BY MICHAEL GOODPASTER
Wrestling isn’t fun right now. The WWE is dreadful. I’ve fought through years of wrestling and lately it’s just not worth the effort. They have great talent and great production, but there just isn’t anything going on that’s enthralling or entertaining. I know feuds like Punk and Cena are going to always be around and always beat the dead horse. It’s lame and boring now. I was lame and boring three months ago. The fans want to cheer for CM Punk and boo for Cena, but for whatever reason that’s too easy. Sheamus and Del Rio had a million matches. Now we’re supposed to pretend Sheamus and Big Show is an attraction. The biggest farse is the Ryback stuff. His slogan shouldn’t be “Feed Me More” it should be “Force Feed Me More!” because the dude has been shoved down our throats. The fake bullshit chants, the really forced generic action figure arm motions, the lack of moveset or skill, and all of this leads to disaster. He’s going to have to be REALLY protected for anyone to get any value out of him. Can he wrestle a 12 minute match against someone he can’t squash? The shock and awe of his Goldberg con is going to wear off and the little kids will quickly realize he’s still the same Skip Sheffield who was quickly forgotten from the Nexus. This is just me nitpicking. The problem is that the bad outweights the good. Why watch something for five to ten minutes of enjoyment and have to sit through a million hours of torture? There is just too many hours to take in to really absorb all that’s going on. The three hours of RAW, two for Smackdown, one for Main Event, one for NXT, and tons of supplemental stuff. Keeping up with is not worth the time. That’s just the WWE though. The shitfest doesn’t end there…
TNA is TNA. No matter what, the show will always revolve around Hulk Hogan. Austin Aries is champion? Let’s showcase how proud Hogan is! It goes on and on. No matter what the old guard is featured in the heart of the show and if anything cool happens outside of that shit they’ll sprinkle in the old guy and Hogan stuff as much as possible. The biker stuff, the lack of general direction, the constant re-pushing of Jeff Hardy, the boredom of an AJ Styles, and the WCW feel of this product and production makes it impossible to ever consider them as a legitimate option.
Ring of Honor has a few really awesome performers who are coming into their own in Adam Cole, Mike Bennett, and a few others. I always enjoy seeing the Briscos get in there with someone on their level, which is few. The Kevin Steen thing is going weird. They want him to be the bad guy, but he’s really over with the crowd. Then they’re trying really hard to make the fans switch over. It’s like the opposite of John Cena. The fans hate Cena, but he’s pushed as the face. The weird booking around it didn’t make me care either way. They have so much going for them, but they just don’t seem to get going in the right direction. It’s really hard to watch Ring of Honor. As much as I like a few of the mentioned talents, I don’t know if it’s worth anyone’s time anymore.
The better alternative is DGUSA/Evolve. For some reason a lot of the internet wrestling writers want to either ignore this product’s awesomeness or find a reason to nit-pick whatever Gabe Sapolsky says. Sadly, I think he’s one of the only few people out there who “get it” anymore. His shows ARE what ROH should be and what the real heart of what ECW was all about. The DGUSA shows are cool because we get a few awesome Japanese guys over here, but the Evolve shows and talent is where it’s at. The talent roster of Johnny Gargano, AR Fox, Chuck Taylor, Sami Callihan, Ricochet, Uhaa Nation, Rich Swann, El Generico, and Jigsaw is my favorite group of wrestlers to watch today. People forget that “Daniel Bryan” was there before WWE, not Ring of Honor. Same with “Dean Ambrose”. Please wrestling fans, stop sleeping on Evolve.
Tommy Dreamer’s promotion seemed to do a lot better than Shane Douglas’s promotion. Both are relying on using established independent stars mixed in with old WCW, WWF/E, and ECW people. There is nothing new about this formula. The idea behind it is generally “we’ll draw in the fans with the names their familiar with (from that 10 minutes of air time they got in 2005) and then treat them to all of these new guys they’ve never heard of (if they don’t use the internet… at all).” This can work to a great amount of success, but I’d rather see a group of new faces get their own ball to run with. THAT is what made ECW awesome. We all love Terry Funk, of course we do, but he was never ever the reason I tuned in at 2 AM on grainy access TV in the Chicagoland area to watch ECW TV. I wanted to see the Shane Douglas’, the Ravens, the Sabus, the Tommy Dreamers, etc. The same people who loved ECW would mock the hell out of a Ric Flair or Hogan going on past their prime and eating up the spotlight. Isn’t that the same thing going on here? Take a page out of the Funkster’s book. To really open the doors and let wrestling move on to whatever it needs to, try helping and complimenting the product don’t present it. I’m confident both groups will find their own unique voice, but right now these nostalgia acts need to stop before we start rethinking about why were into it all to begin with.
Something cool has to be out there…
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