10 Worst Things To Ever Happen To Wrestling Creatively
Worst things to happen? More like best things!
To paraphrase Angel 'Swiss' Garza, WWE is a lot like the Simpsons.
It was great in the '90s, and it has mostly sucked sh*t ever since, failing to embiggen a fanbase that, unmoved by its at-best cromulent fare has largely moved on. Viewership has tanked. Crying wasn't going to bring those whimpering dogs back, so WWE hatched a scheme; they ate can after can of dog food, until their tears smelled like dog food, by booking a storyline between King Corbin and Roman Reigns that lasted for about a good quarter of a year. The scheme worked.
But in another, more accurate way, it did not.
Vince McMahon couldn't locate a rebigulator - a concept so ridiculous that the Wellness Policy chortled at it - so he has seemed in recent years to reluctantly push and then pull back on the smaller millennials he evidently resents.
They used to be with it, then NJPW and AEW changed what "it" was, accelerating a sweeping change in the discourse and fan-driven revenue decline.
How did we arrive at an era that was eerily silent months and months before fans weren't allowed in the buildings?
10. The Distraction Finish
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Fool me literally hundreds of f*cking times, and I am a completely sh*t-brained geek.
Even if this particular wrestler hadn't yet fallen for the classic "I'll just come out by the stage and lull him into a trance" prank, any aspiring WWE talent should know of it. It isn't some closely guarded secret known only to the high-ranking members of the Performance Center fraternity; they've seen it on TV millions of times. And it's not some terrifying Lovecraftian horror looming in the distance, nor an apparition of an enemy thought long dead. It's f*cking Johnny Gargano or something.
This trope is unforgivably awful. They are screwing you out of a finish, and they are screwing the talent by making them look as thick as sh*t. They're the ones who deserve to be screwed! They deserve to be screwed, and just then your writer is reminded of Vince McMahon hightailing it away from Bret Hart in 2010 and he is forgiven because that was tremendous.
No, not forgiven, because it would be quite marvellous to not receive the people you are meant to believe in as complete imbeciles.