The Real Reason Wrestling Has Never Been So Hard To Watch

WWE took the lead on keeping weekly television live with its March 13th edition of SmackDown, but a bizarrely enjoyable time has already been made ancient by the rapidly-changing news cycle

There was an end-of-term feel about the thing (in contrast, at least, to an end-of-the-world one), with Triple H f*cking around with Michael Cole and cameras, John Cena and The Fiend suiting the silence and Daniel Bryan and Cesaro uppercutting each other for literally nobody beyond those in the building when the show cut to break, but the novelty was destined to wear off within days.

Three, to be precise.

The 16th March Raw was a more responsible offering, but the entire 2020 Royal Rumble filling the bulk of the broadcast and Steve Austin and Byron Saxton p*ssing about in a turgid turd of a closing segment was a more realistic realisation of the problems at play. AEW Dynamite on March 18th was the best of the bunch, with wrestlers in the stands making noise in place of an audience and two reveals in Brodie Lee and Matt Hardy that provided the pretence of talking points for people beyond the single obvious one that fills our screens most days. NXT that same night, in your writer's opinion, was better still, because as a highlights show, nobody had to f*cking touch each other or go into work because wrestlers aren't key workers.

They still aren't, no matter how much of a relief their brand of entertainment might provide for some. The world continued to slow down by the day, but wrestling found a way to carry on in this strange, zombified state.

Does anybody still want this? Or more importantly, with health at significant risk, does anybody need it?

CONT'D...