Me again. This is becoming a bit of a regular thing again here. I think with the build to WrestleMania and the bizarre twists and turns within the company just now it’s creating a lot of talking (moaning) points. RAW last week in my opinion was a woeful show and while certainly this week has been better, it was still limited by what had came before it. For example, they didn’t make the Undertaker v AJ Styles any less interesting this week, but I would argue the damage had been well and truly done already.
I noted on Twitter earlier in the week that I had decided to keep up with RAW until WrestleMania and at that point I will likely drop off and only be keeping up with AEW and NXT on a weekly basis. For the sake of doing this article sporadically though I don’t want to abandon it completely, so I am toying with the idea of doing a once a month format. In this new format roughly once every four weeks I would check out both RAW and SmackDown and then write about what I thought from an outsiders perspective. Almost in a lapsed fan kind of way. I will continue to refine this idea in the coming weeks and finalise what I will be doing post WrestleMania.
First thing to talk about this week is the state of Ricochet’s career. The fucking state of it. The more forgiving fans last week played off his loss to Riddick Moss as not a big deal and nothing to read in to. Unfortunately more fuel was added to the fire this week as he didn’t even appear on RAW, being relegated to facing Eric Young on the tapings for Main Event.
It’s hard to think of a bigger fall from grace than challenging Brock Lesnar for the world title on a PPV, to losing a 24/7 title match, to wrestling on Main Event in the span of TEN days. I have no doubt in a few months someone will get the idea to push him again and it will last a month before being dropped, but at this point I couldn’t care less. Ricochet as I have stated before was my favourite wrestler for years, but I cannot get behind a character after the show he is on has went out of their way to tell me he isn’t worth investing in.
The Drew McIntyre/Eric Rowan segment on RAW was quite a thing. They spend about four months building Rowan up week after week. Constantly trying to build intrigue about what’s in the cage. Then last week they unveil a huge mechanical spider which everyone rightly mocks. So a week on it appears Vince has just decided to bin the angle, sending Drew out to destroy the cage and spider within.
Now it’s not like I was invested in this storyline. I don’t even know if it is possible for me to get invested in something featuring Eric Rowan. But what this does do is compound the reasons why fans aren’t getting behind any of these storylines. When you build something up you need to have a proper pay off. That way when the next angle comes along that you are interested in you will invest, safe in the knowledge that you will get a conclusion.
Next up is the bizarre outrage about Shayna Baszler facing Becky Lynch at WrestleMania. The weirdest part is that the apparent outrage only begun on Monday. Were there WWE fans who genuinely didn’t think “The Cage Fighter” was going to win the Elimination Chamber? I mean her and Becky had started the feud already, it’s not rocket science. Like her or not, Shayna has great presence and intensity. I can’t think of a better opponent for WrestleMania this year and it is actually one of the only matches I am looking forward to. Now that’s pretty good going considering how much I hated the neck biting angle and how badly I think they have botched Becky in the last year.
That PPV on Sunday was such a fucking waste of time. It was decent in ring, but very rarely has there been less effort put into a WWE show. Main eventing with Ruby Riot, Sarah Logan and Liv Morgan was pretty astounding. The crowd had died about an hour earlier in the show as well which didn’t help matters. Causing the crowd to die was regular culprit Seth Rollins. After a fairly strong start this Messiah gimmick is dying on it’s arse. Rollins is such a great in ring talent but it really is starting to feel at this point like his online antics last year may have damaged his career long term. I like Seth better as a heel, I’m a big fan of AOP and I also think this is a good way to push (Not Buddy) Murphy while hiding his absence of charisma, but somehow it just isn’t clicking.
The last thing I want to talk about this week is the overuse of old stars in recent months. I have spitballed the assumption before that Vince had told USA Network and FOX back in November/December that although ratings weren’t where either network had hoped, they would pick up during WrestleMania season. Obviously this hasn’t happened and now it just feels like McMahon is throwing every available legend out there and hoping it does well. I mean in the last month or so alone we have had Edge, Goldberg, Hogan, Cena, NWO, Undertaker and more. Even this week on SmackDown they are hyping the return of Jeff Hardy and an announcement from Paige. Then next Monday it’s Steve Austin and Undertaker.
To be fair it has worked to a small degree in popping a rating, especially on SmackDown with Cena and Goldberg. The problem is that once again you are leading into a WrestleMania telling people that the stars of the past are more important than the current crop. This has been happening for years and it’s putting a ceiling on this generation of talent and is hurting the company overall. When looking at part time wrestlers getting a spot on WrestleMania this year you have Lesnar, Goldberg, Cena, Undertaker, Edge and Beth Pheonix. It’s far too much.
That’ll do it for this edition of Wrestling with Mediocrity. As stated at the beginning of the article I will try and pump out one a week until WrestleMania and then after that I will decide on how to structure things going forward. As always you can get in touch with me via Twitter @VizualDze. I’m always tweeting out gaming, wrestling or general life shit so feel free to follow and message me.
Peace ✌️
-VDZE
