To let you all know where I'm coming from, I haven't watched consistently since around 2005, I used to post here quite regularly, I remember the great sleaze thread and the birth of 'matches matches everywhere', even contributed to them but I started watching MMA instead around that time and just forgot about wrestling with very few exceptions. It seems I wasn't the only one either. I got the Network because of Covid 19 and decided to check out Mania and this.
Mania was ok, while I don't love the concept of movie matches I didn't mind them and kind of understand why. The AJ match was basically like an old WCW angle we'd all laugh at but it was at least filmed and 'wrestled' well. The Fiend stuff was just a WCW angle through the mind of David Lynch.
As for the MITB match, I thought it was one of the worst things I've seen in wrestling.
I found everything about it so cringy, maybe the humor is just not my humor but it still all felt so low quality and childish. When you have backstage angles filmed from a magical camera nobody notices, thats fine, I learned to suspend my disbelief for that, however now we have multiple angles from people who aren't actually there, special effects, slow motion, music etc. While it's still seemingly filmed and wrestled like a normal backstage match. This just made it all look like a cheap bargain bin movie, something like Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies but with a lower budget, surely if they were going in this direction they could have made it more interesting, exciting, cooler stunts, more safe or just better?
There were so many dumb insult the viewers intelligence moments, I can't believe it's not just getting universally shit on. Stephanie obviously wasn't there, AJ clearly wasn't actually trapped under those weights and could have escaped anytime, somehow Asuka got into the elevator first and reached the second floor last, why didn't the wrestlers just take the elevator to the top floor? Then there's a food fight like it's some dumb 80's kids movie. Two wrestlers get thrown assumingly to their death. And why do two of their top stars act scarred of Vinces walking corpse, when Stone Cold would have walked right in that office and given him the stunner.
As for the wrestlers performance themselves, I guess they did their best with it even though their acting was terrible, I don't blame them for this I blame the people who greenlit and wrote this shit. Wrestlers fighting through Titan Tower gives me vibes of Fonzy jumping the shark, it feels desperate and I worry for pro wrestling as a whole.
There seems to have been a shift in what the wrestling fans want, I know everyone is entitled to their own opinion but if something like this happened years ago it'd be universally shit on and rightly so.
No longer are we looking for them to at least pretend it's real we're expecting them not to and now see them more as actors on some TV show other than athletes, tough guys, larger than life personalities. There's a reason kayfabe remained so long even after pretty much everyone knew it was fake, the attention received from the Attitude era was gotten by a seemingly real(but actually fake) angle between Stone Cold and Mike Tyson. The feeling of it being real is no more and new viewers are no longer getting invested, I certainly wasn't after watching MITB, ratings are down I hear, well no shit.
If kayfabe is dead and we're not going to attempt to preserve it, then it all just seems kind of pointless, why does wrestling even need to exist in that case? We have MMA, Theatre, movies and TV shows. Real fighting, real acting, quality filmed and written work from some of the best and most popular and talented people in the world.
Sorry for the blog post but I really, really didn't like what I saw. To reiterate my point on kayfabe, I've seen thousands of MMA fights and trained in BJJ so I know what a real fight looks like. I've been watching old ECW from around 94 and have been getting into that in part due to the subtleties used to preserve kayfabe. I know its fake but I still get into the matches, characters and storylines I still believe in what I'm seeing even though I'm very aware its fake.
