It's Official: We Are In WWE's Endgame

In WWE, you see table wreckage on every other broadcast. In ECW, Sabu, the legend who popularised the spot, refused to take a table to the ring or hide one underneath it. Sabu, at least initially, knew how ridiculous and fake that would have looked, only using a table that would ordinarily exist in the ringside environment; that way, the spot would feel more opportunistic and thus realistic. That psychology is long dead, and has been for years. Fans are meant to believe that the wrestlers spend the preceding day hiding plunder under the ring before a hardcore match. It’s a silly explanation that conjures an even sillier mental image, but it is what it is. In this TKO era, WWE has lost the plot entirely. In this TKO era of WWE, the tables are sponsored by Slim Jim. Snap into a table!

The table was once classified as a “foreign object”. The idea is to preserve the sporting sanctity of what pro wrestling is meant to be. These objects - tables, chairs, brass knuckles - are only used because they are not meant to be used. The heels do this to cheat, without the explicit approval of management. That’s the whole point. Now, in WWE, the limp crap that passes for violence is not just encouraged; it’s sponsored. WWE wants its wrestlers to careen through a table and risk injury, in what is meant to be a dangerous event that could cause injury, because it makes them money. This does not make sense - quite the opposite - but it makes money. If lamenting the end of violence in WWE is an exercise in bad faith, and it probably is, WWE in 2026 also badly undermined the concept of emotion.

At SummerSlam, Chad Gable dethroned Intercontinental champion Penta. The match was good, not great. A bit anticlimactic and short. This is a TKO era problem in and of itself, the idea that a match is a throwaway buffer before the next commercial, and this specific PLE attraction should have been allocated more time to tell the story of Chad Gable’s decade-long odyssey to finally win a singles title. Gable won, it was fine, but he at least got to celebrate with his tear-soaked family in the aftermath - and luckily for his dehydrated wife and children, they were able to replenish with some Mug Root Beer, with its trademark sweet, creamy vanilla and caramel flavour with a delicate herbal finish!

Yes, the Gable family was joined in the celebration with the Mug Root Beer mascot. A suspiciously tall person in a disguise lurked uneasily by Gable and his loved ones. Was this Big Cass, debuting 24 hours earlier than teased, in a bait-and-switch development? Anybody with a vague pro wrestling sensibility sensed that an angle was imminent. But this is no longer pro wrestling, is it?

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