Yep, I’m back. I really don’t know for how long, though. My life has been really busy. I watched some of Raw and Bound For Glory, unfortunately. So, I will talk about those two shows. My future on Pulse now is unforeseeable. It’s not that I don’t relish writing on here. It’s just that I’m busy and there’s almost diddlysquat to talk about. In this column, I will talk about how WWE is boring, how TNA’s booking is strange, and how it all means wrestling is back to normal.
Frankly, it’s comical how rapid my perception on the WWE has altered. The WWE was blistering earlier this year. As a matter of fact, the product was so hot during that stretch from Wrestlemania to Extreme Rules that they couldn’t annihilate anything even if they tried, which became evident when Daniel Bryan became huge by accident. Long story short, they intentionally tried to make Bryan look weak to make Sheamus look strong, in hope that he could become the superstar protagonist they desired him to be. For the WWE’s sake, the crowd made it transparent that Daniel Bryan was a better wrestler than Sheamus, though and it ultimately gave the WWE an accidental chance to make bundles of cash.
One of the main reasons the WWE was blistering was because of Brock Lesnar’s comeback. He wind up bringing back something that WWE had been lacking – legitimacy and also a household name. Unlike most WWE wrestlers, Brock Lesnar didn’t feel like a cookie-cutter character due to his look, freelance promos, and legitimized fighting background. In a nutshell, the WWE had an easy chance to strike gold with Lesnar, but they managed to discover a way to mismanage someone who was the hottest person at the time in the company.
It goes almost without say that Lesnar should have beaten John Cena, but they found a commendable way of pulling off Cena winning until they foolishly kept Cena wrestling on television. It felt like if Brock Lesnar defeated Triple H via submission it would result in redemption, but it certainly didn’t feel like it. Perhaps because the build failed to make the encounter feel epic and Triple H’s overly contrived 20 minute speech about retiring. Aside from nobody believing anything he said, the biggest problem was seeing him snicker about losing a match. There are some people nobody wants to see cry, and someone who has been perceived as a badass for a decade isn’t one of them. Summerslam’s buyrate was good, there’s no disputing that. However, in my eyes, it could’ve been better. After all, look at the increase of numbers for UFC’s buyrates when Lesnar was fighting.
Just like Blair A Douglas talked about in column a few weeks ago, the only thing fans have left now is hope. Hope that WWE’s going to make new talent. Hope that one day there will be the next Stone Cold or Rock. Hope that the PG era will climax. Hope that CM Punk will become the cutting-edge heel he once was. Hope that John Cena’s character will be redeveloped or turn heel. Hope has become something every WWE fan has acquired over these years, but, especially with how many hours WWE produces a week, one must question how much hope people have left. My hope is certainly running out, and it seems others are too as Raw’s ratings have dropped significantly since I stopped viewing.
Of course, the loyalist will come up with any cope-out excuse to defend a product they adore even if it defies logic. So, many use the “wait and see” technique, a personal favorite of mine – because no matter how atrocious something is everyone must wait and see how it develops before we can judge it. According to many, for instances, we couldn’t be harsh on Brock Lesnar losing to John Cena because that would be too impatient nor could we be harsh on Triple H’s abortion of a promo because it could develop into something extraordinary. I’m sick of waiting and seeing because the waiting is overshadowing the seeing.
Jump shipping……
For a while, TNA was the saving grace of wrestling. They were emphasizing the importance of matches, giving every division a serviceable storyline, and giving stories continuity and time to build. Oh yeah, and the Bound For Glory series may have been the best put together and wrestled tournament I’ve seen in the last decade. However, the company appears to going back to their roots, with this being evident at Bound For Glory where we realized they rehired one of the worst big men in the business, wasted a big surprise on Devon, and paid King Mo more money than 90-percent of the working population makes in a day to stand there and do nothing.
I hate to be that guy but I didn’t enjoy Bound For Glory at all. Perhaps it was because I missed the build heading into the show but the show lacked emotional investment. Everything was sound, but it was missing intensity and heat. Nearly every match felt through-the-motions, even the James Storm vs. Robert Roode match that everyone raved about. Sorry but there’s nothing exciting about a back-and-forth exchange with cookie-sheets in 2012. It was all extremely vanilla and it didn’t help that Roode had a no chance of winning. The climax also didn’t seem special. I mean James Storm was screwed out of the Bound For Glory Series and lost the title to Roode via a fluke, how exactly does winning an exhibition match resolve that? The Aries vs. Jeff Hardy match felt the same exact way: There was nothing technically wrong with it. The pacing, timing, execution, and chemistry were all sound; however, it was difficult to invest into it due to the lack of heat and intensity.
So yeah, there you have it. The WWE is boring, TNA’s booking has become strange, and therefore wrestling is back to normal: sucking.
