When did Pro Wrestling get its balls chopped off? Had to be sometime between 2002 and last night, because I watched WrestleMania last night...my first time watching any wrestling in the last 9 years (Yes, I'm slightly embarrassed by that statement).
My excuse for watching was because The Rock, my 2nd favorite wrestler of all time, was coming back & assured to be highly featured throughout the show. Even with The Rock and another old-favorite, Stone Cold, doing their thing, I can best describe WrestleMania XXVII as "slightly less than mildly entertaining."
With my most recent frame of reference being the WWF stuff I watched from 1999 - '02, I expected to see the following: 2 or 3 hours of insane story lines involving things like a wrestler abducting family members of the CEO of the WWE, envelope-pushing matches like a steel cage battle where the wrestlers can use barbed wire legally, a group of wrestlers basically killing themselves to permanently raise the bar with a tables, ladders & chairs match (just watch 1 minute of the video and you'll be amazed), the final match being the Heavyweight Title face off between two of the most popular guys where a really compelling rivalry story had been built, and of course some ridiculous "lingerie match" between 4 or 5 women who had no business being called wrestlers (but were fun to look at).
In reality the present day WWE gave me this: FOUR hours of slow, mostly boring storylines (note to WWE, the Undertaker chasing a 19-0 WrestleMania record is far less compelling than a real streak in sports since we know you choose each year whether he wins or not. But I did appreciate the chance to see a big "19-0" on the scoreboard with fireworks blasting through the stadium--totally didn't make me get visions of that Patriots' Super Bowl loss in the 18-1 season), not a single family member of WWE management getting abducted, no cage match or fight to the death stuff...barely even a metal chair used throughout the event, a fake rolls royce being smashed up as the "pushing the envelope moment", the Championship fight between a douchey ex-reality star & a gentleman wearing jean shorts, and of course, Snooki. Oh, and we got to witness the 2011 WWE Hall of Fame Inductees--a group that includes Drew Carey??
How the hell did this industry get so far off track? And how do I get those 4 hours of my life back?
I think I decided the reason the McMahon's are no longer involved is because Linda ran for an actual US Senate seat this year so images of her, her husband, and her kids hitting people with barbed wire clubs probably wouldn't play well with the voting public?
ReplyDeleteHey, I can agree with you dude. I also see the whole thing with Linda causing changes. The problem is, she shouldn't have been running for anything...geez. She knew what business her name is tied up in and that ruined everything! I've watched wrestling over the years but it's been so lame for so many years that most of my friends don't even watch it. They started because of The Rock but it'll surely die off again unless they turn up the envelope and drop the crap that they've been putting us through for years.
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