10 Positive Developments In This Awful Post-WWE WrestleMania Season
Bargaining.
This author page hasn't reacted well to WWE's annual post-WrestleMania season doldrums.
Gauging by social media and the backlash to Backlash, this is a shared sentiment. So much of WWE's recent televised output has compelled fans to smash their heads against a brick wall, purely to see if the laws of physics still apply - because the normal rules of pro wrestling simply do not. We've somehow reached a point at which Carmella > Asuka + Charlotte Flair.
It is a formula for depression. Elias has killed Bobby Roode in the storylines as comprehensively as main roster creative has drained the life from his character...and yet, it is Roode set to contend for the Money In The Bank briefcase, awful win/loss record and all.
Baron Corbin is trading pointless wins with No Way Jose in matches bereft of excitement, heat and purpose. Stephanie McMahon returned on RAW and reheated her vulnerable character by repackaging every other prominent character as a eunuch and, since the lower and midcard acts are directionless dorks, they might as well have tripped over the loose balls in comedy skits. That would have generated more laughs than the now-infamous Bobby's Sisters segment which, for sanity's sake, is to be banished to the repressed memory bank forevermore.
To preserve that sanity, an attempt to focus on the positives follows...
10. Shinsuke Nakamura's Heel Character
It is a testament to Shinsuke Nakamura's expert heel character work that he remains worth caring about in spite of his protracted and illogical programme with AJ Styles.
He is such fantastic value, even if the in-ring work hasn't quite been restored to his a mastery of mischievous and badass body language. On the post-'Mania SmackDown, in his backstage interview with Renee Young, Shinsuke delivered elusive laughs with his transparent, winking phoniness. It felt as if Nakamura was winking to Renee and his detractors alike. Nakamura hid in plain sight his dark side from AJ Styles - and his confident grasp of sports entertainment from the masses.
As obsessed with AJ Styles' testicles as Stephanie McMahon is with everybody else's, his wince-inducing attacks literally hit home where the storytelling misses the mark. The running gag of his English skills ("...but I forgot!") is another low-key triumph of a rivalry one needs to scrutinise much too favourably to get anything out of.
So much rests on Nakamura finally capturing the WWE Championship...or does it? This sort of thing has been written before but, albeit very slowly, Shinsuke Nakamura is proving that he belongs in and is above a broken system once thought incompatible to him.