better choice due avoiding serious and/or permanent damage?

Kevin Kelly and Don Callis are very good at this. While Gorilla Monsoon would often say certain wrestlers will never tap out, often times when a wrestler would submit in a match, he would say "they will live to fight another day".

Yes, depending on the hold and how lethal it got over, Monsoon and Ventura (and even Heenan) would mention how it might be a better idea to just submit rather than gut it out and "risk permanent injury". They'd say that to guys locked in Greg Valentine's Figure-Four, putting it over as "the move that put a lot of guys on the shelf, including Tito Santana".

I'm watching stuff from 1982 and Backlund's crossface chickenwing was treated as a huge submission...by everybody. If you gave up to that, you weren't considered a wuss or a pansy. You just opened yourself up to it and got locked in. You got beat. No shame.

[carp (SPC, Itoh Respect Army)]

It's weird to me in combination with another thing: the fact that there's something somehow shameful about pinning someone without knocking them unconscious first. If you tie someone up and pin them even though they're still able to move, it's "cheap" or you "stole the victory."

WWE-inspired wrestling acts like there's only one "correct" way for a match to work, and that's that one guy beats down the other until he's knocked out. It's weird.

[Mozenrath]

I wonder if part of it is, there aren't really a lot of "fluke" submission wins you can do in professional wrestling, whereas it can kind of happen in MMA and the like, that a lesser fighter can still seize opportunity to lock on a hold that has the "better man" dead to rights.

On the other hand, there are a plethora of pinning predicaments you can do that save face for the defeated. Outside of chop blocking someone in the back of the knee if they turned to look at the guy they're feuding with, distracted by the music, etc, and then lock on some sort of leg submission, you can't really do that very easily. Maybe a surprise sleeper hold.

[Natural Born Farmer]

I think the stigma is going away as real combat sports gain greater prominence. Abundantly clear to most people now that tapping to avoid severe injury isn’t cowardice or weakness, and wrestling should take advantage of that more often.

[Mozenrath]

Nov 22, 2018 14:46:51 GMT -5 Natural Born Farmer said:

I think the stigma is going away as real combat sports gain greater prominence. Abundantly clear to most people now that tapping to avoid severe injury isn’t cowardice or weakness, and wrestling should take advantage of that more often.

I remember them pushing that angle to it during the Invasion, when they had Kurt Angle make Kane tap, something 2001 Kane was unheard of to do, that Kane couldn't get to the ropes and that he had to tap or risk serious injury.

Not sure why they've hardly done it since.