Sin #9: The death of kayfabe

As wrestling fans we heard the term “kayfabe” often enough to know what is means and for those that don’t… To make it short, it’s staying “in character” while appearing publicly. For example, The Undertaker showing up as The Undertaker and being treated like The Undertaker while acting as the Undertaker. Of course his real name is Mark, his current wife’s name is Michelle and Kane is not his real brother, but that is reality, and I am talking about what is presented on screen. That is kayfabe, that is that thing the fans should suspend their disbelief on, that is how wrestling worked for years and it worked great, but that art has basically died in the mainstream wrestling.

Why is that? Well according to people there is at least a couple reasons, like the audience being more mature or the information being more accessible due to Internet, but honestly… I see no reason why it’s not there anymore.
So we have a son of a wrestler for years ago, let’s call him a different name, just because we could market that. If he does become big, he won’t be able to compete under that name outside of our company; but other then that, let’s not change absolutely anything about him. Let’s give him a generic personality, a generic motivation and people will buy it, right?
That’s a basic formula for a wrestler these days, cookie cutter personality, look and motivation, rinse and repeat, copy and paste. My question is, where are the actual characters? Where are the over-the-top characters of yesterday that are so deeply burned into our brains we will never forget them? Everyone will forever remember Andre the Giant, Ultimate Warrior, Hulk Hogan to name a few, while nobody will give two shits about 90% of guys and girls in the business today in less then 5 years.

I know the argument that there is no point for kayfabe, since everyone know everything about everyone. There is no reason trying to hide it, some say. Well I disagree. We all know that Undertaker doesn’t have actual magic powers, we all know his name is Mark, we all know he got old and his injuries caught up to him… We know this, but when we see him on screen, when we hear the bell, when the lights go off and when that choir starts to sing, we don’t see Mark William Calaway, we see The Undertaker. Characters create memorable moments, memorable moments create unforgettable experience and that makes it all worth it.

Sadly now we don’t get characters, we get flavors, we get fads. Who was the popular guy a while ago? CM Punk. People were supposed to chant his name everywhere, riot and hijack live programming. Where is that all now? Dead. Who was the popular guy recently? Daniel Brian. People so “hot” for the underdog against authority (what could be more cliché in wrestling…), they were “yes-ing”, they were “no-ing”, where is that all? Dead. Current flavor, the next fad is Roman Reigns, people love to cheer for him. He’s big, he’s strong, he’s explosive… and that’s about all he is. He doesn’t have the “talk”, and in a longer match you can see he doesn’t have much to show either.
You know what I’m saying? That is the problem with flavors, eventually people have enough of eating the same thing over and over and it starts to annoy them, that’s what happened to John Cena. “Fad” is just one letter away from “fade” and with the “monthly flavors” it transforms into that word very fast.

That is why kayfabe is needed, that is why actual characters are needed, that is why even if the whole world knows, it doesn’t matter. Superman isn’t real, nor is Batman, but people love the characters, people remember them, cause they have something distinctive about them, something identifiable even after 10, 20, 30, 40 years… That is what wrestling should be, that is how wrestling was for many years, that is why wrestling needs to go back to creating, not rehashing.

Sin #8: Predictability

Everything in the current product is predictable to the core. Whatever happens we know how it will end. Some people were amazed at how the Shield disbanded, that is was so unexpected, so surprising. And I will only say, no, no it was not. I don’t remember exactly when that was, but last year, when I was still making a wrestling podcast with my friends, I said exactly that “Where can the shield go after they beat everyone? They have to end and it will most likely be done from the inside and I think it will be Rollins that goes the separate way”. The only thing that changed from what I was thinking back then is the roles the trio took. But other then that my prediction was spot on. And yes, I have that recorded and it is online somewhere among almost 100 episodes we did, so no, I am not just spewing bullshit.

Like I started, everything is so painfully predictable that it’s beginning to look like a joke. It reached a point where some guy on some website claims that he supposedly has insider source and tells you the outcomes of the matches. Well guess what, I can do that as well, with over 95% accuracy, does that mean I have my sources as well? No, I just use my brain and the knowledge I gained throughout the years of watching. But really, it doesn’t take 20 years of being a wrestling fan to know what, when and how will happen. All you need to do is watch closely and look at the possible outcomes.

And that is the problem, if people know what will happen, what is their incentive to keep being excited? For me that is quality of matches themselves, as luckily it still can be found here and there. But let’s be honest, having the same match over and over on my screen is not what I consider fun.

What? Everything has been done, so it’s natural “creative” is rehashing old ideas or being predictable with their plans? That’s bullshit. Not everything has been done and even if, there is always a way to put a new spin on old concepts to make them interesting, enjoyable and yes, even unpredictable. And yes, I know a thing or two that could be done, but hey, that’s not an information I will share publicly or for free.

Sin #7: Wasting the veterans

This one was meant to go a bit later, but with the return of Chris Jericho I decided to write it now. Why did Chris make me write this? Well, because he is one of the greatest of all time among in-ring performers and he deserves better. He loves this business and would and did sacrifice a lot for it. We know what he did in the past, how he never complained and did what he was supposed to do, but there is a problem with that.

Chris Jericho is known to put over people, because he doesn’t mind, because he actually cares, but you can put over only so many people, before you start to look like a jobber yourself. And when that happens, there is no power behind your “rub”. It’s also important what happens to the people you “rub”. Looking into the recent past, we had Jericho put over Ziggler, who should be thankful he didn’t get cut in recent wave of releases and Fandango, who ended pretty much right after he started. Don’t get me wrong, this is obviously not the wrestlers fault. Fandango needed some toning down of the dancer gimmick and Ziggler will never get anywhere with that name. They both could’ve worked out, but WWE decided to shove Fandango down everyone throats and we puked it out rather fast. What happened to Ziggler is just another examples how soap opera writers should never, and I mean EVER, write a wrestling show, again. They’ve put him into a relationship angle, in today’s wrestling that is mostly a career killer, cause no one cares.
Of course there is also CM Punk who Jericho did put over, but Punk already was a big name, so he didn’t need a “rub”.

Chris Jericho, is a great performer, he is the best in the world at what he does, but he lost a lot of his in-ring credibility. When you lose to somebody who 2 years later, a year later means so little he is involved with a crappy Diva storyline, how can you be treated seriously? Well, I still respect the hell out of Y2J, but I notice as well, that he just doesn’t have that power behind him. It’s like what was going out with Kane. Kane agreed to put over everyone and by now, he just doesn’t carry that “main event” badge anymore. There is a lot of speculation about the current role of Jericho, but it’s quite clear that a program with Wyatt family is going to happen and most likely Jericho will, again, put someone over.

It’s just a waste, if you take an edge from the knife you have a piece of dull metal. You might be able to do a few things with it, but it’s simply better to sharpen it. Jericho needs a high profile match win, to regain some “rubbing” power. On the other hand, the Wyatts are nothing but losing all the time, they need an actual win as well.

Jericho of course isn’t the problem here, I used him just as an example to turn your eyes and really open them to actually see the problem.

Sin #6: Lack of foresight

What this one is about? Well… Imagine you watch your favorite wrestling program, everything is pretty much the usual stuff and then… Someone new/in new gimmick appears. At first you are skeptical, but after few weeks the character is starting to grow on you, starts to cement it’s persona in your brain as what you see, you start to like the guy/girl. And then the “creative fuckers” rise their ugly heads and make the character do something completely out of the left field. Now don’t get me wrong, character changes for wrestlers are not anything special, but when they happen with no rhyme or reason? That’s just shitty writing. It shows that the person responsible doesn’t know what the hell is he/she doing.

Creative these days seem to like playing with turds, throwing them at a wall. Just pick one up, throw it and see how much sticks, but is it really what it comes to? Wasting money, television time for an experiment that will most likely fail? Why most likely? Cause they usually do. From the top of my head the example of Ryback comes to mind. He re-debuted as Ryback and got all the momentum in the world, at one point one of the biggest rumors was that due to the similarities between them, Bill Goldberg will come out of the retirement and face Ryback at Wrestlemania. He was the next best thing… And then what happened? “Creative fuckers” happened, that’s what. They decided to turn Ryback heel and pretty much killed all the momentum, all the support the guy started to get. Now he is just “another big guy”, just another guy that if disappeared no one would notice, no one would care. Months of build up, crapload of money down the drain, all because of stupid people and their shitty writing. But hey, at least they fired the one responsible, right?

Sin #5: Complete lack of interest in a real tag team division

Hello? Is there anything in that empty bucket you call head? For something to be called a tag team division there needs to be quite a few more of actual tag teams available. Why? For the sole reason to make the matches interesting. If you have 4-5 tag teams you basically have 4-5 matches that look almost exactly the same each and every time. You constantly have the same people holding the belts, you constantly have the same people trying to get the belts. How much excitement can the crowd have for a match they seen 500 times already and will see 500 times more? And when the crowd doesn’t react to a tag team, what do you do? You blame the team for the lack of interest from people. With all the respect I have inside me to the performers, there is only SO much they can do. If you have them in the ring 200-300 times a year, there’s a limit to what they can do, the material will get stale, people will begin to say “we’ve seen that”, there will be less and less reaction, there will be silence. But the blame is of course on the wrestlers side, right?
Tag team wrestling has a great history and even today there are some tag teams that work great together. Too bad they won’t work together very long, cause as soon as the officials notice the lack of crowd involvement, they make the stupidest decision possible, they split the team. Of course they could analyze “why it happened?”, change something either in the gimmick or something else, but why bother with using those moronic brains. You get no crowd reaction after your 200th match against the same opponent in a row? Well obviously you don’t work well together, so time to split you up. Bull-fucking-shit.
And while we are on the subject of tag team, do we really need that cookie cutter formula of matches? Copy, paste… times 5000. Here’s the formula: when match starts, the face has an advantage, then the heels dominate, then we get a near-tag for the faces, then heels dominate, then we get a hot tag for the faces. After that, depending on who is meant to win it’s either a hot-tagged face kicking ass and going for the pin, or a heel stopping the pin and winning. Rinse and repeat. I have seen that formula in the works so many times that I can actually call it with 95% timing accuracy. And when you constantly have the same people battling each other, I can even call the moves that are gonna happen 95% of the time. 
The state of tag team wrestling in the mainstream… Can’t say it’s non-existing, cause from time to time there are teams that shine for few months, but with lousy, lazy writing and moronic management, everything that’s good, goes to shit very, very fast.

Sin #4: Women cannot be the “main event”

You know what is one thing that pisses me off the most in current “main stream” wrestling? The way women performers are being treated. The history as well as independent scene show that women can and a lot of the time are the main event, are what draws people to watch, are entertaining, are funny, are skilled in the in-ring art as well as on the microphone. But why you never see that in the “main stream” ring? I am a long time fan and I do remember other times, other ways. It saddens me that we don’t really have women-wrestlers in the ring on TV, no… What we have are walking tits, vaginas and asses, a laughable caricature that some people still call a “division”.

What the fuck? What the serious fuck is wrong with you people? This was a strong field in the business, it still is in some place, but nooooo, not in the weekly television. In the TV we need to have attires that would work great at a street corner on a cheap whore, cause that is what you think of women wrestler, right? A cheap whore, that shows her “goods” cause that is all she has? Well fuck you if you do. And after they do swallow their pride what do you do? Give them a 5 minute match, so the viewers at home know when to go take a piss.

What happens during those matches? A shitload of nothing. Every match is the same, no ingenuity, no time, no motivation, no inspiration, definitely no actual care from the management goes into those. Just “who cares” right? Give them 5 minutes of on-screen time (and that includes the entrances and exits), put on them 10 inches of material, oh and the most important thing, make sure they screech and moan a lot, spread their legs and bend over every time they can, so maybe the fathers and teens among the crowd will get a kick out of watching this. Don’t make the commentators care about what they do, make them comment on how they are “bat-shit crazy” or make them find a PG way of saying they look so good, they want to fuck them. Quality TV.

Fuck you, seriously, fuck you, all of you who make that happen every week. Fuck each and every single person that still accepts that. Fuck each and every person that can change the state of mainstream women wrestling and doesn’t do anything with that.
I love wrestling, but I am done pretending things are “Gonna get better, you’ll see next week”.
For the fucknuggets who don’t know, women are capable to captivate the attention of the crowds, they can draw huge crowds, if you actually give them a chance to do it, a fair chance.

Sin #3: No respect for the wrestlers

So I turn on the TV/computer to watch some wrestling, why? Oh I don’t know why, maybe because it has been a huge part of my life for the past 23 years, I grew attached, I care. Is that so hard to understand? Well I can see every week that for you it is hard to understand. Unlike you, I do respect people in the ring, both men and women. Thanks to them my life is just a little less shitty for few hours a week. I don’t care if it is a good guy, bad guy, every person who steps between those ropes to perform deserves and gets all the respect in the world from me and I am sure not just from me.

But why you don’t do the same? Is it so hard to tell the commentators to actually care about what goes inside the ring? Are you seriously so dense, you think we will forget about Triple H’s huge nose from the top of the show? Those people work their asses off for you to stuff your wallets with hard cash, they earn the fucking right for attention when they are in the ring. Don’t talk about your guest hosts, don’t talk about what the “current management” did 2 hours ago. Why it matters? Because commentary is an integral part of every televised or recorded wrestling show. If the people we hear for majority of the transmission don’t care about the in-ring action, they create the image like it doesn’t matter, like what we see in the ring is just a piss break. Well guess fucking what! It’s those “small” matches that very often steal the show, it’s those small matches that people remember for the longest time. Need I remind you the classic WM3 match between Macho Man and Ricky Steamboat? Hulk Hogan was in the main event then, he defeated Andre the Giant, but it’s not that match that people remember the most.

The hardest working people in the business are those men and women you shove into the midcard hell and brush over them, treat them as filler. When it’s them that a lot of the times MAKE your show, MAKE people remember the experience. Bottom line is, get your heads out of your asses and give them some respect, they certainly earned it.

Sin #2: Acting as if people have less than 5 seconds memory

Hey morons! Guess what?! We can reach back to few months, few years ago to check every bullshit you are trying to pull. Are you seriously trying to say something has never happened before? Well excuse me for actually remembering what happened a year ago when XYZ fought ABC. And what do you expect of us? To act oh so surprised when something happens? “John Cena picked up Mark Henry/Big Show/Ryback/Great Khali/every big guy ever… I have never seen anything like this before!”. Are you taking us for idiots? Oh, right, you do. Well we are not, at least not all of us, not most of us. We have more than 5 seconds of memory and when you pull something like that from the inside of your ass we can see that is just lazy writing by the assholes who you call creative.

Sin #1: Treating wrestling as a soap opera

Why the serious fuck are wrestling companies hiring soap opera writers straight from TV? Just because they are airing wrestling shows on TV? That’s just bull and a load of it. Professional wrestling is an art and should be treated as an art, it’s a live show in front of a live crowd, a crowd that can and does react. A true interaction between a performer and the fan. People, wake the fuck up, we are talking here about theater and not about another “Bold and the Beautiful”!

"Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elements of design and stagecraft are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience."

Treat wrestlers like real, live performers, do not dumb down their roles in telling a story to the fans by allowing shitty writers rehash for a billionth time the same scenario.