Arn Anderson gave his thoughts on various topics on his latest ARN show, including the layout of a long match and more. Here are the highlights:
On the layout of a long match:
“You have to break it down into increments. You have to have a period of time in the front of a match where you establish both teams are trying to get control. First, you must get control before you can maintain control. So you go through that 10, 12 minutes, go back and forth, and jock in for position. You will have one of the baby faces get stopped, and you’ll get a good chunk of 5, 6, 7, maybe seven minutes of heat to where the heels are controlling. They cut off the ring. They keep a guy close to the heel corner. Then you get what you think is going to be the hot tag, and comes the tag. Here comes the other guy. He starts kicking ass. The real trick is to get it peeked and then stop that baby face. Now we get what is called a second heat, and that first baby face can recover. Now, the audience does not know which way is up, which is Normal, which way it’s gonna go. Normally, you have a finish off that hot tag, that one hot tag. But if you’re going 30 minutes, you must break it down into increments and get a second tag. And here we go. You get a four-way, and whatever it is, it is, but you have to break it down strategically into chunks of time and story.”
On Sting vs. Vader rivalry and people thinking Vader was Sting’s biggest rival:
“Yeah, because Vader made it competitive. You know, he is, no matter how you slice it, he was a big, impressive guy and a hell of an athlete. And for him to go out and make Sting, which was his job, mind you, some guys that size would’ve felt like they had to work a lot stronger. Leon knew what his job was, and he made it happen. He could have a match with anybody.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit with an h/t to Wrestling Headlines for the transcription.