10 Biggest Sacred Cows In Wrestling In 2018
Don't milk it...
For those unfamiliar, a literal sacred cow is a creature deified and celebrated by Hinduism without question or compromise. These (despite the utterly wonderful image you may have spotted of Kane dominating a herd of Knox County's finest milkers at the front of this article) will not be the beasts analysed within.
The idiom that emerges from this, however, can be applied to life beyond bovine beauties. Pro wrestling is fertile ground for the blind idolisation of talents by its very nature - it asks audiences to pick favourites in every single match - but the late-1990s growth of the Internet Wrestling Community (and the online branches that have sprung from that tree's roots ever since) has resulted in talents being seemingly immune from criticism if they had the right moves, looks or attributes that jived with broader received wisdom.
The declining mental and physical states of workrate sweethearts Dynamite Kid, Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero in the mid-2000s widened the net beyond the typical too - scroll below the line on this and other sites to find furious abuse in response to criticism directed at particular wrestlers. Give it a few days and those same remarks may appear below this article! Think about it like this - somebody, somewhere, is still absolutely f*cking livid that Jackson Andrews wasn't given an extended push alongside Tyson Kidd back in 2010.
And such is the reality of the sacred cow. Especially, recently, this first one...
10. Johnny Gargano
In a lot of ways, WrestleMania 34 was WWE's 2018 in a microcosm. Half of the show was a sheer delight; an exploration of the earthly pleasures the company can provide. The other half was at times disastrous, depressing and destructive.
Such was the case with Johnny Gargano's troubled journey at the top of the NXT card. He engaged in sublime matches with Andrade Almas and former partner Tomasso Ciampa on the first two TakeOvers of 2018, and though returns were diminished with his #DIY-destroying ex, Gargano's babyface fire still lit up every show he worked.
It was the dark, brooding version of his character that seemed to to trigger his fervent fanbase when reasoned criticisms came his way. Gargano's performance as he walked across Exposition Bridge outside Full Sail was, for some, utterly cringeworthy. He went on about loving "the dark" to justify his heel attack on Aleister Black, and was immediately pied by his TakeOver: War Games 2 opponent as a fraudulent teenage goth.
Certain fans dared to agree with Black's assessment, and were themselves pilloried by 'Johnny Wrestling's army of followers. The subsequent match undid much of the bickering - Black and Gargano should both stick to doing more talking in the ring than they do on Twitter - but the sooner the heart of NXT's beats through the audience rather than in spite of it again, the better.