10 Wrestlers You Never Thought Would Get Over On TV
Meme matches > dream matches.
On principle, it is more often than not infuriating, terrible practise when WWE gives up on a performer - particularly since there is no meritocratic evaluation process.
It's just Vince, instructing a new generation of talent to work a Vince pace, to speak in a WWE voice, to do something he will deem ineffective or boring days later, wondering what it is about these new guys that can't get over.
But it's not just a mad king arbitrarily f*cking everything up for everybody in a haze of spiralling lunacy; a great athlete with kick pads who can go but can't talk doesn't necessarily work on episodic television. Virtually every Paul Heyman Guy of 2019 was a fairly one-dimensional banger practitioner that signed up for a system that tells you that you don't have to work if you work a banger.
It's a paradox that will damn a Humberto Carrillo, but perhaps it's no injustice.
There is an art to the TV wrestler - they have to grip you in the ring, they have to grip you on the microphone, they have to dream up thin justifications to dress up a promo and make it more interesting - and there are some, looking at things through the r/SquaredCircle filter, that you'd never have thought would excel in that domain.
10. The Dark Order
The nicest thing one can possibly say about that Dark Order debut is "Well, AEW trusts their fans".
Somewhere lurking underneath that hokey, inexplicable facade were a great tag team from the early 2010s era of the vastly influential - but very niche - Pro Wrestling Guerrilla.
Several not nice things could be said about it, like "The f*ck is this?" and "How did AEW take two hours to become the WWF of 1995?"
But there was always something to the act, when considered in the parameters of the win/loss rankings framework. The Dark Order, considered tacked-on spooky bullsh*t, were created to sink their tendrils into the losers of the promotion, recruit them, and grow in number. The execution was goofy - scientology-adjacent cult attempt to brainwash oiled-up comedy wrestler Michael Nakazawa wasn't elite-tier cable TV - until the arrival of Brodie Lee, Exalted One, recalibrated the act.
As a satirical riff on WWE - figures stripped of their identity and agency do bidding of terrifying, steak-eating despot - this was tethered to a genuine and incredibly familiar cult-like mentality.
The satire is less on-the-nose now, and better - Colt Cabana is the perfect, endearingly oblivious victim of the "Jedi mind trick" Vince McMahon is said to possess - and, on the strength of this week's awesome Dynamite, fans have finally realised the superb calibre of worker in their ranks.