Why This Is WWE's Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic This Year
It was Samantha Irvin tasked with providing the link between the videos and live redebut, and the specifics of the scripting foreshadowed a dangerous development;
"I think we've all appreciated the true Lacey Evans story, and before we introduce her tonight live, Lacey has asked that you show the proper respect. So ladies and gentleman, please applaud and welcome Lacey Evans."
After several minutes of awkward posing that now seemed to play to the insincerity undermining this intro, Evans did what the 'Sassy Southern Belle' had several years ago - left without doing a thing. The crowd cheered, oddly, with the instruction taken as an order based presumably on the heartbreaking content of the video pieces. A week passed in which she was moved to Raw, giving this discouraging development time to breathe. When she arrived on Raw, she laid it on so thick that even the ostensible babyface intent of the promo was hard to parse;
"I just wanna say how much I admire and respect the men and women of our armed forces. And how much they keep volunteering their time and their life to protect this country. With that being said - hold on because I want every single one of you in this building tonight to get off your butts and on your feet and give them a round of applause with me. I wanna also thank you guys for the warm welcome I got coming back here on Monday Night Raw and how honoured I am that I'm in the presence of some service men and women tonight...I wanted to personally tell you thank you for everything you do for this country. Finding the courage to fight is hard...but we've got what it takes to do so. You have what it takes to beat the cycle...we have what it takes inside of us to make it. We have what it takes to wake up, to work and to win. I may not be better than any of the WWE Superstars...but they damn sure are no better than me."
"Get off your butts" was a bit of a b*llocking, but what about the rest? Raw rolls on, so perhaps the company might move to clean up this mess next week. Good, too - it's a multifarious and largely disgusting failure on WWE's part.
They have failed to turn the real life person up to eleven because they overreached into hyper-realism and are simply not equipped to manage the states between that world and the weekly insanity of WWE television. The've also failed Lacey Evans. The model of a modern WWE Superstar, Evans has played vastly different roles in an extremely short space of time that should (and still could) have killed lesser careers. An okay-not-that-good wrestler that's yet to really be given a fair shake at become great, her personas have been so heavy handed that they've hamstrung so much over so many key years. This problem isn't the fault of Lacey Evans, yet she'll be the one at the centre of many misguided critiques and misguided takes - especially if the eventual matches and angles aren't really up to much. She deserved better for giving so much up about herself for this cause.
Most importantly, they've failed audiences that did not wish to tune into World Wrestling Entertainment and - without any content warning - relive terrible traumas from their own lives. Long before it's played out to any conclusion or Evans has even taken a bump, this story has brought forth a lot of terrible real life situations that wrestling's primary function - escapism - simply doesn't require.
The pushback from WWE insiders when criticised about the wrestling on their show is often rooted in the show being more about the "E" than the second "W". This angle's been a lot of things, but nothing in 2022 will be as far away from "Entertainment" as Evans' revealing and challenging past.