10 Wrestling Moments That Exploited Nostalgia (And Failed)
Don't call it a comeback!
WWE's past is killing its present, and if this has diminished your appetite to revisit it, then tough t*tties.
This awesome new era of pro wrestling, and whichever form it takes - Wednesday nights on USA (awww), Japan (awwwww), Wednesday nights on TNT (awwwwwwwww), NXT UK ("Outta the way, you!") - is, if not in total stasis, then increasingly tenuous. We will need to explore the endless depth and riches of pro wrestling's past to fulfil our bloodlust soon enough.
Perhaps it's time to challenge the legacy of ECW for a second time. Reappraised as artless and tacky in recent years, the really great, cult, influential shows were quietly added to the Network recently. If you've always wanted to revisit the dying days of the NWA, and the tragicomic transition into WCW, you will be rewarded with high art and high farce alike. Classic All Japan is as pirated on YouTube as Vince McMahon wanted Katie Lea Burchill to be in 2008, and it is incredible - a challenge, morally, but a pinnacle of the craft nonetheless.
The past exists to simply revisit, in a charming echo of a cherished memory, to educate - or to exploit...
10. The Ascension Get Buried
It's the principle of the thing.
The Ascension aren't likely to tear it up in PWG or New Japan in a bid to prove or reinvent themselves. They were limited workers, subpar in a lost generation, elevated to mild success in a winning act. A literal winning act; that they dominated a complete lack of competition in the embryonic, good NXT got them sort of over. They were on the main roster buried into the same tectonic plate that split Diamond Dallas Page's ass in half because they either worked JBL into a shoot, or the story was they had worked JBL into a shoot. It was all deeply weird and regrettable stuff.
As the Ascension mocked the nWo in a accordance with the script, JBL send these poor pricks to Wrestler's Court. On live television. "How dare you compare yourself to the Road Warriors!" he bellowed, and what do you say in response to that? "Take it up with Ryan Ward, you mark"?
JBL soaped up his arm and smashed Viktor right in his bastard face.
"Welcome to the wasteland, ya sacks of sh*t!"