I’ve been working on keeping my cool. Not letting disappointments bring me crashing down, maintaining a consistent vibe when everything goes into a tailspin. I also caught a spoiler that Kevin Owens lost to John Cena as I was running about an hour behind in my watching of Battleground, so I was prepared for the unfortunate eventuality. Kevin Owens’ #1 fangirl here didn’t riot when Cena won, because I’m practicing non-attachment, rising above the fray,…
Author: Andrea
With all the kerfuffle about what Rusev says in his entrance, I just realized it’s been a couple months since Sheamus started yelling something when he enters the arena. I think Heel Sheamus is a marvelous douchebag, and yet somehow I never stopped to worry about his passionate battle cry. Me, the IWC’s resident linguistics nerd! A quick cruise around the internet uncovered a number of discussion threads about it, one of which pointed me…
To those who would criticize Sheamus as Money In The Bank winner for being too midcardish and uncool to deserve the honor, I would suggest you take a look at it from a different angle. First, in defense of Sheamus, he is really a spectacular douchebag heel if you think about it. That’s what I’ve been calling heels like Seth Rollins, just ridiculous wrestling characters who are so great because they are so successful at…
I’ve slowed down my number of posts here the past couple weeks because I’m working on two art criticism posts I’ve been percolating for months and months — one on a portrait of Vince McMahon by Rob Schamberger, and the other about the eyes of wrestling in the art of Punkrockbigmouth. Really, the Vince McMahon one is a work of creative nonfiction that will also be about moral ambiguity and my cowboy grandfather. I’m also…
The wrestlers, bless them, continue to grace us lately with memorable promos for me to transcribe for posterity! It’s as though they know I’m working on some more difficult, thinky posts and need to refrain from my usual rate of commentary so I can focus on getting the deep thoughts about art and wrestling all worked out and organized. Now it’s my beloved Dean Ambrose who busted out with a “Hard Times” promo (likely an…
Happy Money In The Bank Day everyone! Today The Work of Wrestling features an editorial I wrote about the deconstruction of John Cena by Kevin Owens. Click here to go read it! And if you’ve arrived here after reading my piece on John Cena and Kevin Owens, a warm welcome to you. If you scroll down a little, I’ve transcribed and commented on the recent memorable KO promos, and earlier I wrote about the ethics of…
Kevin Owens brightened the heck out of Smackdown this week with a reiteration of his previous RAW promo. John Cena is delusional and corrupting the minds of children around the world! It’s no secret I’ve been giddy about Owens since that first match with CJ Parker, so his epic deconstruction of John Cena fills my heart with joy and gives me great hope for the future. Bask in his words of Forgotten Man truth: You…
Wow, things are fairly groundbreaking, even game-changing, in the feud raging between Kevin Owens and John Cena. This stuff gives me chills! I am working on an editorial about the Cena/Owens duality for Tim Kail to read on his Work of Wrestling podcast, but I need to transcribe these promos to work from so I’m sharing them here. Notice how literary these words are when you see them in print. Kevin Owens speaks in precise,…
So Rusev and Lana broke up, apparently to complicate the narrative so WWE could extricate itself from the much too effective political satire it had created with Lana and her big pictures of Putin and Red Square. It was great, but it was a minefield, and both Lana and Rusev are too good to be allowed to hit a wall of controversy or wash out as corny and innocuous cultural stereotypes. Trust me, we don’t…