Month: April 2016

April 30, 2016 /

A big welcome to guest contributor Sawyer Paul, who has laid out a thoughtful theory of a not so straightforward question: what exactly is it that makes professional wrestling “good”? Sawyer’s piece gets at the core of what we’re trying to do here at Spectacle of Excess, and that’s to clarify and celebrate the artistry of this pretend sport. So a big thanks to Sawyer (and all the other recent guest contributors) for the help keeping…

April 10, 2016 /

The Women’s Championship match was the best match of Wrestlemania 32, hands-down, no contest. It had stakes, it had psychology, and it mattered in a way that none of the other matches on the card did. And it was all elevated by the fact that Charlotte, Sasha, and Becky weren’t fighting over some chintzy butterfly-shaped insult — at last, here was a big, badass belt that anybody would be proud to go to war over. The audience got to watch two fights at once: a dust-up…

April 1, 2016 /

Image Source: wwe.com On this past RAW, the all-important RAW before Wrestlemania,Triple H delivered a promo I could tell he didn’t believe in. It was a promo in which he tried to do the job, in the classical jabroni sense—he said things he knew couldn’t sell in a desperate attempt to save Wrestlemania and put over Roman Reigns, one of the most embattled babyfaces in wrestling history. But even after that awkward display, we shouldn’t forget that…