Hello and welcome once again to My Pinterest Is Piledrivers. I am your columnist James A. Sawyer.
So this column is a little late. A little lot late. Originally I was going to have a back-and-forth with Rey in regards to The Rock vs. CM Punk, but he got distracted with writing raps and ogling racks and I came to an existential realization… I don’t care.
The argument against the so-called “IWC haterzzz” was always “if you don’t like it, then why do you watch?” Up until recently, I could claim that there was something worthwhile, worth fighting for in the product. Whether it was CM Punk running roughshod over the faces in full-on God Mode, or Daniel Bryan’s mainstream meme-spawning “Yes! Yes! Yes!’ act, Dolph Ziggler’s ability to pull out a good match against anyone up to and including brooms, or even most recently the debut of The Shield. But it just doesn’t seem enough anymore.
The product lately is bad. Really bad. Embarrassingly bad. I am an out-and-proud wrestling fan. I got my cool, Brooklyn yoga instructor friend Rebekah (whose website you can find here) to embrace Daniel Bryan.
I got my glamorous, hip ‘n’ sexy friend Caitlin to follow CM Punk on Twitter. I had the idea of getting both of these young, demographically important women to watch an episode of Raw to see if I could convert them over to the wrestling side. But I had to cancel it. The shows are just that bad. I didn’t want them to lose whatever respect they had for me. If they found out I was being sports-entertained by this crap they’d block me on Facebook and never speak to me again. I mean… they had a bench press competition. On TV. They thought people would watch that! I mean, I just, how can they- sigh.
Since starting this column, the now annual (after two years) post-Wrestlemania RAW has happened, whereupon a very vocal and smarky crowd goes insane and we all hope and dream that it’ll last and effect last-ing changes. It doesn’t and it didn’t. Last year did help push D. Bry, probably, but he was also likely to be in a feud with Punk already. And since then he’s been single-handedly propping up the entire tag-team division, instead of winning world titles and going all over mainstream media promoting his chant which has been seen in other sports games as well as concerts all the way in motherflippin’ Scotland. So yeah.
This year we had the explosion when Ziggler cashed in his Money In The Bank case where the brass realized “oh yeah, fans really are involved with Dolph as a performer and cheer him over most faces up to and including Cena… let’s have him lose to Swagger.” Then you had the ironic(sincere?) love for Fandango, or at least his theme music. Don’t worry, WWE will kill that like they killed Ryder’s underground buzz and Cesaro as a serious and capable heel. Actually speaking of Fandango and Ziggler…
Watch that. Look at how funny everyone is off-the-cuff and without dumbass “writers” scripting something somehow more dire than MadTV or the twitter of Amanda Bynes.
Watch that. Look at how clever Antonio Cesaro is. And that video doesn’t show how he’s already probably in the top five wrestlers they have in ringwork. But now someone got it into their head to give him a yodeling gimmick and to job him out to a jobber, albeit a talented one. Both of whom, by the way, weren’t on the card at Wrestlemania.
The WWE has a guy that looks exactly like a buff Andy Samberg, who is also almost as legitimately funny… and he’s not on TV. Ever. How can they not give this guy a gimmick of “say whatever you want you’re fucking hilarious” and call him Derrick The Master Bateman or Derrick “The Hot Rod” Bateman (wink wink)? But I guess they’ve only got six hours of wrestling programming to fill a week and God knows people will go ham if they don’t get their Inceptionesque recaps of shows they’re already watching.
Maybe it’s time… it’s time I took a break. A longer break. This isn’t a new idea or sentiment, as evidenced in heel manager Blair’s amazing farewell column here (and P.S. go back and read all the other ones. The little-read Smackdown one in particular is a riot) Maybe like Steven Gepp and Blair, I’ve realized I’ve just aged out of the demo? Or my tastes have changed? Or I don’t feel like watching a 36-year-old white rapper that’s not Eminem in jorts and a buzzcut when I can see that all the time in Queens. Most of my columns have been and would be negative, and I don’t know if I want to write that nor do I know if you want to read it.
So for now… I bid adieu. I would like to thank Matthew Michaels, Widro and InsidePulse for putting up with me. I’d also like to thank the sincere friends I’ve made through this like Blair, DaveDubya, FDSwayze, KON, CB. I look forward to still hanging out and watching good shows, like Game of Thrones despite what that one moron says. And you, the readers. All three of you.
Should some of you have enjoyed this or liked me enough to send a buck my way or send a link to others who may want to send a buck my way, I’ve got two more weeks on my fundraiser here: http://igg.me/at/SneakyMagic/x/1989246. Don’t let me have gotten cancer and disillusioned with wrestling in vain!
As always, find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/TodaysJimSawyer.
Hell, who knows? Maybe the product will improve enough for me to come back? Stranger things have happened. I mean, odds are against it, but Vince can’t be immortal… right? I will still be here reading columns and making comments as I maintain then and now that this is the best wrestling site on the web. And I’m not saying that for the money, as there wasn’t any.
So long and thanks for all the fisherman’s suplexes.
credit to http://cmpunkisnotimpressed.tumblr.com/
