WWE: Can we have the wrestling back please?
Wrestlemania, the Super Bowl of wrestling as they call it, came to a halt as John Cena took the title away from The Rock. That wasn’t the best match of the night. The match that stole the show was Punk Vs. Taker. The match had every right to close the show. The streak is the highlight of Wrestlemania, and yet it has never been the main event. The same thing happened at Wrestlemania 28. Undertaker, Triple H and Shawn Michaels told a great story in that match. The finish was probably the best I had seen in years. Yet, the show closed with Rock vs Cena, with Super Cena losing due to his display of “cocky” attitude. The match also did not live up to the hype as John had to carry the totally gassed out Rock for the last 3-4 minutes of the match.
The Rock vs John Cena – was it really worth the hype?
Trust me, this isn’t sour grapes. To watch PPV after PPV with the best match on the card being relegated to the lower or middle of the card is absolutely annoying and downright depressing and is very disrespectful to the artist. Yes, I consider wrestling to be an art. A wonderfully executed shooting star press is good as any masterpiece painted by an artist.
There has always been hype and buzz around WrestleMania. It is indisputably the single biggest pay day in professional wrestling. That means Wrestle Mania gets those additional viewers who normally won’t watch WWE. These casual fans, who are the reason for the excess revenue, are the very reason why a well-deserved match never gets to be the main event.
The crux of the matter is that these casual wrestling fans are indirectly killing it for us hardcore fans. The focus is on glamorous nobodies who put together garbage matches rather than on workhorses like Antonio Cesaro. Why would a guy like Cesaro, who is technically brilliant, strong and who can communicate in 6 different languages, be kept off the card for Wrestlemania? So, Cesaro won’t be on the card because it is intriguing for a casual fan to tune in to watch “Big Show”, “Sheamus” and “Orton” team up! Absolute rubbish, in my opinion.
In Paul Heyman’s words, promotion in wrestling is all about answering three questions.
“Who are these guys?
Why are they fighting?
Why should you see it?”
Sadly but truly, the opening match of Wrestlemania 29 did not answer any of the questions convincingly and neither did the penultimate match. We all know that the Brock Vs HHH happened just so that HHH can get the win and satisfy his ego. Daniel Bryan, easily one of the best talents in the industry today, is unable to showcase his talent in a pure wrestling match because of the casual wrestling fans who want frills and WWE repeatedly plugs Rock Vs Cena every chance they get; as if the promotion wasn’t enough.
Let me explain what the problem is. The casual fan will only be drawn in if something or someone is larger than life. Lets take for example Ryback vs Mark Henry. Both are larger than life, quite literally. The whole feud was built on Ryback lifting Mark and delivering the Shell Shock. The thought of these guys going at it looks great on paper and that is as far as it gets. The match was one of the worst I have seen in a while. There were no counters, hardly any rope running and zero athleticism. Now, was that interesting to watch? Hell no! Why did their match suck? Both of them have zero ring knowledge and they lack in-ring psychology. On the contrary, Daniel Bryan and Seth Rollins will blow the roof off the arena if given a chance. They will never get a chance because a casual fan doesn’t have any knowledge about their ring ability. What they are actually doing is judging the book by its cover.
When people who don’t know anything about pro wrestling start watching it, the program needs to be dumbed down and the focus is shifted to the frills rather than the wrestling itself.
I came across a comment on twitter:-
That is the level of knowledge of your average viewer who probably only tunes into Wrestlemania because he thinks wrestling isn’t cool anymore. Well, it isn’t. It wasn’t supposed to be cool. That statement is totally disrespectful to the other wrestlers who are facing them on the card. Why would anyone watch a pay per view when he/she doesn’t know anything about the wrestlers on the card? My guess is all they would know are some Attitude Era wrestlers who they would have watched once or twice, when rasslin was “cool”. These are people who know nothing about the business and have zero respect for it because they have turned to wrestling only because others turned them down. I am convinced that Wrestlemania was always and still is a collection of good matches on paper; but when it comes to execution, they don’t seem half as impressive.
Mike Tyson in one of many non-wrestlers who came into the WWE just for the publicity
The Attitude Era just ruined everything. It has led to a generation of people who never grew up watching pro wrestling (American footballers, basketball players, body builders) to enter the business, thus leaving it in the sorry state that it is in right now. Little do they know that pro wrestling is not a glamorous business as the Attitude Era portrayed it to be. It’s a thankless and painful business where one can be in it only if he has the utmost passion and respect for the profession, and you don’t deserve to a be a fan if you watch it only because it is cool. People who attend indie wrestling shows at basketball stadiums, an old barn or a warehouse – where hardly 20 or 30 people are seated on a uncomfortable steel chair to watch the wrestling – are the ones who respect the performance art that is professional wrestling. They are the ones who motivate the wrestlers for that extra moonsault for the finish, putting their body on line. They are the real wrestling fans for whom pro wrestling should be made. We want wrestling back.