10 Alternative Wrestling Awards For 2023
2. The Tommy Wiseau Award For Terrible Acting
For the uninitiated, Tommy Wiseau is the worst actor of all-time. Comically bad, his creepy laughter, unhinged line readings and utterly alien approach to emulated human interaction have cast him as shorthand for bad acting.
Wrestling actors tend not to be very good, which is worrying, since WWE fancies itself as "cinema" in 2023.
Not all of them are bad, but even the good ones are incredibly broad. Their ability to project emotion is the base requirement for acting. There is rarely if ever any subtlety to the performance, and that's fine. These people are not trained actors. They are trained to convey pain, yes, but that's about it. WWE in particular insists that their characters act, and beyond Hand Staring 101 in the PC, they aren't equipped to do it.
Case in point: Von Wagner.
Now, Von is an inexplicably effective TV character, whose real-life awkwardness informs his performance as a man trying to tap into his emotions for the very first time - but it's not strictly "good". It's like outsider art, almost. His performance when visiting manager Robert Stone's house for Thanksgiving was hysterical. When he was scolded for encouraging Stone's kid's bad behaviour - "You know the kids have to eat their vegetables" - Von said "Oh yeah, right" in much the same way a haunted, guilty perp would say it when their alibi falls apart.
It wasn't quite Razzies-level. That award goes to...
On the April 29 Rampage, as part of the build to the Firm Deletion match, the Firm kidnapped Isiah Kassidy. Big Bill choke-slammed him onto an offscreen crash pad. Matt Hardy reacted to this in much the same way everybody else reacted when they watched the segment: with utter fury at what a disgrace it was. Hardy's screams of "No! No! No! No!" were just abysmal. He sounded like a toddler who was told screen time is over.
Or a wrestling vet who'd been told his screen time was over.