Why WWE Needs A NEW Pipebomb Moment

Formulas are repeated on RAW with the disturbing resonance of Jack Torrance’s typewriter. Every segment is patently staged, every promo cringeworthy and lame at worst, indistinct at best. Character arcs are largely incoherent, and much of the audience cares less and less to make sense of or believe in them. Entire divisions are portrayed as worthless. The matches are much of an homogenised muchness, even when not repeated in themselves; producers are to in-ring action what writers are to promos. This is the real deathblow, the realisation of these processes: we’ve rarely seen such a diversity and depth of talent in WWE failing to translate as genuine, unmissable star power.

We need a new Pipebomb moment.

We need something, anything, to inspire belief in a company scarcely believable in everything it does. It’s too fanciful to expect a complete philosophical overhaul. It isn’t too fanciful for WWE to allow just one of its performers the platform to instigate the next ripple effect. Punk’s brand created another. In his hands, that thing wasn’t a microphone.

This is something we could see manifested literally. There is an entire audience as dismayed with tag team wrestling in 2018 as they were with the static one-man main event scene of 2011.

The shoot promo remains shocking, even if that shock element is perilously close to Edgelord territory. It has retained the power to resonate beyond a valley of content in which it is impossible to remember what headlined Monday Night RAW three weeks ago. Say The Revival appear on RAW, given free reign to verbally lambaste the pathetic company mentality behind tag team wrestling with the same passion with which they excelled at it between the ropes. Casual fans may not believe in the act, but they care about the form. Impelled to care, the audience may demand change, if the promo is fiery enough. You cannot un-burn wood.

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