One of the most important things to understand about Fire Pro is that it’s one of those games that’s “easy to play but difficult to master.” The actual inputs you need to execute are usually 2 button combinations, it’s a lot easier than a fighting game. It’s also easier than a WWE 2K game because it’s not 3D and you don’t have to worry about broken animations and physics.

BUT…

This stuff is only easier once you figure out grapple timing.


To do your moves, you need to initiate a grapple by simply moving your character into the enemy. The game will have you lock up and if you time your input correctly, you pull off a move.

The secret here is to pay attention to the audio. As soon as you hear your foot stomp on the ground during a grapple, do your move by pressing one of the 3 attacks and a direction.

The timing window is hella tight but once you do it you’ll notice just how fluid this system is. It’ll start feeling “natural” over time and you won’t even need to rely on the audio.

You can also try paying attention to the actual stomp animation as well, although I find the audio to be more reliable. I’m not sure if this is a personal preference or if the audio is more accurate in online matches that don’t have perfect connections.

LIke I said, the timing on the grapple is insanely tight, you might even struggle against a level 1 CPU at first. To practice, simply do mission 1 over and over or just play against a level 1 CPU until you get comfortable with it. It might take you 10 minutes, it might take you 2 hours, but once you nail down the timing, the rest of the game is waiting for you with open arms.


Fire Pro has a massive amount of calculations going on under the hood, and they’re all designed to simulate a real wrestling experience as much as possible. This means that you can’t bust out brainbusters or piledrivers right off the bat. Have you ever seen Taker tombstone a guy like Austin or HHH in the first minute of a match? If the answer is yes, either it was a one off thing or a goofy house show spot.

If you try using your medium and big moves at the start, they’ll get automatically reversed, and you’ll feel more embarrassed than when you watched the Eugene gimmick, week in week out.

So in the opening minutes of your matches, focus on your light moves which are mapped to X on XBOX or Square on PlayStation. Cycle through them, and definitely try to land all of them. You’ll soon notice that your enemy is breathing heavily (watch that upper body), which is a sign you might be able to bring out your medium moves.

It depends on how the characters are built and situational factors, but usually you can move on to medium moves after 4 - 8 light moves.

However, this brings us to our next point…


You can use LB/L1 to breathe and regain stamina which helps you perform better. Use this whenever possible.

Don’t waste your wrestler on submissions and fancy mat moves at the start of a match. You’ll do a basic body slam and you’ll notice the enemy will get up in just a second or two. Use this time to simply breathe for a second. If you’re doing well, the early breathing from the get go will help you greatly over time if you keep it up.


When the same inputs from both wrestlers connect, you get into a minigame in which you strike each other silly. Mash the face buttons. I’m not sure if your stats in the background also affect it. I’ve yet to lose one of these when mashing though.


There’s a lot of confusion here, and even I was confused at first.

As page 51 of the manual points out (actual 51, not pdf page), mash the medium strike button to get out of a pin. It’s A on XBOX and X on PlayStation.

I’ve definitely kicked out of pins by just holding it instead of mashing, but I’ve also definitely lost more when holding. It is believed that mashing it recovers some of your background stats and that’s why it’s a better kick out.

As for submissions, you can keep moving the dpad/analog stick to attempt to get closer to the ropes/break the submission. I’m not sure if mashing the face button does anything, the manual doesn’t mention it.

Punching and kicking is damn hard in Fire Pro. You could even say it’s the hardest thing. Harder than Vince’s boner for Roman Reigns. It takes a long time to figure out the hitboxes and to figure out the timing and alignments.

Sooooooooooooooooooo, just ignore it!

Worry about the striking later on when you’re comfy at the game. Unless you’re playing some of the more niche match types, you don’t need to focus on them. We’ll cover striking in another one of these posts.

Figuring out the grapple timing and doing your moves is much more important.

Anyway, I hope this has been helpful! If you have any comments or questions, just let me know below. Lesson 2 will be ready soon, if you like this kind of content be sure to tell me :)

At the end I refer to Nakamura as AJ because he’s usually my test dummy… just kill me now please.

Hey comrades, getting a 100% match rating isn’t overly complicated, but a lot of situational factors have to go your way.


The TLDR to all of this is that if you apply wrestling logic and put on a match that fans can get invested in, you’ll get a 100% rating. In fact, what we’re really breaking down here gets into the fabric of wrestling itself. What makes a great match so great?

One thing you’ll have to remember is that having a 100% match doesn’t necessarily mean winning it, and it means that you might need to give up control at certain points.

For this lesson we’ll be speaking within the context of a standard 1v1 pro wrestling match, but you can apply these tips to other matches as well. You don’t need to apply everything in this post in every match, This is more of a guide instead of a must-follow checklist.


Has there ever been a wrestling match that was universally hailed as a classic but was completely one sided for its duration with no hopes of a momentum shift? I can’t think of one.

So even if you’re the best Fire Pro player ever, you’ll be running on an endless treadmill if you try to get 100% with squash matches.

If you want 100%, you have to think about your matches like a booker or movie director. Think about what the fans want to see. They want to cheer, they want to boo, they want to be excited. Reversals are super important in wrestling. By letting your opponent boss you around at certain points in the match, you’ll help create situations that are more likely to result in a 100% rating.

One sure fire way to boost your rating after dominating an opponent is to let them do a few moves on you. After that, do a few moves of your own. Then let them do some more moves (medium/big). If you were dominant and managed your breathing, you’ll be fine and you can kick out of their pins and break their submissions.

Now you’ve create a hopeful situation for the other character. To the viewer it would look like it’s a tightly contested match, but as the player you are in complete control. Finish off the enemy here with some of your flashier and signature moves.

This is just one example though, feel free to experiment!


Near falls and false finishes are the easiest ways wrestlers can pop even the most disinterested crowds. Remember when everyone got excited that Neville beat Seth Rollins for the title but then we all noticed Rollins’ foot on the ropes? Yeah!

You’ll want to strategically pin the opponent throughout the match, even if you don’t think they’re finished off. For example, I did the pedigree to AJ Styles 8 minutes into the match kind of due to luck, but I knew there was a small chance that I’d win JUST from that. I pinned him anyway for 2.9 kickout. You can apply this kind of thinking to your big moves as well, not just your finishers.

Careful not to pin after you do a lot of heavy moves in a quick sequence though, you’ll end the match early!

As for rope breaks, I’m told that your wrestler will automatically put his leg on the rope if he’s near it, but has no strength to kick out. I’ve yet to see this happen in my gameplay but I haven’t had too much time to test. With how much of a simulation this can be, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was 100% true. Perhaps a series vet can chime in here.


You definitely don’t need blood for a classic match, but it sure ups the ante!

In a regular match, it can be tricky to bloody someone up since it depends on various calculations and moves. From what I’ve noticed so far, it seems that striking, or strike based moves are the best way to get someone to bleed.

For example, I’ve played against an Undertaker workshop wrestler a lot, and his punches were amazing. He could make me bleed just from a few punches.

Your mileage will vary. And of course, weapons/barbed wire/landmines make it easy to get some color going.


Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never gotten 100% without moves off the top rope. In my latest 100%, I landed a phoenix splash and an elbow drop, whilst missing another move. The crowd pops quite a bit, but I’m not sure if the crowd is an audio cue or if it’s just programmed to pop for cool spots.

Anyway, one thing you definitely should be doing is your signature/finisher moves. Getting 100% without them is tricky. And on that note, you need to let your enemy do theirs as well. Or at least attempt to.

Think about Okada vs Omega I. Kenny never hits the one winged angel but it’s constantly teased throughout the match. It was so exciting because it made you think that if he hit it, Okada would lose. So if you’re too scared to kick out of someone’s finisher, try to maximize your breathing and to never take a lot of damage in quick succession. That way, you’ll be able to reverse moves that would normally end the match.

It’s believed that outside the ring action contributes towards the overall score (more on that later). It seems that there’s something to this, because I’ve fought outside the ring in almost ever 100% match so far. One of my favorite things is to throw someone out, do a suplex or DDT, and then put the guy in a submission. The ref counts to 20 but doesn’t disqualify you for being a ♥♥♥♥. #whataheel


No, but more time can make it easier.

My shortest 100% match clocked in at 8:06. I’ve also had 95% and higher at 7 minutes.

The common theme in all of those matches is that they were the most orgasmatronic fast paced fights that would be impossible in real life. There was virtually 0 down time and the reversals were constant, along with a few high spots sprinkled in. I once landed 3 kinshasas in a row to AJ Styles for the sub 10 minute 100% rating. He kicked out at 2.something, then at 2.9, then got knocked out. It’s possible that the knockout helped the rating because it was unexpected potentially.

So although you don’t need to go for 45 minutes for a classic, it’s definitely easier to pace a match when you’re looking to do a 20 - 30 minute bout. Having to rush everything is hectic and creates an environment where you’ll mess up your match rating if you don’t execute everything perfectly and smoothly.

That’s why it’s so rare in real life to actually enjoy a super short match. There just isn’t enough time to tell a story.


In most of my 100% matches, I’ve never used a single move that included bouncing off the rope. So like a running senton, running elbow drop, that sort of thing. Granted, this is the weakest area of my game and I don’t always time them properly, so this could be a factor. I highly recommend you experiment with these sorts of moves.

I’ve had 100% matches with loads of strong style face offs and some with just 1. I don’t know they factor into the match rating.


Big props to Carlzilla from forums on FPWarena.com for finding this out. Below is a dump of the code, telling us what the game might be looking at when grading a match. This post has covered a lot of it.

public enum MatchEvaluationItem { HPSP, FinishTime, FinishCond, SkillRank, SkillArtPoint, SkillType, Recieve, Bleeding, OutOfRingFight, SpecialMove, CriticalMove, Count_2_9, Reversal, RopeBreakJustBeforeGiveUp, Down, TotalWrestlerRankAndCharisma, AverageWrestlerRankAndCharisma, Num }

Now obviously some of these are very clear and some we may never figure out, and if you want to see his take on things, it’s over here.


Continued in part 2.1 due to character limit.

Yep! It’s more useful to see where we “went wrong” than to simply tell you to copy a match formula.

Now the first thing you’ll notice is that this match was only about 14 minutes. It wasn’t really planned out in any way, I just kind of improvised to bait the game into a 100% rating for demonstration purposes.

I think where we screwed up is the finish. I didn’t mean to end it so… out of the blue. I was going dramatic near falls and damaged Nak too much and… yeah.

For this match to have gotten 100%, we would have needed it to play out for a little longer. Instead of me crushing the comeback and winning, it would have most likely been better if I let the comeback continue for another 2 or so minutes, before dramatically counter attacking, landing a sequence of big moves, and then finishing it off.


Absolutely.

Not.

And that’s part of the beauty of this game. It’s so freeform, you can really play it how you want to. Don’t worry about pleasing the rating gods if that’s not you thing. At the end of the day, what you think is 100% and what someone else or the game thinks is 100% is not the same. Ratings are opinions.

Play the game how you want to play it, and have your fun :)

I hope this has been helpful! If you have any questions or comments, be sure to let me know below, I’m usually around. Lesson 3 will be posted soon! Cheers.