10 Things In Wrestling That Can’t Be Taught
8. Athleticism
It does not matter how expensive the training facilities are; certain folks are not equipped for the athletic field.
To underscore that point, WWE’s Performance Center is state-of-the-art, and look at the state of some of the acts to have “graduated” from it. Baron Corbin appears to wade through treacle at his lumbering worst. The vast majority of the women that make up the Riott Squad and Absolution stables were promoted to literally make up the numbers ahead of the first-ever Women’s Royal Rumble; countless women who trained in less glamorous surroundings are better than Mandy Rose in innumerable ways, which almost indicts the very building as a write-off.
One notable (rule-proving) exception is CM Punk.
He was the antithesis of a jock, and this mentality manifested physically. He carried, to use pro wrestling parlance, “lead in his ass”. Through literally painstaking effort and a drive virtually unparalleled - how he became a WWE headliner remains a staggering tale of pure, dogged determination - Punk compensated with a commitment to conditioning that nonetheless could not obscure, on more than one occasion, the odd unsightly botch noticeable in even his greatest matches. Or an abysmal-looking diving elbow.
Cass is not a PC product, but a PC product has rendered him extinct: Braun Strowman. WWE fans know now that the big man can be explosive. Cass decidedly isn’t that.