5 Most Insane Things Happening In Wrestling Right Now (July 14)
Lame gags and ball gags.
The tragedy of this grisly Alberto El Patron and Paige business is in its inevitability.
It would be remiss not to mention it in this article - after all, awarding the newly-unified GFW Championship to a man recently investigated for domestic violence is surely the most blackly comic LOLTNA moment ever, utterly insane in its incompetence - but this isn't the sort of thing I want to see crop up on Twitter feeds as fodder for this article. I want to see more pornography companies producing parody films of iconic wrestling moments. I want to read about all about how Ryback came up with Hulkamania. Paige's sad, Einstein practise of lunacy - returning to an allegedly abusive relationship with the repressed knowledge that things in these circumstances never change - is becoming scary. There's no salty humour in it, nor any humour at all.
The situation is looking grim. Paige's social protests have been undermined by those of her brothers and damning audio of the recent airport scuffle which, at this rate, might be old news, so quickly is the couple spiralling into something very dangerous. Your writer hopes that a happy conclusion can be found for all.
Onto the salt...
5. The Double Non-Turn
Remember, in the Attitude Era, when 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin lost the 1999 Royal Rumble to Vince McMahon through missing a Lou Thesz Press, sending himself flying over the top ropes, and then attempting to kill Vince McMahon because he was upset at his own stupidity?
No? That's because Austin was portrayed as neither moron nor ungracious loser. Roman Reigns virtually turned heel at Sunday's Great Balls Of Fire when he drove the ambulance he speared himself into, with Strowman inside of it, into another vehicle, thus attempting some light vehicular manslaughter. Strowman eventually emerged from it, having nearly died, as this impossibly sympathetic badass - the garlic and onions behind any babyface dish. WWE finally did it! They recognised the universal sentiment toward the insufferable succotash Roman Reigns face act and turned him heel!
Only, they didn't. You could make the argument that the traditional roles of babyfaces and heels matter little in wrestling in 2017, and whether Reigns is a face or heel depending on how he is received, but WWE routinely undermines that notion by presenting matches in the most black and white goodie versus baddie mode this side of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.
Roman Reigns is a guy nobody really likes, hasn't for years, and has now taken to throwing murderous tantrums. And he is still a babyface.
Meanwhile...