10 Expectations Vs. Reality For WWE Backlash 2020

Curb your enthusiasm.

By Michael Sidgwick /

Look, it's hacky as f*ck to use a cliché, much less lead with it, but please let it pass. It's too relevant.

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Desperate times call for desperate measures, and those tumbling ratings amid multiple hopeless global crises have compelled WWE to do something quite incredible. Well, not incredible, obviously. That would save them. WWE have done something so stupid that something like it ordinarily incites the events of a three camera sitcom.

An extravagant lie is told, causing a farcical scramble to fake the claim before it all falls flat in the face of the luckless leading man. Edge Vs. Randy Orton: The Greatest Wrestling Match Ever is a Frasier plot taking itself as seriously as Sean Penn.

It is none more desperate. Edge Vs. Randy Orton: The Greatest Wrestling Match Ever has logged onto MSN Messenger and is appearing offline, waiting for its crush to log on, whom it seeks to attract with lyrics from the latest Funeral For A Friend long player. It is making the WWE Universe a mix CD and placing it next to said crush on the last day of school, as if life is the motion picture 'Can't Hardly Wait', and not a global civil war fought amid a disease with no vaccination.

WWE is inexplicably telling you to expect the Greatest Wrestling Match Ever.

The reality...?

10. About Five Extra Matches Get Crammed On To The Show Last Minute

Expectation:

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You know what they're like. Remember Super Show-Down this year?

The entire show was shrouded in controversy - a wrestling controversy, not anything remotely important - following a report broken weeks earlier: Goldberg was set to remove the Universal Title from the undefeated Fiend, thus bringing a swift, hilarious end to his monster push. Nobody cared about anything else, except possibly the extent to which they were going to f*ck Ricochet (A: right in the ear with a premature load-blow). Whether you were on Team Sh*tty Replica Belt or Team Nihilism, it didn't matter: everybody wanted to get to the fireworks factory. Perhaps sensing this, WWE attempted to fatigue the streaming audience by welding two hours of that very week's RAW to the back of the show.

Also, they do this in a craven quest to artificially inflate the success of the Network with minutes-viewed data.

Reality:

They've stopped caring about the financial failure that was the WWE Network, and have therefore stopped doing it! Outstanding.

It's not about the wellbeing of the talent. If it were, they'd let them sit down during those ten-hour bulk TV tapings.

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