When one entertains a profession like professional wrestling, they should know what they’re signing up for: pivotal breakthroughs, with a mixture of injuries (unintentional and scripted). If there’s one key lesson that Montel Vontavious Porter (MVP) has learned within his 27-year career, it’s how to work the crowd if an injury stoppage is part of a scripted plan. When asked on his “Marking Out” podcast, “If a ringside doctor pauses a match for a concussion check, how do you restart without losing the crowd,” AEW’s on-screen manager and now occasional in-ring wrestler of The Hurt Syndicate responded with two answers: one from a heel’s perspective and another from a babyface’s point of view.
“I would say that if you have a capable healer who knows what he’s doing, my first impulse would be…to try to get at that guy a few times and make them pull me back,” the in-ring veteran answered. “If I’m a healer, if I’m a babyface, I’d show aggressive concern…I want to beat him up, but I don’t want to see him hurt.”
Whether the uninjured party is a heel or a face, MVP emphasis that the best thing to do is to sell your concern or not during that stall. In his first run with WWE, MVP recalls which match portrayed the best injury sell, and which wrestler inspired him to create his best heel work when circumstances like that arose.
“Somebody took a nasty bump, and they stopped the match for a minute, and they were checking on the babyface that Finlay was working against…Finlay, he’s still working the crowd as a heel. You know, he’s still kind of pacing,” MVP recalled. “And Finlay conveyed to the wrestler as soon as you’re up and you’ve got a moment…he told the ref to tell them. The ref went over and said, when you get up and they ring the bell, dive on Finlay, and just start beating his a**…The crowd came right up.”
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit “Marking Out with MVP and Dwayne Swayze,” with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
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