I noticed last night on Smackdown that at the end of the James Ellsworth/AJ Styles comedy match, Dean Ambrose was pointing menacingly at his package as a threat to AJ Styles. You can see it at the end of the clip in this here tweet: THAT'S RIGHT! @realellsworth has DEFEATED the @WWE World Champion @AJStylesOrg on #SDLive! @TheDeanAmbrose pic.twitter.com/46GCT7Mziv — WWE (@WWE) October 12, 2016 Their feud has been focused on the exchange of low blows,…
Category: Wrestling Theory & Criticism
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…
You might have noticed I haven’t posted to this blog in like three months. AJ Styles has upended my theoretical stance on everything and thus, my affairs are a shambles. I’ve had to completely rebuild my worldview and it’s taken some time. I mean, I have been doing other things and not blogging, it’s true. Life has been on an extreme trajectory as of late. But in fact this hasn’t been writer’s block, I’ve written plenty,…
Image Credit: wwe.com Haters gonna hate, as the old adage goes. But I think it’s naive and kind of patronizing to get all shocked and judgmental when it’s revealed that a wrestler, even a supposedly upstanding one like Roman Reigns, violated WWE’s wellness policy, which is a euphemism for “probably took drugs.” Now, this wellness policy is apparently overly stringent when it comes to procedural compliance (which is well articulated here in an op-ed on turnheel.com) so it’s certainly possible that Reigns somehow ran…
Image Source: wwe.com For the few weeks in which the Ambrose Asylum replaced Chris Jericho’s Highlight Reel as the main roster’s centerpiece talkshow that can be depended upon to end in violence and the upending of furniture, we the people were treated to the strange spectacle of Dean Ambrose holding court with a microphone, a cardboard sign he wrote on with magic marker, and of all things, his potted plant named Mitch. A few weeks later and in…
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…
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…
Note: I am a skinny white guy writing an article about a female wrestler’s body, and God knows that there’s been enough of those on the Internet. But while I could write yet another thinkpiece about Kevin Owens in my sleep, that would be kinda cowardly. An easy post. Nia Jax is important, and she deserves an enormous amount of consideration and thought. If I’m not staying in my lane in this article, please let me know…
Image Source: wwe.com Oh, dear friends, was this week’s RAW not a humdinger? And just when we thought the world was coming to an end because of Roman Reigns, who shows up but Shane McMahon, to drop a bombshell (if not quite a pipe bomb) that he has some kind of lockbox full of blackmail against Vince himself! The prodigal son returned, but not to beg his father for charity and compassion, oh no! Shane came back to…