10 Most INFURIATING Wrestling Narratives
9. Push Cesaro
Cesaro is amazing. Of course he is.
On this week’s RAW, he excelled in an impossible situation; Ricochet looked like a bit of a thicket issuing a challenge to him on Monday, with his bad back helpfully put over with a massive bandage, but the sheer height at which Cesaro threw him powerfully, majestically into the air made for exciting action in spite of the b*llocks scripting.
It’s not just Cesaro. “Push X Workrate Guy” is an impossible projection.
Vince McMahon doesn’t push pure wrestlers because he literally does not run a wrestling company; he runs a sports entertainment conglomerate that favours the performers he considers TV stars. The tall, smug, eloquent Baron Corbin; the expressive and beautiful Alexa Bliss; the fundamentally shocking but hugely charismatic Miz: broadly, WWE insists on “cosmetically pleasing” talkers, because literally every opening 20 minute segment requires talking, and that’s something a Cedric Alexander can’t do.
If a talent can’t waffle on for minutes on end, they are f*cked, and so are you, if you watch WWE expecting them to “finally do something” with a Killian Dain. Doesn’t matter that Alexander is an unreal athlete, or that Dain looks so gloriously capable of ripping the weak to shreds.
They cannot do 20 minute opening verbal segments. Literally every episode of WWE TV begins with a 20 minute opening verbal segment. It is kind of impossible to watch every episode of WWE TV and still think they should and might push a guy who can’t much talk…
…throughout a 20 minute opening segment, the same 20 minute opening segment of RAW that opens, every time, with a 20 minute opening segment.