Pro wrestling will give you trust issues. The language of pro wrestling is the language of deception. Mark, work, selling, and kayfabe are little strands of carny DNA that show us wrestling’s origins — a callback to when strongmen traveled with carnivals across the United States, bilking gullible Dust Bowl Alpha Bros out of money by goading them into rigged matches. Even if one of the local hayseeds looked like he might actually win a match with the strongman, another carny (hidden…
Tag: Sami Zayn
Look, hear me out here: I too was initially bitching and moaning about the perplexing botch/screwjob ending of the Brock Lesnar/Undertaker match at Summer Slam. But after sitting with it for a few hours, I was still captivated, unsettled, left wondering what the fuck. “WTF #Summerslam” I tweeted, and then soon realized that was exactly the sentiment I was supposed to carry away from the match. Here’s the thing we tend to forget about wrestling…
I find myself with a contrary opinion in regards to the story we’re being told about Kevin Owens. I was behind him from the very first day, even as he went about putting my heartthrobs on stretchers. Here was a mercenary prizefighter, an anti-hero so strong and bold that he scorched any possibility of alliance in NXT. He doesn’t need friends, he’s confident in himself and he stands alone. Kevin had no use for aging…
Sami Zayn’s shoulder injury will be for us one of those memorable heartbreaking moments in WWE history. Perhaps the best everyman underdog of all time, on an iconic RAW debut against John Cena (that very much echoed Cena’s own iconic debut against Kurt Angle a decade ago), dislocated his shoulder before he even entered the ring as he swung his arms to rouse the crowd. He wrestled the entire excellent match on a bum shoulder…
True kayfabe is a rare bird at this stage of history on wrestling’s timeline. The fact that it is a scripted performance is now firmly a “no duh”. Or maybe a “yeah, and?” We all think about the meta in wrestling now, considering it in terms of storyline, product, and character development. We are completely aware that we cheer and boo for quality of performance, intensity of presence, and for surprises we weren’t expecting. It’s…
I have precious little to say about TLC which is a shame, because I think so fondly of the days when tables, ladders, and chairs meant something huge. A ladder match used to fill me with fearful excitement, and the crunch of a split table would stir in me a primal thrill. I used to try to write poetry about the iconography of hardcore, hardcore being a kind of revolution, a period of anarchy in…