Wrestling Is OBSESSED With Corruption (...And It's Got To Stop)

If this sort of thing in wrestling's always been for you, that's fine.

The overwhelming success of The Undertaker (and to a lesser extent Kane and The Brood through the lenses of those white-hot Attitude Era crowds), there's a belief that there always has to be one of these charlatans peddling the nonsense in order to ensure a promotion has range. It's not true. Not to paraphrase and butcher a classic South Park line, but there's a time and a place for this, and it's called Impact Wrestling.

That's anything but a neg, by the way. Nor is calling the former TNA a "zombie promotion" anymore, thanks to the rather impressive way the company has folded the preternatural, supernatural and outright impossible into its stories. Taking up a mantle left behind by the much-missed Lucha Underground, the likes of Havok, Su Yung and even the Broken Universe pioneered by Matt Hardy going back to 2016 has made the company a place where such gimmicks can co-exist with the rest of us on this mortal plane.

Speaking of which, Eric Young was eradicated off of it in 2022 when Cody Deaner appeared to fatally stab him in a vignette, but the in-universe rules have allowed this to either stick or be a twist. Young could just as easy come back from purgatory as never appear again, but Impact earned the right by often dedicating their shows to the possibilities such absurdities. The characters that come into the organisation know that signing for Anthem is potentially signing your own death warrant. Literally.

That's all it ever takes. Wrestling fans have no problem observing a framework as long as the rules are stuck to. Like the much-missed AEW rankings or The Undertaker in whatever you consider his prime, premises can be stretched as long as they're not pulled to breaking point. But we're long past that with the most recent monsters - goo, transmogrification or immolation in seg four is forgotten about by seg six, and mist that permanently blinds somebody is substantially less of a toxic juice if it's spat in the eyes of a major star.

That's what's potentially ruined Bray Wyatt then, now, forever and together with Uncle Howdy. Wrestling is obsessed with corruption and it's got to stop. Money-drawing monsters like Brock Lesnar and Bobby Lashley are working themselves out of WrestleMania matches and and storytelling geniuses The Elite aren't able to tell a story to build a guaranteed match-of-the-year candidate. The spells being cast aren't on audience imagination, but on suspension of disbelief.

A bit of magic here and there goes a long way, but at this rate it'll be more matches, wrestlers and fans fans - as opposed to teleporting corrupted talent themselves - that mysteriously disappear.