Thanks for joining me.
If you missed it, the first part of this venture can be found HERE.
Now that we got through those #5ThingsInWrestling that could do with a vacation, here are 5 more!
1. The Wrong Kind of Heat
Just because Vince McMahon thinks that any attention is good attention, and just because Vince McMahon enjoys humiliating and laughing AT people as a hobby, it doesn’t mean we always do; especially when it stems from a problem Vince has with someone else’s personal life/relationship and it’s a reflection of Vince’s own insecurities.
I seriously wonder where these ideas come from…
Okay, that was a lie. I know exactly what’s at the crotch-erm, the heart of the matter. With that said, there are many times public humiliation/cuckolding is used to flog an angle, and any form of engagement is seen as a positive and used to fuel their continuation, sending a never-ending cycle into orbit and out of control.
May I suggest a solution? Something I’ve said even before way back during the days of Super Cena. Something I re-suggested when dealing with crowds being force-fed Roman Reigns for years. Something that I’m sure would get the message across a hell of a lot clearer than shouting abuse at Vince’s puppets while he laughs at your squirming backstage.
The next time something needs ejecting as soon as possible, simply disengage and turn your back.
It works with naughty children and it will work with Vince’s personality/product. Playing along with his narrative and boo’ing/jeering the on-screen antagonist isn’t going to get us very far when he can just spin it and saying we’re inevitably doing what he wanted us to do and brag about viewer numbers.
2. Phones at Shows
This applies to watching shows on TV too, but especially live and in person. Even Deano/Mox wanted to smack this idiot in the nose for being an ignorant bell-end.
You can’t properly enjoy something if you’re not giving it the majority/all of your attention. Do yourself a favour and try turning your phone off/onto silent for a bit, give yourself the chance to absorb something and actually live in that moment.
I even ranted and raved about this not so long ago!
3. Suicide-Dives & Variants
I know this won’t be a popular choice, but I think we’ve overdone the dives/flips onto the floor and beyond. When everyone and their dog does a move, it becomes less shocking and impactful. This wouldn’t be so much of an issue if Suicide-dives were relatively safe to pull off, but as the name suggests, they’re pyrrhic in nature.
We’ve gotten to a point where we expect small guys to use these like headlocks and they, in turn, become redundant when larger guys start doing them. Now, I appreciate the big lad’s effort, but where the hell are Keith Lee’s knees going to be in ten years? Or even 5? Cut it out/slow it down and reduce the risk of injury, please.
Last time now, less is more.
4. Silly Non-Finishes
Let’s be honest, most of the time these are thrown at us as a proclamation of laziness and/or short-sightedness. Most WWE shows include at least a couple of these and it’s something we’ve just learned to accept and no-sell, for the most part.
The most recent incident that left a particularly bitter taste in a lot of people’s mouths, was the ending to Hell in a Cell 2019. This saw a building of angry fans shouting abuse at a referee for allowing the violence to escalate and then de-escalate, before ending the match due to Seth Rollins using a much smaller hammer than the one Bray Wyatt hit him with earlier.
I suspected the plan was to turn Seth heel in the end, and WWE could have hit two birds with one stone if they hadn’t been caught staring at their own two feet.
WWE really missed a trick here and I half-expected Seth to piss his pants, break out of the cell and run all the way into hiding. This would have generated a nice bit of instant heat for Seth, kept the belt on him (for now), and it wouldn’t have soured nearly as many people as admitting WWE couldn’t think of anything better than just ending the match in the way that they did.
If the promotion doesn’t seem to care or think too far ahead, I don’t see how they’d expect other people to invest as well.
5. Love Blindness
Now, there are guilty parties all over the shop here and I’m not just focusing on the fans of a single promotion.
Many WWE fans eat crap with a smile on their face because they have either been conditioned to expect/enjoy nothing else, it’s all they know, or they know it’s what their friends/the majority watch; everyone likes a conversation piece.
Many AEW fans blindly follow anything that isn’t WWE, or that’s vocally anti-WWE in an attempt to be the internet’s largest assembly of contrary-fairies dusted with borderline personality disorder.
Many NXT fans doubled-down or abandoned ship. When the “pick a side” mentality was invited by the Wednesday Night Wars and it smacked us all in the face, the launch of a “real” alternative to WWE was the deciding factor in a lot of people’s minds; causing another black & white/love & hate framework to be established.
By all means, love what you love. Everyone has different tastes. Please just try and accept that you CAN love something and still find fault with it. It’s not the end of the world if someone has constructive criticism and wants something to get better, and it’s certainly not a justification for some of the violent outbursts you see quite often online between the fans of rival promotions.
One last little secret.
You are allowed to like all of the promotions if they happen to float your boat that is. Don’t buy into this tribal, side-picking, stone-throwing mentality.
We’ll all have so much more to enjoy.
[…] one more mention of it here, if you are […]