WRESTLESSAINCE 2013

This was originally posted at LowBlowBlog.com, a wrestling blog I started but gave up on maintaining because that's how that stuff goes.

Daniel Bryan, arguably the favorite to 

win tonight’s Money in the Bank All-Stars match.

Ever since WrestleMania 29 earlier this year, the WWE product has seen arguably its biggest overhaul since the early Oughts when they figured out how to manage the influx of talent from their purchase of WCW. Its expanded, multiplatform storytelling strategies along with the new blood being placed in the main event scene has led to quite a few thoughts on the business swirling through my head.

This summer is a great time to be a WWE fan because we’re witnessing a bit of a renaissance, both in terms of talent elevation and how storylines unfold. We’re seeing a lot of relatively new faces being built into main eventers for the company, most notably Daniel Bryan, Dolph Ziggler and CM Punk (who I realize has been around for awhile now, but he is still worth noting based on the astronomical leaps of faith WWE has put in him these past two years). Hell, they’ve finally managed to establish Mark Henry as a monster heel, and if John Cena weren’t booked as an unbeatable Superman every month, you’d think he would likely walk out of tonight’s Money in the Bank as the new champ.



They’ve also rebranded the former competition program NXT as a showcase for tomorrow’s superstars (most notably The Shield, Wyatt Family, and Curtis Axel) while giving us most of the best wrestling on WWE programming week in and week out. Granted, WWE has been utilizing developmental territories for ages now to breed talent in-house, but they’ve never quite had the national exposure that NXT does with its current home on Hulu (which is well worth your time). It’s a wise move — a regional audience can only let you know if a wrestler is getting over with the crowd to a certain extent. But in this Modern Era of professional wrestling, the denizens of the Internet Wrestling Community (or IWC, which often prefers wrestlers based on ability without regard for ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’) have begun to reign supreme.

Mark Henry struts out of the ring with 

his salmon-colored jacket, ’cause THAT’S WHAT HE DO.

Earlier this year, I spoke a bit about how wrestling personas and storytelling have evolved in the Internet Age during the show KEVIN GEEKS OUT ABOUT WRESTLING, held at New York’s late, great 92Y Tribeca (RIP). With all wrestlers on social media and thus more exposed than ever, there’s a stronger need to stick to a character round the clock, with Twitter becoming an extension of the storyline. One needs to look no further than this summer’s Mark Henry retirement swerve for a spot on case study. Grantland’s The Masked Man recently wrote an excellent article suggesting that the WWE writing staff is utilizing the opinions and expectations of the IWC as a new means of creating such swerves.

The consummate segment to define this forward momentum in WWE’s storytelling is the McMahon family segment evaluating Vickie Guerrero’s performance on the July 8th edition of RAW. Everything about this is terrible on paper, but hear me out with this. To sum up the events in this segment: Vince, Stephanie, and Triple H come to the ring to evaluate Vickie Guerrero’s performance. Vince believes, and feels everyone believes, that Vickie is doing a great job (nobody else believes this, we learn, as Vince’s comment was met with a chorus of boos). Triple H, furthering the rift building between them, disagrees with this sentiment, and recognizes that she’s not exactly a fan favorite.

The final result is that they leave it up to Stephanie to decide Vickie’s fates, who leaves it to the WWE App, who votes her out as the Managing Supervisor of RAW. To “punish” the fans for turning on Vickie, Vince appoints beloved Brad Maddox as the new GM of RAW. On the surface, this accomplishes a couple of different things in terms of storytelling. It’s another chip off the block that will likely form into a Vince/HHH showdown at Wrestlemania, which itself shows how WWE is making the excellent decision to let angles unfold over extended periods of time, and launches a fresh face like Brad Maddox into a marquee role on the company’s flagship show.

Brad Maddox, befuddled GM

There’s so much subtext to the exchange of words between Vin-Man and Triple H though (unless I’m reading too far into this, which I very well am). The story itself is representative of the inevitable changing of the guard in WWE’s future, with Triple H eventually being in charge behind the scenes. But it fully hooked me in when Vince noted that he (key word is ‘he’) is so entertained by Vickie, a woman who gets loads of heat by simply opening her mouth, that she must remain on television. It’s somewhat general knowledge that Vince has final say over everything that goes on the air in WWE, but the common perception is that he is so far in the zone that he’s not in tune with the zeitgeist by any means. My suspicions were practically confirmed when Triple H threw in the crack, “Vince, if everybody went by your tastes, The Golden Girls would still be on the air.”

Whether or not Vince McMahon is actually as disconnected from pop culture as people say, the bottom line is that the writers room acknowledge this belief exists among fans (the verbiage was too uncanny for me to believe they weren’t alluding to this sentiment). Each similar example has resulted in exciting results, and this new plan of attack shows that WWE is committed to improving their product each week. And before you start complaining that the company is manipulating its audience by lying to us on Twitter or exaggerating a performer’s injury to add drama, just remember: wrestling has always been fake anyway.