5 Most Insane Things Happening In Wrestling Right Now (August 3)
Mercenaries, Mentalists and Mahal Monitors.
How self-aware is WWE?
That isn't as absurd/rhetorical a question as it may appear on the surface. Stephanie McMahon, a women physically incapable of smiling, tells the media that "putting smiles on faces" is the company's mission statement as, all the while, WWE ritually books heel characters to antagonise and antagonise and antagonise babyfaces with almost zero comeuppance.
This was also technically wrong, as opposed to merely brain-melting wrong; the Stephanie McMahon character puts precisely one smile on faces each year, as she performs that old-fashioned wrasslin' "selling" remit at WrestleMania and WrestleMania alone. Maybe she doesn't actually know what a smile is. Maybe that snarl she does to approximate an authentic human being is what she thinks smiling is, and believes her job is done when surveying the crowd reaction after an interminable four-hour dual-brand pay-per-view.
And yet.
WWE are aware of its audience. They know that we’re gaga for Daniel Bryan, so they use the essence of his character to form that of Roman Reigns. They know we hate lame comedy, so script the heels to perform lame comedy to get us to support the punchlines. It’s counterintuitive, but there is a strange method underpinning everything as WWE struggles to grasp this new strand of meta storytelling.
WWE is aware of its audience; it just f*cking hates them. But content provider and consumer were oddly in tune this week…
5. WWE Buries Own Product
Brock Lesnar uttered one of the most amazing, achingly true lines in the history of RAW this Monday. Paul Heyman stormed his private locker room. He was apoplectic. He wanted to know if Lesnar had heard what Reigns just said about him. Lesnar looked up from his magazine, and delivered an adverb with the same hilarious precision with which he delivers an expletive:
"Obviously I didn't, Paul. I don't watch the show, Paul. Why would I watch the show?"
Why would he watch the show?
If he watched last week, he probably got the gist of this week's. The Tag Team division is a literal joke. Everything that's meant to be a joke isn't funny. Bobby Lashley is doing an all-smiles John Cena impression - counterproductive in itself - so poorly as to be genuinely creepy. The Authors of Pain are over, and not in the wrestling way. Nothing goes the way of pro wrestling on Mondays; RAW is brazenly awful sports entertainment in which wrestlers, as long as they are sensitive hormonal females, are sent not to the ring but to counselling.
Either one of two things is happening here, neither of which is good.
1) WWE knows full well RAW that is abysmal, and is laughing at us for watching it. Vince McMahon loses count of who wins and who loses, but is still able to count his money.
2) WWE deems RAW such a cherished institution not in dire need of complete upheaval that we're meant to loathe Brock Lesnar for desecrating its good name.
He doesn't watch RAW! Let's boo him, and cheer Roman Reigns! was the actual rationale here. Little did WWE know - or did they? - that they just turned Brock Lesnar babyface again by having him take a massive sh*t on our faces.