WrestleWipe #2 - May 2024
WWE's Press Conference Cowardice / NOAH Hope For TNA / AEW's Identity Crisis
A great man once said, "May the force be with you", and May truly was a force to be reckoned with. No one was safe; journalists, wrestling fans, and wrestling fans pretending to be journalists were all at risk as the WWE flew into France and AEW coasted into mediocrity. Oh fuck off, it's 19:57 on a Sunday night and I've just counselled a tantruming toddler into their bedtime slumber. Talking of tantruming toddlers, let's get to our first topic;
Triple H's Backwash Backlash
"Evil men triumph when good men do nothing", isn't that how the phrase goes? Well a young man named Lucas Charpiot wanted to test that old saying by chucking a well aimed stone at the thick, unkempt cranium at the profits-over-people giant that is WWE by questioning one of their big time executives on the disappearance of a longtime employee accused of misconduct. He attempted this feat in the 10th circle of hell, the pit of despair and groveling more collectively known as a WWE press conference, a dank and depressing enviroment that not even Dante Alighieri could conjour through his shivering quill.
"I just wanted to ask you, Fightful and PWInsider reported that Drew Gulak was released by WWE. I just wanted you to clarify on the situation if that was true and is there anything to do with Ronda Rousey's accusation."
Transcribing credit: Aidan Gibbons, Cultaholic.com
We all know by now what happened next; Lucas' question pierced Triple H's surgically repaired ventricles, and his WWE PR guards muttered and frowned through their spittle, and the gangrenous crowd around him were tutting and were already furiously typing up their Tama Tonga wank fantasy novellas in retaliation. After all, the new-media landscape of sucking up to the copro number one for C-level access doesn't allow for questions that might disparage a poor company or one of its poor executives.
"First of all, if you're going to cite news sources, pick good ones. That's where I would start. Credible, really, maybe. We release talent all the time. The NFL releases 4-500 people a year. We release talent all the time. It's a part of what we do. You can't just hire people, bring them in, keep hiring more people and just keep bringing them in. So an unfortunate part of the job is talent get released. Can I say that he was released? He was not released, his contract was just not renewed."
Transcribing credit: Aidan Gibbons, Cultaholic.com
Triple H's response didn't answer the question. Triple H's response took down two well-liked wrestling media outlets in Fightful and PWInsider. Triple H's response took the cowards way out and skirted all responsibility by throwing Lucas' integrity under the bus, and by fucking God I hope it's lit a fire under the wrestling media world to command more answers from the King of King's at these conferences.
But who am I fudging, the two wrestling outlets that Triple H tore up like Pope John Paul II were quick to laugh it off and get their cheese boards and continue to make their money off WWE fans who just want to enjoy their RAW and Smackdown, their NXT and SPEED, and their premium live events without all that gooey, nasty stuff like forward-facing critical opprobrium, analysis with historical-context, and dissecting the horrible as well as praising the good. (Looking back to the Clash At The Castle conference in Scotland, the circumstances are still the same. Like a bunch of shitting dogs, they were. I can’t believe the Scottish allowed such corporate fondling in public, might as well hang up the St George jack whilst you’re at it).
It's that exact same lobotomised crowd that packs those WWE press events and post-shows, that same crowd with credit cards pushed to the limits just so they can blow fluff from their from their maws and mansport the ceiling with continual flowering praise at the their favorite sports-entertainment gladiators, and it's those same crowds who will be holding jars with their cerebral cortex's floating inside as they drool, "WWE…It's...bliss...".
As for Lucas? I hope he keeps at it. The wrestling worlds needs more of his ilk, and we are desperately low in supply of them. When you aim for the King you better not miss, and remember this; Lucas did not miss.
One For The History Books.
Lets stay on WWE for a while longer shall we? Not like there's anything else going on worth dedicating the writing space to these days when it comes to non-mainstream pro wrestling, what with the independent scene across English-speaking locales having no buzz, a shallow talent pool, and a lack of innovative counter-culture cutting-edge pro wrestling. Be it shows, matches, storylines or wrestlers themselves, the excitement around the wrestling outer wilds began to die down in the very late 2010's when WWE began to frog match into the independent and international spaces with a massive hard-on for ANYTHING to either spritz up their own dire product or destroy the pro wrestling that was making them look bad (you could plant a horse's turd in the middle of a flat-roof rec room and call it a pro wrestling show, and it would still make WWE look bad in 2019 but that's not the point).
Sure, COVID and Speaking Out contributed their fare share of life-affirming events to wrestling, but these were merely temporary setbacks. Wrestling shows were back up and running within a few months of the first COVID lockdowns (GCW ran a fucking Collective weekender that very same October) and those very same wrestling shows still continued after the UK and USA lost the phone numbers of a handful of nonces, wankers, perverts, abusers, and scum bags who were outed during pro wrestling's own #MeToo reckoning. Well, some of them turned up in NXT-UK and NXT, and some of them are still in WWE and AEW today, and there's a few who tour the outer-reaches of Europe and Mexico, and some who never got named at all but you know that they are bad eggs just waiting to be cracked with a teaspoon and a buttered soldier of social justice dipped into their rotten yolk, so I wouldn't say that wrestling’s worldwide roster was massively depleted, unfortunately. It’s a shit business.
When you really look at it, Coronavirus and Speaking Out made a small dent in the pro wrestling circuit, one that was hammered out with all the enthusiasm of a Ted Krilly, and in a more positive timeline those two factors should've killed 99% of wrestling like Domesto to the rim of a truck stop toilet. What really killed wrestling's vigor and spirit was WWE with a fountain pen fired through the thorax. WWE sticking it's greasy fingers into the bank accounts of promoters, WWE starting up NXT-UK under the false guise offering wrestling and wrestlers more choice, WWE buying up promotions and locking up their innards to the WWE Network, WWE signing up wrestlers to contracts where they can be pulled at the very last minute to work dark matches in Sheboygan, Mingo, or Stoke, WWE running shows against the very independent wrestling organizations that they were partnered with, and ultimately WWE stamping out any and all organic pneuma and fighting spirit left in independent wrestling by flaunting their letters and flashing their numbers. WWE beat and flayed the scene, and the scene for the most part has been crying, "Thank you sir, may I have another?!" ever since because WWE has become the self-fulfilling prophecy of being the numero uno number one, and so the cycle continues.
WWE doesn't want to help. It didn't want to to help in 2017 when it ran the UK Championship tournament, it didn't want to help when William Real was promising signed NXT-UK wrestlers that they could still wrestle elsewhere with no restrictions, it didn't want to help when they were signing wrestlers up and down cards around the world so they could lock them away in various warehouses, they didn't want to help ECW in 1997 when they gave them time on RAW just to have first dibs on the roster before WCW, or when they murdered the territory system in calculated blood during the 1980s, or when they disregarded deals made with promoters after agreeing to buy their property, and they didn't want to help provide a healthy wrestling enviroment when they buried WCW under the fucking ground in 2001.
This is a lot of background and a lot of build-up to say, "Well I fucking told you so" after WWE has had it's way with TNA and NOAH/CyberFight and GCW and whoever else feels the need to suck up to them like a simp with an overactive bank balance and a sack full of used bubble bath water. If you think this *new* WWE is going to treat other promotions kinder and with respect after decades of doing the exact opposite then I have a few scam emails to send you. Do you want an example of WWE's treatment of the promotions they partner with? How many of you know that PROGRESS streamed Super Strong Style 16 this year live for free? How many of you watched? How many of you know who won SSS16 this year? How many of you have forgotten that PROGRESS exists despite them being on the tip of everyone’s tongue in the 2010s? What's PROGRESS, you ask? Well it used to be a cool little wrestling company gathering steam and buzz and acclaim and numbers until they signed a devil’s deal with their dick and plummeted into obscurity like a fucking dart.
There was a time where I believed that WWE would be unable break into the Japanese market and effectively take over a promotion. Even during COVID, Japan stood strong against WWE’s moves and makers. Even Big Japan Pro Wrestling, on the cusp of bankruptcy, said “fuck off” and Jun Akiyama himself, I hear, suplexed a WWE executive off a meeting table when discussing All Japan’s stance on a buy-out. I still hold a slim thread of hope that NOAH will continue this attitude and trend of defiance but that isn’t looking likely. TNA were ALWAYS going to give in eventually, that’s just the nature of that particular beast, all that mattered was how long they could hold off for and at what cost, though you’d STILL think that they’d have some fucking sense by now. Then again, TNA just hired Jeff Hardy.
WWE does not play nice with others, and I’ll have to watch on as history’s mistakes are repeated over and over again all for the love of money and a flippant disregard for everyone else foolhardy enough to believe that this time it’ll be better.
AEW: Double Or Nothing (Happened).
AEW...man, what could've been.
I've most likely lost a bulk of the readership with that one; AEW's fanbase are just as defensive as WWE's fanbase only the AEW fanbase should know better and they know that they know better but they continue to cling to this alternative in a desperate bid to capture that old Monday Night War sentiment. As AEW's fanbase generally knows the score and is a little more knowledgable to wrestling's rich history, they take shots at AEW in a more personal way, Apu'ing themselves to shield Tony Khan and the roster from the bullet, as they KNOW that AEW is likely wrestling's last chance for an operable alternative for a long, long, long time. We may all be dead before the next multi-millionaire message board posting tape-trader decides to start a wrestling company with the four hottest free agents on the market.
The thing is, how do you become an operable bigtime alternative to the only letters on anyone's lips when it comes to wrestling when the identity of that alternative has been shifted to occupy that very company's irks, quirks, and utterly stupid tropes and reduced routines? When you defend AEW from creative criticism, you are essentially shitting on the idea of a conventional wrestling company standardizing themselves with unconventional ideals. When you chuck your heft into a defensive position over AEW's initials for their current identity crisis, what you're saying is, "The WWE way is the right way, and copying them is the only way to succeed, and I hope that the wrestlers just have fun, and I would like to sponsor wrestlers because wrestling is my identity, and my butt smells and I like to smell my own butt".
AEW could be the opposite of WWE; the massive WORKRATE promotion, where 99% of the action takes place in front of the paying TV audience and you leave every show wondering where all the time went. The promotion that showcases pro wrestling's various styles and combinations all in the name of pro fucking wrestling, where the wrestling itself is the story, and the interviews and angles are the punctuation that help the wrestling matches flow from segment to segment, show to show, week to week, month to month and so on and so fucking on, all with the easy-on-the eyes production values and big names and on bigtime TV channels and in packed venues where the crowd is hotter than an apple turnover, and we ALMOST had it.
But you gone fucked it up, TK. And I will place the blame squarely on TK as the dollar starts and ends with him no matter who is conjuling in the room with him, and he's earned all the direct energy from these critiques after his insulting spiel where he told us to put our money where our mouths were for actual professional wrestling matches, right after destroying the goodwill of a Wembley sellout by sticking the big stars in multi-man tags and basing the main event around comedy segments that couldn’t even pass the lowest-common denominator bar that Big Bang Theory slowly gesticulates over.
So, Double Or Nothing 2024 was a PPV that neither challenged this notion nor kept to the status quo. DoN 2024 was a PPV that was just there, taking space on a random May weekend (some would say WAY too much space considering how long the PPV was, but I didn't feel the length because I watched this show in three parts because I am smart and absolutely did not watch it in three parts on a wrestling streaming site that gradually lost access to these parts every two hours).
This PPV, that despite being middling by classic AEW standards will still throw ropes longer and thicker than any WWE PPV from the past ten years, had three matches that AEW should look at as the creative basis for their promotion going forward. Just three matches in a sea of mediocrity that still held the spark, just waiting for a paradise white-scented lighter to flick it's spark wheel nearby and dip it's wick;
1 - Will Ospreay vs Roderick Strong. The style of match that should be AEW's bread and olive spread. Hot shit pacing, hot shit sequences, and hot shit pro wrestlers who want to steal the show, all under a cool 20 minutes. With the exception of the NXT lazy-eyed "oh why is my finisher so violent uwu" storyline that didn't work in 2004 with Billy Kidman and Paul London, this fucking rocked. People who think Roderick Strong is vanilla need to go out into that big wide world and order a proper boutique vanilla ice cream instead of shoveling a spoon from the Poundland freezer. People who don't like Roderick Strong going full-on PWG gatekeeper for 15-20 aren't the fans that AEW should be catering towards; those people can get their kicks from chinlocks, Randy Orton's chalice work, Nickelodeon Jr, Kidz Bop muzak, and visual novel walking simulators, and can stay away from AEW. Thanks.
2 - Mercedes Mone vs Willow Nightingale. Bayley vs Sasha Banks from NXT Takeover: Brooklyn 2015 is still the best western women's match of all time. I specifically remember watching that match live and feeling the tears roll down my cheeks as the match reached it's nadir. It wasn't the finish that caused this downpour, with Bayley tightening her hair and hitting that final Bayley-To-Belly. It wasn't the post-match either, with the Four Horsewomen posing to signify this new standard for women’s wrestling in the States. No, I had a tear rolling my own my cheeks as Bayely was locked in a Banks Statement, on the cusp of giving up and letting the match and her title chances go, and as she desperately reached for the ropes Sasha stamped the living shit out of her arm and hand to prevent her from halting the hold. THAT feeling came from organic, logical in-ring action in a built-up pro wrestling match, and that's the drug that I'm constantly chasing, the high that comes from the pro wrestlers doing battle in intense pro wrestling matches. As that tear splashed into my open bag of McCoys, I was joyful to have professional fucking wrestling in my life (2015 fucking rocked in general as far as pro wrestling goes, by the way), and you won't see me getting that emotional over Roman Reigns stalling as he indulges in his version of the Scottish Play, and it's not something that WWE can crack because it hasn’t gone through several layers of writers and agents to be approved. Mercedes vs Willow wasn't Bayley vs Sasha, but it's a very promising building block in what could (and should) be the newest version of that story, and if it's done right and played out properly over time, then I cannot wait to crack open that bag of Thai Sweet Chicken ridged crisps and let the in-ring magic unfold. AEW should be using Mone vs Willow as their destination for a healthy women's division and reverse engineer from there. There's a LOT of promise and potential here.
3 - The Elite vs Team AEW. If pro wrestling is a ternary graph, then Will/Roddy represents the in-ring action side of the triangle and Willow/Mone would represent the opposite emotional side. The final part of the triangle is just labeled, "FUN. WILD, WRECKLESS, MERRYMAKING FUN", and that's where this match comes into the fold. Crazy brawling, characters bouncing off each other like drunk uncles on a kids birthday bouncy castle, attempted murder, big bumps, insane visuals, and music that Tik Tok kids wouldn't be caught dead listening to. Darby Allin leaping off a balcony as the climatic chorus of ‘Final Countdown’ hit has knocked my other number one ‘Final Countdown’ moment off the top spot (that was Bryan Danielson leaping onto Morishima outside the ring and standing in victory as the fans sang along to the opening lines of the chorus). This sort of match, where the camera men and production team actually have to do their fucking jobs and capture the wrestlers at their best instead of the wrestlers doing their job for them, has the sort of energy that can power a whole wrestling show, and an energy that WWE is unable to hardness as it'll mean cutting down an entire forerst just to meticulously script the entire thing out.
The rest of AEW Double Or Nothing 2024 represented most of AEW’s bad habits, traits and instincts, like a couple getting married in a shotgun celebration 5 months-in only realize 5 years later that one of them picks their bum in public and the other one is keeping something very suspicious in the chest freezer. AEW's many faults are for another time in another article at a later date unless they get addressed by AEW themselves, but I'll leave you with this;
I guess there is no one to blame.
We're leaving ground.
Will things ever be the same again?
It's the final countdown.
The final countdown.