The Secret Ugly Truth Of Wrestling Bookers
Similarly, at his NXT peak, Triple H had something special with the Johnny Gargano Vs. Tommaso Ciampa rivalry, as unfashionable as that point reads in 2024. It was in the feel-good vein of his best NXT work (the rise of Bayley and American Alpha). He over-thought a simple, emotionally resonant story of betrayal by adding dreaded shades of tweener grey to Gargano's character, who was buried under the weight of such corny, ambitious material. He did not have the range to play a tortured soul.
Even when Gargano was restored as the babyface role he best suited, NXT was done as a hot brand.
Triple H also fell into the same trap as every booker ever around that time. In 2019, NXT entered its decline years through what is mostly succinctly described as more of the same old. The main events went longer. The melodrama became really corny, as opposed to heartfelt. The shocked kick-out faces were pulled with whiter, more bulging eyes. The word "moment" littered the vernacular of every character. NXT aimed for the super-intense epic at every single TakeOver and a burnt-out, alienated audience stopped caring as much. Paul Levesque had a finite amount of ideas and, in desperation, did the same things with a higher, off-putting intensity. He was another victim of more-is-more.
Doing the basics too often leads to a basic or familiar product that is all too easy to drift away from after a number of years. Consider Shohei 'Giant' Baba. He was an incredible booker in his heyday - the best ever, perhaps. He installed Jumbo Tsuruta as a gatekeeper of the main event scene when he first paved the King's Road in the early 1990s. The Four Pillars, through Baba's framework, had to really earn it, And earn it they did, crafting an incredible overlapping saga articulated by some of the very best and most disgustingly physical pro wrestling ever. The Mitsuharu Misawa Vs. Kenta Kobashi series was phenomenal, seminal, but as All Japan Pro Wrestling entered its own more is more period, Baba hit a point of diminished returns.
The matches extended well beyond the 40:00 mark. They were masterful, if a bit much, those 1998 and 1999 wars. Excessive. The last stop on the road to ruin was, again, more is more. All roads lead to the same destination. A wrestling promotion often has to become very bad for it to get better through perspective alone.
This all paints a grim picture of wrestling's future - but could Tony Khan buck the trend?
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