10 Times WWE Failed At Forced Emotion
Feel free to retire your face character, Trips mate.
For an industry so patently ludicrous and obviously predetermined, pro wrestling has created - key word - many heart-wrenching moments over the years.
That is a testament to why it resonates - and why WWE should be quick to utilise the realistic framework it has previously used to such memorable effect. Fans rejoiced at Daniel Bryan's WrestleMania XXX title win because he rose above the odds stacked genuinely against him by his own company to emerge as their heroic proxy.
Fans suspended their disbelief at Vince McMahon's teary COO demotion in 2011 because the acting was ultra-realistic and it felt - at that time, at least - like the company would actually follow through with his kayfabe exit. It made sense in the scheme of things. McMahon was hardly a permanent fixture on WWE television at the time. His presence wasn't ubiquitous enough to undermine the storyline.
Conversely, WWE have on many occasions tried to imbue their trademark "moments" with an undercurrent of real-life emotion - only to fail miserably.
Wrestling fans will suspend their disbelief - but only to a point. When their intelligence is insulted - when they are asked to invest in dramatic stakes which blatantly do not exist, or have been mined exploitatively - they are more likely to lose their temper than get something stuck in their eye...
10. Sasha Bank's Retirement Voice
WWE has an ugly way of re-contextualising genuinely upsetting moments into their dubious dramatic canon.
When Owen Hart tragically fell to his death at Over The Edge 1999, the genuinely grief-stricken announce team of Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler could barely bring themselves to talk above an audible register. They were crushed, struggling bravely to capture the gravity of the situation.
In what has become known as 'The Owen Hart Voice', their successors to this day still adopt a tasteless approximation of their tone whenever an intra-storyline injury occurs, in order to convey its apparent its seriousness.
A new trend seems to have emerged in the wake of Edge and Daniel Bryan's farewell missives - the 'Retirement Voice'. Sasha Banks was trotted out on the September 5, 2016 RAW to deliver some "bad news" following the back injury she incurred at SummerSlam '16. After listing her achievements and expressing her gratitude for their role in the burgeoning women's revolution, she looked to be getting to the point.
Cynicism was in the air moments after she grabbed the mic. Unlike Edge and Bryan, who were understandably and legitimately shaken, Banks was wooden - and perhaps understandably uncomfortable - having been tasked to almost callously manipulate the emotions of fans.
Consequently, the angle fell flat. Fans, attuned to WWE past form, knew something was up. And it was. Sasha was OK, folks!