It’s Official: A New Era Has Begun In WWE

Even if this was a fabulously antagonistic heel turn, did WWE have to use the pretext of a tournament to engineer it, abandoning several subplots along the way? The passage of time meant nothing. It never does. Is babyfacing The Miz worth Shane’s heel turn? Does this mean the programme between Miz and Daniel Bryan actually ended with a two-minute roll-up presented as a fluke?

Or will it resume, unabated, with our newfound sympathy towards The Miz redirected for…reasons? Does the collateral damage of eight significant roster members just…not matter? Is WWE’s new top heel a part-time 48 year-old non-wrestler?

That last question isn’t rhetorical.

In another iconic Room scene, Wiseau’s Johnny is enraged by an accusation of domestic abuse. “I did not hit her! I did not!” he vents. Then he sees his pal. Very, very casually, as if his big crisis meant not a bloody thing, he says “Oh hi Mark.” This scene is legendarily wrong. In drama, you simply don’t undercut a moment like that, if you want that moment to hit. Wiseau did it, because he wasn’t meant to make films. That’s why The Room is as subversively good as it is. WWE does this all. The. F*cking. Time.

On that same undercard, Brock Lesnar defeated Braun Strowman for the Universal Championship. Acting RAW General Manager Constable Corbin cracked Braun in the back of the head with the belt, and Brock decimated Strowman in a three minute massacre. But it’s fine; to reheat Strowman, WWE will programme him with Corbin, a wrestler few are interested in, as one of RAW’s leading winter storylines. You can’t not laugh at this. It’s something nobody wants. It’s a film made for no audience that becomes entertaining for its dumb ambition.

This new Era has been coming. Throughout 2018, WWE has routinely served up an accidental smorgasbord of baffling bullsh*t. WWE creative isn’t creative. It is a firing squad.

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