10 HUGE Tests Wrestlers Passed
1. Tomohiro Ishii
Never fear, normalised thirty-somethings of WWE's main roster! All is not yet lost.
In a particularly harsh irony, about the worst thing a professional wrestler can do is put their body through the wringer, for your entertainment, for a very, very long time. Christ almighty Dolph Ziggler, f*ck you for taking several thousand impressive and aesthetically pleasing bumps!
It's boring!
Doing not much of anything or anything different for years and years creates the impression among fans that they'll never be anything more. Well, some fans are crying out for Cesaro to do something of more importance because they formed their identity around r/SquaredCircle in 2015, but they don't count.
The older they are, the over they ain't. And for f*ck's sake people, it's not just an age thing - it's a familiarity thing. Chris Jericho was in his late 40s when he debuted the Painmaker persona in NJPW, and it was more fresh and electrifying than anything a 25 year-old was doing at the time.
But don't fret! NJPW's Tomohiro Ishii shed the normalised husk that comes with being a JAG for so many years. He had his "Holy sh*t this guy f*cking rules" breakthrough match in his mid-30s, and never looked back.
The caveat to this is that you must be a psychological genius so great that you make COVID protocol-observant fans shriek in spite of themselves every time you launch a squelcher of a headbutt.
Which Randy Orton isn't likely to do any time soon.