The Getting Over series aims to detail the psychological rules that the world of pro wrestling has developed over the past 100 years to draw the biggest houses and biggest fan reactions possible.
Rule No. 1: It's all about the money
Rule No. 2: Fans will hate a heel more if he can make them respect him
Rule No. 3: A baby face should be billed as a believable underdog
Rule No. 4: Always exaggerate, even when the truth is impressive
Rule No. 5: A heel should have no redeemable qualities
Rule No. 6: A heel should use flawed logic to justify his actions
Rule No. 7: A great babyface needs a great heel to truly get over
Rule No. 8: The top job of an announcer is to get the on-air talents over
Rule No. 9: A wrestler's character should match true personality traits
Rule No. 10: Always overload supercards with great matches and unique elements
Rule No. 11: A wrestler should always put someone over when leaving a promotion
The Road Warriors are arguably the greatest tag team in professional wrestling history. They garnered main event status and held the top tag team titles in every major promotion in the United States and around the world. They were also trendsetters in many ways. Hawk and Animal pioneered the Zubaz pants craze and made it cool to storm the ring to the sound of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" before destroying a couple of overmatched jobbers.
As awe-inspiring as this duo was, its ability to resonate with an audience was eventually hindered because the pair didn't follow the next rule in the Getting Over series.
Rule No. 12: Every wrestler must have a recognizable weakness
Why it works
Uncertainty in the finish is a major part of the draw of a professional wrestling match. Fans know the characters in the story, but they don't know how the tale is going to end, and therefore they are compelled to watch the battle to see how things turn out. The draw of uncertainty goes away if the audience feels that one person or team is unbeatable.
The presence of an immediately identifiable weakness assures the crowd that even if one wrestler or tag team is an overwhelming favorite, there is still a chance that the opponent can exploit the weakness and thereby win the match.
50-50 as heels, nearly undefeated as babyfaces
The Road Warriors were far from unbeatable in the first two years of their career, when they were pitched as heels. According to wrestlingdata.com, The Legion of Doom posted a 173-125-33 win/loss/draw record in matches for which a record of the actual finish is available. That equates to a 52.2 percent win rate, or a pace that let the audience know these muscle-bound bad guys could be conquered.
Famed manager Jim Cornette said in a shoot interview that it was only a matter of time before the fans would turn Hawk and Animal into good guys, as the crowd wanted to cheer for an unbeatable team. This happened to some extent during their time in the AWA, but it really took off late in 1985 when the duo went to work for Jim Crockett Promotions and had some all-time classic feuds with The Midnight Express and the Russian Team led by Ivan and Nikita Koloff.
This move to the babyface side of the ledger was reflected in The Road Warriors' win rate, as in 1986 and 1987 they posted 260 wins versus only 19 defeats and 11 draws. That equates to an overwhelming 89.6 percent win rate. Add that pace to the fact that most of their losses occurred when Hawk and Animal were disqualified (usually due to retaliating against underhanded tactics by the opponents' heel manager), and it meant it was next to impossible to see this team lose via pinfall or submission.
The inability to have this team lose in storyline eventually started to affect how much interest fans had in The Road Warriors' matches. Cornette spoke about this in another shoot interview when he noted that heel tag teams didn't even have to worry about getting dangerous levels of heat in a match against The Road Warriors because fans knew they weren't going to lose and therefore they never took the heat portion of the match too seriously.
The inevitable result of this loss of fan interest is that it caused The Road Warriors to change territories far too frequently. Once they won the blow-off match against every tag team in a territory, it was time to move on to a new set of opponents because fans weren't going to pay to see them destroy the same teams again and again, especially when those foes had no chance to win, even if they cheated.
This is a major factor in why Hawk and Animal worked in 12 different territories around the world from 1986 to 1991. Being peripatetic can be seen as an imperfection if one is paying close attention, but it's a trait that doesn't sell well to the average fan. In the end, the lack of an easily identifiable flaw ended up being the only recurring negative of The Road Warriors' legendary career.
Find a way to lose
The WWE had a similar issue at one point with Brock Lesnar. Everything about Lesnar, from his legitimate credentials as an NCAA and UFC champion, his nickname (The Beast Incarnate) and having his character be the first to defeat The Undertaker at WrestleMania told the audience that he was an unbeatable machine.
This could have caused a similar lack of long-term fan interest if not dealt with properly, so the WWE found a creative way to handle it via Lesnar's first return match against Bill Goldberg at Survivor Series 2016.
Having Goldberg defeat Lesnar in just over a minute told the WWE Universe that The Conqueror could be beaten, but the true genius of this approach occurred in Paul Heyman's interview shortly afterward.
Heyman, in his role as Lesnar's advocate, responded to Michael Cole's question about what happened with believable shock in his voice, but he drove home the story of the match by saying, "We screwed up. We took Goldberg lightly. This guy is a relic who hasn't stepped into a ring in 12 years. We thought this would have been the easiest payday of Brock's career."
The reality here, of course, is that the only way for today's audience to take Goldberg seriously was for him to go over Lesnar in an incredibly memorable manner, but Heyman took that a step further by assigning the loss to an easily identifiable weakness in the otherwise invulnerable Lesnar.
Following in Lesnar's footsteps
Braun Strowman has been following in Lesnar's overpowering footsteps the past few months. This culminated in a match that saw the ring collapse after Strowman executed an off-the-top-rope superplex against The Big Show on Monday Night RAW. When Strowman walked away from the carnage unscathed while The Big Show needed assistance to get out of the ring, it told the audience that, if he wasn't there already, Strowman was ready to take his place at the top of the monster heel ranks.
Since there isn't another Goldberg on the radar, the WWE had to find another way to assign Strowman a notable fault.
It did this by having Kalisto beat Strowman in a dumpster match when Strowman had too much faith in his ability to overpower his opponent. This move let the audience know that Strowman will allow his brawn get in the way of his brains. That weakness should open the door for someone else to put an end to the reign of terror the Monster Among Men has been unleashing on Monday nights.