7 Most Insane Things Happening In Wrestling Right Now (Oct 6)

Is Sister Abigail about to wake up?

sister abigail
WWE.com

The Jinder Mahal mega-push has not only yielded the sum total of zero good matches and a spate of ugly racism over the last month of sparsely-attended SmackDown shows - it doesn't make sense.

Those in the western world already know this. Mahal is a jobber masquerading as WWE Heavyweight champion, with a repertoire and match structure as dated as his foreign menace gimmick. This is all so obviously an inroad into the Indian market...at the border of which is a blockade as big as his veiny trapezius freak muscles. WWE pay-per-views are broadcast on free TV in India. The rights fees were successfully negotiated well before Backlash. Even if WWE had any immediate plans to make them Network-exclusive, there is no point. Streaming services are as much a part of the Indian culture as logical gun control is to America's. See Jinder - that's how you get rednecks to chant "USA! USA! USA!"

WWE finally made some sense of the experiment a few days ago when it announced the obvious: a December tour of India. Only, for the love of God ("USA! USA! USA!"), they didn't bother putting him on the promotional poster (at first, anyway; Triple H hastily deleted the embedded image). This confirmed, once more, that Mahal exists for an audience of one.

Sadly, it wasn't the last oversight WWE committed this week...

7. Stand Up To Cancer (By Burying Those Who Suffered From It)

sister abigail
WWE.com

We're not saying WWE's Public Relations initiatives are a transparent exercise designed to falsely position the company as something other than a toxic slave racket. Stephanie McMahon already did that by notoriously tweeting "Philanthropy is future of marketing" back in March of 2015. We were witness to the very worst of this bullsh*t on this week's RAW, on which the company promoted Dana 'widow-of-Ultimate' Warrior as a spokesperson in the fight against breast cancer.

So careful was WWE to treat this issue with the requisite sensitivity that Women's division storylines were dropped for the segment - at the end of which the warring women put their relatively minor squabbles aside, and embraced. The breast cancer survivors then shook the ropes in homage to the Ultimate Warrior - a man who had the following to say in relation to the recently-deceased Bobby Heenan, who died last month of complications resulting from a decades-long battle with throat cancer:

You are dying, diseased on the inside, and no more time is left to get back any of the integrity that matters the most on death’s bed. Imagine what it will be like, lying there taking in your last breaths, knowing you whored yourself out your whole life, and had to, in your final years, be faced with emptying your own personal sh*t bag affirming to you the true value of what you achieved in your life. Not even Vince could come up with a better finish than this.

For Christ's sake. WWE has desecrated Heenan's legacy to put the Warrior's family over because he's more marketable. And that, sadly, is what it all comes down to.

Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and surefire Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!