There was a strange night a few weeks ago when I had a small flurry of new followers on Twitter for some odd reason. One of them was Funaki. I know I didn’t dream this because I still have the notification in my email: FUNAKI (@shofufu824) is now following you on Twitter! A few days later I looked through the list for some reason and noticed Funaki had disappeared from my followers list. And I…
Category: Wrestling Theory & Criticism
RAW Notes are back! The way Cena approached Ryback for Team Cena recruitment totally came off as soap opera. But what he said to convince him was absolutely Best of Cena material: “It’s amazing that the guy who always wants to get fed more finally gets a chance to eat at the big table and suddenly he’s not hungry.” Cena is really working the populist hero angle while Triple H is nailing the corporate tyrant.…
Bray Wyatt was powerfully convincing about John Cena being a false hero. Will he hit on such an uncomfortable truth about Dean Ambrose? Will he talk about Dean Ambrose’s sometimes awkward delivery of humor? Or will he try to win Ambrose to his side? Like, behold the foolishness you’ve been reduced to, oh venerable hardcore legend. Could there be a Dean Ambrose-like storyline inside Luke Harper and Eric Rowan? Might we discover the soul of…
If you’ve just stumbled across Notes on the Spectacle of Excess, welcome! I’ve been swamped lately so I’m taking a hiatus from blogging about wrestling until mid-November, when I’ll have a few major projects and events out of the way. Maybe Randy Orton will turn face by then? A girl can hope. Until then, here are a few older posts for you to check out: On Mankind vs. The Undertaker On Bray Wyatt On Thinking…
It is a curious state of affairs and a reflection on the liminal nature of kayfabe that WWE feels it must apologize to the people of Russia about Big Show’s satirical disrespect to their flag on RAW this week. Recall that WWE readily apologized about Lana’s mention of the Malaysian Airlines plane in Eastern Ukraine, while Lana herself dismissed the kerfuffle about what she said as “blah, blah, blah… propaganda.” These apologies are calculated —…
No Myth in Wrestling There’s always talk of legends in wrestling. Never of myth. Because all of wrestling is a myth, and yet what is legendary is a particular actor-athlete’s portrayal of the myth. Legendary are the men, not the wrestlers. Wrestling is ultimately a form of American mythology, and yet like with any cultural mythology a small part of us maintains that it is “real”. The Glory of #Bunnymania Don’t discount the fact that…
Night of Champions didn’t bore me once. Every match was solid, interesting, worthwhile to watch and played an important role in its narrative thread. (Except maybe Randy Orton vs. Chris Jericho— that conflict seemed like a last minute idea somebody had and figured we wouldn’t notice it came out of nowhere because they called RAW last week a “season premiere”. But it was still a good match to watch.) Most impressively for me, though, was…