When Daizee Haze and Sara del Rey battled to a time-limit draw in a match televised last Monday on ROH on HDNet, it may have sent a groan to newer-school fans who are used to matches going one fall to a finish without any timer on the match. Granted, the booking mechanism fell out of favor in WCW a long time ago, and it was never really something the WWF/E took advantage of, even in the early days of its national expansion. Even their matches with explicit time limits within the gimmick had overtime periods, most notably the Ironman Match between Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania XII.
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| No decisive finish? No problem! |
So why did this go by the wayside? Blame Vince Russo, I suppose. Even though he worked for the WWF, again, a company that didn't utilize time limits all that much, his influence was pretty widespread in wrestling, even today. He'd rather build feuds with screwjobs, swerves and clusterfucks rather than what goes on in the ring. Hell, the man is probably on record somewhere saying that title belts are worthless props and that since everyone knows that wrestling is fake, it should be treated as such. Have I ever mentioned that I have a strong urge to strangle that man for what he's done to wrestling? No? Well, I do, although I'd never follow up on those urges because I don't fancy the idea of going to prison.
Or you could go with Eric Bischoff, since I don't recall the time-limit draw being used a lot in WCW in 1995 or 1996 either. OF course, his finish of choice was the run-in non-finish, which was a hallmark of his tenure in WCW. Spend 3 hours building to a main event and then don't give the audience a finish. Man, I hate him too.
It's funny, though, because with both of those two running the show in TNA, you'd expect them not to even think about using a time-limit draw. Contrary to that, they've used it at least twice in 2010 (including one that led to Samoa Joe yelling at Russo backstage for how it was handled). The problem is, most people aren't going to hold those draws in same esteem with the ones Ric Flair had with Ricky Steamboat back in the day. Their problem is with booking, plain and simple, and it seems most of the things they'll try won't work because of execution.
But the WWE should take a note from ROH's use of the time-limit draw. The del Rey/Haze match was a part of an ongoing storyline in the fed about the women wanting more respect and competition. del Rey and Haze are really the only two legit women who compete for ROH on a regular basis. They'd already gone through preliminary competition, so them going the full 10 minutes further hammers home that they're the two alpha females in the fed, and it adds more fuel to their feud in that the draw proves nothing about which one is better and it stokes the flames for a rematch. In a promotion like WWE that has scatterbrained writers/bookers that seem to be unable of writing more than one elaborate storyline per show, something simple like this with the tease of ascension through the ranks to get a shot at either the US/IC or the WWE/World titles would work wonders their insistance on having guys wrestle for weeks in a row.
In addition to that archetype or the one mentioned prior about being used to further title feuds and giving challengers more heat, it's also a great way to help elevate guys lower on the card. Ever see the movie Rocky? Of course you did, it's an iconic sports movie. The result of that movie wasn't Rocky Balboa winning, although that was never really the endgame they were going for. The story was that Balboa couldn't go 15 rounds with Apollo Creed, and while he lost by decision, he still went the distance. It was the ultimate elevation, even in defeat. With wrestling, the guy being elevated doesn't even need to lose. There can be a draw, and it'll lead to so much heat for the rematch that you'd have someone to theoretically draw ratings or buys, even if it's just for an isolated event.
There are so many uses for time-limit draws that it's just galling how underutilized they are in pro wrestling today. Used correctly, they can help build feuds better than the clusterfuck or the run-in ever could.
Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein - Please visit his site to view the plentiful amounts of pictures he's taken for DGUSA, ROH and other indie feds: Get Lost Photography
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