10 Collector’s Items Of Modern WWE Brilliance
Incredibly, WWE has done 10 good things in 2020: Year of that f*cking fake Doink.
WWE is Not Good.
That's why the title here is '10 Collector’s Items Of Modern WWE Brilliance' and not '10 Latest Awesome Moments From This Great Company!'
This is a company that its fans literally can't defend because it's no longer a matter of preference. It is booked by a desperate and ailing old man who can't keep track of his own bullsh*t, even if that bullsh*t followed different bullsh*t half an hour earlier. Those awful match finishes and disqualifications, Jesus wept. They can't even f*ck you consistently anymore.
In WWE, a wrestler can be disqualified when somebody assaults somebody else who also isn't in the match. Also, if a wrestler is expressly told not to alter the complexion of a match, they can, so long as it's not near the ring.
"I actually like anticlimactic plot holes."
OK. Good.
Meanwhile, in addition to the glaring continuity issues and awful, awful promos, WWE is embarrassing itself with cinematic matches like One Final Beat, the Swamp Fight, and Honey I Shrunk The Nexus.
This is a company, with its constant camera cuts, that literally makes its audience sick.
But, sh*te as it is in 2020, it somehow gave us...
10. A Wrestling Match...About Wrestling!
What a novel concept, Jesus Christ.
Wrestling style very rarely informs wrestling conflict in WWE because it is "beneath them" and the style is homogenised to f*ck in the first place. The source of conflict is often tacked on quite hideously with poisonings, swamp betrayals, alcoholic-shaming and the like.
Ahead of Elimination Chamber, Drew Gulak taunted Daniel Bryan. He was a student of the game, and Bryan specifically, and reckoned he knew how to surpass the technical maestro. A match was made in which a lower rung wrestler wished to ascend by defeating a wrestler who excelled in the same field. This was a believable challenge and it stemmed from something a pro wrestler, were this not all total bullsh*t, would seek to do.
The wrestling match about wrestling absolutely ruled, too; painful and convincing, Bryan, an immaculate technician with a genius grasp of controlling a crowd, knew precisely when WWE's broader audience might lose interest in the intricacy of the mat battle.
He seemed to time to the very second when exactly to rain down or absorb a stiff strike before the head-dropping fireworks of a hot closing stretch atypical of a regular WWE match - and all the better for it.