10 Biggest Frauds In Wrestling Right Now
Your eyes aren't deceiving you, but wrestling companies are.
Adam Cole is a fraud.
The cynical, villainous and power-hungry leader of the Undisputed Elite has cunningly wormed his way to the top of every promotion he's worked for and is already attempting to do the same in All Elite Wrestling.
These traits couldn't be further away from those held by the the man behind that cynical smile.
He is the opposite of the "real personality turned up to 11" cliche, per just about everything ever said about him and how he comes across on his enormously popular Twitch stream. Sleazy and repulsive energy oozes from from Cole, but shoot life Austin Jenkins comes across as a model human being. And it'd be nice if this was how every wrestling fraud worked.
Too many times there's been stories of wrestlers living a rather ugly gimmick whilst milking the audience for every last penny under the guise of a performance, or the booking of wrestling itself spilling and spinning such b*llocks that earnest paying punters are left footing the bill for something they'd probably rather not engage with.
Why are these frauds perpetuated? And why are they still going on today? The answer is always "CASH. Cold hard rotten cash", or at very least a long game that reaches the same destination. But what are the most egregious offenders at present?
10. Tony Khan's Surprises
Even piping hot pro wrestling cools off in the end.
Stone Cold Steve Austin getting mowed down by Rikishi in 1999 was a downer, but his 2000 return almost matched that energy. Angry at his mystery aggressor, Austin's character took it out on everybody despite the nice time most of the roster had been permitted to have in his absence. Hulkamania hadn't even reached the stage that Vince McMahon could sell out WrestleMania III by the time he was goo-goo for Tom Magee one year earlier - the Chairman used to try and spot this sort of thing before it went out of date, but just happened to be approximately four years premature in his assessment. Every New World Order iteration was worse than the last one.
This is very simply The Way Of Things, and All Elite Wrestling's surprise arrivals/reveals have very much located saturation point. "Wildcard Wednesday" was the subheading given to May 18th 2022's Dynamite, but surprise appearances by tournament "jokers" (and losers) Johnny Elite and Maki Itoh only furthered the discourse on where half of the existing roster were.
When your audience would rather see familiar faces rather than brand new ones, the device has categorically been exhausted.