There’s no sports since the outbreak of COVID-19, but there’s still some sports entertainment, and in a pinch, that’ll have to do. Truth is, it’s been a good, long time since I was more than a cursory fan of pro-wrestling. But if you’ve known me long enough, then maybe you’ll remember that time I was a pro-wrestling super-fan.
My grandfather introduced me to pro-wrestling back in the late 1970s, and yeah, I marked out to Hulk Hogan like the rest of my cohort back in the 1980s. However, it wasn’t until I got married to a girl I’d met at my folks’ hometown church in 1995 in the tiny town of Tullahoma, Tennessee, that my interest in wrestling turned into anything like a genuine personal interest. I’d been a casual fan like a lot of folks, but once Misty and I walked down the aisle, shit got real.
 |
| Savannah, Georgia, 1997. Left to right: Misty, me, Amber, & Matt |
Alas, I didn’t realize how little Misty and I actually had in common until shortly after our honeymoon. That wasn’t her fault. Still, the truth was undeniable. We didn’t like the same music, didn’t share the same interests, had vastly different world views, and wanted different things from our lives overall. And somehow here we were, already married. Whoops! We were young and beautiful, and we lived in a beach town, and that helped more than you’d think, but if we hadn’t also discovered a shared interest in pro-wrestling, I’m not sure we would have made it the entire eighteen months that we actually went.
Folks, if your whole marriage is based on physical chemistry, backyard barbeques, and a shared love of pro-wrestling, you’re gonna watch a Hell of a lot of pro-wrestling. Fortunately, this was 1997-1998.
A Hell of a lot of pro-wrestling was on TV.
I spent a good year-and-a-half reinventing myself after getting divorced, and by the time I got back from Korea, I’d mostly gotten over it. However, I still think of myself as a “smart” wrestling fan, though my enjoyment of the spectacle these days is tempered by my understanding of its costs. I watched Mick Foley’s Hell in a Cell match against the Undertaker live, for example, but my thoughts on that match now are tempered by knowing what it cost Foley himself long-term. With that in mind, I’d rather watch the WWE than UFC because, honestly, I don’t need to see people get injured for real to feel better about myself.
When I watch the WWE now, it’s with my daughter Emma. We both like it most when it’s funny and compelling, but we don’t watch it often.
At least, we hadn’t until all the sports went away.
Lately, we’ve been watching pro-wrestling a Hell of a lot. It is in this spirit that I offer some few thoughts on Wrestlemania 36.
1. Becky Lynch
By far the weirdest thing about today’s WWE is that the modern day Stone Cold Steve Austin is a relatively small-framed Irish woman named Becky Lynch. It’s good for the brand and great for Lynch and her long-time rival Charlotte Flair, but it also shows just how much the business has changed.
Lynch had one of the most interesting angles headed into Wrestlemania, and though I thought her actual match was entertaining, I didn’t much care for its ending. My sense is that Lynch would have most likely dropped the title were we not in the midst of a global pandemic. As it is, however, the WWE is supposedly considering a break post-Wrestlemania, and with that, it makes much more sense to have Lynch hang on. You’d like to have your biggest star holding the title when you come back from break. And yeah, you know, when you’ve got your own big rig, that’s when you know you’re at the top of the business.
My daughter Emma has exactly one wrestling t-shirt, and it’s The Man’s.
2. Rollins vs. Kevin Owens
This was my favorite match of Wrestlemania 36, both in anticipation and execution. I just really enjoy both guys’ work. The match itself ended about the way I thought it would, though I felt bad for Kevin Owens throwing such a huge spot off the sign in an empty building.
Great spot, great match, tough situation.
— WWE (@WWE) April 5, 2020
Great spot, great match, tough situation.
3. Understanding The Firefly Fun House Match (With Spandex)
I’m not sure how to say this, exactly, but the Firefly Fun House match on night two of WrestleMania 36 was art. I’m not saying that to be twee, or to do a hacky “actually pro wrestling is an art form you philistines” thing. I truly believe it was art, because unlike some of even the best professional wrestling matches, it challenged me. It required a second viewing, and a frame-by-frame breakdown to understand it on the level upon which I believe it was intended to be understood. It contains complex character work, introspection, and a deep history lesson from WWE, a company we (and especially I) don’t give credit to or expect to present ANY of those things in its product.
I’m going to try to break it down here and make sense of it, both for you and for myself. Keep in mind that I could be completely off on all of this, but hey, it wouldn’t be the first time. Stick with me until we get to the end.
The first time I watched the Firefly Fun House Match, I gotta admit that I didn’t love it. On first viewing late on a Sunday night, it struck me as somewhat self-indulgent. I watched it again the next day, though, and promptly realized that I’d not actually understood it the first time. Coming out of it the second time, I thought, “Wow. John Cena hates a lot of the ways he’s been used as much as the rest of us do.”
Anyway, if you’ve not watched as much wrestling as Brandon Stroud -- and who has? -- you can kind of see his point in the match below, which saw Cena in his prime against Rob Van Dam in a match at ECW’s One Night Stand (2006). Cena is clearly uncomfortable in his role as a heel here. He’s in the ring for ten full minutes here before he finally leans into it and gives the crowd what they want.
Which, of course, shows Bray Wyatt’s point perfectly.
That match is terrific, by the way, and since WWE is offering its content for free during the coronavirus pandemic, you can watch the whole match right here.
4. AEW
Figuring out the Firefly Fun House Match sent me down the rabbit hole. Emma and I had already been watching some AEW -- I was a WCW fan back in the day and only realized in the aftermath that I’d stuck with that particular fandom far too long after it soured. I therefore wanted to see what AEW had going sooner rather than later. But it wasn’t until after the Fun House Match that I realized that Dean Ambrose/Jon Moxley had left WWE. That took me to this:
And from there, I went here.
For what it’s worth, Emma and I really, really want to attend an AEW show in person at some point soon.
5. Pics from NYC
This bit has nothing to do with wrestling. I just needed a new wallpaper for my chromebook. The result sits below. The next was from the same trip, though down at the Battery rather than across the river in Hoboken. The last pic is Broadway, back in happier times.
 |
| WTC as seen from Pier A in Hoboken, NJ. |
 |
| Same weekend, from the Battery. |
 |
| Broadway. In happier times. |
Bonus Points: The XFL is Closing Shop
As I write this, the XFL has just suspended operations. Regular readers will know that I was a decided XFL fan, so this sucks a lot.
So you’re probably hearing that we’ve suspended operations.— XFL (@realXFLfootball) April 10, 2020
For the record, we signed Antonio Brown 10 minutes earlier so we could fire him, too. #XFL
WWE Chairman Vince MacMahon owns the XFL, and the rumor is that he’s had to sell a lot of stock lately because of cash flow problems related to lost ticket sales from both this past Wrestlemania and the cancelled portion of the XFL season.
That’s a bad sign.
For as much as I hate the George W. Bush-era term “job creators” as a stand-in for the 1%, the term applies in this case. Sure, the government will probably stimulate more immediate economic activity via the bottom-up approach it’s using to combat the coronavirus than it would have by doing some kind of top-down bank bailout a la TARP, but MacMahon was employing a lot of people, and those folks all just lost their jobs. His problems are a lot of peoples’ problems.
I’m sad personally, but this news is ominous for a lot of reasons that aren’t just related to sports.
That’s all I’ve got, friends. Enjoy the weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment