Dolph Ziggler cut a devastating promo on Smackdown this week, a monologue that made me cringe with guilt, that indicted us all for our callous indifference toward the hardworking eighties gimmick pretty boy. Ziggler got raw and real, characterizing wrestling as what it is in its ugliest form: a strange addiction, a pursuit that’s hard to quit, even when it’s become unhealthy and unproductive. His voice was unstable and veering into higher octaves as he…
Category: Quoth Promos
Image Source: wwe.com “…but what’s puzzling you is the nature of my GAME.” —Rolling Stones, “Sympathy For the Devil” While I can’t say I’m giddy with anticipation over the upcoming HHH/Roman Reigns championship match at Wrestlemania, I have been spellbound by the treatise Trips has been whipping together about the authority’s oppression of the ninety-nine percent, the heroic rebel’s challenge to this tyrannical authority, and his assertion that corporate executives are in fact gods and…
Image Source: wwe.com Triple H’s promo last week on RAW was so full of important concepts I had to transcribe it. I’m still getting my bearings after my hiatus from working on the project of wrestling theory that is this blog, so an historic promo like this is a gift from the wrestling gods. Gods indeed! Look at everything he did here. He cast Vince McMahon, nemesis of wrestling fans the world over, as God. Not…
Image Courtesy of Punkrockbigmouth (punkrockbigmouth.tumblr.com) If this were medieval times, I would give my handkerchief to my champion and this blog’s patron wrestler-saint Rusev, and blow him a kiss for good luck as he heads into this year’s Royal Rumble. All his fellow international wrestlers in the League of Nations did was come out and talk smack at Roman Reigns and Chris Jericho, who were blah-blah-blah-ing it in the ring. But Rusev was more artful. He painted for us a metaphor of…
I’m thinking about writing a longer piece about the genre of contract signings in wrestling. Really, I never would have thought the signing of contracts could be such a compelling thing to watch, but I perk up every time I hear there’s going to be one. They represent the tension between WWE’s carny and corporate elements so perfectly: two employees meet in a ring-turned-boardroom to sign a legally binding document to fight for a prize,…
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…
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,…