The Ringer: All Posts by Nick Bond2023-05-08T08:21:49-04:00https://www.theringer.com/authors/nick-bond/rss2023-05-08T08:21:49-04:002023-05-08T08:21:49-04:00Who’s Your Daddy? Dominik Mysterio’s Journey Past the Nepo Baby Tag.
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<p>Dominik Mysterio’s immediate future appears to be free of his Hall of Fame father, Rey Mysterio. How high can Dominik fly on his own?</p> <p id="0aaePo">I don’t know <em>exactly</em> what it’s like to be Dominik Mysterio. For starters, I’ve never <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h5MLaxIKQ0">served hard time</a>, nor have I waited for my dad to throw on his luchador mask before <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6_6JaRbCQYQ">fighting me during Thanksgiving dinner</a>. And, maybe most important, I don’t look good in purple and black. But like the most hateable member of the WWE Universe and the emotional backbone of the Judgment Day, I do know what it’s like to grow up with a famous last name. My experiences growing up in a midsized suburb with a surname that’s both part of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond">a massive movie and TV franchise</a> and also a commonly used verb and noun easily pales in comparison to how Dominik has grown up in the pro wrestling industry, surely. But I do understand what would make someone like Ex-Con Dom act out the way he has since he turned on his father, Rey, and his father’s fellow Hall of Famer friend Edge at last September’s <em>Clash at the Castle</em> in Cardiff, Wales. </p>
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<p id="aLmhbM">Wanting to exist outside the legacy (or shadow) of your family is a natural progression for a person and something we all struggle with from time to time, though many of us don’t confront those issues with low blows and clotheslines, thankfully. </p>
<p id="4taBfb">That may also be because many of us have significantly better relationships with our parents than Dominik has with Rey (at least in kayfabe). To be fair to Dom, though, the relationship between most people and their parents <em>has to be</em> different from whatever situation he and his father have going on. Among other things, Rey has done the following:</p>
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<li id="HkoBCV">Chosen his middle-aged Canadian dad friend to fight Dominik’s battles for him <em>in front of the Welsh</em>.</li>
<li id="5KPvN2">
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-0iIFOs5zUk">Bought Dominik a BMW (not even an M series!)</a> while all of his friends were getting Mercedes.</li>
<li id="YZHqNM">Fought Eddie Guerrero over custody of Dominik.</li>
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<p id="WhyHMw"><br>Now, the first two could happen to anyone (though no. 1 is dependent on how often you visit Wales). But that last bit—where the custody of a child <a href="https://www.thesportster.com/custody-of-dominick-ladder-match-storyline-explained/">was determined via a ladder match</a>—is <em>very </em>sports entertainment specific, and not just because paternity suits aren’t typically settled with ladder matches. More important than that, though, is the fact that professional wrestling (and WWE in particular, with its wide-reaching video library) is unique in the creation of story lines like the paternity of certain “non-playable characters” who can then turn into canon fodder if they eventually become part of the show proper. </p>
<p id="4f6ZI5">The idea that performers like <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/2xlvvw/picture_request_edge_and_christian_in_the_crowd/">Edge</a> or <a href="https://www.facebook.com/RealMickFoley/photos/a.150133228350157/1549579021738897/?type=3">Mick Foley</a> were visible on camera in crowds at important wrestling shows added to the broad appeal that they were “just like us, if we had a little bit of size and a lot of masochism.” <a href="https://youtu.be/qvwsh97zlTs?t=18">CM Punk’s</a> and <a href="https://youtu.be/s5zxAZH4lX8">Diamond Dallas Page’s</a> random appearances as extras in the <em>WrestleMania</em> entrances of other performers help bolster the narrative that they more than paid their dues on their way to the top. </p>
<p id="D4MENw">There’s also one other way for these kinds of cameo appearances to occur. Because modern wrestling is overflowing with second- and third-generation superstars whose parents spent at least part of their careers on television, it’s not particularly surprising that two of the most prominent such performers, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2018/3/6/17072332/cody-rhodes-dusty-rhodes-all-in">Cody Rhodes</a> and <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/1/20/23564078/charlotte-flair-wwe-title-reign-impact-history-comparison">Charlotte Flair</a>, both made their debuts on wrestling television in main-event spots nearly exactly the same way, long before they ever laced up their boots or took a back bump. </p>
<p id="vsVjQM">For Flair, it was in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Flair#World_Championship_Wrestling_(1993,_2000)"><em>Starrcade </em>’<em>93</em></a>, when 7-year-old Ashley Fliehr appeared on-screen at her family’s home to say goodbye to her father, Ric, as he began his march (alongside Gene Okerlund) toward Big Van Vader and <a href="https://www.wwe.com/videos/vader-vs-ric-flair-wcw-world-heavyweight-championship-match-starrcade-1993">their excellent title vs. career match</a> (which Flair eventually won) at Charlotte’s Independence Arena. In a less dramatic version of this, Rhodes’s first appearance on TV was at <a href="https://youtu.be/6fmSeWttt1A">his father, Dusty’s, WCW Hall of Fame ceremony</a>, where he stood alongside his dad as he made his induction speech.</p>
<p id="77cW6K">Dom Dom didn’t have this kind of brief introduction, though. Neither Flair nor Rhodes was involved in a single angle at that age, and they weren’t the centerpiece of a multi-month story line the way Dominik was in his TV debut. Dom wasn’t just a prop or a MacGuffin, either. He didn’t simply hold a trophy or hug his dad. Instead, he actively participated in two-hander on-camera segments with his “uncle” (and real-life close family friend) Eddie Guerrero, appearing on TV throughout the story line, in which Eddie claimed that he was actually Dominik’s biological father. The end result? A blow-off ladder match for custody of Dominik at <em>SummerSlam</em> in 2005.</p>
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<p id="ux5xVG">Poor 8-year-old Dominik was thrown as far into the deep end as anyone ever has been in the history of wrestling, and long before it was reasonable to expect him to swim. Even Stephanie McMahon—who is maybe <a href="https://www.the-sun.com/sport/wwe/680621/undertaker-kidnapping-stephanie-mcmahon/">the only person who can remotely understand</a> where Dominik is coming from—waited until after college before getting into <a href="https://www.thesportster.com/wwe/wwe-stephanie-mcmahon-weirdest-moments-career/">the real weird shit</a>. </p>
<p id="aGKaZU">If we’d never heard from Dom again after 2005, no one would have been surprised. Between that dye job and his (let’s call them “age-appropriate”) “acting” skills, he didn’t seem destined for any kind of stardom. Yet here we all are, with Dom doing some of the best (or at least hottest) work in the business. </p>
<p id="SM6WmU">But even now his path is not forged like those of <em>most </em>successful legacy performers in WWE. Stars like Bret Hart, the Randys (Savage and Orton), and the Rock so exceeded their family members that came before them that we view their familial legacy through the prism of their success, at least narratively. Even now, at 26 and with all the skills he has acquired, Dominik would need an almost unprecedented level of success to overshadow his own family in the same way. </p>
<p id="ao1tJT">At <em>Backlash </em>in 2021, the Mysterios <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2943317-rey-dominik-mysterio-become-wwes-1st-father-son-tag-team-champions-at-backlash">made history</a> by becoming the first father-son tag team to hold a tag team championship in WWE. While Dom won his first championship at a <em>relatively</em> young age (24), he’s definitely not the youngest performer with a pedigree to have at least some title success: Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton both grabbed their first championships—<a href="https://www.wwe.com/videos/cody-rhodes-and-hardcore-holly-vs-lance-cade-and-trevor-murdoch-world-tag-team-championship-match-raw-december-10-2007">a tag title</a> for Cody and <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=2494">the Intercontinental championship</a> for Randy—earlier on, at 22 and 23, respectively. The younger Mysterio won his only championship (one-half of the SmackDown Tag Team title) with his father at the age of 24 and lost it before turning 25. Twenty-four is, as you may have noticed, the same age the Rock was when he won his first championship, the Intercontinental title. But the Rock also fared slightly better than Dom has at ages 25 and 26, winning the Intercontinental title again before turning 26 and then capturing the WWE Championship two more times before he hit 27. </p>
<p id="pcsGow">Dominik, on the other hand, has <a href="https://www.cagematch.net//?id=2&nr=22500&page=4&search=title">never had a singles title match</a>, let alone a singles championship. It’s hard to believe Dominik will be able to catch up to Rocky on any of those accomplishments around 30, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwayne_Johnson#Acting_career">the age Dwayne was</a> when he left for Hollywood. And we, as well as Dom, should probably forget about him getting anywhere near performers like Roman Reigns or Charlotte. Weirdly, his closest analogues are probably Cody and Bret, who was considered one of the best workers in the entire company for the entirety of his WWE run. But Dominik has a somewhat less sterling reputation in the ring than someone like Bret, and again, it seems unlikely that he’ll somehow become a top-five worker in the history of wrestling. </p>
<p id="GJyHup">Dominik could, however, emulate Cody’s level of success. Rhodes has done well for himself but hasn’t set the world on fire in terms of his accomplishments. The secret, though, is that Dusty didn’t either, at least in front of the camera. He didn’t accomplish much of anything in WWE. And even though many of his NWA title runs were significant, almost all of them <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=495&page=11">were <em>very</em> short</a>. </p>
<p id="4pVVwG">Though Cody’s kind of success is well within reach, Rey’s is a bit further away. Dom does have several years to catch up to his dad, however, at least in terms of <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=604&page=11">world titles</a> (or, specifically, heavyweight championships). Rey won his first World Heavyweight Championship at 31, but he had already won the first of his five WCW Cruiserweight championships before he turned 22 and then won it again in a classic match against Eddie <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqRYKCH8dUc">at <em>Halloween Havoc ’97</em></a>, just months after Dom was born. </p>
<p id="53xM6n">Rey isn’t quite as impossible to surpass as, say, Ric Flair. Charlotte is at least <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/3/30/23662644/charlotte-flair-wwe-wrestlemania-39-biography-wwe-legends-interview">a pioneer</a> in women’s combat sports. It’s unfortunate that a number of <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=12939&page=11">Charlotte’s title runs</a> occurred during WWE’s <a href="https://411mania.com/wrestling/melina-weighs-on-negative-stigma-around-diva-era/">heavily criticized</a> “divas” era, initially hindering her from getting anywhere near the Nature Boy in terms of in-ring prestige. </p>
<p id="cB68hd">But even more than Ric, Rey’s impact on wrestling and the <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/rey-mysterio-sends-lucha-libre-masks-to-padres">broader culture</a> makes it seem that Dominik will probably never be able to touch his father’s legacy. Rey is a Mexican American icon—there’s potentially nothing Dominik could do to achieve that level of significance. Or maybe Dom doesn’t have to. There’s definitely a bit of a lightning in a bottle aspect to the dynamic between Rey and Dominik, and it’s as popular as anything WWE has produced in ages (even ever so slightly more than <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/12/6/23496380/roman-reigns-sami-zayn-the-bloodline-wwe-faction-history">the Bloodline</a>). </p>
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<p id="t4acCj">Videos involving the two of them have done exceptionally well on social media and YouTube, with business picking up as they became more and more intertwined with <em>Backlash</em>’s main event and its genuine global megastar host, Bad Bunny. What’s a bit unclear is how sustainable <em>this </em>level of crowd energy toward Dom is, but there’s definitely something there. </p>
<p id="V3Gsbw">Dominik has a “look” that’s very different from Rey’s—though they obviously do look very much alike, albeit in a “blink and you’ll miss it” kind of way. (At least until <a href="https://youtu.be/uqxpgcjWzxQ?t=16">we saw Dom in the mask</a> before his match against Rey at <em>WrestleMania 39</em>, and then <em>holy fucking shit</em> did he look like Rey.) Weirdly, this helped make the “father teaching his son a lesson” idea underlying their story feel less like an echo of some crazy pro–corporal punishment narrative than a tale about failsons getting their comeuppance. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="gW39zt">That father-son idea will seemingly be going away for Dom, as the Judgment Day and the LWO have been <a href="https://www.wwe.com/shows/smackdown/article/latest-wwe-draft-results-2023">drafted to different shows</a>, presumably to keep them from turning into the Hatfields and McCoys of professional wrestling. What will happen to Dom after he loses the specific dynamic he had with his father that carried him through programs is something that only time will tell. But if he somehow keeps on generating the heat he has over the last six months every time he speaks (or is spoken about), he’ll make <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp1apVf8PzE">the family who turned him into the man he is today</a> proud by reminding us every day that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp1apVf8PzE">“Guerrero” means “Warrior.”</a> </p>
<p id="NQ2DVd"><em>Nick Bond (</em><a href="https://twitter.com/THEN1CKSTER"><em>@TheN1ckster</em></a><em>) is the cofounder of </em><a href="https://www.patreon.com/kayfabemetrics"><em>the Institute of Kayfabermetrics</em></a><em> and provides weekly updates to </em><a href="https://wrestling.theringer.com/">The Ringer<em>’s WWE Power Board</em></a>. </p>
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https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/5/8/23712650/dominik-mysterio-wwe-future-rey-mysterio-family-lineageNick Bond2023-04-11T07:56:47-04:002023-04-11T07:56:47-04:00The Rhodes to WrestleMania
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<p>What makes a WrestleMania main event? Is it the importance of the title, or the weight of the story? After almost four decades of ’Mania, the debate over the final match rages on.</p> <p id="bWwpjS">While <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2023/2/2/23583042/wwe-royal-rumble-match-battle-royal-history">the Royal Rumble<em> </em>is usually still the go-to</a> when it comes to <s>indoctrinating new blood into our death cult</s> introducing “wrestling curious” folks to the greatest sport on Earth, the sheer majesty (and tendency toward narrative finality) of WrestleMania<em> </em>makes it maybe the single best show to watch as stand-alone viewing.</p>
<p id="L6FCwE">Usually. Unfortunately, this idea has taken a beating over the past decade, as the show has ballooned in size while repeatedly ending not with a bang, but with the whimper of a crowd forced to sit through the kinds of matches that even the talent often found disappointing. The incredible lengths of these shows reached their peak at the end of last decade, infamously culminating in the <a href="https://411mania.com/wrestling/wrestlemania-35-late-stuck-fans/">biblical shit show that was getting out of New Jersey</a> after <a href="https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/04/wrestlemania-35-long-too-long">WrestleMania 35’s <em>seven-hour</em> running time</a> from the beginning of the preshow until the end of the main event. </p>
<p id="rV44xf">This, however, has largely been dealt with by the forced evolution of the WrestleMania card into a two-night affair starting with 2020’s pandemic show. </p>
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<p id="bfleb9">As you can see, including WrestleMania 39, there has just been one night of wrestling that’s reached pre-pandemic levels, and it was the second night of the first pandemic show, WrestleMania 36. Except for that show—which featured the 36-minute-plus Randy Orton–Edge Last Man Standing match, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/8/26/23323161/edge-wwe-superstar-veteran-schedule">kick-starting Edge’s run of comically long matches over the next three years</a>—every night since the two-night format started has been among the shortest WrestleMania cards ever, with only the notoriously thin WrestleManias<em> </em>11 and 15 and the “WrestleMania in name only” card from the first show ending with “less” wrestling. </p>
<p id="vcsGCA">Unlike those shows, the amount of wrestling per match is <em>considerably</em> more—though, hilariously, WrestleMania 12<em> </em>with its 60-minute Iron Man match still wildly outpaces every other show in this stat and will likely do so into perpetuity—and in line with <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2022/11/26/23479218/triple-h-wwe-survivor-series-wargames-vince-mcmahon-comparison">modern wrestling standards</a>. </p>
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<p id="vy5owy">This cure for the far-too-long show hasn’t been nearly as effective at solving the other major issue with the event: Since WrestleManias 30<em> </em>and 31<em>, </em>every subsequent main event has been an active disappointment. Well, OK, let’s be fair: the main event of the first night of every two-part WrestleMania has been amazing. Night two? We’ll get to that.</p>
<p id="3pvqaP">Less pressing, but equally relevant is that none of these matches managed to generate the pomp and circumstance among wrestling fans that the historic main event between Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, and Ronda Rousey at WrestleMania 35 did until the matchup between Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns. And while it’s totally understandable that the broader cultural impact hasn’t been as far-reaching or resonant as the first women’s match to serve as the main event of the show, the past few main events haven’t even achieved that level of significance on their own terms, insisting upon their importance instead of earning it.</p>
<p id="Bx7ZKs">Making a match feel important, if we’re being honest with ourselves, isn’t nearly as easy as it used to be. At least for the first nine years or so, WrestleMania main events could be conjured out of nothing. Or, if not “nothing,” then the ruins of the many friendships that Hulk Hogan destroyed in his never-ending pursuit of power and control. </p>
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<p id="XqIwGf">Eight of the first nine WrestleMania main events prominently featured Hogan involved in the end result, and two of them (<em>3</em> and <em>5</em>) involved the Hulkster ruining a friendship. Even WrestleMania 9, with <a href="https://youtu.be/IIsW_yxJvP0">its convoluted ending</a>, was set into motion by Hogan declaring Bret Hart a friend before his main event match with the 1993 Royal Rumble winner. </p>
<p id="HAmrif">None of these matches are technical masterpieces, but the five that headlined WrestleManias 2-6 represent a kind of “Golden Era” pentalogy for the Vince McMahon model of sports entertainment. It’s only after the company spent much of the emotional-political capital it had built with the audience to make the Ultimate Warrior the new cornerstone of the company in the final act, just to have it crumble in less than a year, that the magic of “<a href="https://www.thesportster.com/wwe-golden-era-best-worst-taunts/#best-hulk-hogan-must-pose">Hogan must pose</a>” ending every show lost its cachet. </p>
<p id="I84XYf">Say what you will about “Hogan must pose,” but at least it was an ethos. Hogan provided a default star to build the show around, which isn’t something that’s really replicable these days. Hogan was the main event because the entire company, from a promotional standpoint, was structured around him. Performers like Reigns and John Cena from subsequent generations would be placed in these positions because the company <em>decided</em> that these performers are the ones the WWE Universe wanted to see at the end of the night. </p>
<p id="dOotFG">But with Hogan, <em>there really wasn’t another option</em>; and, honestly, it’s totally understandable why that’s not the case anymore. <a href="https://www.espn.com/wwe/story/_/id/22956778/wwe-story-wwe-attempt-fill-la-coliseum-wrestlemania-vii">The lack of blockbuster ticket sales</a> for WrestleMania 7, at which Hogan main-evented the show with lifelong mid-carder Sgt. Slaughter, provided concrete evidence of the decline of Hulkamania. But because it was Hogan and the match was for the championship, he <em>had</em> to go on last.</p>
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<p id="SNYsM1"><br>Though the match was no great shakes, the stakes meant it wasn’t the <em>creative</em> nadir of the Hogan era—that would come the next year, in Hogan’s last headlining match, against Sid Justice. There was no reason for either the match or the feud to end the show: There was a genuinely great Ric Flair–Randy Savage WWF Championship match thrown in the middle of the show that was part of an <em>extremely heated</em> personal rivalry between the two. </p>
<p id="ejX9kS">Outside of the idea that Hogan <em>might</em> retire at 38 after the match, if not necessarily <em>because</em> of this match, the battle—which ended in DQ and led to a post-match angle involving Papa Shango and the Ultimate Warrior—between Hogan and Sid barely had any reason to exist. </p>
<p id="6USv1G">And while it’s not the <em>worst</em>, it’s definitely one of the front-runners for the ’Mania main event that fell the flattest, though it also helps us understand why WrestleMania 39’s ending was so “controversial.” While any match could <em>conceivably</em> be a main event on any card, WrestleMania main events require a few key elements to make them feel they belong at the end of the show before anyone steps in the ring. Most notably, because WrestleMania is ostensibly supposed to be a “supercard”—as opposed to either <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/2/25/23614667/wwe-elimination-chamber-structure-pod-placement-history">a gimmick show like Elimination Chamber</a> or a monthly “premium live event”/“pay per view” <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2022/12/16/23512906/wwe-in-your-house-pay-per-view-history">like the original<em> In Your House</em> series</a>—the main event should serve as the linchpin for the entire event. </p>
<p id="pjjAW8">The goal should be to give the entire spectacle a theme, or at least a tone. While that doesn’t <em>need</em> to involve a title, per se, without one, the juice very much has to be worth the squeeze, or the entire show can feel like it didn’t matter. </p>
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<p id="6ohDJJ">For the most part, these kinds of matches ended up being good enough for government work, though there is one in particular that was decidedly not. That match, between Reigns and the Undertaker at WrestleMania 33, went so poorly that the Undertaker specifically cited it in his <em>Last Ride</em> documentary as one of the reasons he ended up coming back multiple times after what was, ostensibly, his retirement match (which is what led to it ending the show) and the documentary has footage of <a href="https://www.sportsunfold.com/wwe-backstage-footage-of-the-undertaker-making-an-apology-to-roman-reigns/#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20%E2%80%98Taker%20was%20so%20beaten%20up%20about,in%202020%20and%20included%20footage%20of%20the%20interaction.">Taker <em>apologizing to Reigns</em></a> for how the match went. </p>
<p id="R3G5F2">But even before that, there was no real answer to the “why” of the match, especially not as the designated main event of the show. The “feud” mostly centered on Roman eliminating Taker in the Rumble that year and then claiming that the WWE was “[His] yard now.” More so than any other, maybe in his career, that match and its preceding feud felt like Reigns being designated as the Guy and also went a long way in explaining why it didn’t start to work until Year 8, <a href="https://youtu.be/R0J_tVsSEm8?t=207">as Cody explained on the <em>Smackdown</em> before WrestleMania 39.</a> That the match indirectly led to WrestleMania 36’s Boneyard Match (and the cinematic redemption of the Undertaker at the expense of the coward AJ Styles)—is perhaps its only saving grace.</p>
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<p id="mUoj3o">So when a match without any pre-established meaning happened at the end of what was to then one of the longest WrestleManias ever in terms of in-ring action, it fell pretty flat. Mark Calaway leaving his boots in the ring as a valedictory statement on his career as the Undertaker made the match worthy of being placed at the end of the show, but that gravity also weighs down the performance immediately preceding it. </p>
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<p id="wxDsuD">On the other end of the spectrum, “LT” Lawrence Taylor versus Bam Bam headlining the otherwise totally nondescript WrestleMania 11<em> </em>is a fun attraction that makes the show somewhat memorable (if not for the best reasons) and, much like the Rock–John Cena I at WrestleMania 28, derives its buoyancy from the same kind of joy we get when we watch other celebrities do well with their WrestleMania moments. This may seem like a dig at the Rock’s in-ring work, and that’s just simply not true. </p>
<p id="QosEYA">It’s mostly a dig at Dwayne Johnson and how his fame as a movie actor has eclipsed his success as a professional wrestler to the point that there’s presumably a sizable number of fans who know professional wrestling as “the thing that the Rock used to do.”</p>
<p id="q73qU3">Expectations are generally a difficult mechanic to calibrate for these non-title matches, but especially for main events without championship stakes. Without having the importance of a major title in these matches, the professional and personal stakes, or the star power of the people involved, needs to be high enough to warrant capping off your flagship event with them. On the other hand, you also don’t want expectations <em>so </em>high that it makes reaching them nearly impossible, or you could end up with what happened to WrestleMania 26’s main event between Shawn Michaels and the Undertaker.</p>
<p id="obPNlQ">In terms of stakes, personal animosity, and even star power, there is perhaps no more worthy main event <em>ever</em> in the history of wrestling without a championship involved than Michaels-Taker. Michaels put his reputation as arguably the greatest in-ring performer of all time on the line against what was to that point the most significant single accomplishment in WWE history in the Undertaker’s streak. That it was told through an essentially two-year-long story line is about as perfect a way to build a WrestleMania main event (or, any match) as you could ask for. </p>
<p id="1s8dDd">Despite all this, it’s still considered a little bit of a disappointment, which shows how hard it is to tell how well things will go over and to gauge how well they went over in the immediate aftermath. While the bout was a good one, bordering on great, it suffers in no small part because of its comparison to what is considered by many to be the greatest match in WrestleMania history between the two from just the year before.</p>
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<p id="CQ2RRP">While Reigns and Rhodes <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=3686&view=&page=4&search=roman+reigns&gimmick=&year=&promotion=&region=&location=&arena=&showtype=&constellationType=Team&worker=">have definitely worked together</a>, thankfully they saved <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=9967&view=&page=4&search=cody+rhodes&gimmick=&year=&promotion=&region=&location=&arena=&showtype=&constellationType=Singles&worker=">their first singles match against one another until WrestleMania 39</a>. This is a rare commodity in modern wrestling, but between Cody’s absence and Roman’s post-return reduced schedule, this was still a pure “dream” match that became (a very depressing) reality.</p>
<p id="rqyTTT">Taker and Michaels’s WrestleMania 25 match is universally considered to be superior to their streak-versus-career bout at WrestleMania 26. Meanwhile, the main event of WrestleMania 25—Triple H and Randy Orton for the WWE title—is a textbook example of the kind of ’Mania main event that leads to disappointment, and it’s basically the only creative “hiccup” that Rhodes-Reigns <em>didn’t</em> hit. </p>
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<p id="oCZIhw">Not every main event is “objectively” the best match at a given event—for instance, Rhea Ripley and Charlotte Flair’s absolute barnburner from night one could’ve been a worthy main event. But these matches are notable <em>only</em> because they are not even kind of the best match on their card, and in all three cases could have ostensibly been usurped by a “more deserving” match as the headlining bout. And while Cody and Roman definitely didn’t have the best match of the weekend, they at least avoided having this fate. </p>
<p id="5aNLJc">Triple H–Randy Orton at ’Mania 25 was, at least, both for the WWE Championship and the hottest feud in the company before blowing up SPECTACULARLY in the lead-up to the show. Though, it should be said: ’Mania 25’s choices at the end of the show—which included having Triple H use a sledgehammer to win a match where the stipulation was that he could lose the title upon disqualification—are perhaps the best parallel to WrestleMania 39’s poorly-executed main event finish. </p>
<p id="IjE32T">These matches highlight the danger of deciding what a main event is and forcing it on folks, as opposed to letting what “deserves” to be the main event dictate the matchup. The most egregious example in this respect is the main event of WrestleMania 13, the WWF title match between Sycho Sid and Taker—which oddly doubles as Taker’s first main event. This main event is overshadowed by what was many consider to be best match in WrestleMania history (before Taker-Michaels I): <a href="https://youtu.be/jxowP-K1t4M">Bret Hart and Steve Austin’s submission match</a>.</p>
<p id="YUHiqc">The amount of twists and turns involved in getting Sid the championship and Taker into the match so that they could be in the main event instead could have gone into making the match feel like it mattered outside of that context. Or, better yet, spending more time selling Austin-Hart as potentially the best match in the history of WrestleMania while also adding championship stakes.</p>
<p id="TybPE8">Thankfully, this lesson would be learned fairly quickly and Austin would go on to main-event three of the next four shows. To the surprise of no one, these easy-to-comprehend stories end up being the best kind of match to end the Showcase of the Immortals. </p>
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<p id="muMKeZ">Now, sure, most of these matches include either Michaels or Austin, but each of these matches also followed a fairly simple path with minor complications to make them more interesting without requiring any kind of understanding of the behind-the-scenes dynamics to enjoy. Even the most convoluted of these stories was part of one of the farthest-reaching (and easy to understand) feuds in wrestling history between Mr. McMahon and Austin and felt almost paint-by-numbers when it was happening. </p>
<p id="P5qrI9">Keeping it simple isn’t necessarily a guarantee that a main event will work, but when this kind of straightforward main event fails, it most often happens because the simplicity is in service of shoehorning someone into the spot that the fans are not particularly interested in seeing there. </p>
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<p id="vhypkT">Almost none of these matches are bad—though WrestleMania 29 involved the Rock ripping muscle off the bone, so it’s not exactly a workrate classic and I should know, <em>I was there</em>—outside of WrestleMania 34’s main event between Reigns and Brock Lesnar going so off the rails that Vince changed the ending <em>midway through the match</em> based on the crowd reaction. But all of these matches aren’t quite able to get over the hump into the legendary status that you would assume based on many of the people involved (give or take a random Miz appearance).</p>
<p id="surdC8">This, as you may have noticed, seems to be a recurring pattern with at least one of the participants in this year’s main event. But for top-of-the-card performers who can’t quite capture the crowd’s attention in the way those in charge are hoping, an “everybody in the pool!” mentality usually can save the day. </p>
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<p id="Ciqpec">It’s easy to think Reigns has had trouble in previous main events because of some kind of deficiency in his in-ring work. But even Bret Hart had trouble getting his feet under him following WrestleMania 9’s withering climax. This, along with the interminable Jerry Lawler feud he’d found himself embroiled in over the previous year, meant that Hart was sincerely in need of a massive promotional and narrative push in order to return to his former glory at the top of the card and feel worthy of a WrestleMania<em> </em>main event. Enter Lex Luger. (Yes, that Lex Luger.) </p>
<p id="PNcIyh">An enormously underrated worker, Luger helped carry a lot of the storytelling bits in the build-up to WrestleMania 10. Luger’s battle with Yokozuna for the soul of America allowed Bret to tell a much more resonant story with his youngest sibling, Owen, which would manifest itself in the now-legendary opening bout of the show, while interweaving the prestige of the title opportunity that Bret would receive (and make the most of) later that night with the deeply personal tale he was spinning with his brother.</p>
<p id="ABLOls">This is something that has been particularly notable about the story line between Cody and Roman—<a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/3/13/23637099/wwe-escape-from-island-of-relevancy-part-1-roman-reigns-bloodline-saga">which certainly has its flaws</a> and is more than a little overhyped when it comes to the historic nature of the matchup (based on an <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/3/21/23648622/wwe-escape-from-island-of-relevancy-part-2-roman-reigns-cody-rhodes-greatest-wwe-champions">overinflation of the importance of his title reigns</a>)—and speaks to how well the Usos, Solo Sikoa, Zayn, and Owens have all played their roles in a feud with which they are not directly involved. Allowing Solo and the Usos to serve as Roman’s proxy has allowed Cody to make up for Reigns’s (at this point, very pronounced) absence(s) without ever losing the larger narrative thread. </p>
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<p id="GiWYca">The same can be said of matches of historical importance, when the emotional and cultural burden of the result can be too much for one “regular” match to withstand. Although historically significant for VERY different reasons, WrestleManias 30 and 35 both served as watershed moments for the direction the show and, by extension, the company could go. Sometimes a third wheel just serves to add some excitement (as was the case with Daniel Bryan’s addition to WrestleMania 37’s main event with Edge and Roman) or shift the direction of the narrative entirely, as was the case with Seth Rollins’s cash-in at WrestleMania 31.</p>
<p id="1rm6Id">All of these matches, even WrestleMania 2000’s somewhat lackluster four-way elimination match, helped establish all of their participants either as main event mainstays or at least important cogs in the WWE machine for years to come. Which, even more so than selling tickets, is the goal of these matches at this point. </p>
<p id="wpnA9u">The main event at WrestleMania is supposed to speak to the direction of the company much more than it’s supposed to be a “great match” or even a “draw.” What was <em>potentially</em> great about this year’s matchup between Cody and Roman was the idea that it could be all of those things at once, as well as a melting pot of everything that comes together to make a memorable ’Mania main event.</p>
<p id="oHdQ7j">It had managed to both tell an incredibly simple story and layer it with a wide range of characters interacting with the main narrative. But the show was stolen from underneath them. And even if it hadn’t been, the match finished with everything that is fundamentally wrong with the Roman Reigns experience at this point.</p>
<p id="GyBW0q">While we could care less about who won a scripted wrestling match, as a critical observer of these kinds of proceedings, the ending of this show felt shitty in a way that nearly deflated the entire weekend. Hopefully, this is just a momentary blip, but if WWE continues down this path, it may find itself turning from undeniable to undesirable faster than it can possibly imagine. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="SwbE3u">And you can believe that. </p>
<p id="Df8E6X"><em>Nick Bond (</em><a href="https://twitter.com/THEN1CKSTER"><em>@TheN1ckster</em></a><em>) is the cofounder of the Institute of Kayfabermetrics and provides weekly updates to </em><a href="https://wrestling.theringer.com/">The Ringer<em>’s WWE Power Board</em></a><em>.</em></p>
https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/4/11/23667637/wwe-wrestlemania-39-mania-main-event-historyNick Bond2023-03-21T07:30:00-04:002023-03-21T07:30:00-04:00Roman Reigns: Escape From the Island of Relevancy, Part 2
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<p>As ‘WrestleMania 39’ approaches, we examine Roman Reigns’s journey and where he really ranks among the greatest champions of all time </p> <p id="2jZy4k">It has always seemed particularly telling that the second he set foot back on weekly WWE TV (and <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/11/21/23470405/roman-reigns-wwe-head-of-the-table-profile">Roman Reigns’s island of relevancy</a>) at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3I7VCz4nfo"><em>Raw</em> after <em>WrestleMania 38</em></a>, Cody Rhodes immediately made it clear what he wanted. It was very specifically the WWE Championship, a title that his father, Dusty Rhodes, never earned (and rarely competed for). He did not want to win “<em>a </em>world title” but to <em>be </em>WWE Champion. In recent weeks, Rhodes has doubled down on this idea, <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/more-sports/cody-rhodes-is-all-about-wwe-splitting-up-the-undisputed-wwe-universal-championship/ar-AA18FBEk">essentially publicly requesting</a> that, if he wins his title(s) match against Reigns, WWE split <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undisputed_WWE_Universal_Championship">the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship</a> back up. </p>
<p id="3n3XLn">Whether or not that would involve reintroducing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWE_Universal_Championship">the Universal Championship</a> as a second major title (which seemingly would be instantly less valuable than the WWE Championship) is still an open question—as is the splitting of the two titles itself—in large part because of what value, or lack thereof, the Universal title has been able to accumulate over the first few years of its existence. Essentially, it was a <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PaletteSwap">palette-swapped</a> WWE Championship belt (with the color variant depending on which brand you belong to) that was introduced the same night that the <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=when+did+the+2016+democratic+national+convention+start&cvid=8d0a5d8530d348e298b0b43214ce5d89&aqs=edge..69i57.837j0j1&pglt=43&FORM=ANNTA1&PC=DCTS">2016 Democratic National Convention</a> started; the next four years in the life of the Universal title went about as well as they did for many of us. </p>
<p id="vcKwjc">For starters, it became a cursed talisman from the very first night it was awarded; although the title was introduced with an announcement on July 25, the first match for it didn’t happen for another month, at that year’s SummerSlam. A match that infamously featured Finn Bálor winning the title <em>after</em> his shoulder was separated when he was on the receiving end of a buckle bomb to the outside guardrail from Seth Rollins.</p>
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<p id="BG0gpW">After that, the championship ended up in the hands of Kevin Owens for roughly half a year, then became a kind of plaything for <em>Raw</em>’s biggest, beefiest bois (and a pre-“Freakin” Rollins) after Owens was squashed almost into oblivion by Goldberg at 2017’s <em>Fastlane</em>. (Following his 22-second annihilation, his previously scorching-hot feud with Chris Jericho would lose nearly all momentum, and Jericho and Owens’s match at <em>WrestleMania 33</em> ended up disappointing Vince McMahon so much that it essentially led <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/9/27/23374709/mystery-solved-who-brought-the-ko-show-back-to-life">to what we would call a “de-emphasis” of Owens until the ThunderDome</a>.) The championship would bounce around for much of the next three and a half years—essentially until the pandemic—from disappointing reign to disappointing reign, often grinding promising runs to a complete stop. </p>
<p id="Arnsm2">Its spiritual predecessor, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Heavyweight_Championship_(WWE)">World Heavyweight Championship</a>, also known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Gold_Belt">Big Gold Belt</a>, shared a lineage with World Championship Wrestling’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WCW_World_Heavyweight_Championship">World Heavyweight Championship</a> (although not with the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/1/20/23564078/charlotte-flair-wwe-title-reign-impact-history-comparison">NWA title</a> that had previously been a part of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-WCW-WWE/dp/B0028X36EE">Jim Crockett Promotions and WCW</a>). On the other hand, the Universal Championship is perhaps the only major world title in modern times that was essentially made out of whole cloth as a consolation prize for someone (because USA Network didn’t get the WWE champion drafted to its show). Although, weirdly, that part actually does very much follow in the footsteps of a litany of regional titles that were created by promotions, including the WWE (né <a href="https://historyofwrestling.com/timeline/lou-thesz-defeats-buddy-rogers-for-nwa-title/">World Wide Wrestling Federation</a>) title itself, when WWWF was unable to secure the aforementioned NWA title and its champion for its own purposes. </p>
<p id="as3xzD">Which is certainly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_JTzEppKy8">a valid reason</a> to do something for a promotional outfit with a weekly TV show. But for WWE, a narrative content company, the story behind the Universal title’s origins is pretty severely lacking, and that origin-turned-raison-d’être has played no small role in making every single Universal title change feel like a business decision. To be clear, that is what <em>all</em> title runs and changes are, but usually companies are a little bit more coy in situations like this. </p>
<aside id="EWH8We"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Escape From the Island of Relevancy, Part 1 ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/3/13/23637099/wwe-escape-from-island-of-relevancy-part-1-roman-reigns-bloodline-saga"}]}'></div></aside><p id="WtEg16">Instead, Universal Championship title changes often end up lining up a little too conveniently with requests for the product from outside influences and have often been very clearly telegraphed based on potential future matchups. Not in the fun and flirty wrestling way, but with all the charm and elegance of a video game making it clear that you’re about to enter into a cut scene instead of just allowing you to move the narrative forward naturally.</p>
<p id="zNQOqT">Which is how Reigns started his now-historic reign. He was handed the title, more or less, after interrupting a match at <em>Payback</em> between the Fiend and Braun Strowman almost exactly 10 minutes and precisely one collapsed ring in. The soon-to-be-anointed Tribal Chief and his new “wise man,” Paul Heyman, appeared at the top of the ramp with the contract that would allow his entry into the already-in-progress match. And a couple of chair shots later, Reigns would start on what’s turned into this 930-plus-day journey, which has led to Reigns and Rhodes standing in a ring together. </p>
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<p id="Kj8EDM">The above segment seemed to pop a number of folks, but if you spend more than 10 seconds thinking about what was said during the exchange, you may end up wishing that they’d at least <em>strolled </em>down some of the interesting avenues that touched at the emotional core of (or just made you give a shit about) why Reigns “needs” to prevent Rhodes from winning, beyond “I like being champion too much.” As <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/3/13/23637099/wwe-escape-from-island-of-relevancy-part-1-roman-reigns-bloodline-saga">we discussed last week</a>, instead of engaging with the outside world and the realities of the universe in which we <em>all</em> live, Reigns and Rhodes mostly stayed in WWE’s “universe.” </p>
<p id="3hBLBl">Even the “real” or “shoot” beats they’ve tried to half-heartedly inject as non sequiturs into this feud have almost nothing to do with the larger Bloodline story and very little to do with anything that didn’t explicitly happen under the NXT umbrella. Instead of building Rhodes up as a formidable competitor, Reigns has spent most of his time running him down in any number of completely idiotic ways. (It should be noted that, on the other hand, Rhodes has been so quick to effusively praise Roman that it’s either a company edict or a kayfabe-deliberate psychological or promotional tactic he’s employing.)</p>
<p id="1M6BMQ">For instance, Reigns’s attempt to imply that Dusty didn’t love HIS SON as much as he loved a guy he worked with is just the weakest possible shit. Now, to be sure, there are a lot things that Cody might have to say about his relationship with Dusty—anyone blessed enough to have spent significant time with even the greatest of dads definitely knows they are, at best, a pain in the ass (if you’re reading this, not you, you’re the best, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83wO_d4Jp9M">Jimbo!</a>). But “Does he like and believe in me as much as he believes in that guy he works with?” Doesn’t seem like Cody would have to work too hard to figure that out. </p>
<p id="6E2uqA">Cody isn’t some no-talent <a href="https://www.vulture.com/article/hollywood-nepotism-babies-list-taxonomy.html">nepo baby</a>. He was a two-time Georgia state champion as a high school wrestler who <em>gave up a </em><a href="https://twitter.com/codyrhodes/status/930922769734340609"><em>scholarship</em></a><em> to Penn State</em> (winner of nine of the past 13 national championships) to become a professional wrestler. And even if Cody weren’t those things, Dusty Rhodes didn’t get to be Dusty Rhodes without thinking <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dusty_Rhodes">Virgil Runnels</a> was <em>the shit</em>. So I really doubt he’d look at his kid and think, “I’m sure <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sika_Anoa%27i">Sika Anoa’i’s</a> baby is going to be better than mine.” I mean, just look at Dusty’s face <a href="https://twitter.com/RealDDP/status/928761570066300929/photo/2">in this picture</a>: That man adored Cody. </p>
<p id="3yGYqW">Something as palpably dumb as this would be additive if WWE leaned into the fact that Reigns looks ridiculous trying to rile Cody up in this way. Though, to the company’s credit, it did have Reigns explain that Dusty probably just didn’t like talking about his kid around him. But Reigns, as always, has to look strong, so his insults are played as something close to a mic drop, or it’s implied that Cody just doesn’t totally care. Neither narrative makes for the <em>best </em>television once the initial shock of “HE SAID DUSTY’S NAME” wears off.</p>
<p id="WosgzW">Ultimately, there are no real personal issues between Rhodes and Reigns, which is totally fine from a narrative perspective. But trying to manufacture a feud in this way without making Reigns look like a geek (or at least an insecure bully) makes it seem like he has a point. This Dusty detour is a clumsy attempt to add emotional stakes to the match—apparently it isn’t enough to try to win the most coveted championship in the business (and also the Universal Championship) to honor the legacy of your late father?—because one of the other options (the intrapromotional dynamics between Rhodes and Reigns) is a subject that the company does not want to touch with a 10-foot pole. </p>
<p id="voqDHE">Speaking of which, while we are here, congratulations <em>are </em>due to Reigns for main-eventing six <em>WrestleMania</em>s (so far). It is definitely impressive, even if you don’t meaningfully take into account that this is an era when the brand of <em>WrestleMania—</em>as opposed to whichever of Vince’s favorite toys finds themselves working the last match of the night<em>—</em>is what has been explicitly used to sell the show. And, sure, Reigns is one of the few performers to have main-evented multiple <em>WrestleMania</em>s, but he’s also the only one who has done so exclusively against opponents who had main-evented before him (his match with Rhodes will be the first time he’s worked against a <em>’Mania</em> main-event rookie<em>—</em>so now he’s actually trying to make someone else into a megastar instead of relying on more established and successful acts to carry the weight). </p>
<p id="JNTpPa">It’s almost certainly a coincidence that half of Reigns’s main events—<em>WrestleMania 31</em> and <em>WrestleMania 37</em> were both well received, while the consensus on last year’s third round with Brock Lesnar was met with lukewarm resignation—rank among the worst <em>WrestleMania</em> main events of all time. Rhodes seems to have forgotten to mention that <em>he cofounded </em><a href="https://www.fightful.com/wrestling/tony-khan-says-aew-will-gross-over-100-million-2022"><em>the only legitimate contender</em></a><em> to </em><a href="https://corporate.wwe.com/investors/news/press-releases/2023/02-02-2023-210607072"><em>the biggest company in the industry</em></a><em> in 20 years, at essentially the same time that WWE was running Reigns out every year as the headliner of its biggest event.</em> Just kidding; obviously no one would ever say that on WWE TV, and it makes good business sense not to! </p>
<p id="anJYpG">But what’s genuinely odd is that Rhodes seems to be pretending to have selective amnesia about what happened during his WWE <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa">rumspringa</a>. Rhodes could have said, “We sold out a 10,000-seat arena.” Instead, we get, “well, everybody gets paid more because of me” without even slightly hinting at the idea that, for a really long time, many WWE fans thought Reigns was everything wrong with the company, an idea that would add actual depth to the story being told. It would have gone a long way in making it seem that Rhodes is at least aware of the game Reigns is playing at, but<strong> </strong>without having to mention the competition or even really “shoot” on Reigns with a cheap shot. Slightly hinting at the idea that, for a really long time, <em>many WWE fans thought Reigns was everything that was wrong with the company</em> would add depth to the story being told. </p>
<p id="rYUA4w">But there seems to be an aversion to anything other than a story about Rhodes’s triumphant return and Reigns’s place on the throne. WWE will likely lean almost exclusively (especially when the match hype starts to hit overdrive over the next two weeks) into Reigns’s “historic” reign and the “mountain” that Rhodes claims he is ready to climb. But how high and majestic, exactly, is that mountain? Is it, as WWE seems to be positioning it, a towering achievement of will and determination that is, if not the greatest title reign of all time, certainly the best of the post–Bruce Sammartino years? I mean, if I can put it as directly as possible: absolutely not at all, not even kind of. </p>
<p id="qq9NLQ">There are two reasons for this. One is Hulk Hogan or, more specifically, his first run as WWE Champion, the most important reign in WWE history as well as its most dominant. We, as a general rule, are not Hulkamaniacs, but the numbers are undeniable.</p>
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<p id="HE3GtZ">And yes, before you ask, we did run through <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=20">all 3,806 WWE Championship matches</a> since Hogan won the WWE title from the Iron Sheik in January 1984 to make sure that we were right about this. (It’s technically 3,807, but we did <em>not </em>include <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=20&page=5&reign=105&houseShows=true">Rey Mysterio’s 2011 Bermuda Triangle title “run,” which lasted roughly 14 minutes</a>, and instead folded that match into John Cena’s concurrent title reign, which itself was happening at the same time <a href="https://youtu.be/DCjw5doWWno?t=33">as another title reign</a>.) No, we don’t regret this (as much as we thought we would). The findings were certainly illuminating, but the sheer volume of Hogan’s work is overwhelming. </p>
<p id="dreKXi">His first reign has the most time in ring on television by <em>three hours</em> (OK, two hours, 50 minutes, and 44 seconds, to be as precise as possible), even though he worked without a weekly TV show worthy of ever having a meaningful title match. And he had more title matches (475!) in that one run than there are in the next three longest runs <em>combined</em>. He was also the only performer to main-event multiple <em>WrestleMania</em>s in one reign—<em>I</em>, <em>II</em>,<em> </em>and <em>III</em>. The first was a tag team match, and the latter two were one-on-one championship matches against King Kong Bundy and Andre the Giant (though Reigns and Randy Savage are the only two to win a championship at one <em>’Mania</em> and defend the title the next year). </p>
<p id="rNIJZM">But even if Hogan’s title reign is removed from the running, Reigns’s WWE title reign is nowhere near the most dominant, especially when taken by itself. In the grand scheme of things, Reigns’s WWE title reign is somewhere in the mid-30s of these champions:</p>
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<p id="udp39A">Which makes sense. This run is very solid, but he’s had just 16 matches as WWE Champion, with only half on TV—for context, the <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=3102&page=5&reign=14&houseShows=true">first <em>21</em> of Reigns’s Universal title defenses</a> were on TV because of the ThunderDome “situation.” And the company he keeps on that ranking (including his own) is still fairly significant. Slaughter’s run ended Warrior’s only run and led to Hogan’s last “legitimate” run for more than a decade (he’d win the championship twice more, with reigns that included three matches <em>total</em>, before leaving the company after losing the championship to Yokozuna at <em>King of the Ring</em> 1993). </p>
<p id="WybGuY">Dean Ambrose’s and Brock Lesnar’s first runs were exactly what it says on the tin: solid runs by EXTREMELY over acts that functioned more as evaluations of their long-term potential as centerpiece performers than as significant runs in and of themselves. On the complete opposite end of that spectrum is perhaps the most <em>consequential</em> title reign of all time, Bret Hart’s last run with the belt before losing it to Shawn Michaels via <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2022/11/11/23452218/bret-hart-shawn-michaels-wwe-montreal-screwjob-interview">the Montreal Screwjob</a>.</p>
<p id="gKZN4r">Hart and Michaels had already had some of the most dominant runs in the championship’s history when the Screwjob happened, with three of their reigns among the top 10 ever. </p>
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<p id="bAkP9c">This added to the drama of what happened at <em>Survivor Series</em> 1997, as the Screwjob didn’t involve a random Hart opponent like the Patriot (or Jean-Pierre LaFitte or Skinner or, <a href="http://juicemakesugar.com/owenweek-the-juice-make-sugar-top-10-list-other-brothers-2/">well, you get the point</a>), which made what happened feel significant while actually <em>being</em> significant. It’s best for business for important things to happen to characters <a href="https://twitter.com/CodyRhodes/status/1583503316587511809">who are really important</a>. This also gets to one of the potential purposes of a title reign: to make the title of “champion” matter.</p>
<p id="81Gygz">Which is also, beyond the Hogan of it all, what prevents this title reign from <em>actually</em> mattering in the same way WWE wants it to (and why it will likely be remembered as a “good run” 10 years from now, in the way Cena’s best runs have faded from memory). While Reigns’s Universal title run <em>is </em>the greatest ever, there’s a good chance the championship won’t exist as soon as next month.</p>
<p id="qqcreE">It’s also not <em>as</em> dominant as Hogan’s, even if it’s not quite fair to compare the two. Reigns’s run is long, but if it ends at <em>WrestleMania</em>, it will not even have been two-thirds as long as Hogan’s. And during that time, he has worked fewer than <em>10 percent </em>of the matches Hogan did. On the Universal side of the ledger, Lesnar <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=3102&page=5&reign=4&houseShows=true">also held the title for over a year</a> and <em>repeatedly</em> beat Reigns’s ass in front of people for money, including in two of the last three matches in Lesnar’s reign (he’d eventually lose the third in the trilogy to Reigns at <em>SummerSlam</em>, in a dud of a six-minute main event.)</p>
<p id="Y5E1zA">Reigns has spent a shocking amount of TV time in matches (combining the Universal and WWE reigns, it’s the second-most time as a champion in televised matches <em>ever</em>), so he seems dominant. But if the order in which he won the titles were reversed, this would just mean more. </p>
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<p id="Wb7mNh">It’s clear that WWE felt the need to add the only world title anyone actually wants to Reigns’s résumé in order to make his run feel more dominant and less like the answer to a trivia question. </p>
<p id="fRKaQG">For the reasons we’ve outlined above, and also the fact that two of the seven years of the title’s existence were completely warped by the pandemic, having the greatest Universal title reign is like having the most passing yards in LendingTree Bowl history. It’s an impressive feat because it’s always great to be the best at something, but wishing it were prestigious simply doesn’t make it so.</p>
<p id="d7vdlG">However, even after the Universal title reign is added onto the beginning of Reigns’s title reign—which would be a <em>wild</em> way to measure the relative value of his WWE title run, roughly equivalent to counting Shohei Ohtani’s hits in his Cy Young case—it wouldn’t be considered the most dominant title run in the last <em>10 years </em>when run though our Power Board rankings formula. That Frankenstein’s monster version of a WWE title run would definitely be in the conversation for <em>among </em>the best of all time, though. </p>
<p id="ibU1yS">Post-Hogan, the performer who is actually no. 1 (based on our system) champion of all time <em>may</em> surprise you:</p>
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<p id="Bhc23g">Yep. CM Punk’s comically frequent—especially post–<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPFuTTcd0h0">Heyman Heel Turn</a>™—claim that he had the greatest title reign of the modern era is, in fact, reflected in the numbers. If Hogan’s first run is the Platonic ideal of what a championship reign can be, Punk’s incredible run between the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2013 is the gold standard by which all modern championship runs should be measured. </p>
<p id="JHw2kw">In stabilizing the belt, Punk’s run helped put some of the “<a href="https://www.theringer.com/2023/2/2/23583042/wwe-royal-rumble-match-battle-royal-history">reign inflation</a>” issues that many WWE titles had behind them after the most egregious bullshit in the history of the title. Post-Punk, the title had a hot streak of high-profile runs: the Rock’s return; Cena’s passed-torch run; Daniel Bryan and Randy Orton swapping the title back and forth, leading into the Yes Movement and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfFrDS2cCKA">“Yes”-tleMania</a>; Lesnar founding Suplex City and Rollins cashing in; and Reigns winning his first. Punk’s run, outside of Hogan’s first, also featured the most title matches—<a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=20&page=5&reign=111&houseShows=true">149</a>, 17 more than Savage’s <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=20&page=5&reign=12&houseShows=true">132</a> in his first run—and at 116 is tied with Savage’s for the most “successful” defenses (meaning <em>wins</em>, not draws or those matches that end because of the “champion’s prerogative” to get DQed or counted out to retain their title). It also featured the most TV time outside of Reigns’s and Hogan’s runs. </p>
<p id="EV2LjD">If there’s any run in the top five that actually needs explaining, it would be AJ Styles’s shocking (or at least “really surprising”; <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BJGoCzVDyaS/">Hank didn’t need a fainting couch this time</a>) placement on this list. But that sneaky-long title reign (Styles has the third-most matches and defenses, after Hogan’s run, behind Punk and Savage) played a role similar to Punk’s, but on a smaller scale. Styles ended one of the most reviled title reigns ever—while we would <em>never</em> hinder Jinder Mahal in the Palace of Wisdom, his run is generally seen as a kind of modern nadir in the title’s history, even if our numbers don’t agree (for those wondering, Sheamus’s are, sadly, the actual nadir)—and lost the belt to Daniel Bryan to kick off the American Dragon’s best (and his personal <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2023/3/3/23623004/bryan-danielson-aew-revolution-2023-career-longevity-interview">favorite</a>) WWE title run, which itself ended up turning into KofiMania. </p>
<p id="QD4HLR">Which is ultimately what these championship reigns are about. Adding value (promotional or otherwise) to the performer, the title, or both is the only real reason to give someone a championship and make them an integral part of your wrestling promotion. And, in that way, Reigns’s run is extremely valuable, <em>one</em> of the greatest of all time. </p>
<p id="iw3qGm">But treating this like the second coming of world title runs both rewards WWE for backfilling its own narratives and will eventually end up with the kind of “____ is overrated” backlash that Reigns had to suffer through for most of his career. </p>
<p id="Adkuot">Although it’s not a guarantee it would happen, if it did, it would suck much more than on the front end. As much shit as I’ve given Reigns in the last two weeks, he’s made it clear over the last decade that, as a performer, locker room leader, and one of the most public faces in the history of an art form I love more than any other on earth, he couldn’t get much better. And as a man and father, Joe Anoa’i seems like, as they might say on <a href="https://www.theringer.com/cheap-heat-podcast"><em>Cheap Heat</em></a>, a <em>guh-reat </em>guy (though it’s unclear whether he’s “mensch of the centch” material). And that’s before you wrap your head around him beating back cancer <em>twice</em>. </p>
<p id="ibMKU7">That’s why, for once, WWE should just let Reigns be Reigns, let Rhodes be Rhodes, and allow the fans to enjoy what should be a once-in-an-actual-lifetime story line as precisely that. It shouldn’t try to force significance, create tension where it isn’t, or compare what’s happening now to what’s occurred historically, all in increasingly futile attempts to validate that what we’re watching is some pretty dope shit. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="jZ2lCM">Now, let’s get off this island of relevancy and back on the Rhodes to <em>WrestleMania</em>. </p>
<p id="es48Pv"><em>Nick Bond (</em><a href="https://twitter.com/THEN1CKSTER"><em>@TheN1ckster</em></a><em>) is the cofounder of the Institute of Kayfabermetrics and provides weekly updates to </em><a href="https://wrestling.theringer.com/">The Ringer<em>’s WWE Power Board</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<aside id="scFbm9"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"ringer_newsletter"}'></div></aside><p id="edNpQB"></p>
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https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/3/21/23648622/wwe-escape-from-island-of-relevancy-part-2-roman-reigns-cody-rhodes-greatest-wwe-championsNick Bond2023-03-13T13:15:57-04:002023-03-13T13:15:57-04:00Escape From the Island of Relevancy, Part 1
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<p>Roman Reigns and the Bloodline saga are at the heart of WrestleMania season this year. How does the modern era’s hottest angle really compare to the greatest stories ever told? </p> <p id="JWMVJa">I remember when I first bought the condo right on the beach surrounding Anoa’i Bay. There was a sense of peace as I watched the better part of two and a half years go by while the world returned to “<a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=daily+coronavirus+deaths+in+us&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&ghc=2&lq=0&pq=daily+coronavirus+deaths+in+us&sc=5-30&sk=&cvid=B6DCC74BC1E6488C8882038D6FDBE5E7&ghsh=0&ghacc=0&ghpl=">normal</a>,” and stadiums started to fill with the sounds of bodies slamming against mats while thousands of folks shared in the communal experience of the most beautiful, dumb thing humans have ever created.</p>
<p id="1Z5jNT">Lately, though, there’s been a lot of big talk happening here that has made me desperate to get off of <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/11/21/23470405/roman-reigns-wwe-head-of-the-table-profile">Roman Reigns</a>’s “island of relevancy.” That was before I realized how far away it was from civilization, or any kind of reality, as more and more people found themselves drunkenly stumbling in from Heyman Harbor (“Where the beer and lies flow like wine, which also flows like wine,” as the locals say). When paired with a sanitation department that has been on strike for the better part of the last year, escape has become both more important and seemingly more impossible every day. </p>
<p id="pJJM1c">And as your dutiful correspondent, it’s become a moral imperative to at least get to the highest point on the island, even if it’s a pile of bullshit a mile high, to get a full survey of the land as we make our way to WrestleMania, where, hopefully, rescue crews will begin evacuating the folks still stuck here. But, since it’s going to be a bit of a journey to get to that point, let’s start with the lowest-hanging fruit possible to get us rolling with the right kind of energy: </p>
<p id="ZG3I4A">Can any of us sit here straight-faced, <em>under the watchful eyes of God</em>,<em> </em>and truly say that the whole of WWE’s <em>SmackDown</em>—and not just its Bloodline scenes—deserves an Emmy? More than <a href="https://www.theringer.com/succession"><em>Succession</em></a>? Or <em>Severance</em>? <em>Squid Game</em>? <em>Stranger Things</em>?<em> </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2022/1/17/22888235/everything-you-need-to-know-about-yellowjackets"><em>Yellowjackets</em></a>?<em> Better Call Saul</em>? Ignoring, at least for the moment, quality (though, <em>c’mon</em>), these shows all tell stories with boundaries that hew significantly closer to the full breadth and width of the human experience than basically anything you will ever see on even the best wrestling show. </p>
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<p id="0cCtV3">OK, maybe not <em>all</em><strong> </strong>of these shows do the whole “breadth and width” thing, but even the ones that don’t and definitely wouldn’t care to, like <em>Succession</em>, are at least pantheons of great TV and make a compelling case for a wealth tax (and, like, a <em>Purge, </em>maybe two<em>)</em>. Even something a little bit more apples-to-apples with the Bloodline’s story, like <em>Ozark</em>—which, instead of having one character treating his wrestling stable like he’s running a drug cartel, features an actual drug cartel <em>and</em> Jason Bateman—is able to do so much more on its worst day than wrestling can on its best day because of the inherent limits of both live television and the medium of wrestling. </p>
<p id="oJTyS6">These are also both the exact kinds of shows that highlight that no meaningful stakes exist in the world of professional wrestling, <em>even in kayfabe. </em>Beyond the wrestling and the prestige and fame that come from being good at the wrestling, unless <a href="https://www.denofgeek.com/culture/lucha-underground-the-monstrous-story-of-matanza-cueto/">Matanza and Dario Cueto</a> are involved, the concerns of those involved are far from existential. And because playing a role on a show is a fundamentally different concept than a wrestler working a gimmick, there’s not even a real concern about being written off the show in a meaningful way unless you fall ass-backward into a Loser Leaves Town match. </p>
<p id="kwERmA">Now, you’re probably saying, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ACTING? And, yes, various members of the Bloodline have done a spectacular job of acting compared to other <em>professional wrestlers. </em>However, anyone who has seen more than a handful of Botchamanias (or, better yet, any Wrestling is Awesome segment of an <em>OSW Review</em> episode) can attest that “These are some of the best actors in wrestling history” is not saying very much at all. </p>
<p id="y6ygi2">This is why although I wouldn’t laugh at Rami Sebei (<a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/12/6/23496380/roman-reigns-sami-zayn-the-bloodline-wwe-faction-history">Sami Zayn</a>) if he wanted to <a href="https://www.emmys.com/sites/default/files/Downloads/2023-rules-procedures-v2a.pdf?bust=230228">submit clips for</a> something like the Outstanding Supporting Actor category (he’s done a Batista-level job in some of his “scenes,” the highest possible compliment you can give a wrestling thespian), I’d understand that he’d have a less-than-zero chance of getting nominated ahead of performers like John Turturro or Christopher Walken (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVsQLlk-T0s">yes, <em>the</em> Christopher Walken</a>) just from a logistical standpoint. In fact, it’s precisely these “f<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNRpb_E0jPc">or your consideration</a>” concerns that make this entire argument so absurd on its face that you have to assume that it’s not a realistic assessment of the situation. </p>
<p id="eK6kAu">Instead, it’s basically what you say when the idea that “These things are good things, and good things can win awards for which they are technically eligible” is one of the major ways in which you interpret the quality of the art you are watching. This is totally understandable and why, ultimately, <em>this </em>conversation is good, clean fun: As wrestling fans, we rarely have something to sink our teeth into on an emotional level beyond really hating one guy and liking the other, so if someone wants to throw a parade or hand out awards when it happens, so be it. Also, nothing would make the VenPurr Bros. happier than seeing Sami in a tuxedo doing the Sami dance on TV’s biggest night. </p>
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<p id="N5VoZP">What’s truly bothersome is the way this almost total detachment from reality when evaluating the Bloodline has permeated into wild discussions about this story’s place in the history of wrestling, where it has somehow fallen ass-backward into “greatest story line ever made” territory. To that, I have to say: We used to build things in this country, and some of those things were wrestling narratives that actually exemplified what <em>wrestling </em>could be and not just the wrestling version of ... literally every story of absolute power corrupting absolutely. </p>
<p id="hYBrWW">But because the Bloodline as a concept is built on the rather obvious foundation of a largely unadulterated truth—Joe Anoa’i (Roman) <em>really is</em> cousins with twins Josh (Jey) and Jonathan (Jimmy) Fatu, they come from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoa%27i_family">an EXTREMELY prominent extended family of wrestlers</a>, and they did seem to grow up close enough to “together” for it to pass in the story line as “real,” or at least as “not total bullshit”—we have a tendency to ignore that essentially everything that has happened within that context is <em>clearly</em><strong> </strong>a part of the constructed reality of the wrestling show we’re all watching.</p>
<p id="w1pCcg">And while a narrative playing into “Is this a shoot?”–style storytelling is not necessary or sufficient criteria for “determining” whether or not a story line should be considered great (and has very little to do with whether or not the story being told is enjoyable), very few of the best stories told in wrestling history have had so little to do with the world surrounding them. More so than even the action in the ring, the interplay between our reality and the unreality of professional wrestling is the definitive trait inherent to the medium that makes wrestling, well, wrestling, which seemed to be something that was (pardon the pun) acknowledged at the beginning of this story line. </p>
<p id="0n6Vw1">However, whatever real tension might have existed from either residual teenage angst—as you may remember, the main emotional through line for the first six months or so of this run was focused on the tension between Jey and Roman, which seemed to stem from Joe picking on and ordering around Josh and Jon for much of their childhood—or professional resentment the Usos might have had toward Reigns’s success was largely dealt with more than two years ago. Jey and Roman’s interpersonal dynamic at the time (and their Hell in a Cell match at 2020’s titular PPV, in particular) touched on the core emotional conflict and tried to engage with generational trauma and the expectations that family and legacy place upon us, but that concept has not been reintroduced in any palpable way. </p>
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<p id="QEZOl3"><em>That</em> was easily some of the best television ever produced by WWE. Had they committed to telling the story of the Anoa’i family in its totality with the same level of care and focus, we would all be on a very different path. However, over the past year and a half, the story has quite literally lost the plot (or at least <em>that</em> plot). Now, its emotional crux has been whether or not Jey would accept (and then eventually side with) Sami Zayn—a guy who he’s been kayfabe friends with for a couple of months—over <em>his twin brother </em>simply because their cousin sucks<em>.</em> </p>
<p id="hLSy3u">Why? Because when fans came back and saw Roman turned heel, the Bloodline got over. Like, crazy stupid bananas over. And while great wrestling television has come out of it—though your mileage may vary on Jey’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXRqxDQyzZ0">acting</a>,”—by taking their foot off the gas on Roman’s unmitigated jackassery (to make him more palatable to fans on the fence about “acknowledging” him and to sell GOD-awful T-shirts), they’ve steered themselves into a bit of a narrative dead end, where the goal becomes “prolonging the magic” instead of “telling the best story.” </p>
<p id="v8HbUM">This has led to a recurrence of the Four Horsemen of the FUN-pocalypse problem, where your objectively <em>very evil </em>but popular faction doesn’t meaningfully lose their sinister side, but the <em>reasons</em> behind them doing sinister things become “shrug emoji” instead of the characters involved being shitty/evil people. The Horsemen bit, which <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Horsemen_(professional_wrestling)#Original_Four_Horsemen_(1985%E2%80%931987)">began</a> in earnest after <a href="https://youtu.be/No671uhpHSo?t=143">one of them broke Dusty Rhodes’s leg in a cage at the Omni</a>, actually started as a kind of “Lost Cause” revival between Ole Anderson and his kayfabe cousin (as well as the greatest wrestler of all time) Arn Anderson. The “big bang” moment for the Horsemen occurs when Ole—in an interview in which he essentially makes a backdoor case that’s supposed to half sound like he’s advocating for (I swear) the reintroduction of segregation as a way to explain why he wants to end his tag team with Thunderbolt Patterson—cites Arn’s recent debut for the catalyst for making him realize he’s “gotta go back in time.” </p>
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<p id="tftccf">And yes, they do play Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” as Manny Fernandez’s entrance music for his match against Arn in the second half of this video, because Crockett-era broadcasters didn’t care about royalties, and, as such, the vibes were immaculate.) </p>
<p id="vOexsG">Eventually, this <em>extremely</em> rough edge would be sanded down as the Horsemen got increasingly popular and their nefariousness went from “mildly racist, extremely violent group of marauders” to “guys who helped Ric Flair retain his title.” This is exactly where Roman and the abusive hold he has over everyone in his orbit, along with the pie-facing by which it is made manifest, find themselves. Having become the ol’ “semiotic means to a narrative end,” Reigns LOSING control OF THE VOLUME of his VOICE has started to function in much the same way “Flair befriending and turning on someone” worked, where his outbursts don’t really add actual intrigue or depth to the proceedings and instead become the wrestling version of “playing the hits.” </p>
<p id="bIZxYN">Thankfully, much of the narrative juice—the thing that <em>actually</em> moves the needle every week in terms of character and story line development—has shifted toward the Usos, who kind of sit in a parallel universe with Sami and his soon-to-be tag team partner (again), <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/8/29/23327186/kevin-owens-chad-gable-wwe-raw-best-wrestling-matches">Kevin Owens</a>. That Roman Reigns appears to be too busy to show up for every episode before what’s supposed to be the biggest show in the history of the company has actually benefited the story line, as Paul Heyman plays proxy better than Roman Reigns does anything, other than serve as the poster boy for the power of veneers. (To be clear, not just because I’m a wrestling writer who looks like he writes about wrestling, but that’s not meant as a dig in any way—his smile is INCREDIBLE now and he even seems more comfortable with it than he used to, so good for him.) </p>
<p id="64m7uf">Even Cody Rhodes’s appearance to make the save for Sami on <em>Raw</em>—and challenge the Usos to a fight at the end of <em>SmackDown</em>—wasn’t <em>really</em> about Roman. It was vamping to build anticipation for the inevitable reunion between our two favorite Quebecois wrestlers. (Sorry, Raymond. Jacques, you know what you did.) That it has established Rhodes as standing in opposition not just to Reigns, but to the Bloodline’s raison d’etre—somewhat selfishly, as you remember Cody’s song <em>doesn’t say shit </em>about there being “more than two<strong> </strong>royal families in professional wrestling”—and their role in WWE as a malevolent force is great but was very secondary to the actual happenings in front of us. </p>
<p id="zZ7jff">And while a story like the nWo would eventually turn <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3A_vxgBDxA">from hot shit in a champagne glass to cold diarrhea in a Dixie cup</a>, as opposed to the Bloodline, which has gone a bit stale but remains main event–worthy, the initial year-and-a-half run of the New World Order (essentially through <em>Starrcade ’97</em>) is as significant (both in wrestling and the larger culture) a story as has ever been told in the history of the medium. In part, because it marked a massive shift in the ways stories were told, not just from a writing perspective, but also from a cinematography perspective. </p>
<p id="tZTzUA">And, I mean, that turn:</p>
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<p id="76Svcz">More importantly, though, it worked as well as it did because everyone involved had actual motivations and real character depth that moved the plot forward. Now, Hulk Hogan stinks on ice—we say that in a way that isn’t legally actionable, we hope—but he is one of the most over acts in history and it wasn’t by accident. For all his many faults, Terry Bollea played something resembling a nuanced, <em>almost </em>three-dimensional character (or, OK, at least a person with an interior life who had wants and desires, as well as interests, outside of wrestling. Mostly “hanging and banging” then riding Harleys with “Brother Bruti,” but interests nevertheless). </p>
<p id="osGrzP">With the Bloodline, Roman wants to stay champion and is willing to do whatever it takes. That’s ... about it. As mentioned earlier, at some point he conflated that with being able to provide for his family and secure their (impressive in its longevity but not disproportionately successful at the highest levels) legacy, which was <em>dope</em>. But that motivation has largely dissipated and hasn’t been replaced by an equally compelling reason for Roman to be so obsessed with holding onto the titles. </p>
<p id="hWHGFT">Hogan did his turn, then became champion because he knew that whoever holds the gold holds the power. Roman got the gold (again) because his self-worth is tied up in his titles and the championship belts that accompany them, or at least that’s what it feels like, but even that level of introspection or characterization seems to be missing. And what’s more is that Hogan’s reasons for turning against WCW were understandable: Fans had largely abandoned him (which, having seen him work, I get it) and he had no actual loyalty to WCW, merely seeing the company as a chance for a hefty paycheck (in the same way the company saw him as a meal ticket). So, when the opportunity arose to become part of a dominant faction, there was no real reason for him to <em>not</em> make the decision he did. </p>
<p id="lJ0MPK">With Roman, it’s about as deep as “He’s not a Good Guy, he’s a Bad Guy who is obsessed with being the Guy.” This speaks to the larger problem of the Bloodline story line: there really isn’t much nuance or introspection with the decision-making in the story, or to anything that’s happening. And, no, Jey making the “uh-oh, puppy did a poopy” face every time Roman is mean to him isn’t the same as nuance. </p>
<p id="XvANGA">No one’s expecting “<a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/9/2/21417597/mad-men-the-suitcase-bottle-episode-don-draper-peggy-olson">The Suitcase</a>,” but some kind of internal conflict (usually between the person you are and the person you want to be) is often part of what makes truly great stories. Like the Mega Powers (sorry for all the Hogan) or almost literally every show and movie that’s ever been awarded for its excellence—except whenever the Academy sees a movie that explains how racism was solved by the invention of the automobile—having the ability to argue either side of a conflict (if not necessarily either side’s <em>reaction</em> to the conflict) is a key component of their success. </p>
<p id="wLAF0Q">While Randy Savage’s reaction to Hogan’s behavior was the catalyst for their world-famous explosion, Hogan was (as the kids say) sus AF and even Miss Elizabeth could have told Hulk to cool out (or at least <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/say-less-with-kaz-lowkey-and-rosy/id1503772303">say less</a>). Roman’s reaction to everything—Sami chants, most notably, but basically any time someone doesn’t say exactly what he wants to hear—hits the “I think you are trying to steal my girl and my championship in between all your hotdogging and grandstanding” level that Savage only reached at <em>WrestleMania V</em>. Which, in theory, would put the onus on everyone else around him to decide whether or not to bust Roman’s head open for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61fsW4xxkZE">habitual line stepping</a>, but it’s happened so frequently that it seems increasingly unlikely anyone ever will. </p>
<p id="vjDZGe">Some of this is structural and requires watching a lot (some, including my wife, would say “too much”) of wrestling to pick up on. As a bit of a spoiler, I’ve been watching every WWE PPV main event (in preparation for a <em>WrestleMania</em> project which may kill me) in order and, outside of the, uh, enhanced look of the overwhelming majority of the competitors, the most shocking aspect to this journey into that particular heart of darkness is the ways in which the earliest PPVs showcased a product that was morally ambiguous with a presentation which engaged in actual discourse about the roles of morality and ethics in a ruthlessly competitive space like professional wrestling. </p>
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<p id="Aj3U86">It didn’t hurt that Jesse Ventura, the greatest heel announcer of all time—we will not be taking questions on this subject, but the answer to all of them is “you’re wrong”—and maybe the only true practitioner of what I like to call “courage of your convictions” commentating, was in the booth for most of the major shows in the company’s first five years of PPV. Ventura was quick and smart enough, with the required amount of stroke and on-screen credibility, to truly plant seeds of doubt in the minds of free-thinking viewers that maybe the bad guys had the right idea all along. Or at the very least, the “good guys” were as full of shit as anybody else, but had the backing of the company and the fans to better hide their ugly sides. (He also once explained what a rest hold was doing in kayfabe terms as seamlessly as I have ever seen a professional broadcaster do <em>anything</em> in my entire life.)</p>
<p id="wZGlKt">Unlike his spiritual descendants (see Graves, Corey), Ventura wasn’t framed as the wrestling equivalent of right or left, but someone with a different perspective than his either largely neutral (with Vince McMahon and Tony Schiavone, the latter of which is the greatest commentary team of all time, and please see earlier instructions regarding discussing this) or comically pro-babyface (with Gorilla Monsoon, also Schiavone when the Ultimate Warrior was involved) broadcast partners. Now, the idea is selling you (even in the “New and Improved!” Triple H era) on what’s happening at this moment being the greatest thing ever (despite us having access to the Network and, thereby, knowing for a fact that it isn’t) with a specific vision for how you should react. Commentators don’t have meaningful conversations, even in kayfabe, about what’s happening in the ring as much as they produce point-counterpoint cable news pundit banter. </p>
<p id="9y5lug">This framing—when coupled with (outside of Brock Lesnar and whoever is the designated monster [read: tall] villain that fiscal quarter) heels that range between Team Rocket and villains from <em>Batman: The Animated Series</em> levels of competence—means that anything resembling high-level professional acumen by the bad guys gets treated as almost black magic, simply because we’re so used to heels soiling themselves the second they are confronted by adversity or someone willing to stand up for themselves that not actively sucking is seen as “smart booking.”</p>
<p id="i9K2UZ">But this is just as much about Stockholm Syndrome as it is the way the show is now presented narratively. After <em>years</em> <em>and years </em>of categorically rejecting Reigns, it seems him showing flashes of the character we always wished he would be was enough for a sizable chunk of the internet discourse (and a depressing number of fans in the arenas) to start treating him as a conquering babyface. As opposed to what Reigns is: a bully and cheat whose obsession with, and stranglehold on, power has warped the world around him so thoroughly that those once connected to him are now trying desperately to save everyone else in his inner circle from turning into the monster he’s become. </p>
<p id="PqEg1B">Which is the ultimate failure of this story line at this point. Reigns is unequivocally an abuser, the villain, the antagonist, and the final boss at the end of the game or however you want to describe this interminable run holding the company’s titles hostage. He is not the hero, and yet there is way too much support on his end of the ledger, considering there has not been a legitimate reason to root for him <em>since he tried to kill his injured cousin to win a wrestling match against their twin brother, who he then threatened to excommunicate from the family the next day unless he fell under his thumb.</em> </p>
<p id="lsS356">The shockingly positive reaction to Roman’s completely out-of-pocket behavior—and a realization that most people don’t have a meaningful grasp on what the word “<a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=betray&cvid=f2ebbd03edd540909311337426c845bc&aqs=edge..69i57j69i60.1143j0j1&pglt=41&FORM=ANNTA1&PC=DCTS">betray</a>” means—has gone a long way in sucking the fun out of this narrative, at least in the Palace of Wisdom. Instead of enjoying the culmination (hopefully) of the second act of one of the better bits of long-term wrestling storytelling produced in the past 30 years of professional wrestling and appreciating it for what it is, we are forced to sit here, speaking in hyperbolics. </p>
<p id="zD2Nus">Like pretending that a story line that essentially asks “What if Tony Soprano was written to appeal to the sensibilities of children?” is the greatest piece of literature in the modern world. Or even more egregious, trying to convince ourselves Reigns has somehow made his way into the discussion of greatest wrestlers of all time—or, even more hilariously, and easily disprovable, the greatest champion of all time—when in reality, it’s exceedingly difficult to be considered the best at something when you’re the third-best guy in the only two factions you’ve ever been a part of and half your record title reign has been holding a belt no one cares about.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="EzebOf">But that’s a discussion for another day. How’s Thursday sound?</p>
<p id="TOWzCi"><em>Nick Bond (</em><a href="https://twitter.com/THEN1CKSTER"><em>@TheN1ckster</em></a><em>) is the cofounder of the Institute of Kayfabermetrics and provides weekly updates to </em><a href="https://wrestling.theringer.com/">The Ringer<em>’s WWE Power Board</em></a><em>.</em></p>
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https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/3/13/23637099/wwe-escape-from-island-of-relevancy-part-1-roman-reigns-bloodline-sagaNick Bond2023-02-25T10:40:36-05:002023-02-25T10:40:36-05:00Beware the Pod of Death: An Elimination Chamber Deep Dive
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<p>A week after the dust settled in the Elimination Chamber, we crunched the numbers to see which pods garner the most success, and why</p> <p id="ZKkub6">During the last few days leading up to this year’s Elimination Chamber show in Montreal, in something that has become tradition before “<a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2022/12/16/23512906/wwe-in-your-house-pay-per-view-history">gimmick</a>” shows on the WWE calendar, the VenPurr Bros. and I spent roughly 15 hours in the Palace of Wisdom running through every single Chamber match in order. </p>
<p id="zfbBes">(My daughter didn’t get to partake in as much of the Chamber “tape eating” as she would have liked, or at least I assume based on her reaction to me starting <em>Goodnight, World!</em> with her way, way too soon after <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/2/16/23600535/asuka-wwe-superstar-entrance-music-history">Asuka</a> arrived on-screen. Though it’s also possible Thiz just misunderstood the concept of “tape eating” and was upset about missing out on “snackies.”)</p>
<p id="crNoE2">While the stories of the matches (both on micro and macro levels) ranged between “historically great” and “mildly interesting,” what seemed most important to us while we watched was how much the first four of these matches—over the course of almost FIVE YEARS— <em>looked </em>like the garbage fire the fifth match actually was. </p>
<p id="Vkj62J">And by that, I mean this shit was <em>hard to watch (and without even helping </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/2/21/18233226/egot-necklace-30-rock-tracy-morgan-whoopi-goldberg"><em>Tracy Jordan win his EGOT</em></a><em>)</em>.<em> </em></p>
<p id="l7zq9b">I had never begrudged WWE for taking much longer—January 21, 2008, almost a full 10 years after <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_television_in_the_United_States">HD was first broadcast in the U.S.</a>—than nearly <a href="https://americanfootballdatabase.fandom.com/wiki/NFL_on_CBS#:~:text=On%20November%208%2C%201998%2C%20the,York%20Jets%20and%20Buffalo%20Bills.">every</a> <a href="https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/nba-goes-hd">other</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_broadcasting_firsts#:~:text=Catcher%2DCam%20soon%20would%20become,Sox%20and%20the%20Texas%20Rangers">major</a> (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_National_Hockey_League_on_United_States_television">or not so major</a>) sport, as well as a plurality of network television, to find itself filming and broadcasting in high definition. Well, that bootlicking bullshit ended last week. After watching the first five editions of the Chamber match, I felt as though I’d seen Jack Horner’s worst fears come to life. </p>
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<p id="7qehgg"> </p>
<p id="K86pCm">Trudging through an orgy of shots noisily obscured by steel beams, routinely punctuated by bloodied faces mashed into chain links that comprised the “walls” of the structure, all with seemingly arbitrary cutbacks to a useless “hard cam”—the stationary camera that traditionally functions as a recurring establishing shot for wrestling matches—looked terrible, which almost certainly wasn’t intentional but was at least partly a function of the lo-fi presentation that permeates the entire era. </p>
<p id="xEDK3q">Like Floyd Gondolli trying to keep himself flush with lollipop and butter-stick money by switching to videotape to cut costs, WWE’s reluctance to join the high-definition future (presumably over cost concerns in the other direction) led it to nearly destroy any credibility the Chamber idea had developed before the concept ever even had a chance to turn into The Final Stop on the Road to WrestleMania™ by presenting it in such an embryonic form. </p>
<p id="tFUHBl">If this sounds—may God have mercy on my soul for this pun—extreme, that’s only because you weren’t around for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elimination_Chamber#Match_history">the fifth Chamber match</a>, at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_to_Dismember_(2006)">Extreme Championship Wrestling’s <em>December to Dismember</em> in 2006</a>. Considered one of the worst shows ever produced by WWE, it led to Paul Heyman <a href="https://www.thesportster.com/wwe-backstage-fight-paul-heyman-fired-by-vince-mcmahon-explained/">being relieved</a> of his duties in charge of ECW at the time, the (albeit brief) retirement of the Big Show, and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20121222044121/http://www.wwe.com/classics/ecw/the-true-story-ecw-relaunch-26078068/page-5">release requests from multiple ECW originals</a>, including Tommy Dreamer and Stevie Richards. Which is to say: The Chamber match (and everything that came before it) went so bad they took <em>Paul Heyman </em>off TV. </p>
<div id="fhEfuZ"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3VyR250QYcQ?rel=0" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share;"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="7XEuVy"> </p>
<p id="ol8nrH">Unequivocally the worst Chamber match and easily one of the worst main events in WWE history, the attempt to turn ECW’s version of the Elimination Chamber into <a href="https://youtu.be/XF37-nalmCk">the WCW Chamber of Horrors</a> (give or take an Abdullah the Butcher botch ... or six) was a failure on every level. The chamber <em>looked </em>terrible and is perhaps the nadir of WWE’s presentation in the modern era—that is, in a “low production values” sense, as WWE has obviously put way worse stuff on TV from an ethical, moral, and cringe perspective—and the actual match was <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1372939-hell-in-a-cell-remembering-the-worst-match-involving-satans-structure">the “Kennel from Hell”</a> but with a brand shitting all over the ring instead of a pack of scared dogs.</p>
<p id="P6uZxz">Presumably, over concerns that the <em>multiton steel structure that they had advertised as a violent torture chamber they were all trapped in </em>wouldn’t be able to get the job done, weapons were placed in each pod for individuals to wield against their opponents. Or, that’s at least what we were told, but it’s unclear how some of these, including a <em>whole-ass table</em> placed in eventual winner Bobby Lashley’s pod, were supposed to be used against someone in a situation like the Chamber.</p>
<p id="XlTz7a">As a general rule, the Chamber is a busy match for the eyes, and on this night, with the weapons crowding each pod <em>and</em> the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stage_lighting_instrument#House_lights">house lights</a> seemingly turned all the way up, there was essentially no visual contrast between the spectacle going on in the ring and the crowd behind it. This meant that every time the camera went to a wide shot (to see the crowd not reacting to anything in the ring) it gave the entire thing all the aesthetic charm of an indie show at a high school gym coupled with the visual clarity of the last season of <a href="https://www.theringer.com/game-of-thrones/"><em>Game of Thrones</em></a> if they had somehow filmed that with the sun placed directly on set with them but then covered the lens with the mop water from a janitor’s bucket. </p>
<p id="9KcvMp">While things like lighting and mise-en-scène or depth of field are <em>normally </em>not of concern for professional wrestling shows, the very specific ways in which the match played out from a visual standpoint made me wonder about whether how much of what I was watching was WWE’s total apathy toward what it was putting on-screen. (Smaller shows sometimes do have problems, but their issues usually come from bad camera equipment and audio that sounds like it was recorded from a very uncomfortable place, like the back of a Volkswagen.)</p>
<p id="m3W2Cd">So I asked Timothy Burke—for those unaware, in addition to creating one of the most frightening pieces of media criticism of recent vintage, Burke (<a href="https://deadspin.com/how-americas-largest-local-tv-owner-turned-its-news-anc-1824233490">formerly of <em>Deadspin</em></a>, which was a good website) runs <a href="https://burke-communications.com/">Burke Communications</a> and is one of the foremost experts on broadcast standards and technology working today—if the relatively poor quality of the footage from this match and era is, at least partially, a function of a lack of care or concern about the visual presentation or something else. In this instance, it seems like he saw a real “Por qué no los dos?” situation.</p>
<p id="mu7FcA">“Over the years different processes were used to ingest WWE archives into ‘the Network’—some of them better than others. Looking at this ECW <em>December to Dismember</em>,<em> </em>my guess is that this was initially archived in a digital format but then recaptured through an analog capture process. I’ve seen this in a lot of the NBA’s content as well, where there’s both digital pixelation and chromatic fringing that are telltale signs of both aspects of re-production,” explains Burke. </p>
<p id="BsxLnn">This is in contrast to the Attitude Era broadcasts, which maintain at least some fidelity to the original presentation. “If you look at the WWE Attitude Era stuff that was recorded in, I’m guessing, 3/4-inch U-matic tape, then digitized using a very high-quality comb filter and time base corrector and all that, it looks much better despite being up to 10 years older than this ECW stuff because someone else or somewhere else did the digitizing.”</p>
<p id="TPqz7H">Though, as Burke was quick to point out, WWE’s decision to change the way it handled footage was “not about cheapness, it was about the trends. You will see the exact same thing in replays of ESPN college football games from that era. There were extremely high-quality ways to save this stuff back then it was just ... expensive and not many people did it. If you find original air tapes, for example, those are always going to have the highest quality, assuming you have decent digitization equipment. But as we know, air tapes were not always kept even into this century.”</p>
<p id="OqfDII">So while it may feel good (and I certainly wanted) to blame Vince McMahon or a lack of foresight by his production team for my trouble with getting through the first few Chambers, Burke makes it clear that this was standard operating procedure for an industry that almost certainly did not see a broadband-enabled streaming future that would become the primary distribution model for most entertainment in the world. </p>
<p id="Dd9MB4">“There was a period of time from, like, the late ’90s to the mid-2000s where it was common to archive stuff in a lossy digital format that was easier to work with than analog tape but was visually inferior to a well-recorded, well-kept 3/4-inch analog U-matic or similar broadcast tape.” </p>
<p id="1NkH9N">And, for all of its faults, WWE has actually done a decent job of maintaining its library, which itself contains <em>nearly </em>the entirety of meaningful matches from the territory era and, by extension, the entire visual history of a significant cultural medium, at least in terms of North America productions. </p>
<p id="Xs59ya">“Overall, the Network is an amazing thing and WWE has preserved its history better than just about any sports league. The NFL—and I say this having worked with them recently on something related to the Immaculate Reception—kept almost nothing. They relied on NFL films to tell their history, and so decent recordings of their television broadcasts basically don’t exist.”</p>
<p id="SbxzUO">All of which is to say that while a lot of things can be said about WWE as it relates to the ways in which it goes about its business on the talent or international relations side, at the very least, the production side wasn’t in some budgetary death spiral that WWE only managed to pull out of in early 2008.</p>
<p id="zwqKKW">However, even with the understanding that from an archival perspective, there were industry-wide issues with how these were digitized and transferred from their original forms, having watched these shows live it wasn’t like they looked<em> good</em>. Which seems like an objectively bad original decision. </p>
<p id="2FpIU4">To create an entire match type and visual spectacle for your wrestling company, but not spend the time, money, and effort (as the switch isn’t a simple one) to present it in the best possible way, is bad for business. The development of the Chamber was, however, clearly done for <em>a</em><em><strong> </strong></em><em>reason</em>, and in order to figure out what that might have been, we’re going to need to talk about camera blocking. </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UsJjTpSohKHGuZyY46u64xNh5HU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24460641/IMG_0022.jpg">
</figure>
<p id="goyQD5">This is the original Elimination Chamber—there has since been an updated Chamber structure, <a href="http://oswreview.com/new-ec/">first introduced in 2017</a> after <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWE_Elimination_Chamber#Events">a one-year hiatus</a> for the concept—or at least a mediocre render of one. As you can see, the inner sanctum has four semicircular pods positioned at each corner of a ring placed centrally inside the circular superstructure. The spotlight at the top right represents the winner, which is a visual concept cribbed from WWE’s “selection” process for the next entrant in this version of the Elimination Chamber (which was replaced by LED light bars mounted to the roof of the chambers in the new iteration).</p>
<p id="lY3X4N">While the inaugural match—which took place at Survivor Series 2002 and <a href="https://www.espn.com/wwe/story/_/id/21442373/the-origin-wwe-elimination-chamber-how-everything-went-wrong-turned-all-right">featured</a> Shawn Michaels winning the World Heavyweight Championship in just his second match back after a four-year hiatus—was unequivocally the best of the initial handful, it completely skewed expectations for how dynamic this match could be in its then-format from a visual perspective. The show’s host, Madison Square Garden, rather infamously had the entrance positioned <em>on</em> the hard cam as opposed to the left of it during this era, which looked great for surprise <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNlObJjzoyk">Royal Rumble John Cena</a> entries or Rock chair shots during Triple H–Cactus Jack matches but was distracting for pretty much everything else. </p>
<p id="Ho3HhF">This floor configuration appears to have provided WWE more distance between the camera and the chamber, allowing it <em>and the crowd</em> to be framed in full, giving viewers a total picture of what they were seeing, as opposed to the cropped shots that cause the Chamber structure (as opposed to a view inside the Chamber itself) to completely block out the rest of screen. </p>
<p id="37c0mj">So, while the visual that went along with Michaels’s shocking World Heavyweight title win after four years on the shelf is one of the most memorable in the company’s history—an absolutely biblical pop, on par with <a href="https://youtu.be/5OfSR68tEzs">CM Punk’s Money in the Bank pop in Chicago</a>, ever so slightly above Cena’s and H’s returns to the same building, and, if I can avoid some recency bias, definitely better than <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/2/21/23608847/roman-reigns-sami-zayn-wwe-elimination-chamber-best-pro-wrestling-matches">Sami Zayn’s arrival at the 2023 Elimination Chamber</a> (though, it should be noted that those are all entrances, and it was very clear watching from home that the entire Bell Centre would have been Raptured if Zayn won)—it’s something WWE couldn’t properly replicate (at least not well enough to put in the kind of retrospective sizzle reel that pushed DVD sales and pay-per-view buys during this era). </p>
<p id="EZLTir">Even when you take into account the lowered expectations that nearly any other Chamber win is not also a historic comeback by a performer many considered to be the best worker in the history of the company, there weren’t nearly as many “moments’’ in Chambers that involve the crowd the way the very best moments WWE produces have a tendency to. Goldberg mega-spearing people through the <a href="https://tenor.com/view/mero-foh-hehehehe-get-out-viceland-gif-13901949">“BULLETPROOF”</a> glass in 2003 and all of the different variations on that motif, for instance, while absolutely awesome, were rather intimately shot and focused on the two performers as opposed to on the crowd’s reaction as a whole to the spot. </p>
<p id="dscirr">That’s because, on top of the original version of the Chamber being difficult to see through—which became much less of an issue starting in 2008, thankfully—unfortunately for WWE, in most other buildings in which they perform, the lower and upper bowls (as opposed to the moveable floor seats they add) usually prevent this kind of framing (an issue that would at least partially lead to the redesign 15 years after the first match). As such, for literally every other arena WWE has worked in over the last 30 years (at least when fans were present), the ring has a specific layout for how the show is presented from a structural and production perspective, that looks something like this:</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ecmrEDcpy-1fN3JG7fQR3XTOymM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24460608/Old_Chamber_Camera_Schematic_2x__1_.png">
</figure>
<p id="WWnZqr">You may have intuited (especially if you didn’t have any strong interest in staring at camera equipment or Corey Graves’s wildly diminished suit game) how this poses a problem, both visually and logistically, for some of the pods/sections of the structure. This becomes even clearer if you split the chamber into “visual quadrants” based on the desirability of having the camera pointing at that side for an extended period of time:</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zRHxsETbnvJrLd1YwyvSLSfXDBI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24460609/Old_Chamber_Camera_Position_Heat_Map_2x.png">
</figure>
<p id="j6XKQL">As you can see, the top two pods are both what you might consider “good” places to have your camera pointed, while the third pod on the bottom left isn’t necessarily “bad” but is definitely boring (even now, you mostly just get a giant screen that says ELIMINATION CHAMBER, in case you’d forget you were at or watching an Elimination Chamber PLE during an Elimination Chamber match). But that fourth pod? We don’t know for sure what would happen if you pointed the camera in that direction for too long, but we’ve also seen the H-bomb scene from <em>Terminator 2: Judgment Day </em>and there’s no evidence to make us believe the result would be any different. </p>
<p id="fIIgug">This is probably why the first two matches start with this pod—Chris Jericho (who is also, in part because of his record eight appearances, <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2818465-wwe-elimination-chamber-records-and-stats-to-know-from-cage-matchs-history">the all-time leader in eliminations</a> by a decent margin, with 10) in the first match and Randy Orton in the second—before the rest of the wrestlers come out of theirs clockwise. This removed any suspense regarding that pod (beyond it being used as a weapon itself) and, by extension, any need to point the camera back there, which they did briefly during the match and seemingly instantly realized how unnatural it felt, spending much of the rest of the match looking <em>literally anywhere else</em>. </p>
<p id="uXDlaQ">That would all be well and good—it’s not like I was personally offended when I realized—<em>if </em>the match itself wasn’t built around “chaos” and “randomness”; unfortunately for WWE, “random” doesn’t mean “the order in which the performers enter the match is determined by which corner of the ring they are standing in relative to the hard camera.” But it definitely was, and in embarrassingly obvious ways, too. </p>
<p id="S0YMlE">For totally practical reasons—people like games of chance, that’s just the way it is, was, and always will be, and they especially love mildly suspenseful synth music and goofy visual tricks when playing them (which is basically how slot machines make money)—WWE basically played the “final answer” music from <em>Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?</em> and had the spotlight operator pretend to do eenie-meenie-minie-moe with the pods. While WWE has been accused of thinking its fans were dumb since time immemorial, even they found the whole thing a little too on the nose, and as a response WWE decided to course correct.</p>
<p id="uEaebw">Kind of. Instead of treating all pod people equally, WWE began to use the bottom right pod as a dump spot, which is how you end up with this:</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/MX90bWbUc4Cb1udkYjkzvq8PdeI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24460611/POSTER___OLD_CHAMBER_0.5x.png">
</figure>
<p id="EybzUV">As you can see, of the first 19 matches in the original Chamber, just TWO have been won by someone in the bottom right pod, and that someone was named Triple H, who won twice from that position as part of his record four times overall, including the third match, which was his second consecutive win and also the first not to release participants in the <em>exact</em> same clockwise order, though they just went counterclockwise instead. </p>
<p id="eXBNIE">This is done for, again, very obvious aesthetic reasons, but the lack of victories by those in the right pod has at least<em> something</em> to do with the ways in which the pod layout wildly skews the order in which people come out. (Yes there’s another graph.)</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/C_OqgMekDKG_K81eY6dl7fXV4Ew=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24460629/CHAMBER_ENTRY_DISTRIBUTION_2x.png">
</figure>
<p id="aI0i1w">Haitch would manage to overcome the disadvantages to win it from this position again in the second Chamber match of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Way_Out_(2008)#Elimination_Chamber_entrances_and_eliminations_(SmackDown/ECW)">No Way Out ’08</a>, which was also the structure’s first night shot in HD, but it would be another <em>15</em><strong> </strong>Chamber matches and almost 10 years before Roman Reigns would win. </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gtjvU4S447-sDN3u9ZwkCup75BM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24460635/POSTER___NEW_CHAMER_2x.jpg">
</figure>
<p id="WH8tQO">This time in the new structure, which (as you may have been able to guess based on the chart) is even a bit more restrictive in terms of how undesirable the bottom right part of the Chamber is to be seen on-screen.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Wl0p__OqklWrM8gOWOZzLhJQgI4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24460631/New_Chamber_Heat_Map_2x.png">
</figure>
<p id="jyzfjb">And that match (like the first H “down-right” win, where Evolution drama dictated the order in which performers would be released) even had a reason for Roman sitting in the Pod of Death: With the idea of feeding Braun Strowman to Roman, and in order to create the tension/suspense with Braun, WWE put the Monster Among Men in the top left pod (because although <em>outcomes</em> are roughly the same for the two top pods, the top left pod is more likely to appear on-screen), looming over the action until it was his time to let slip the dogs of war. He did, entering sixth and eliminating five other competitors (there were seven total in this one).</p>
<p id="HLqax3">And, before WWE even had a chance to do any of that, it needed an establishing shot of Roman Reigns standing diametrically opposed to his biggest threat (a shot the cameras went to more than once), hence his position in the bottom right of the screen. Outside of making its most important performers look strong, WWE has essentially spoiled at least one part of the match every single time it lowers the Chamber.</p>
<p id="kmOahN">WWE has also made it such that, for obvious narrative purposes, you are equally likely to win if you start the match (although they are technically “first and second” entrants, we count them as a single unit) or if you are the <em>fifth</em> person to enter (both spots have seven wins, two behind sixth for the most). This would make sense if something resembling the same courtesy was extended to the third entrant, who has won just three (the previously mentioned two by Triple H from the PoD, and in what was essentially a xenophobic fever dream, Jack Swagger in 2013). </p>
<p id="MmT2rz">Of course, that’s at least partially because WWE also goes out of its way to (for all the reasons discussed above) leave the top two pods occupied until the last two entries as often as possible. It would also be fine if those were filled by random, or at least random-adjacent, performers instead of what WWE actually did, which was essentially to treat those pods like a wing of the WWE Hall of Fame. </p>
<p id="3ccg6D">HBK, Goldberg, Edge, Kurt Angle, Big Show, Finlay, JBL, John Cena, Rey Mysterio, Kane, Randy Orton, The Miz, Daniel Bryan, the New Day, Ryback (who won, was an ENORMOUS star at the time, and looked well on his way to a major main event career), Sasha Banks, Jeff Hardy, AJ Styles, Brock Lesnar, this year’s Women’s winner Asuka, and this year’s Men’s MVP Montez Ford all started in the top right pod. Even absolute cannon fodder like Baron Corbin and Elias were explicitly put in this pod to generate heat throughout the match. </p>
<p id="hMmpqs">On the other hand—or I guess in the other pod?—this is what the historical roster for the bottom right looks like: Jericho (who had one exactly one world title to that point), Orton, Triple H, Chris Masters, Punk, MVP, Vladimir Kozlov, Mike Knox, John Morrison, Big Show, R-Truth, Dolph Ziggler, The Great Khali, Kane, Daniel Bryan, the Prime Time Players, Mark Henry, Mickie James, Roman Reigns, the IIConics, Kofi Kingston, Lucha House Party, Liv Morgan, Jey Usos, Sheamus, Rhea, Nikki Cross, and Bronson Reed.</p>
<p id="ZbdDel">While all these folks are talented performers, with more than a handful of Hall of Famers, it’s clear where the juice is, from a narrative and visual perspective. And it’s understandable that all of these production logistics may seem like little quirks that someone who watches these things way too closely might pick up on, while other stuff is almost certainly a consideration made as part of every other show WWE produces. </p>
<p id="ZEqZEK">But these <em>specific</em> issues—all of which seem to stem from not <em>really</em> thinking through most parts of the presentation for at least the first half decade and then making it up as they went along the way—and the sheer number of them, basically guarantees the fans don’t actually get the feeling that “anything can happen,” at least in a narrative sense. (These issue range from “not being able to show a full quarter of the Chamber on TV” to “not actually having it be significantly more likely that the first person or the last person in will win, unless their pod is too close to the camera equipment.”) </p>
<p id="MSCxVt">In the Royal Rumble, while we have a basic idea of who will win, <em>anyone</em> can <strong>lose</strong>, as there is an expertly crafted sense of genuine surprise baked into the concept, not just because WWE has told us there is, but because it’s actually put its money where its mouth is basically since introducing the concept to the public. <em>Hogan</em> was eliminated in the first Rumble, Mr. McMahon beat “Stone Cold” Steve Austin <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Rumble_(1999)#Royal_Rumble_entrances_and_eliminations">in 1999</a>, and, hell, even Alberto del Rio was very nearly eliminated at the end of the largest (actual) Royal Rumble in history <a href="https://www.wwe.com/shows/royalrumble/currentepisode/16630520">by <em>SANTINO MARELLA</em></a>. </p>
<p id="yrzqxV">With the Elimination Chamber, what <em>happens in the match</em> may be surprising and exciting, but it’s very rare that any of it reaches exit velocity to matter in story lines going forward. In many ways, the Chamber is simply used by WWE to <em>reduce </em>the number of available main-event story lines in order to prepare for the WrestleMania endgame. </p>
<p id="X30Duv">This is the fundamental problem with the Elimination Chamber and the reason it just feels like it matters so much less than anything else that WWE produces at this level. As a narrative construct, it has been without an actual raison d’être from the very beginning, and unlike a gimmick with purpose, like Hell in a Cell—which was a concept specifically promoted as a way to keep D-Generation X out of the Taker-HBK title match at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badd_Blood:_In_Your_House">Badd Blood</a>, and was largely done in reality to let Kane rip the door off a presumably impenetrable cage for his debut while also evolving past the traditional cage match—the Chamber is a concept that insists upon itself. </p>
<p id="VCtbp8">And, while it’s certainly cool looking, this has left the Chamber matches themselves, as a general rule, to only be as good as their participants and the stakes involved. This is where WWE has, and still does, find itself often struggling to make the Elimination Chamber carry nearly the cachet of the other long-term gimmick matches it has produced, like Money in the Bank (which the Chamber debuted several years before), the Rumble, and even the aforementioned Hell in a Cell.</p>
<p id="AMDMTL">At this point, the Elimination Chamber is officially old enough to buy a drink and still hasn’t figured out even the basic ideas about what it wants to do with the rest of its life. In the last 10 Chamber matches, six different things have been at stake: <a href="https://www.wwe.com/shows/eliminationchamber/elimination-chamber-2019/gallery/elimination-chamber-match-to-crown-the#fid-40327124">the Women’s Tag Team Championship</a>, the WWE Championship (3x), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X7xMaVRbsI">the SmackDown Tag Team Championship</a>, a Raw Women’s Championship match at WrestleMania (3x), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdz9peAOM9w">an immediate match for the Universal Championship</a>, and <a href="https://www.wwe.com/shows/eliminationchamber/united-states-title-elimination-chamber-match">the United States Championship</a>. </p>
<div id="qCw8s7"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oJNQm_Hu3hM?rel=0" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share;"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="2A47Cf"> </p>
<p id="0332fC">Now, things have changed in major gimmick matches before. As we discussed just a few weeks ago, the Royal Rumble went through a number of permutations before setting a standard set of rules, regulations, and expectations for fans and the company alike to either adhere to or subvert in an attempt to tell specific stories at specific times. But for the Rumble, or pretty much any gimmick match lacking a physical structure (outside of a ring and, maybe, a ladder), the investment in putting an innovative show on (or changing the way something worked) was a matter of opportunity (and not material) costs.</p>
<p id="U5lsUw">The Elimination Chamber started off, however, and has felt since, like WWE trying to score five runs in one at-bat. Already coming off the emotional and financial high of the Attitude Era, and almost certainly seeing the Elimination Chamber as a big swing to attempt to make its way back to crossover pop culture relevance while waiting for the other shoe to drop on the revenue numbers after the departure of Stone Cold and The Rock, there never seemed like a good enough reason for the company to even take the bat off their shoulders. </p>
<p id="fsAZrh">While the first match was a home run (and I swear, the baseball metaphor ends here) the batting average on genuinely great matches, or even matches that really live up to the promise that the concept feels like it should have, has at best been almost replacement level. Since introducing the new Chamber, which was built with new features—including a much larger opening up top for dramatic “there are bodies everywhere” shots from a ceiling camera, glass corners, and no curves to allow as much light (and space for cameramen) as possible to get into the cell for filming <em>and </em>to make it easier to set up in every arena —it seems like whoever designed it was aware it would be on TV, while the match itself became noticeably more watchable in a narrative and physical sense (I know you all had great concern for my ocular health).</p>
<p id="26QdcW">More than that, WWE has also begun to give the show itself a deeper sense of purpose as the Official Last Big Thing That’ll Change Things Before WrestleMania show. Over the last decade, the Elimination Chamber show proper had been stuck in limbo between allowing the fans to actually understand what was going to happen on the WrestleMania card (which in turn made the matches we had just watched on the show feel like they mattered) to acting as a post-Rumble palate cleanser for whatever road-work-themed PPV WWE would put as the last <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWE_Roadblock">roadblock</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWE_Fastlane">fastlane</a> on the Road to WrestleMania™.</p>
<p id="PyoS27">Now, with what appears to be a <em>massive</em> drop in the number of shows that will be run every year (while there is a Backlash announcement, as well as a King and Queen of the Ring PPV, it doesn’t seem like we’ll be getting any end-of-days-themed PPVs or random gimmick shows shoehorned into the schedule), every platform like this becomes more valuable. While we’re obviously in the bag for Asuka in the Palace of Wisdom, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/11/15/23460331/austin-theory-wwe-money-in-the-bank-cash-in-failure-future">Austin Theory</a>’s performance in this year’s match for his U.S. Championship managed to overcome its (somewhat) diminished stakes to provide a highlight match of the year so far and positioned as ready for whoever comes his way (regardless of whether he sees them coming or not). </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="JluQpH">Which is what the Elimination Chamber’s purpose <em>should be</em>. A thing that matters because a lot of people put a lot of work into it, but also because WWE seems to know and care what it wants to do with it. <em>The Purpose Driven Life</em> may be a bad book, but it’s a significantly better booking decision than whatever you might have wanted the alternative to be.</p>
<p id="TvNZlS"><em>Nick Bond (</em><a href="https://twitter.com/THEN1CKSTER"><em>@TheN1ckster</em></a><em>) is the cofounder of the Institute of Kayfabermetrics and provides weekly updates to </em><a href="https://wrestling.theringer.com/">The Ringer<em>’s WWE Power Board</em></a><em>.</em></p>
https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/2/25/23614667/wwe-elimination-chamber-structure-pod-placement-historyNick Bond2023-02-16T12:32:35-05:002023-02-16T12:32:35-05:00From Far and Wide and Light-Years Away
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/oNjTotlwUMS7Nd8qilfuWoakONc=/93x0:1160x800/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71983533/auska2.0.jpg" />
<figcaption><a class="ql-link" href="http://www.bartlettstudio.com/" target="_blank">Jonathan Bartlett</a></figcaption>
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<p>It’s now time that we give Asuka—the Empress sent from tomorrow to take back today—and her entrance music the deep dive they deserve</p> <p id="AYSW2n">Since her WWE debut in 2015, Asuka—born Kanako Urai in Osaka, Japan—has been a true beacon of light. Her joie de vivre and general awesomeness are as infectious as the love and reverence she receives from fans, her coworkers, and legends of the business. Although she had a few fits and starts earlier in her career (she briefly retired in 2006 to take on <a href="https://etcanada.com/news/779953/wwes-asuka-details-her-own-experiences-with-racism-its-a-waste-of-time-to-be-hateful/">a bout with nephritis</a> and <a href="https://www.f4wonline.com/news/wwe/wwe-nxt-5-things-you-might-not-know-about-asukakana-160761">work as a graphic designer</a>), the past eight years have been among the finest ever produced by a performer in WWE history. </p>
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<p id="F6ZYiq">All while she juggles motherhood and <a href="https://www.wrestlinginc.com/1017416/asuka-tweet-has-fans-buzzing-about-possible-demonic-possesion/">being possessed by a demon</a> who has led her to hang out backstage and embrace her destiny as the end boss from <em>Yakuza 8: Puroresu</em>.<em> </em>(Or, sure, according to <a href="https://www.cagesideseats.com/rudo-radio">my dear old friend</a> and <a href="https://retroxp.substack.com/p/the-retro-games-of-the-year-of-2021">video game nerd</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Marc_Normandin">Marc Normandin</a>, she is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0IB3gGqog0">literally cosplaying</a> as <a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/p__/images/4/40/Goro_m.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20190222071350&path-prefix=protagonist">Goro Majima</a>.)</p>
<p id="7ANKI3">There are any number of reasons why Urai has an almost universally positive approval rating—to be clear, that is meant literally: <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=2785&gimmick=Asuka">Her Cagematch wrestler rating</a> of 9.42 is composed of 679 votes, with just three rating her as less than a 6 out of 10 (which is <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=406">the Cagematch average</a>)—but for us here in the Palace of Wisdom, the very specific way in which her entrance theme, “The Future,” doesn’t suck is what’s most intriguing to us. This may seem odd, given her awe-inspiring accomplishments—especially considering she’s one of the most over promos in the business without ever needing to say so much as a paragraph in English.</p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="QGuk1A"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Reign Delay: Claudio Castagnoli (Finally) Has His Crowning Achievement ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/2023/2/9/23591664/claudio-castagnoli-ring-of-honor-world-champion-all-elite-wrestling-success"},{"title":"Charlotte Flair for the Gold? ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/1/20/23564078/charlotte-flair-wwe-title-reign-impact-history-comparison"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="7y8olV">But, in what is perhaps our <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/55R0CZoqgY3hcmCmVkmBig?si=22b34beb46354cd3">Hottest Take</a>, we’ve run the numbers—very complicated, can’t show you right now, just trust us—and it is an indisputable fact that wrestling entrance themes are mostly stepping-in-it-barefoot levels of dogshit terrible. <em>Especially </em>to listen to out of the context of a live wrestling show. (Also, Hank asked to write about this because he loves music theory, and by that he means he loves watching old episodes of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1m-KgEpoow&list=PLJ8cMiYb3G5fyqfIwGjH2fYC5fFLfdwW4"><em>Earworm</em></a>.)</p>
<p id="JOKwtl">Of course there currently are, have been, and always will be a few “bangers.” Even when you include the genre’s less aesthetically pleasing entries, the overwhelming majority are still effective in their basic purpose of getting the audience excited to see someone and what they are about to do. As stand-alone products, though, they are not, by and large, good; and before you get all “But my gym playlist!,” bringing great workout vibes speaks to the entire issue with wrestling themes as musical objects, specifically that they aren’t what you are supposed to be paying attention to when they are playing.</p>
<p id="xZbAfr">The worst ones are so bad as to be entrancing and are repetitive in a way that makes them feel much longer than they actually are. As a consequence, many of these pieces of business live in the exact middle between completely forgettable and dangerously catchy, which makes them earworm breeding grounds. As form-following-function as these are, at their core, they are elongated jingles geared toward eliciting reactions from a live crowd, existing not to complete a harmonic thought but to convey an idea about a brand. </p>
<p id="Sleo6U">This affects wrestling songs structurally, at least according to <a href="https://twitter.com/DylanRoth">Dylan Roth</a>, who, in addition to growing up at “<a href="https://www.nj.com/entertainment/2021/06/vintage-vinyl-njs-premiere-record-store-closing-after-42-years.html">New Jersey’s Premier Record Store</a>,” is a culture writer, wrestling fan, and member of the <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/3wHvs7TzFvlCnUuYpO3rHV?si=03335108b8f44251">pop-punk band No Jersey</a>. So he’s thought about the idea of how entrance themes affect a pro wrestler more than most. “Pro wrestling entrances can be any genre of music, but not every great song makes for a great wrestling entrance theme. A great entrance theme needs to line up with the essential beats.”</p>
<p id="QmpJw2">The most common song structure for most music the public has heard (and liked), Roth says, is “ABABCAB, or verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus,” which he says can be “mapped to, like, 60 percent of all pop hits, from ‘Please Please Me’ to ‘Kiss Me More,’ with allowances for rap verses, guitar solos, etc. It’s not universal, but it’s as reliable as the ‘hero’s journey’ in pop cinema.” </p>
<p id="fBNV6u">Both independent and mainstream wrestlers have different priorities from a band or record label trying to produce the modern equivalent of a radio hit, Roth says. “A wrestling entrance theme needs to declare its <em>own</em> entrance. It should be immediately recognizable to fans from the first second. ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin’s begins with the sound of shattering glass … so the music is still getting warmed up and the performer has not actually appeared yet, but the audience knows to be excited.”</p>
<p id="VMp2pk">While Asuka’s theme is more subtle than shattering glass, the motifs and music cues hint toward approaching danger. After what sounds like a meteor crashing, a drum (along with an accompanying light show) replaces thundering footsteps before a burst of distortion stands in for the primal scream of a kaiju monster as the song starts in earnest. </p>
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<p id="2t39D4">This may feel like/be a bit of Orientalizing and othering by WWE—and would be in line with its presentation of previous Japanese (and Japanese-“adjacent”) characters—but given how Asuka has organically incorporated so many bits of her culture into how she projects her chosen personas onto the world, <em>not</em> having references to that musically would have felt disingenuous. (Also, given the magnitude of her star when she signed and the protective umbrella of NXT, you’d assume she had a major role in her presentation that she may not have had in the mid-1990s.)</p>
<p id="KuRCw8">Kana has balanced innovation in execution and reverence for traditional presentation her entire career. She has literally paid—or one presumes, as it was for her own promotion, Kana Pro—to have (at least) one of her matches, against Meiko Satamura, scored live by a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamisen"><em>shamisen</em></a> (<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%B8%89%E5%91%B3%E7%B7%9A">三味線</a>). (<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Way-Blade-Greatest-Matches-Wrestling/dp/173494594X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=way+of+the+blade+book&qid=1675978499&sprefix=way+of+the+blade%2Caps%2C239&sr=8-1">Thank</a> <a href="https://www.theringer.com/authors/phil-schneider">Phil</a> for finding this, everyone!)</p>
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<p id="46MrVs">The words to “The Future” aren’t, in the grand scheme of things, on the level of <a href="https://www.rush.com/songs/the-spirit-of-radio/">“One likes to believe / In the freedom of music / But glittering prizes / And endless compromises / Shatter the illusion / Of integrity,”</a> but grading by the standards of professional wrestling lyrics? “The one force of nature they call by name / I came from tomorrow to take back today” is as perfect as poetry as anything those precious Canadian prog rockers ever gave us. </p>
<p id="laRQGq">As the “Empress of Tomorrow,” Asuka—<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asuka_(name)">a somewhat common unisex Japanese name</a> <a href="https://www.behindthename.com/name/asuka">that means</a> (essentially) either “the fragrance of tomorrow” or “to fly; bird”—has since day one been presented as the present and future of the business. Again, that is meant literally: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESTi221XKfs">In her debut on <em>NXT</em></a>, then-GM William Regal referred to her as “the hottest free agent in the world and possibly the greatest competitor ever signed here.” </p>
<p id="bHJKJy">That same debut shows the ways in which Asuka represents an explicit turn away from the kind of cheap wrestling logic that treats essentially everyone who does not have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/20/business/omaha-talk-talk-talk-of-telemarketing.html">the diction of a Nebraskan call center employee</a> as bad on the mic or, if English is not their first language, explicitly “foreign” (and by extension of wrestling logic, “potentially dangerous and untrustworthy because they are not from around here”). </p>
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<p id="HKus0n"><br>While she was treated as an alien, it was in the otherworldly sense—yes, she comes “from far and wide,” but it’s a place “light-years away” (although it’s reasonable to assume that people would also be hella hateful toward extraterrestrials). And she wasn’t bullied by Emma and Dana (<a href="https://www.wwe.com/shows/raw/2017-11-20/article/asuka-def-dana-brooke">poor</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_yjWq-GQ2M">poor</a> Dana) because she’s from Japan; she was bullied because she was the new girl and the Dimmer Twins were trying to seem tough. After she detached them (minds from spirits, bodies from souls, shoulders from sockets, et al.), at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpxwliyqy-c">consecutive</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jjOluG3pmE">TakeOvers</a>, she got her inevitable comeuppance, which was fueled by disrespect for her not as a cultural idea, but as a person.</p>
<p id="MLXFbB">Her use of <a href="https://www.the-noh.com/en/world/mask.html"><em>noh</em> masks</a>, which have their roots deep in Japanese performance art and the (relatively modern) staple of Japanese wrestling, and poison mist puts her heritage on display in ways that actually work for her character without <em>being</em> her character. Metaphorically, the masks help hide her true intentions, and especially now with the <a href="https://nohmask21.com/eu/daikijin.html"><em>daikijin</em></a> mask, she is just straight-up unsettling to stare at from across the ring or down a long entrance ramp. The mist serves as an homage to the Great Kabuki and <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2023/1/22/23566293/keiji-muto-great-muta-pro-wrestling-legacy">Muta</a> while simultaneously serving a functional purpose (of helping her cheat and/or defend herself). </p>
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<p id="sN213B">Even the one bit of her entrance that doesn’t have a practical purpose, her kimono—which is <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/onna-bugeisha-female-samurai-warriors-feudal-japan/">reminiscent of the armor worn by the Onna-Bugeisha</a>, a group of female samurai warriors in the 19th century—tells us about her without being the only thing she’s about. This kind of holistic storytelling, when paired with a fitting song, helps to create the aura of someone like Asuka. Although the song may not have as high a probability of getting over by itself as something like <a href="https://youtu.be/6f_92pS51zQ">“Radio”</a>—which, for the record, features the lyrics “I’m gonna drink some beer tonight, yeah / Gonna get some girls I like / I’m gonna wear my pants real tight / All the girls are gonna treat me just right”—the underlying themes of a song like “The Future” can more precisely define someone’s character and, by extension, career trajectory. </p>
<p id="9Q2IkW">“Radio”—the WWE theme for the greatest wrestler in the history of Long Island (the most magical place on earth), <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Cardona">Matt “Zack Ryder” Cardona</a>—is instead perhaps the most notable example of WWE’s version of an “I Want” song, the point in a musical when the main character explains whatever dreams and aspirations they have before reality crushes them (or magic makes them come true, usually the latter). They’re probably best known for their appearances in Disney musicals, but you may have even seen one performed by the (former?) first couple of WWE, Triple H and Stephanie McMahon, on <em>The Tonight Show</em>.</p>
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<p id="GKkWPW">While they are usually limited in a musical to a single song and, maybe, a reprise, in professional wrestling these kinds of songs also make up a disproportionate amount of in-house product largely split into two camps, first, the “What I Am” song: </p>
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<p id="TtCiEB">These aren’t nearly as popular as they used to be, as, unlike some other entrance theme styles, they never survived the transition from a single person creating songs in-house to mainstream acts both writing and covering songs for performers. It was during the era of in-house song production that the “Why I Am (the Way That I Am)” song, which is basically a “What I Am” song that learned about poetry in freshman composition, rose to prominence. </p>
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<p id="ahgPDw">Dumb (or even unintelligible) lyrics in a bad or unintentionally goofy song are often objectively funny, which is probably how we missed how many of these things have some of the very worst lyrics in modern music. It’s not until, say, your 2-year-old announces she “loves” (with a conviction she’s never had for either of her parents) a song—like mine did the first time she heard “Radio”—and you try to sing along that you might even notice just how deep the rot goes. </p>
<p id="cU2Rzq">A bad song (or one that people don’t take seriously) can also be part of an accumulation of marginal things that stunts or prevents someone from getting over the way they should. While we all had a good laugh, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXIHJXXqGe0">It’s a shameful thing, lobster head, a careless man who can wind up bread, you wear your sins like it’s some kind of rice, too many limes, too many limes</a>” put the brakes on things a bit for Sheamus, at least in the sense that it spoke to a larger inability to take him as seriously for an inordinate amount of time. (As an aside, the meme culture surrounding him over roughly the same period also obscured for “internet fans” that he was <em>exactly</em> the kind of wrestler they claim they want to see.)</p>
<p id="vwH6hy">Writing any song seems difficult, but for wrestling entrances, or any kind of novelty song, the challenge isn’t to stumble into divine inspiration but to find the motivation to write about some really dumb shit. Although constraints can lead to creativity, commerce has a tendency to constrict it to the point of suffocation, and wrestling’s microcosmic relationship to capitalism means that cost control exists far above quality on the list of concerns when it comes to something like the soundtrack. </p>
<p id="H0ytt6">This is the fundamental reason why lyrically, a lot of these songs fall short of compelling. The goal in the ’80s and ’90s was to get something up and out there for when wrestlers debuted, and when someone didn’t have a strongly defined character (or such a strongly defined character that words detract from the overall presentation), the way this was dealt with in the past was to simply make an instrumental song. Which usually turned out great: Bret Hart, Diesel, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Brock Lesnar, and the Undertaker all have absolutely no words to their songs, and even the Rock’s theme didn’t <em>really </em>have lyrics. </p>
<p id="ond9kH">This has become a trend once again, with Sheamus reverting to an instrumental while nearly every newly minted WWE main-eventer of the past 10 years—<a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/1/20/23564078/charlotte-flair-wwe-title-reign-impact-history-comparison">Charlotte Flair</a>, Becky Lynch, Seth Rollins, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/11/21/23470405/roman-reigns-wwe-head-of-the-table-profile">Roman Reigns</a>, Dean Ambrose (as well as the Shield proper), <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2022/11/5/23440617/braun-strowman-wwe-crown-jewel-monsters-omos-vader">Braun Strowman</a>, Shinsuke Nakamura, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/8/29/23327186/kevin-owens-chad-gable-wwe-raw-best-wrestling-matches">Kevin Owens</a>, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/12/6/23496380/roman-reigns-sami-zayn-the-bloodline-wwe-faction-history">Sami Zayn</a>; pretty much everyone except for Bray Wyatt—has had a largely lyric-free catalog of entrance themes (at least, depending on whether you think ska-based chants of enthusiasm are lyric-free). </p>
<p id="B09tEX">But what nearly all of them have had is a nearly perfect start to a wrestling theme, incorporating both the self-introduction of the song and what Dylan describes as the “need to leave some space between its opening notes and its first musical climax so that the audience has time to anticipate that moment when their favorite (or most hated) character steps out onto the entrance ramp.” </p>
<p id="lrKR0x">Roth feels that John Cena’s theme, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqv5TYQTFYM">“The Time Is Now,”</a> is a “perfect example” of this concept and that it speaks precisely to the structural needs of a successful wrestling theme. “The track starts with those minor descending saxophones and simmering tambourine that absolutely everyone in the building knows means John Cena is about to arrive. But it also provides the audience a reliable countdown as to exactly how long they have before they see him. The saxes build, and you hear a vocalist trill his tongue and someone exclaims ‘AMADOU!’ (<a href="https://youtu.be/jqPxJp5OJW0?t=8">sampled from ‘Ante Up’ by M.O.P.</a>), and that’s the exact moment when Big Match John is going to bound through that curtain. The trumpets hit, a fanfare declaring that ‘The Champ Is Here,’ and the crowd pops a second time, positively or negatively.”</p>
<p id="WgS24a">Hip-hop, as Roth explains, “experiments with form a ton, especially outside of Top 40 singles.” In hip-hop outside the Top 40, “the main thrust of the song is the lyrics, not the hook. If you’re just trying to create a mood, you might not even include a chorus at all.” This makes hip-hop much more versatile for wrestling themes (though for a number of reasons, relatively rare in wrestling compared to rap’s relative ubiquity in popular music). The looser structure of rap also allows it to be cut and reconstructed in ways that get to the emotional crux of the presentation. </p>
<p id="r89PlE">“When Cena makes his exit or wins a match,” Roth explains, “the music plays again, but this time they skip right to the trumpets. You don’t need those first 11 seconds anymore because there’s nothing to anticipate.” Although Asuka’s is not structured quite the same, the interregnum between the first “meteor strike” and the arrival of the first verse elicits Pavlovian levels of response from crowds—as the pop at this year’s Royal Rumble showed.</p>
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<p id="cfX4q5">Part of this is because, structurally, the piece reaches the level of what Roth calls “REALLY cooking with gas.” Reaching this level requires a song to be “designed to account for the length of time it takes for you to descend from the entrance tunnel to the ring, and has a third pop, timed for the moment when you climb the turnbuckle, perform a signature pose, spit a geyser of water out of your mouth, or whatever your gimmick requires.” </p>
<p id="dbhRUa">This doesn’t happen naturally and is in fact something that performers almost certainly practice, especially for something like Triple H’s magical mist fountain, and the performance is all a function of how the song is put together. “This is when it helps to use an inverted pop structure of intro, chorus, verse, chorus. Emerge during the first chorus and use the verse—whether it’s sung or instrumental—to make your way into the spotlight, and by the time you’re there, the crowd is primed to sing the rousing chorus one more time. That’s big match appeal, baby!”</p>
<p id="l0gRml">Asuka’s “spit take” is the removal of her mask, which, for obvious reasons, is the most anticipated part of her arrival. The ability to sustain interest in your entrance can also, as Roth implies, serve as a pilot program for whether or not you will be able to get over in a meaningful way over a long period of time. Keeping eyeballs on you while, essentially, just being yourself—or the personification of yourself that you are projecting into the world—puts folks in rarefied air. </p>
<p id="oOX6gQ">Although she’s one of the most accomplished performers in the history of the women’s division—in addition to having one of the longest reigns <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=2021&page=3">as NXT Women’s Champion</a> in modern American wrestling, she was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Slam_(professional_wrestling)#Women's_format_(established_2019)">the second Women’s Grand Slam Champion</a> in WWE history after Bayley, <a href="https://youtu.be/N3ANy6j5_as">won the Mixed Match Challenge</a> despite having the Miz as her partner, <a href="https://www.wwe.com/shows/raw/2017-11-20/article/asuka-sole-survivor">was a sole survivor</a> in a traditional Survivor Series match, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2uMgGXX9vw">won the inaugural women’s Royal Rumble</a>—it has not always been smooth sailing for Asuka. There was certainly a time when fans (and presumably folks backstage) had real concerns about whether WWE had squandered the chance for Asuka to reach the potential everyone (including Vince McMahon) seemed to agree she had. </p>
<p id="F38vGF">But, at least for Empress, suffering through the “curse of the good hand”—or as Vince would say during the ThunderDome era, “just put Asuka out there”—proved that, like her entrance, she could maintain the interest of fans through a period of transition and decreased focus on her. In that way, she is like Cena—who, as we’ve mentioned in previous pieces, was the first performer to win the Money in the Bank contract <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/11/15/23460331/austin-theory-wwe-money-in-the-bank-cash-in-failure-future">and <em>lose</em> the cash-in</a>, has lost multiple WrestleMania main events, and even got tricked into relinquishing another WrestleMania main event after <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2023/2/2/23583042/wwe-royal-rumble-match-battle-royal-history">winning the 2008 Royal Rumble</a>. </p>
<p id="oSkdh6">Neither has ever quite been “buried,” but because of their palpable greatness (and electric relationship with the crowd), the “curse of the good hand” becomes a blessing when put to good use by the company, in service of building new stars (see: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxTLT0BPjHg">the U.S. Championship Open Challenges</a>) and the legacy of future cornerstones, like Asuka may presumably do with Bianca Belair (if not at WrestleMania, almost certainly somewhere after that). Experimentation with star-building models—as our beloved editor Khal has pointed out to me, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayley_and_Sasha_Banks#The_Golden_Role_Models_(2019%E2%80%932020)">it became</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shayna_Baszler#WWE_Women%E2%80%99s_Tag_Team_Champion_(2020%E2%80%932021)">a trend</a> for Asuka and Kairi Sane to dominate in the women’s tag team division while Asuka went <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kabuki_Warriors#Women's_Tag_Team_Champions_(2019%E2%80%932020)">title</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kabuki_Warriors#Asuka's_Raw_Women's_Championship_reign_(2020)">hunting</a> in the ThunderDome—is a rite of passage for megastars at this level, as they are often the only ones who can withstand whatever ill will fans might have toward change (because change is scary and occasionally gross). </p>
<p id="EyhslB">Asuka and Cena present themselves similarly at a core level, even though their themes structurally differ quite a bit. On a basic genre level, they exist in entirely different spheres of influence. Lyrically, however, their songs both exemplify the one significant style of wrestling poetry remaining, which more often than not produces the best of all wrestling themes (or at least those with lyrics): the “What I’m Gonna Do” song. </p>
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<p id="SQ9iSt">Bestowed only on all-powerful beings, these songs announce that we are all privy to someone becoming great, or at least a pretty good segment on a wrestling show. And these aren’t just about lyrics, as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaYSOOXOxdI">“The Game”</a> elevates Motörhead’s mammoth sound from a song about someone who can win a world championship to a song that makes Triple H a world-conquering force who would eventually become the “King of Kings.” </p>
<p id="MyeRG0">As the name “What I’m Gonna Do” implies, there needs to be a clear and definitive “truthiness” (more “truthy,” less “facty”) to whatever it is that the song is saying. When <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0MslYif9iQ">Mark Henry’s music</a> hit, you just knew someone was going to get their “ass kicked,” and there was also a pretty good chance someone would end up with their “wig split’ by the World’s Strongest Man, who spent several years “walk[ing] through this land like [he] run this land” on his way to building his Hall of Pain. </p>
<p id="7Gt9zy">The entire “LOL CENA WINS” era was a perpetual “three-second tan,” but it’s almost certainly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQYGp__iD5c">Vince’s “No Chance in Hell”</a> that hews closest to what something like Asuka’s song (in particular the original CFO$ version) accomplishes. On the razor edge of metaphor, the “implication” of the “No Chance in Hell” theme is that McMahon—although it’s not so much an “implication” once your wife runs a super PAC for the reelection campaign for the POTUS administration of one of your closest friends—exists in a world where he is so powerful that he can buy politicians that control your life, which is 100 percent true, in particular in the world of WWE, where he is essentially God. </p>
<p id="VV7DYg">Asuka’s song announces her as both the present and the future, something made very clear in the fanfare announcing her arrival. And, based on her return out of the dark side—or as her song explains it, being “cast from the shadows [that] now light my way”—and a new version of her song (which, while it has not been released at press time, has been referred to as a “priority” by the folks I spoke to at WWE), she will continue to make her way through the women’s division until she gives them a reason not to believe in her as a centerpiece of their company.</p>
<p id="fAanAh">We’ll have to wait and see whether that means fallen idols scream yesterday or kings and queens fall like rain this weekend at Elimination Chamber—winning that would put her in a title match against the center of the WWE universe, Bianca Belair, at WrestleMania. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="NKR0uT">Though we’ll probably never be ready for it. Because, well.</p>
<p id="1YLwhl"><em>Nick Bond (</em><a href="https://twitter.com/THEN1CKSTER"><em>@TheN1ckster</em></a><em>) is the cofounder of the Institute of Kayfabermetrics and provides weekly updates to </em><a href="https://wrestling.theringer.com/">The Ringer<em>’s WWE Power Board</em></a><em>.</em></p>
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https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/2/16/23600535/asuka-wwe-superstar-entrance-music-historyNick Bond2023-02-02T12:25:20-05:002023-02-02T12:25:20-05:00Window-Shopping on the Road to ‘WrestleMania’
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<p>How did the Royal Rumble match come to be, and what exactly does surviving it do for the winners? We take a deep dive into 200-plus years of history to find out.<em><strong> </strong></em></p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="y798QH">When someone says there’s nothing new under the sun, it should generally be assumed that they’re talking about professional wrestling. In <a href="https://uww.org/organisation/history-wrestling-uww#:~:text=Professional%20wrestling%20began%20in%20France,around%20France%20showing%20their%20talent.">roughly two centuries of performances</a>, nearly every match and every outcome in the squared circle has been attempted and executed in one form or another, certainly before the first time you see it on television. If <a href="https://xkcd.com/904/">sports are a weighted random number generator around which we can build narratives</a>, wrestling is a weighted random narrative generator to which we can apply numbers. </p>
<p id="WopN5y">There’s no greater microcosm of that than WWE’s <em>Royal Rumble</em>,<em> </em>which was held for the 36th time this past Saturday in San Antonio and saw Cody Rhodes and Rhea Ripley both winning their first Rumble matches to earn the now-standard <em>WrestleMania</em> main-event spot for a championship (at least in Ripley’s case) of their choosing. Along with having <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/1/30/23577919/roman-reigns-kevin-owens-wwe-royal-rumble-2023-best-wrestling-matches">an all-time great angle</a> to end the show and a … less-than-all-time great experiment in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMfX8PdGKks">glow-in-the-dark wrestling</a>, the Rumble itself also continued the hot streak Triple H has been on since taking over for Vince McMahon ahead of last year’s <em>SummerSlam</em> and was a solid rebound from <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/1/31/22910314/wwe-royal-rumble-post-show">last year’s disappointing show</a>.</p>
<p id="ETOqz4">Which, given the Rumble’s importance to WWE’s event calendar, is probably a good thing. After its basic (cable) beginnings in 1988, the <em>Royal Rumble</em> has in the last three-plus decades received a level of genuine reverence and affection that has made it essentially every WWE fan’s favorite show of the year. It is also the single safest way each year to <s>indoctrinate fresh blood into our death cult</s> introduce new people to the wonderful world of professional wrestling because of the Rumble match’s consistent quality, deep well of history, and traditional importance as the start of the Road to <em>WrestleMania</em>™. </p>
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<p id="28OfKQ">But when it first came onto the scene, the Royal Rumble match—part Pat Patterson innovation, part McMahon marketing subterfuge—was simply a fresh new idea that had (at the very least) never been seen before at anything close to the scale of what was then the WWF. This is remarkable, as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_royal_(professional_wrestling)">battle royals</a> are maybe the oldest “gimmick” in the entire medium of staged fisticuffs outside of the singles match, and “pretending to fight for money” is presumably the world’s fourth-oldest profession behind sex work, murder for hire, and beating someone up for money (with “pretending to fight for money” having been invented, you’d figure, <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/record-scratch-freeze-frame-yep-thats-me">at roughly the same time</a> someone saw a fist <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKbU8B-QVZk">coming at their face</a> that belonged to the someone else who was hired to beat them up). </p>
<p id="lwdpzx">The basic foundation for this kind of match happening in any kind of promoted or sanctioned way reaches as far back as early 1700s London, with battle royals most prominently featured on cards by one of the first combat sports promoters (and one of the fathers of modern boxing), James Figg, as part of the “boxing” shows at his amphitheater. Boxing at that point was closer to “free-for-all shit show” than “sweet science,” with “rules” that—as <a href="https://www.cagesideseats.com/2013/3/9/4028970/battle-royal-WWE-Boxing-wrestling-with-past-origins-history-combat-sports-part-one">John S. Nash explained in the first half of his excellent two-part piece on the origins of battle royals</a>—were essentially the equivalent of modern prison etiquette, which means Dominik Mysterio probably would have done as well then as he did on Saturday. (And yet the whole thing is somehow still less gross than <a href="https://thespectator.com/topic/dana-white-power-slap-gruesome-freak-show/"><em>Everybody Loves Concussions</em></a>!) </p>
<p id="txK7zD">Jack Broughton—who succeeded Figg as the city’s most prominent boxer and boxing promoter and established a precursor (“Broughton’s rules”) for the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/sports/Marquess-of-Queensberry-rules">Marquess of Queensberry rules</a>—brought an air of relative legitimacy (and his advertisements for “<a href="https://assets.sbnation.com/assets/2236503/Broughton_s_Amphitheatre.jpg?_gl=1*1qj5ehc*_ga*OTYwNDQ0MDE5LjE2NTU1MTYxOTk.*_ga_2M5GYNY1YS*MTY3NTA0Njk3Ni4yMTMuMC4xNjc1MDQ2OTc5LjU3LjAuMA..&_ga=2.89009627.1182433418.1674614040-960444019.1655516199">THE NOTED BUCKHORSE and SEVEN or EIGHT more</a>”) to the world of battle royals. But even with this cultural cachet (and THE NOTED BUCKHORSE) behind them, boxing battle royals were eventually seen as (and presumably were) so barbaric that they were banned from England entirely.</p>
<p id="0kR8hs">Following their expulsion from England, battles royal became a noted pastime among enslaved people in the antebellum American South before evolving into, essentially, commercialized human cockfighting starting in the Gilded Age. (Unsurprisingly, like most of American history from this time, this chapter of battle royal history is wildly racist and incredibly depressing, as <a href="https://www.cagesideseats.com/2013/3/10/4070146/wrestling-with-past-battle-royal-WWE-Boxing-part-two">covered by Nash in Part 2 of his series</a>. From a broader pop culture perspective, battle royals have played a significant role in African American literature, including a seminal role in the life of the unnamed main character of Ralph Ellison’s <em>Invisible Man</em>.) Clearly a meat grinder powered by, at best, the indifference to the suffering of others at the core of structural racism (and some would argue capitalism, but I’ll save that for <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/billsimmons/comments/z191ai/we_need_a_fennessey_and_chris_ryan_podcast/">my upcoming guest appearance on <em>Just My Opinion</em></a>), boxing battle royals also became a way for talented and tough fighters to establish themselves as legitimate, bankable stars of the sport. </p>
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<p id="9sLusY"><br>From these incredibly dark times would also come Black sports legends like Joe Gans, a lightweight who would become the first Black world champion; fellow lightweight champion Beau Jack; and one of the most important athletes in American history, world heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson. But as boxing (and more important, the athletic commissions that governed it) became more rigidly structured to prevent the deaths of its participants, many northern states—where these matches didn’t have the cultural cachet they did in the South—began banning boxing battle royals as early as 1911. </p>
<p id="TbwQEb">Certain parts of the country allowed these kinds of spectacles on boxing cards until the 1960s (lasting long enough <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKsa_9TFG48">for James Brown to take part</a> before becoming the Godfather of Soul), but as early as the mid-1930s, wrestling promoters had begun selling the spectacle of these battles royal. Not as opening acts, as they had been on boxing cards, but as the main attraction and headline act to finish the show. </p>
<p id="VJPqHA">By featuring numerous competitors and nonstandard win conditions (i.e., “throw the dude over the top rope”), the battle royal almost perfectly split the difference between including as much star power as possible on a card or in a given match and minimizing consequences to the reputations (or egos) of stars on the roster while still involving them in a match with a definitive result that wasn’t in their favor. This chaotic nature lent itself to prominent contenders having built-in excuses about a loss in a battle royal, and, conversely, the distributed focus of the event allowed mid-card performers to come up with (less than sturdy) justifications when they were able to cheat their way into positive results or timely eliminations. </p>
<p id="JJpOwX">This stage of battle royal evolution would reach its peak (and physical embodiment) in the form of Andre the Giant.</p>
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<p id="DiesW0">Although he’s now most well known (in a wrestling context) for <em>WrestleMania III</em>’s main event<em>, </em>he became the Immovable Object that Hulk Hogan’s Irresistible Force had to body slam in his work in battle royals. For any number of entirely valid business and storytelling reasons, Andre was often thrown into battle royals, and they account for a disproportionate number of his career matches—nearly <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=926&page=4&search=royal">one of every 12 of his matches was a battle royal</a>—even relative to other big men. He had more battle royals (236) than <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=712&page=4&search=battle+royal">the Big Show</a>, <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=2011&page=4&search=battle+royal">the Great Khali</a>, <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=761&page=4&search=battle+royal">the Undertaker</a>, <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=21239&page=4&search=battle+royal">Omos</a>, <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=379&page=4&search=battle+royal">Kane</a>, and <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=1648&page=4&search=battle+royal">Haystacks Calhoun</a> <em>combined</em>. </p>
<p id="bxQfR8">Andre became, almost literally and definitely figuratively, a platform to showcase stars in different territories without forcing them to convolutedly (or worse, cleanly) lose. But because the matches began with everyone in the ring at the same time, getting someone over in a meaningful way during a battle royal would require that performer to either do something so spectacular as to stand out from the rest of the match entirely or last in the ring for longer than you want them to.</p>
<p id="1sRsAM">Which is, presumably, what Patterson had in mind when he first developed the Royal Rumble concept. Simply by staggering the entrances, Patterson solved the “everybody in the pool” problem and, in doing so, turned the battle royal from a cost- and time-effective way to get over contenders in your territory into a star-making machine that could quickly push a performer to the very top of the card, in a way we’ve started to affectionately refer to in the Palace of Wisdom as the Rumble Rocket. </p>
<p id="s62I33">But the aim of the Rumble wasn’t always to create tomorrow’s WWE stars today. </p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="bq8Uv3">“Hacksaw” Jim Duggan won the first Royal Rumble, but it was only barely a Rumble, as it followed nearly none of the rules that would come to define the Rumble—aside from the two-minute Rumble onboarding process. With two-thirds the normal participants and no defined prize for winning, the match was just a gimmick in search of a reason, and it found its purpose with a National Wrestling Alliance pay-per-view—the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunkhouse_Stampede">Bunkhouse Stampede</a>, a gimmick PPV with its own <em>caged </em>battle royal variant and named for <a href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNDVhMDMyMDAtZWFlNC00NjJiLTk0NDYtZWQ5ZWEzZjNlNWM1L2ltYWdlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzIxNTI3MTE@._V1_.jpg">the funny outfits</a> competitors wore to the ring—happening the same night. </p>
<p id="6mmDav">McMahon’s goal in putting on the Rumble show—for free on the USA Network—was to divert attention (and money) away from the Bunkhouse Stampede happening in his home territory (at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, the most magical place on earth), and he accomplished that. So while the match is mostly meaningless, the show was a success and the next year <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Rumble_(1988)">became a PPV</a>. It had <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Rumble_(1989)">one year of adjustment</a> (when Hogan was eliminated by Akeem the African Dream and the Big Boss Man, allowing Big John Studd to ultimately claim victory in one of his last appearances on WWF TV or in wrestling) before becoming the State of the Union (and the <em>actual</em> Super Bowl) of WWE. </p>
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<p id="mse9i4">That began in earnest in 1990, when Hogan won the first of his two consecutive Rumbles. With the stipulation of a title shot at <em>WrestleMania</em> not yet in play, the Rumble match at that point mostly served as a means to make Hogan look as strong as possible while also setting up his eventual <em>WrestleMania VI</em> match against the Ultimate Warrior. It is, to date, the only time the reigning world champion entered the Rumble, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Rumble_(1990)#Results">won it</a>, and then lost the title <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WrestleMania_VI#Results">at that year’s <em>WrestleMania</em></a>. As always, we do not weep for Hulk. </p>
<p id="myzgqA">Hogan would come back the next year (without the title), <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Rumble_(1991)#Results">won the 1991 Rumble match</a>, and was named the no. 1 contender for the WWF title, which he fought for in the main event of <em>WrestleMania VII</em> against Sgt. Slaughter (who won the title from Warrior at the same Rumble after interference from Randy Savage, eventually leading to a match between Savage and Warrior at <em>WrestleMania VII</em> that ended up being the second best of the night). Hogan would then beat Slaughter to win the championship for a record third time.</p>
<p id="3S3kQe">The Rumble win didn’t turn Hogan into a star or award him a championship or even, really, an opportunity at one. But in “reviving” (or, probably more accurately, reinforcing) Hogan’s standing in the company with a win in what had already become the most anticipated match on the WWE calendar outside of the <em>WrestleMania</em> main event, the Rumble revealed its most important function. The Rumble match is one of the few (and when it started, it was essentially the only) single events or matches that allows WWE in one night to organically open someone’s “championship window” wide enough for them to get through it, by giving them either their first opportunity or second chance to use one of the promotion’s “high-leverage” moments to make themselves into a centerpiece star of the company. </p>
<p id="lkOrwj">As an idea, and unlike in unscripted athletics, a professional wrestling championship window is how long a company sees a performer as a high-level (if not always <em>highest-</em>level) attraction around whom it can build shows and top-of-the-card story lines. As a statistic, a championship window is literally the time (measured in days) during which a performer is a viable candidate to be made world champion by the company, which is based on, oddly enough, the number of days between the very first day of their very first world championship (or in our case, Rumble) win and the very last day of their very last world championship reign. </p>
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<p id="UEF9wv">What the colored bars represent is the amount of “window” left open <em>after</em> a Rumble win. As you can see, Hogan’s window <em>after the Rumble win </em>was surprisingly somewhat lengthy—as his second Rumble win happened roughly seven years after his window was first opened and he left the company less than three years after his second Rumble win. In other words, winning the Rumble allowed Hogan to get to the highest levels of Hogan-ness he’d reached for roughly a three-year period (from <em>WrestleMania VI</em> until <em>WrestleMania IX</em>, which, well, we’ll get there in a minute).</p>
<p id="7sQWuA">But what may come as a shock is just how many times winning the Rumble didn’t do anything like that for the performer. </p>
<p id="WeNZlk">Ric Flair’s Rumble win was a singular piece of wrestling art, but it didn’t help all that much in making him a major star in the company. He’d “co-main-event” <em>WrestleMania VIII</em> but left the end of the show to Papa Shango (and, sure, Sid Justice, Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, and Harvey Whippelman) and was out of the company <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=1091&view=&page=4&gimmick=&year=1993&promotion=1&region=&location=&arena=&showtype=&constellationType=&worker=">before the spring of 1993</a>. </p>
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<p id="lyhPUF">After the Rumble worked as a world title match in ’92, and in an echo of Hogan’s 1991 path from Rumble winner to <em>WrestleMania</em> headliner, for the 1993 Royal Rumble, the WWF had actors portraying Julius Caesar and Cleopatra announce the “Rumble winner gets a ’Mania<em> </em>main-event” stipulation for that year’s “Showcase of the Immortals” at Caesar’s Palace before the Rumble match. </p>
<p id="mJKGbO">This is probably why we think of the Rumble (especially after 1993, when the ’Mania stipulation <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Rumble_match#Prize">was introduced</a>) as the domain of pure contenders unsullied by disappointing past title reigns marching stridently into <em>WrestleMania</em> to claim their rightful throne. The reality is that there was just one year when that was the case, with Yokozuna the very first person to win the Royal Rumble match and then go on to claim the WWF title at ’Maniae. Yoko, who won the Rumble in 1993 and then the WWF World Championship <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WrestleMania_IX#Results">at <em>WrestleMania IX</em></a> (and then lost the title to Hogan—at <em>WrestleMania IX</em>—before swiping the title back at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_the_Ring_(1993)#Results">the first <em>King of the Ring</em></a> PPV that June), was also the only performer to do so on his first try for the next 10 years. </p>
<p id="28rRNp">As opposed to the paint-by-numbers piece from ’93, the next four years are, instead, best thought of as an art installation called <em>What Sticks: Throwing Shit at the Walls of Society</em>. In 1994, there were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Rumble_(1994)#Results">infamously</a> two winners of the Rumble match, Lex Luger and Bret Hart, who tumbled out of the ring onto the floor at the exact same time (or at least close to it), leading to a convoluted work-around at that year’s <em>WrestleMania X</em>, where both men were given a chance at defeating then-champion Yokozuna. While Bret went on to have perhaps the best individual performance in the first 29 years of <em>WrestleMania</em> at <em>WrestleMania X</em>, Luger (poor Lex) failed in his attempt to become the embodiment of the American dream or win the WWF title and instead fell ass-backward into a tag team with Davey Boy Smith called “the Allied Powers” before he found his smile again in WCW. </p>
<p id="yt38S1">In ’95, Shawn Michaels—on the heels of his own legendary <em>WrestleMania X</em> performance with Razor Ramon in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YegEqMalt1Y">their ladder match</a>—would win the Rumble as a heel, only to lose his title match to his former best friend Diesel in what was largely considered the best match at the absolute worst <em>WrestleMania</em> of all time. But it was <em>not</em> the main event, as that honor would go to Bam Bam Bigelow and NFL superstar Lawrence Taylor in a match whose story line began at, you may have guessed it, that year’s Royal Rumble. </p>
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<p id="7KQ15Q">Even with this setback for Michaels, the Rumble (both the show and the match) was firmly established as <em>the</em> narrative bridge to the Road to <em>WrestleMania</em>. The role of the biggest match of the year in setting up the biggest show of the year became even more pronounced. With it, however, came a number of increasingly odd occurrences that increased the stakes and kept fans guessing about what would happen between the Rumble and ’Mania to shape what we’d see on our screens in late March. </p>
<p id="Cmfigc">Michaels pulled off the Yoko in his second try with his win at the ’96 Rumble, which was followed by his first world title win, against Bret Hart in a 60-minute(-plus) Iron Man Match in the main event of <em>WrestleMania XII</em>. In winning the Rumble, Michaels opened up his (objectively long but still surprisingly somewhat short) championship window for the next six years of his career, proving the theory that a win at the Rumble could help propel a star in the same way that battle royals had helped sustain the career of someone like Andre. </p>
<p id="kxLQh1">However, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin would become, in his first two wins (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Rumble_(1997)#Results">1997</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Rumble_(1998)#Results">1998</a>)—despite essentially just repeating the same steps Michaels had the previous two years—<em>the</em> catalyst (as he so often was) for making the Rumble the framework through which we look at both the build to <em>WrestleMania</em> and what kind of “push” someone is getting. </p>
<p id="PL2hCx">While Flair’s 1992 performance is rightfully considered a masterpiece, at the Institute of Kayfabemetrics, it is our firm (possibly mathematical; it’s all very complicated) belief that the single-best showing in a Rumble match is Austin’s 1997 tour de force. The match involves him doing push-ups, getting his ass beat by Bret Hart, and eventually winning in such a shitheel way that it turned <em>Bret Hart</em> heel against America. It also forced WWE to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Your_House_13:_Final_Four">create a PPV special</a> to address in-kayfabe concerns, more or less, about the integrity of the Rumble match (and the attendant <em>WrestleMania</em> main event). </p>
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<p id="HyNYuy">Which, wrestling can be real dumb sometimes, but if Austin hadn’t somehow re-entered himself into the Royal Rumble and won it because no one was paying enough attention, he almost certainly would not have had perhaps the most important non-title match in WWE history—his legendary submission match against Hart at <em>WrestleMania XIII</em>. Even after <a href="https://prowrestlingstories.com/pro-wrestling-stories/steve-austin-neck/">breaking his neck</a>, Austin rode the momentum of his towering performances in two of the biggest PPVs to that point in WWF history to the following year’s Rumble match and <em>WrestleMania</em> main event. This was the moment when Austin, in the buildup to the match, achieved megastardom on a scale that had never truly been seen before (and perhaps hasn’t been seen since, give or take a Daniel Bryan). </p>
<p id="zpbcei">Austin essentially won the 1999 Rumble despite being the last man eliminated (shockingly, at the hands of his greatest rival, Vince McMahon) and again wound up in the <em>WrestleMania</em> main event. But then neck surgery would put him out of action the year after that. McMahon would also manage to win the WWF title later in ’99, creating one of the cutest little championship windows ever at 280 days, which he followed up <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WrestleMania_2000#/media/File:WM2000Poster.jpeg">with a spot in the main event</a> at the next year’s <em>WrestleMania</em> alongside <em><strong>seven</strong></em> other people, only four of whom were actually working the match (with Vince, of course, not being one of them). </p>
<p id="KWyfJg"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WrestleMania_2000#Results"><em>WrestleMania 2000</em></a>, while a great <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWF_WrestleMania_2000_(video_game)">video game</a>, was far too chaotic and, ironically, ’90s of a show to even be “watchable”—the only one-on-one match was a “catfight” between the Kat and Terri Runnels, with Val Venis as guest referee. It had a four-way elimination match at the end of it that was precipitated by the Rock and Big Show attempting to recreate the Hart-Luger spot from 1994 but ending up going way too Luger (and not nearly enough Hart) in the execution. </p>
<p id="7SG5or">Austin’s still-record third victory in 2001 established him as the greatest Rumble performer ever, while the next year’s winner—Triple H, as part of his revenge tour against his wife, Stephanie McMahon, and Chris Jericho—would mostly serve as a placeholder before the Rumble reasserted itself with a string of first-time winners who were looking for exactly the kind of foothold that a Rumble win can provide. </p>
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<p id="ofhW4C">(And, yes, before anyone asks, we did omit the ’04 Rumble winner from our chart. But for those desperately wondering what their championship window was, they were a replacement-level champion with the smallest championship window of anyone we tracked who ended up winning a championship.)</p>
<p id="Nh92bs">Brock Lesnar’s championship window is the longest of any Rumble winner’s and the longest in WWE history both in totality and starting from their first Rumble win—with even Goldberg (who won his first championship in WWE in 2003) not having as much longevity (in his case, largely by accident). This makes sense, as Lesnar was also the youngest world champion <em>and </em>Rumble winner in WWE history. Though, much like Hogan’s window, his was just as much a result of his longevity as of his having gone away for several years, only to come back as the prodigal son and conqueror of whatever tired babyface act was the face of the company at the time. </p>
<p id="u1FHx8">Perhaps most interesting is that (and this is something that you may recall from the concept of <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/1/20/23564078/charlotte-flair-wwe-title-reign-impact-history-comparison">reign inflation</a> the last time we spoke) it becomes clear that, after Rey Mysterio in ’06, the company had lost its patience for using the Rumble to build stars, essentially having failed three of the four times it tried. (Batista was the only one who was both still with the company <em>and </em>a viable championship contender within two years of winning his Rumble.) </p>
<p id="wbnIIH">This was why over the next few years, we would see winners who not only had previously won a world championship but, at least in the case of John Cena and Randy Orton (though the Undertaker would also have a nice run in the back half of the decade), were also the already established main-event stars of the company. With the rise of <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/11/15/23460331/austin-theory-wwe-money-in-the-bank-cash-in-failure-future">the Money in the Bank contract</a>, the Royal Rumble turned completely from a star-making tool into a semiotic means to a narrative end, with the machinations of the Rumble match shifting rather explicitly from a coronation and announcement of a new main event star to a deus ex machina designed to help determine who could be involved in <em>one </em>of the main event (or at least world championship) story lines on the way to <em>WrestleMania</em>, though perhaps they would not even make their way to the show itself. </p>
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<p id="WPXrTs">Over the next 10 years, this would not change much either. <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/8/26/23323161/edge-wwe-superstar-veteran-schedule">Edge</a>, at that point well established in the main event scene for much of the past five years, would win the 2010 Rumble, only to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WrestleMania_XXVI#Results">lose the title match</a> at the next <em>WrestleMania</em>, becoming the first Rumble winner to do so since the Rock did <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WrestleMania_2000#Results">exactly 10 years earlier</a>, though with significantly less McMahon involvement this time around. </p>
<p id="ZMD0qk">And although there would be attempts to build some new stars—well, Alberto Del Rio and Sheamus winning in consecutive years at least<em> felt</em> like attempts—by the fourth Rumble of the decade, the company would by and large be back to using a win in the match as a way to lock up one of the two championship matches in <em>WrestleMania</em> in the brand-split era. </p>
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<p id="H2qw1U">Although Roman Reigns would win the 2015 Rumble (much to the chagrin of the Philadelphia crowd that night), his win would, essentially, be the only such victory that seemed to explicitly position the winner as a future, but not quite fully established, company centerpiece (which, it seems fair to say, they got right) in that 10-year span. Although both Seth Rollins and Shinsuke Nakamura were first-time winners near the end of the decade, Nakamura never made anything of it (which breaks my heart in a real way), and Rollins hasn’t had nearly the title success after the Rumble that he had before. With the introduction of the women’s Rumble match in 2018, the opportunity arose to reestablish the importance of the ’<em>Mania</em> title shot stipulation. Sadly, it was not really meant to be, with only Becky Lynch coming close (and she had, at that point, been a multiple-time women’s champion and was already clearly the biggest star in the company, man or woman).</p>
<p id="O3OFEc">This decade has been, well, an almost biblical clusterfuck from a historical context perspective. But at the very least—with Drew McIntyre’s remarkable run in the match and his subsequent coronation, albeit at the worst possible time in the history of wrestling to be anointed as the future star of a company—2020 saw a real attempt (on the men’s side, at a minimum) to return the Rumble to its former position as the lead indicator of the company’s feelings toward a particular performer. </p>
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<p id="y4bRz3">That year’s other winner, Charlotte Flair, would take perhaps the most interesting tack of any Rumble winner in the “choose your own adventure” era of the match, deciding to take her talents down to the Performance Center with a challenge for Rhea Ripley, the then NXT champion. </p>
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<p id="CZ2thU">In 2021—the only “ThunderDome” Rumble—WWE attempted to split the difference between a semiotic means to a narrative end and a golden ticket, with Bianca Belair and Edge coming into the match with <em>very</em> different résumés and leaving <em>WrestleMania</em> in very different positions following the championship matches they earned with their victories. Belair became <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/7/11/23200224/bianca-belair-biggest-star-wwe-universe">the brightest star</a> in the WWE universe, while Edge turned into the “angriest dad who still sits on his porch listening to Wilco” possible.</p>
<p id="5t2ghh">Which brings us to, maybe, the worst <em>Rumbles</em> of the modern era. While the worst men’s Rumble—won by Lesnar as part of <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2022/11/26/23479218/triple-h-wwe-survivor-series-wargames-vince-mcmahon-comparison">McMahon’s very public cry to be relieved of his booking duties throughout the first half of last year</a>—was bad on every conceivable level (and <a href="https://www.fightful.com/wrestling/exclusives/inside-royal-rumble-3-look-behind-nightmare-royal-rumble-2022">was nearly single-handedly sabotaged by Shane McMahon’s ego</a>), in its own way it led Lesnar to try to overturn a wrestling ring with a piece of heavy equipment. And that’s as much as any person can ask for. </p>
<p id="6Vbm2c">When it comes to the worst women’s Rumble, the entire idea of Ronda Rousey winning after a comically late entry (no. 28) stank, essentially from beginning (or almost end) to end, and never really got any better—except that Rousey losing at ’<em>Mania</em> gave us brief hope they’d decided not to force her into an ill-fitting role as champion—until a few days before the end of the year. </p>
<p id="L13YKG">But this is a new year, and Saturday was a new Royal Rumble. Cody Rhodes’s win—although he was also given a free pass with the 30th entry, he then worked something like a 10-minute match against <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2022/9/20/23362865/bobby-lashley-gunther-wwe-mid-card-division">Gunther</a>, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2022/9/3/23335526/big-meaty-men-a-brief-history-of-hosses-in-the-wwe">our beefiest boi</a>, before eliminating him—fit him perfectly into the role of surging, righteous babyface on a mission to achieve greatness, like Michaels in 1996 (minus the Iron Man bit, of course). </p>
<p id="E2oKii">With the result of Rhodes’s WrestleMania match seemingly a foregone conclusion (he’ll win at least the WWE championship, if not the unified belt), most of the interest in his story will come from the way he interacts with all the moving parts that go into telling a <em>WrestleMania</em> main event story (the pinnacle of which can be found here, featuring, of course, the dulcet tones of one Mr. Fred Durst).</p>
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<p id="4cpVKZ">It is a nice story, and one that may lead to the coronation of another generational talent, but it could just as easily tie Rhodes’s story up so well that whatever momentum he gained from his showing at this year’s show may end up being lost after he achieves his goal and the dream of his family. </p>
<p id="PyfYHn">As for Ripley, given her immense talent and the fact she is just 26, her victory almost feels like a mix between the Lesnar win in 2003 (in part because she’s diesel, but also because she had a run with a world title before winning the Rumble) and the Austin win in 1998, at least as far as what awaits her at <em>WrestleMania</em>.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="yH0DWo">Her choice (which she made this week on <em>Raw</em> when she chose to face Charlotte Flair for the SmackDown Women’s title) was between—<a href="https://twitter.com/THEN1CKSTER/status/1618392851636973570">as I put it on</a> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/3clEfTnFhjyRVf1ecLQI4X?si=_aHcmSarSQWz624L3m8wMw"><em>Wednesday Worldwide</em>—</a>one of the best wrestlers any of us have ever seen and a <em>supernova</em>, both of which would be worthy of a <em>WrestleMania</em> main event match and story. And that, ultimately, is all that a Royal Rumble winner can ask for. </p>
<p id="RjhshV"><em>Nick Bond (</em><a href="https://twitter.com/THEN1CKSTER"><em>@TheN1ckster</em></a><em>) is the cofounder of the Institute of Kayfabermetrics and provides weekly updates to </em><a href="https://wrestling.theringer.com/">The Ringer<em>’s WWE Power Board</em></a><em>.</em></p>
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https://www.theringer.com/2023/2/2/23583042/wwe-royal-rumble-match-battle-royal-historyNick Bond2023-01-20T15:29:45-05:002023-01-20T15:29:45-05:00Flair for the Gold?
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<p>Current WWE ‘SmackDown’ Women’s champion Charlotte Flair’s 14th world championship reign might be the most important for her career and the future of women’s titles</p> <p id="lETjfA">It’s hard to imagine ever being good enough at something to be crowned a world champion in it more than once. To be clear, I think I’m <a href="https://youtu.be/wdHRbZATyW8?t=18">world-historically great</a> at my particular line of work; I’m just not in a field where winning championships happens regularly. And if we’re being honest, I’m not entirely sure I’m the best Nick Bond on the planet (there’s one fellow whose work on erosion patterns in Australia rivers seems to be the envy of his field), so it’s not even a guarantee I’m getting that prize. So, unless the Nobel Committee starts handing out awards for “Best Numbers-Based Wrestling Criticism Featuring Semi-passable Illustrator Graphs” instead of “Peace,” I shall go wanting. </p>
<p id="2bY9dG">For Charlotte Flair, though, being world champion is the family business, and on December 30 of last year, she got back to it less than 50 seconds after returning to the ring for the first time since her opponent Ronda Rousey “broke” her arm in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsUum5q9EuA">their “I Quit” match at <em>WrestleMania Backlash</em></a>. </p>
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<p id="gq4PMQ">After adding a 14th world championship to her collection, she now <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_championships_in_WWE#Most_total_reigns">sits nine ahead</a> of Trish Stratus and Sasha Banks for most by a woman in WWE history—though Stratus does have as many reigns with one title (the retired WWE Women’s Championship) as Flair does (in her case, the <em>SmackDown</em> Women’s Championship)—and Flair’s two behind her father, the hopefully retired Ric, for the most recognized (you have no clue how much work this word does) world title reigns by anyone in WWE history. </p>
<p id="Q5OwlS">That’s more than Bret Hart and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin <em>combined.</em> In just 10 full years of work, she sits tied with Randy Orton and Triple H, both of whom had 20-plus-year careers (with Orton’s hopefully, and presumably, still going). Doesn’t feel like that, though, does it? Ric’s reigns are treated as an accomplishment. Charlotte’s? An inevitability. The question has become less about whether she’ll break the record and more about by how many. Or at least that’s the question for her and WWE. </p>
<p id="10UqlY">For us, it’s what the championship reigns will mean when she finally does break the record—and what that will signify for her legacy, not just relative to her father’s, but to women’s wrestling and its standards as well as who is affected by them. And in order to understand the significance of these championship reigns, we have to go back to a few years after World War II.</p>
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<p id="5lG7VR">When <a href="https://www.wrestling-titles.com/personalities/brown_orville/bio.html">Orville Brown</a> became NWA’s first recognized champion (technically; it’s very complicated) in 1948, it probably seemed likely that he’d hold on to the title for as long as he wanted. The Kansas-born farmer and blacksmith was made the newly formed wrestling cartel’s first standard-bearer just as much for his box office drawing power—he was an 11-time champion of the Midwest Wrestling Association—as for his hooking ability (his aptitude for actual wrestling). “Hookers” were used by promoters as a way to keep rogue performers from “going into business for themselves,” and Brown was a great hooker, as evidenced by his 71-0 record in mostly legit wrestling contests before he entered the staged industry proper. </p>
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<p id="z9iKqa"><br>But a car accident forced him to relinquish the championship to Lou Thesz after “just” 570 days of holding it. Thesz himself was a recognized major champion in the NWA who’d had a match scheduled with Brown to further consolidate regional belts into one to rule them all. Thesz, for his part, would then hold on to the title for so long that basically no one remembers who Orville Brown is. (All due respect to the late Mr. Brown, who seems like he’d rip me in twain because my hair was too long for his liking.) <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=179&page=5&reign=2">Thesz’s initial reign, which lasted 2,300 days</a>, is still the longest of all time for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NWA_Worlds_Heavyweight_Championship">the Worlds Championship</a>—he also holds the fifth longest at <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=179&page=5&reign=8">1,079 days</a>, somewhat deceptively just 36 days longer than <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=179&page=5&reign=96&houseShows=true">Nick Aldis’s 2018-21 run</a> (Aldis worked only 35 matches because of the COVID-19 pandemic). His reign also gave the championship (and this era’s physical design for it in particular) the name the Lou Thesz belt. </p>
<p id="NS7MFB">Unsurprisingly, Thesz had the most days as NWA champion as well, with 633 more days in his three times holding the title than <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NWA_World_Heavyweight_Champions#Combined_reigns">Ric Flair’s 3,116</a> from his record 10 reigns combined. Ric Flair, however, is an icon whose persona has permeated pop culture, and he’s become something of <a href="https://www.complex.com/sports/how-legendary-ric-flair-became-hip-hops-favorite-wrestler">a style influence for</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPTlvQ1Zet0">southern rap</a>, while modern fans mostly know Thesz for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NmNT4oFN3w">“Stone Cold” Steve Austin’s use of his Press</a>. Not, you know, because he was considered the best wrestler in the world for longer than literally anybody else in the history of mankind. (Quick aside: one of the weirdest option Bs in <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=z8Zb3BwcviMC&pg=PA315&lpg=PA315&dq=%22The+General+Tso%27s+Hypothetical%22+klosterman&source=bl&ots=9gIp8qx-6s&sig=ACfU3U3OdSQKxm41TCTTHzQlY7O-kvwd6Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjsv4Of8878AhVQEVkFHUikCYMQ6AF6BAhAEAM#v=onepage&q=%22The%20General%20Tso's%20Hypothetical%22%20klosterman&f=false">General Tso’s hypothetical</a> history.)</p>
<p id="KG3Fs6">That his legacy would eventually be surpassed in significance by those of Ric Flair and Harley Race has at least <em>something </em>to do with the eroding effects of time on our memories, and I’m guessing it partially happened because we have relatively few clips of him involving <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=733103561310775">alligator shoes</a> and absolutely zero Thesz promos about <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGbZN4fV4GU">jet flyin’</a>. (Though, to be fair to Lou, flights on jet planes weren’t commercially available until four years into his first reign, and <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-jet-makes-test-flight#:~:text=Then%2C%20on%20May%202%2C%201952,record%20speed%20at%20the%20time.">then only between London and Johannesburg</a>, newly under apartheid. Woof.)</p>
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<p id="QqbbGN">But it also seems, at least after I jumped down rabbit hole after rabbit hole of championship lineages, that while long reigns are significant in the shared history of the sport stories we tell ourselves, at a certain point our brains can no longer comprehend fully what that amount of time actually means, and the entire idea becomes abstract. It’s a <a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/the-small-problem-with-big-numbers-4f3dad23ce01">known issue in data science</a> and makes it so that, essentially, 10 reigns with 3,116 days as champion <em>feels</em> more impressive than three with 3,749 because our brain understands “10 reigns is more than three” much more clearly than “3,749 days is almost <strong>two years</strong> longer than 3,116.” </p>
<p id="QZs6bw">So although Thesz’s first run as champion featured—and this is a technical term—a metric fuckton of work, after a certain point those numbers become noise. Still, they are almost unfathomable when put into context. </p>
<p id="VZ9noj">Between 1950 and 1956, when he dropped the championship for the first time, the second-generation Hungarian immigrant worked the following number of championship bouts (many of which were 15-plus minutes and two-out-of-three falls, as was tradition) each year: 153, 179, 181, 170, 163, and 158, before ending with 61 while swapping the belt between himself and (I swear <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdP9UL_KfZg">this is not a hazing</a>; this is real) Whipper Billy Watson. That’s <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=179&page=5&reign=2&houseShows=true">1,056 </a>bouts!</p>
<p id="ouIGnH">He’d defend the title another 566 times in his other <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=179&page=5&reign=4&houseShows=true">two</a> <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=179&page=5&reign=8&houseShows=true">reigns</a>, pushing him out of reach of even <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=179&page=5&reign=26&houseShows=true">Ric Flair</a>, <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=179&page=5&reign=28&houseShows=true">who’d</a> <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=179&page=5&reign=30&houseShows=true">eventually</a> <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=179&page=5&reign=32&houseShows=true">face</a> <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=179&page=5&reign=34&houseShows=true">nearly</a> <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=179&page=5&reign=36&houseShows=true">1,400</a> <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=179&page=5&reign=38&houseShows=true">challenges</a> <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=179&page=5&reign=40&houseShows=true">for</a> <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=179&page=5&reign=42&houseShows=true">his</a> <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=179&page=5&reign=46&houseShows=true">championship</a>. </p>
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<p id="j725wd">Charlotte, on the other hand, has 223 world title defenses. Ever. </p>
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<p id="hrWbPq">I say this not to pick on Charlotte, who is unequivocally great and worthy of being a champion essentially any time she’s a member of the active roster (and Becky Lynch, Asuka, and <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/7/11/23200224/bianca-belair-biggest-star-wwe-universe">Bianca Belair</a> are otherwise occupied). But she almost perfectly highlights what we’ve come to call “reign inflation” in the Palace of Wisdom. </p>
<p id="hXnCbz">We were able to extract the “rate of reign inflation,” which is, more or less, exactly what it sounds like, out of mountains of championship data. It measures, over a period of time (decades, for our purposes at the moment), the average reign of a championship winner at the time they’ve won the championship. The more times former champions regain a given title in a given time frame, the higher their “inflation rate.” </p>
<p id="MXFiSF">This helps us determine two things. Above all else, it helps measure the decade-over-decade development of new stars in a given division. And, by extension, it also gives a peek into how often a promotion recycles feuds between performers at the top of a division (often between folks who have already held the championship). </p>
<p id="C8loTJ">Put simply, an inflation rate close to 1 indicates that every single person winning the title is winning it for the first or second time in their careers, which is obviously a specific kind of exciting. Something like a 4.42 inflation rate means that although the championship may have moved around a bit, it did so mostly by relying on older stars and/or rivalries to put butts in seats. </p>
<p id="zhlGng">A high number is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. But when the number jumps suddenly (even, in the timescale of wrestling, from one decade to the next), our understanding of the value of a title reign can become warped and lead to a lack of investment in a new championship reign for a new performer (especially if the reason for the quick switches feels inevitable, which can happen when someone feels like a “default” champion who will get a championship back sooner rather than later). </p>
<p id="OqhXHg">In breaking down the major current and historical WWE men’s (NWA Worlds Championship, WWE championship, the United States title, the Intercontinental title, the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Heavyweight_Championship_(WWE)">the World Heavyweight Championship</a>, and the Universal Championship) and women’s (the WWE Women’s Championship, the Divas title, <em>Raw</em>, and <em>SmackDown</em>) championships, it’s clear how a sudden, massive rise in the number of people handing a championship back and forth can lead to disaster, even if it works in the moment. Because once all those performers with inflated numbers are gone, a new crop of contenders finds themselves challenging one another for both the championship and the audience’s attention; it can take years for the audience to recalibrate what it means to be champion and what is actually important to that concept beyond “they have won and lost this level of match many times.”</p>
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<p id="oojMti">The NWA, in particular, saw the value of its world title essentially drop off the face of the earth in the ’90s after a massive spike in title reigns between Ric Flair and Harley Race. Of course, both earned their keep as champions, but reigns that sometimes lasted days or featured a handful of title defenses (without also involving an injury forcing one of them to give up the title) made it seem that anytime someone beat Flair, he’d eventually claw the belt back to his side after the fans “got what they wanted.” A <a href="https://prowrestling.fandom.com/wiki/Dusty_Finish">“Dusty Champion,”</a> if you will. </p>
<p id="QYn3ix">The trend line of the NWA’s inflation rate also makes it clear that, although young stars like Sting and Lex Luger would eventually find themselves becoming stars in the ’90s, it was too late to inject life back into the NWA title. And by 1991, WCW had stopped using the championship entirely and the lineage of the belt ended up taking a sizable chunk of the decade off.</p>
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<p id="DeX3mO">The most extreme example of this is, of course, the WCW championship. While the WCW’s 26 title changes was <em>technically</em> the lowest of those in the 2000s that we looked at, 20 of them happened in, essentially, one year and literally destroyed the company. The last six swaps before the title went defunct were under the auspices of WWE, and the lineage of the belt, like the company whence it came, became the stuff of <a href="https://www.wrestlingdvdnetwork.com/full-content-listing-wwe-rise-fall-ecw-dvd/177812/"><em>Rise</em></a><em> and </em><a href="https://www.wrestlingdvdnetwork.com/full-content-listing-wwe-the-rise-fall-of-wcw-dvd/178605/"><em>Fall</em></a> DVDs. </p>
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<p id="Uf21Ic">Even when they don’t send a company into a death spiral, these kinds of fluctuations can do real damage to the value of a title. So while it’s not as though in the 1990s the Intercontinental title was treated as sacrosanct, a title change once every 55 days—which is what 66 title changes in 10 years will get you—in the 2000s led even the most libertine of wrestling fans to hope they’d tighten things up, which they did by reverting back to the standards of the previous decade. And, in an almost perfect example of the cyclical nature of the business, most championship changes have reverted even further back in the first third of this decade.</p>
<p id="m2FmSh">Although we are only three years into the 2020s, for the most part, the feverish pace of hot potatoed titles from the last 25 or so years of the business has slowed down considerably. Long and, perhaps more important, medium title reigns have returned, with several pay-per-view and premium live event cycles between big shifts in most championship pictures. </p>
<p id="r3Fsn2">Except in the women’s division. </p>
<p id="kH6492">While they aren’t exactly speed running through all the mistakes made in previous generations, choices have definitely been made to, if not diminish, then deflate the potential value of any given champion reign for any given performer not named Charlotte Flair. </p>
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<p id="8X5XJO">To be sure, reign inflation for these championships is not as steep as it was for something like the WWE championship in the two previous decades, which came about as a result of performers like Edge, John Cena, Randy Orton, and even Triple H handing the championship back and forth <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2022/12/16/23512906/wwe-in-your-house-pay-per-view-history">as the company attempted to calibrate providing value month to month on PPVs</a>. (FFS, Orton and Triple H literally accounted for three title changes between the two of them <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Mercy_(2007)"><em>in one night</em></a>.) </p>
<p id="Vl71ZD">Reign inflation is certainly not great for the general long-term health of the division, though, and for Charlotte, it’s been particularly problematic. She’s held the <em>SmackDown</em> belt seven times and the <em>Raw</em> belt six, but she’s rarely been able to hold on to those titles for long. Although she has two of the five longestf <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=3116&page=2&sortby=colDays&sorttype=DESC"><em>SmackDown</em> women’s title</a> reigns, she also has five of the shortest six. <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=2906&page=2&sortby=colDays&sorttype=DESC">For <em>Raw</em></a>, her longest reign is just seventh longest overall, while each of her five others resides in the bottom 11 (including the shortest for that belt), alongside most of Sasha Banks’s runs with the title.</p>
<p id="OMbDhT">For the WWE title, such massive inflation of the top performers’ reigns, along with the understanding that none of them would likely ever pass Ric Flair—WWE had <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2554067-jon-stewart-turns-the-heel-hits-john-cena-with-chair-at-summerslam">Jon Stewart, in<em> his first public appearance after leaving The Daily Show</em></a>,<em> </em>make sure it didn’t happen for John Cena—made all the reign collecting feel like garbage-time stat padding. This is why, in many ways, the WWE championship currently has had much of its prestige usurped by the fledgling Universal strap. WWE has even gone so far as to frame Roman Reigns’s historical run by the length of time he’s had the Universal belt in particular (as you may recall, he won the WWE championship at this past <em>WrestleMania</em> in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkPxcw1h_aE">a unification match with Brock Lesnar</a>).</p>
<p id="BuLAps">Although it’s lost a lot of luster, the literal decades of prestige and history associated with the WWE championship make it highly unlikely (though ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN IN WWE) that it will ever be completely removed from WWE. Even when titles have been unified with it in the past, they’ve mostly kept that title’s name and certainly maintained the lineage. For something like the <em>Raw </em>and <em>SmackDown </em>women’s championships, though? The future of those titles isn’t as certain. </p>
<p id="9TuHFs">Ignoring that the championships are just a few years old since they’re a product of the brand split, they have a conditional life span that could come to an end at literally any moment. A decision to consolidate yet another pair of championships would likely raise an eyebrow only because it could indicate the return of a certain member of the Bloodline, not because people would miss either championship. </p>
<p id="iYXlsS">Which is absolutely not where the women’s title should be, as it’s definitely not where the women’s division is. But the titles could be consolidated in an effort to make them seem like they have a lineage in line with what the history of the division should have been—don’t even get us started on Moolah’s role in stunting the growth of women’s wrestling—as opposed to the reality of where the women’s division ended up for much of the last half century. Charlotte, unfortunately, finds herself as both the beneficiary and victim of the mindset of manufacturing prestige and importance instead of performing the necessary actions to actually produce either.</p>
<p id="tSNIf2">We will, of course, not weep for Charlotte—who is fabulously wealthy, appears happily married, and is an already legendary performer—and her being a 14-time champion should not somehow make her career worse or lessen our opinion of her. But as she and the company navigate this championship reign (which weirdly feels like one of her most important) and the reigns that will put her closer and closer to and then ahead of her father, it would do them well to remember <a href="https://youtu.be/ULoh336SNNI?t=103">one of the most important lessons</a> from the greatest story ever told about getting everything you ever wanted: </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="ihAzvB">“It’s no trick at all to make a lot of money, when all you want is to make a lot of money.”</p>
<p id="slnhVs"><em>Nick Bond (</em><a href="https://twitter.com/THEN1CKSTER"><em>@TheN1ckster</em></a><em>) is the cofounder of the Institute of Kayfabermetrics and provides weekly updates to </em><a href="https://wrestling.theringer.com/">The Ringer<em>’s WWE Power Board</em></a><em>.</em></p>
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https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/1/20/23564078/charlotte-flair-wwe-title-reign-impact-history-comparisonNick Bond2022-12-30T08:46:38-05:002022-12-30T08:46:38-05:00The Kayfabemetrics Institute’s First Annual Award Show of Awards From Other Award Shows
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<p>It’s like ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ threw an award show for WWE superstars</p> <p id="IBs0NL"><em>As we stand at the end of 2022, the mathematicians (Hank and Dean, the VenPurr Bros.) in the Palace of Wisdom have, with my guidance, run a number of simulations using the most powerful computers Kayfabemetrics Institute has to determine which awards best match the accomplishments for a given WWE performer across the multiverse of all award shows and slates. </em></p>
<p id="50JPGV"><em>Machine learning being machine learning, there are still some bugs in the system, so nearly every year you end up with a new crop of awards and recipients deemed worthy by the patented Award Show of Awards from Other Award Shows Algorithm (The ASAOASAs for short) which we (meaning me, Handsome Hank, and Dashing Dean) then convert into a shorter list suitable for publication. </em></p>
<p id="TNJ8Zo"><em>These are our picks for the best of the best when it comes to awarding professional wrestlers with achievements and commendations they are not qualified or eligible to receive.</em></p>
<h3 id="RYtpfS">Edgar Martínez Outstanding Designated Hitter Award (MLB): Roman Reigns</h3>
<p id="Ra5D1M"><a href="https://www.mlb.com/awards/outstanding-dh"><em>Presented annually to the most outstanding designated hitter (DH) in Major League Baseball</em></a>.</p>
<p id="zZWPDf">Although Roman Reigns has had one of the most dominant runs of all time over the past two years (especially in the first six months of 2021), only the second half of it is eligible for the purposes of this exercise. Which, for Roman, is a period in which he has dropped from competing in 10 TV matches in 2021 to just two in 2022, a decrease in production which would have been evened out overall—had he kept up the same house show schedule in the second half of the year as he did in the first. Instead, he stopped performing on house shows almost entirely starting in June, and, with that, essentially ceased in-ring appearances outside of premium live events almost completely. </p>
<p id="yB9wlN">So, with Reigns’s part-time status becoming perhaps the defining feature of this phase of his career, it just felt right to award The Tribal Chief with the most prestigious award available to someone that does half the work of their peers. That doesn’t mean he’s less valuable or seen as less important by the company at the moment—he’s still ranked third on our WWE Power Board and will likely headline his seventh WrestleMania (out of the last nine overall for the company) this spring—but it <em>is</em> becoming harder and harder to reconcile (or, for the company to justify) his part-time status with his outsized influence on the company’s future plans. </p>
<p id="gW6uqJ">Believe that.</p>
<h3 id="eT6j2I">Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series (Academy of Television Arts and Sciences): Logan Paul</h3>
<p id="dSD0Tb"><a href="https://www.emmys.com/sites/default/files/Downloads/2022-rules-procedures-v5.pdf"><em>Given in honor of an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance in a guest-starring role on a television comedy series for the primetime network season</em></a>.</p>
<p id="xD2sxV">As <em>The Ringer</em>’s own resident wrestling encyclopedia, Phil Schneider, has spent all year <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/11/7/23444604/roman-reigns-logan-paul-wwe-crown-jewel-best-wrestling-matches">telling us</a> that Logan Paul’s first few matches in the WWE have made him borderline legendary already. Although he might not be the best pound-for-pound celebrity wrestler of all time, he’s on the very short list in terms of in-ring quality, while being more legitimately famous than almost anyone else on the active roster (outside of, maybe, Becky Lynch, Brock Lesnar, and Roman Reigns). </p>
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<p id="myrGzS">This is unprecedented, essentially, in the history of wrestling. Putting aside someone like the late Kevin Greene (or, as much as I dislike him as a basketball player and weirdo person, Karl Malone), there’s never been a bona fide celebrity that has the legitimate chops to be world champion of a major wrestling promotion (though, as everyone knows, it hasn’t stopped major wrestling promotions from doing so before). As hinted above, it’s easy to forget just how good Bad Bunny and Floyd Mayweather Jr. were, but given how much smaller they are than Paul (or most of the people on the roster), it’s unlikely they would find themselves anywhere near a WWE main event outside the context of their celebrity. </p>
<p id="Ptr2L8">It almost feels as though Paul could get too much screen time to be eligible for this award next year—similar to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-36853962">Peter MacNicol</a>’s post-award disqualification. Once he recovers from his injury, however far he wants to go in professional wrestling could very well be a function of his willingness to commit to the grind that comes with a starring role as a full-time WWE superstar. </p>
<h3 id="o4RZnp">Lady Byng Memorial Trophy (NHL): Seth Rollins</h3>
<p id="7mhOl5"><a href="https://www.nhl.com/news/nhl-lady-byng-memorial-trophy-winners-complete-list/c-287910994"><em>Awarded to the “player adjudged to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability.”</em></a></p>
<p id="k5VHdI">For our purposes, this award is less about exhibiting sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability, than it is about being willing to job-out constantly while maintaining the latter. Which, if you’ve been following along all year, is why there’s simply no other choice for the WWE’s Lady Byng award than Seth “Freakin’” Rollins. </p>
<p id="7arIAX">During his “rivalry”—rivalry implies some kind of competitiveness, hence the scare quotes—with Cody Rhodes earlier in 2022, Rollins managed to <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=2250&page=4&search=cody+rhodes">lose all 19 of their matches</a>, which is on some Washington Generals-ass shit. But, because he is Seth “Freakin’” Rollins, starring every week on Monday Night Rollins, the end result of Seth crawling through 500 yards of shit was Cody Rhodes looking like a star big and bright enough to take down Roman Reigns and carry the company into an unprecedented era. Rollins, along with most of the main event’s gatekeepers on the roster, also helped raise the profile of Austin Theory, and his work with Bobby Lashley has put The Almighty back on the main event track after Lashley took the scenic route through Mount Omos at this year’s WrestleMania. </p>
<p id="IGqK2y">For his troubles, Rollins got more over than he maybe ever has, despite losing for almost exactly two months straight—from April 15th to June 13th, he lost every match—even picking up a United States title run for good measure in the aftermath of his routine drubbings by The American Nightmare. (That he was also the only person to “win” a singles match against Roman—he was awarded a DQ victory after he passed out in a chokehold Reigns refused to let go of—this year and last, feels like an important bit of information over the next four months.)</p>
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<p id="2zNlTu">Nearly every morsel of news in anticipation of WrestleMania has Rollins involved as a backup plan or prominently involved in the main event of one of the event’s two nights, something that seemed completely impossible just a few months ago. This just goes to show there are always benefits to playing The Game the right way.</p>
<h3 id="QW93CP">The FWAA’s Outland Trophy (CFB): Gunther</h3>
<p id="Qbs0ZA"><a href="https://www.sportswriters.net/fwaa/awards/outland-trophy"><em>“Presented to the nation’s best interior lineman.”</em></a></p>
<p id="ibZhpt">The Outland Trophy is a relatively obscure one, at least to folks who aren’t fans of college football, but it is an extremely prestigious (because football dudes understandably love big beefi bois) honor handed out yearly to the best interior linemen of the season in college football. For our purposes, we’ll be bestowing this to the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2022/9/3/23335526/big-meaty-men-a-brief-history-of-hosses-in-the-wwe">Meatiest Man To Slap Meat</a> this year, our beloved Intercontinental Champion <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2022/9/20/23362865/bobby-lashley-gunther-wwe-mid-card-division">Gunther</a>, The Ring General. </p>
<p id="5vj1GJ">There were a number of extremely qualified candidates for the 2022 award—some were performers with whom Gunther had matches worthy of Phil’s weekly top three, like <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/9/5/23337899/sheamus-gunther-wwe-clash-at-the-castle-the-acclaimed-aew-all-out-best-wrestling-matches">Sheamus</a> (<a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2022/10/11/23399030/brawling-brutes-imperium-wwe-extreme-rules-best-matches">and his Brawling Brutes, as even Butch “works big</a>”) and <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/4/11/23019761/bron-breakker-gunther-jon-moxley-wheeler-yuta-necro-butcher-hoodfoot-best-matches">Bron Breakker</a>—but Gunther stood out, and not just because he spent his time preparing for the main roster by getting into the best shape of his career. </p>
<p id="ixCXSP">His Clash at the Castle<em> </em>Intercontinental Championship match against Sheamus in Wales was an all-time classic, a 19-minute-39-second tour de force of brutality and busted blood vessels: the very game in which the Welsh crowd turned it from a great match to a mythical one, through nearly atmosphere alone. Gunther’s also been a workhorse on “free” TV, with six title matches—one title win and five title defenses, the last three of which have all gone for more than 18 minutes—on <em>SmackDown</em> since taking the championship from Ricochet in June. </p>
<p id="QusXaB">With Braun Strowman seemingly being positioned as his next opponent, Gunther may, for the first time on the main roster (and, potentially, in his career), be the much smaller man in a fight—Strowman <a href="https://www.wwe.com/superstars/braun-strowman">is billed</a> as 4 inches and almost 100 pounds heavier <a href="https://www.wwe.com/superstars/gunther">than Gunther</a>—which will be the first real test of the Austrian’s range as a performer on this big of a platform. But with Gunther’s rookie year going about as well as anyone’s ever has (outside of Brock Lesnar putting up <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bondsba01.shtml#2001-2004-sum:batting_standardhttps://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bondsba01.shtml#2001-2004-sum:batting_standard">late-career Barry Bonds stats</a> in his first year on WWE TV), it’s the assumption of the Institute that he will look a lot more like James Harrison than Leon Lett if he’s given a chance to run with the ball. </p>
<h3 id="BB56gS">Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences): Sami Zayn</h3>
<p id="41qcbl"><em>“</em><a href="https://www.oscars.org/sites/oscars/files/95th_oscars_complete_rules.pdf"><em>Performance by an actor in a supporting role.”</em></a></p>
<p id="EKQG4C">This is a bit of category manipulation on behalf of The Bloodline, as Sami Zayn is not a supporting actor in terms of the amount of screentime he’s received in this new role. But in terms of his place within the group itself, Zayn’s performance is not dissimilar to something like Robin Williams in <em>Good Will Hunting</em>. </p>
<p id="gpH9VY">As the therapist for the titular Will Hunting, Dr. Sean Maguire, Williams doesn’t meaningfully interact with the full cast of characters in the movie the way Zayn does weekly, but his purpose in the movie as a perpetual counterbalance to all the different stakeholders in Will’s life—each of them (whether it be Ben Affleck’s Chuckie, Minnie Driver’s Skylar, or Stellan Skarsgard’s Professor Lambeau) pulling Will in different directions for self-centered, if not necessarily selfish, reasons—feels right in terms of Sami’s status as the “glue guy” of The Bloodline. Zayn spends nearly all of his time, even when working, trying to do what’s best for everyone involved on an individual level, while still maintaining the integrity and sustainability of the group itself because he both believes in the potential of the group and he feels it’s the right thing to do. </p>
<p id="MxmJqq">Like Sean does with Will’s mental well-being vis-à-vis his potential, Sami sees in the Bloodline a chance to redeem himself for how far he’d fallen over the past few years—even if preserving or championing it may destroy other older relationships for him. What may come of that in the aftermath of this story line (or, in Maguire’s case, when the final credits roll on that part of his life) was far less important to both of them than doing what they felt was the right thing in the moment. </p>
<p id="cEPE3V">Now, we’re not sure if we want to watch Sami “go see about a girl” instead of going to see a Red Sox World Series game, but it’d definitely be nice to see him working in a prominent spot on the card for <em>Elimination Chamber</em> this February. </p>
<h3 id="KDbv67">Nobel Prize for Physics (The Royal Swedish Academy of the Sciences): Bianca Belair</h3>
<p id="VCyOd6"><a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/#:~:text=The%20Nobel%20Prize%20in%20Physics%202022%20was%20awarded%20to%20Alain,technology%20based%20upon%20quantum%20information."><em>“Those who have made the most outstanding contributions for humankind in the field of physics.”</em></a></p>
<p id="yb5i67">Bianca Belair is number one on our Power Board, our draft rankings, and our hearts as wrestling fans, but you may be wondering how she’s made the “most outstanding contributions for humankind in the field of physics.” Which, of course, makes it obvious that you didn’t read <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/7/11/23200224/bianca-belair-biggest-star-wwe-universe">the very first piece</a> ever written about the Big Board, which focused on Belair. </p>
<p id="WHNMri">Because if you had you’d understand that, in terms of physics, her place at the center of the Women’s division has completely warped half of the WWE universe around her. Without most of the Four Horsewomen for significant chunks of the year and other stalwarts like Alexa Bliss and Asuka missing significant time, this was a perfect opportunity for Belair to make herself the biggest star in the women’s locker room and, at least based on her appearing at the beginning or end of nearly episode of <em>Raw</em>, it seems like she was able to accomplish exactly that.</p>
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<p id="7gXoh5">Bianca Belair certainly feels like as big of a star as Ronda Rousey—is there literally anyone out there who thinks Rousey is doing a better job or is a better champion than Belair?—despite not having nearly as much cultural cache as the UFC Hall of Famer. Even when Charlotte Flair comes back, she’ll still feel like the most important women’s performer on the roster. </p>
<p id="xjNJok">In calling Flair (and Rhea Ripley) out explicitly during the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt8B4u3piq8"><em>Survivor Series WarGames</em> post-show press conference</a>—while sitting next to Becky Lynch, after defeating Ripley’s WarGames teammate Bayley in <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=9089&view=&page=4&search=bianca+belair&gimmick=&year=&promotion=&region=&location=&arena=&showtype=Pay+Per+View&constellationType=&worker=">their third consecutive PLE match</a>—she’s made it very clear that she is the one calling the shots and determining the future worlds she plans on bringing into her orbit before ultimately overtaking them completely as her star grows ever-larger. </p>
<h3 id="XXfPx8">The George Mikan Most Improved Player (NBA): Dominik Mysterio</h3>
<p id="bYkyGx"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/09/sports/2018-19-nba-awards-stein.html"><em>“This award is designed to honor an up-and-coming player who has made a dramatic improvement from the previous season or seasons. It is not intended to be given to a player who has made a ‘comeback.’”</em></a></p>
<p id="G3JImA">If there were some kind of collective version of this award, it would have most certainly been given to The Judgment Day, who has turned into the best possible version of “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPbVRpRgHso">Cybergoth Dance Party</a>, But Make it Wrestling” imaginable. Unfortunately, while individuals who used to suck (and now suck less) can get rewarded with actual trophies—the NFL’s Comeback Player of the Year can also be awarded to someone who simply wasn’t good at one point and now is again, but it mostly goes to players coming back from injury—teams that do the same are usually just rewarded with surprise playoff berths before getting swept out of the first round. </p>
<p id="QysCru">With Mysterio, however, he has this lovely trophy, a great new girlfriend, a fresh outlook on his relationship with his father Rey and the rest of his family, as well as a burgeoning rap sheet. He’s also managed to get way more comfortable on the mic and in the ring, with his ability to “work to character” in particular developing at a pace that makes it clear that he’s been closely watching his family and their friends ply their craft for the majority of his life. </p>
<p id="VyxRW5">There’s a special combination of things that made Rey Mysterio, well, Rey Mysterio, and no one should begrudge Dominik if he never quite makes it as far in the business as his dad does. But if Dominik keeps on this path—while starting to fill out like an actual athlete and not some guy’s kid who hangs around at the gym on his tablet—there may be a future as a Miz-esque mid-card workhorse that any father would be proud of. </p>
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<h3 id="Z0ZVqa">
<br>Grammy for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package (The Recording Academy): Rob Fee/Bray Wyatt</h3>
<p id="pDY0Ii">Although <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/12/19/23517790/the-masked-man-show-grading-triple-hs-rehires">I’m on the record</a> as enjoying the return of Bray Wyatt a great deal, it’s clear that this slow-playing of Wyatt’s breakdown (and, in particular, his seemingly nonsensical and, at the very least, meandering promos) has rubbed some people the wrong way, a perspective which has been addressed in kayfabe by the current object of the Eater of World’s “affections,” LA Knight.</p>
<p id="5He1Pu">But, while there’s certainly some chatter about how the actual work has gone, there’s been nearly universal acclaim for the packaging in which it came. Although I don’t know Rob Fee from Adam (<a href="https://youtu.be/eGjeaqeW1nU">Page</a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/v2Qb8f-mhvw">Cole</a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/FDFdroN7d0w">Driver</a>, or <a href="https://lifehopeandtruth.com/god/is-there-a-god/proof-of-god/first-man/">T. Firstman</a>), it seems like a good idea to have someone who has spent time deep into as supremely fucked a continuity shit pile as the one at Marvel (which I say as someone who has over 1,500 Marvel comics in their collection). </p>
<p id="evOPdA">Wyatt is a complicated character to get right, not because wrestling can’t handle layered and complex characters (though it’s certainly not its strong suit). It’s that it is simply difficult to have everything go right in any wrestling-related environment, and for a character built so completely on mystique as whatever this incarnation of Windham Rotunda ends up being, the level of precision required to not break the illusion does not lend itself to WWE’s particular brand of live entertainment. </p>
<p id="dpS8pg">Like the acoustics of a particular recording space, the crowd reaction to a given bit of sports entertainment spectacle can shape how the audience watching at home (or even live) perceives it, no matter how good the actual material is on its own. But, in a weird way, as in-ring work becomes more uniformly passable-to-good, what happens in between the ropes has begun to matter in a different manner than it once did. </p>
<p id="ilR0nH">You don’t buy Wyatt gear and psychotic props or follow the surreptitious QR codes because you think he’s going to bust out a five-star work rate master class of a match, but because he’s dope, his entrance is dope, and it feels cool to own a piece of this thing that we are experiencing or have experienced together. Like listening to a remastering of an old collection of records or checking out the expertly-done liner notes for a favorite song, Wyatt’s return was great not because it was good wrestling; Wyatt’s return was great because it was made by people who wanted to make good wrestling doing the best job they could, making it clear they cared about what they were doing while trying to guide the fans in experiencing what they want them to with specific choices they made. Nothing lasts forever, but sometimes it’s okay for it to look awesome while it’s here. </p>
<h3 id="MGJT0K">
<a href="https://mrirrelevant.org/about"><s>Mr.</s> Miss Irrelevant</a> (NFL): Sonya Deville</h3>
<p id="ZW32oe"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League_Draft"><em>“Nickname given to the last pick of the annual National Football League draft.”</em></a></p>
<p id="uOswzF">Although she is not often spoken about on the pages(?) of <em>The Ringer</em>, Sonya Deville’s name is one that is often bandied about in The Palace of Wisdom. Mostly because she just has the worst GD luck ever. The only performer in our system to ever have a negative push, she is literally the only person we legally allow to be referred to as “getting buried” as her time on TV—where she has essentially become designated cannon fodder for gauntlet matches on <em>SmackDown</em>—is almost never used to portray in anything other than an actively negative light. </p>
<p id="e6EhVC">To be clear, we don’t think this is a reflection on a Daria Berenato the human being, or even Sonya Deville the character (who does yeowoman’s work every time she appears on-screen, even in kayfabe), but just a return of the old-school character jobber who exists entirely to paint by numbers in matches designed to get baby faces over at the expense of heels looking for steady paychecks. Her work exists closer to someone like the Mulkey brothers or George South, where (<a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2022/8/16/23307174/the-miz-happy-corbin-natalya-wwe-new-brooklyn-brawlers">as we’ve discussed before</a>) their spot on the roster made sense for a promotion based on the idea of an actual sport, rather than as a character jobber like The Brooklyn Brawler or Barry Horowitz. </p>
<p id="X3VYyq">With her MMA background and previous success before her life got turned upside down following a horrifying stalking incident, the return of Deville to the positive side of the push ledger doesn’t seem completely outside the realm of possibility, but perhaps this string of bad luck may lead to her ending up as the WWE’s Brock Purdy: a hero to all, cherished by millions and well on their way to a championship no one ever imagined they’d win.</p>
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<h3 id="EgBhj3">Best Villain (MTV Movie & TV Awards): Bayley</h3>
<p id="QdKkiL">Bayley’s return at SummerSlam was the opening salvo in Triple H’s war against stagnation in the Raw Women’s division—and also, sure, the first big return in what would become an almost annoyingly long string of them. From the first second Bayley was onscreen, it was clear that she hadn’t come back as the erstwhile Hugger character upon which she had built the first half of her surefire Hall of Fame career, but as the kind of über-Karen wrestlemonster that she had devolved into over the course of her up-and-down relationship with Sasha Banks. </p>
<p id="nLlnEw">With two capable henchwomen in Iyo Sky and Dakota Kai, Bayley now had enough muscle to make at least some of her more nefarious plans come to fruition. While Bayley treated Banks as though she saw them as equals of whom Bayley was first among, there seems to be a more hierarchical (albeit chaotic) relationship between Bayley and the rest of Damage CTRL. There’s also a real joie de vivre that Bayley seems to get from heeling out on nearly everyone who crosses her path (outside of Bay Area athletes like George Kittle). </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="QZuGYV">Although she was unable to achieve her goal of world domination, or at the very least capturing the Raw Women’s Championship, she put herself back in the mix for the main women’s match at every PLE until, eventually, a bigger bad comes along and she either beats ’em or joins ’em.</p>
<p id="3S0Fdu"><em>Nick Bond (</em><a href="https://twitter.com/THEN1CKSTER"><em>@TheN1ckster</em></a><em>) is the cofounder of the Institute of Kayfabermetrics and provides weekly updates to </em><a href="https://wrestling.theringer.com/">The Ringer<em>’s WWE Power Board</em></a><em>.</em> </p>
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https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2022/12/30/23531522/wwe-power-board-kayfabemetrics-institute-first-annual-award-showNick Bond2022-12-21T05:50:00-05:002022-12-21T05:50:00-05:00A Few Good Men: How the Usos’ Dominance Revives the Tag Team Division in WWE
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<p>The Usos aren’t where they are just because they’re Roman Reigns’s family. In 2022, their work helped elevate an oft-neglected section of pro wrestling.</p> <p id="ejd8lK">You may have noticed over the last few weeks in this space that we’ve mostly focused on <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/11/15/23460331/austin-theory-wwe-money-in-the-bank-cash-in-failure-future">big-picture</a>, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/10/8/23392956/wwe-extreme-rules-pay-per-view-brief-history-value-extreme-rules-matches">broad concepts</a> about the general direction of WWE, or <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2022/12/16/23512906/wwe-in-your-house-pay-per-view-history">the historical context</a> that helped orientate the company in that way. Some of this has been happenstance, but a significant reason for that focus is that there’s simply been nothing doing on our WWE Power Board, the source from which all our knowledge springs forth in the Palace of Wisdom.</p>
<p id="09uLAl">Although a sizable chunk of performers have been removed from tracking because they weren’t working consistently—Brock Lesnar, Edge, Omos, and Matt Riddle have all been pulled in just the last few updates—and, by extension, some debuts (and returns) have filled in their places, there hasn’t been much movement (or push) for anyone in our rankings since, essentially, Crown Jewel. (And in reality, probably Extreme Rules.) </p>
<p id="Dn5c1N">That was until last week, when after months of creeping ever closer, the undisputed WWE tag team champions the Usos finally surpassed their cousin, undisputed WWE champion Roman Reigns, to become the no. 2 performers on the Big Board (behind <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/7/11/23200224/bianca-belair-biggest-star-wwe-universe">the center of our WWE Universe</a>, Raw Women’s champion Bianca Belair). </p>
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<p id="6n9cqe">Now, of course, it’s not as though in achieving such lofty heights, Jimmy Uso and Jey Uso instantly became the Tribal Chiefs, the Heads of the Table, or <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/12/6/23496380/roman-reigns-sami-zayn-the-bloodline-wwe-faction-history">even the second-most important act in the Bloodline</a>. </p>
<p id="Nxypiz">It also unfortunately doesn’t mean that, all of a sudden, all WWE premium live events will be headlined by the Usos and a series of worthy (but ultimately overmatched) competitors in tag team championship matches (we say “unfortunately” because their matches are almost uniformly dope). But it definitely represents a change on the micro and macro levels of how they are presented and what the show will look like going forward. </p>
<p id="0joFK5">For the Usos, personally, this push toward the top of the card is the culmination of a career that has mostly stood next to something that felt bigger than themselves. With Reigns no longer appearing on TV every week, they have become the messengers for the Bloodline in a literal sense on-screen and, in particular, on house shows. As of this week’s <em>Raw</em>, the Usos have worked 26 matches <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=28&nr=1689&page=2">since the start of November</a> and 17 of them at live events, many of which involve the Usos both opening and closing the show. </p>
<p id="W8tgAU">It’s not like they’ve been coasting on TV, either. Of their three title defenses in the same period, the <em>shortest </em>was 14 minutes (with the other two combining for over 40 minutes in total), and there’s another (already filmed) title defense coming this Friday against Hit Row on <em>SmackDown</em>. The other two matches they worked since the beginning of last month were a 20-minute, six-man tag match against Matt Riddle and the New Day; and the only TV match they’d lost (before Monday night) in this timeframe, a nearly 15-minute match against Drew McIntyre and Sheamus for the WarGames match advantage. </p>
<p id="Dl7UL5">While this stretch is particularly busy and bountiful, the Usos aren’t cramming for some kind of imaginary test before the new year. They’ve worked the second-most matches in our tracking system since the start of 2021—yes, McIntyre is still eight matches ahead of them by himself, despite not working in three weeks, but they also spotted him <em>six months </em>at the beginning of last year—at 194 after <em>Raw</em> this past Monday.</p>
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<p id="gXO1VL">Working this much has made it so that although the Usos don’t have the pure promotional push of Reigns, the amount they work means they’ve become (along with Sami Zayn) the critical characters in the men’s division on either show. They don’t have the force of will that a character like Roman or Bray Wyatt does, but their sheer ubiquity has made it so that they matter simply because so much of the show would need to be replaced if they were unavailable one reason or another. </p>
<p id="0EHVBk">Which obviously hasn’t made for light work so far this year. Just in those past few title defenses mentioned above, the Usos have managed to become the longest reigning tag team champions in WWE history—defeating the previous record holders, their longtime rivals the New Day, to cap off the achievement—and over the course of the entire year, they’ve been undefeated on pay-per-view and premium live events (7-0) with five title defenses, including three after their unification of the <em>Raw </em>and <em>SmackDown </em>tag team titles <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=balGX2ueJww">over seven months ago</a>. </p>
<p id="ZHQJ5S">This run hasn’t quite been Reignsian—as we’ve discussed, the only actual weakness of the Bloodline is six-man tag matches at house shows, <a href="https://www.cagematch.net/?id=29&nr=2971&page=2">in which they are well under .500</a>, which has become even more pronounced without Roman—but it’s definitely established them as <em>the</em> dominant tag team in the company and, at least according to some outside sources, <a href="https://twitter.com/OfficialPWI/status/1599901437198184450?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1599901437198184450%7Ctwgr%5Eb4a9f8e119dce3528b0c76fdfcc488557ba269e2%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fbleacherreport.com%2Farticles%2F10057781-wwes-the-usos-lead-pwis-2022-tag-team-100-rankings">the best tag team in the world</a>. </p>
<p id="SDJYBe">For a very long time, such a distinction would have been essentially meaningless in WWE. The previous regime was not particularly keen on (actual) tag teams, vacillating between using the division as the lowest quality filler meat—think, like, whatever they might use to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=521418660850&set=a.521417902370">make taquitos at a tiny gas station in Barstow, California</a>, only more so and with bacne—or as a punching bag/<a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2022/7/18/23220741/riddle-avoided-randy-orton-barbershop-window-wwe-tag-team-wrestling">catalyst for a “more important” main-event feud</a>. </p>
<p id="meY54e">Before Vince McMahon left WWE during this year’s build-up to SummerSlam, he had booked just three “actual” tag matches on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WWE_pay-per-view_and_WWE_Network_events#2022">the six PLEs outside of WrestleMania</a> (where the “everybody in the pool” nature of the proceedings almost makes those matches count <em>less</em>, as though that’s the only time they can even be bothered) of which he was in charge—and two of those came on the same show, Day 1 in January. (There was also a mixed tag at the Royal Rumble with the It Couple versus Beth Phoenix and Edge, and a gimmicked match at Elimination Chamber with Ronda Rousey and Naomi versus Charlotte Flair and Sonya DeVille, wherein Rousey had to work with one arm tied behind her back. Obviously, neither had any bearing on the actual tag divisions, and both speak to the complete unseriousness with which McMahon approached the genre.)</p>
<p id="mYz7OW">While Triple H hasn’t exactly produced a show called “<a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2056054-cinnamon-toast-crunch-shrimp-controversy">Oops, All Tag Matches</a>!,” he has definitely increased the emphasis on them at PLEs, with an average of one match per show he’s booked (as well as using the champion Usos and Damage CTRL in the headlining matches for Survivor Series WarGames). Overall, in the time period <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2022/11/26/23479218/triple-h-wwe-survivor-series-wargames-vince-mcmahon-comparison">we covered in our survey of the empirical differences between Vince McMahon and Triple H</a>, Hunter had managed to put together an extra two hours of tag team matches in the shows he produced, presumably because he doesn’t seem to have Vince’s extremely well-established aversion to <s>properly compensating his </s><a href="https://aiptcomics.com/2020/11/18/wwe-independent-contractors-twitch-employees/"><s>employees</s></a> the <a href="https://whatculture.com/wwe/real-reason-vince-mcmahon-hates-tag-team-wrestling">financial “burden” of tag teams</a>. </p>
<p id="ZNB0Up">Given his artistic influences, Triple H almost certainly enjoys tag matches more as a narrative conceit than McMahon did. He also can probably do the back-of-the-napkin math on how many more options are available to fill time and how many different pairings can be made with a tag team feud relative to the singles alternatives: When you need to fill at least one extra segment a week with wrestling, experimenting with six different narrative choices per feud—each performer can have two matches with their opponents (one with each member of the other team) and a handicap match as well—seems worth the extra cost of needing to keep an additional person or two employed to make it work.</p>
<p id="QnHvTB">At the very least, H has emphasized tag team title matches on TV since taking over—again, as of Friday, the Usos will have had <em>four</em> tag title defenses in the last month and a half on TV, which is absolutely unheard of—as part of a two-prong strategy (along with the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2022/9/20/23362865/bobby-lashley-gunther-wwe-mid-card-division">U.S./Intercontinental title divisions</a>) to fill the hole left by Roman Reigns’s regular absence from in-ring competition on weekly shows.</p>
<p id="vRa9y4">In addition to shifting some spotlight back on the tag divisions, Triple H has now begun to use the men’s and women’s tag champs—and the Usos in particular—as the tip of the spear, narratively. Damage CTRL’s chaotic campaign has largely been confined to Mondays in terms of their leader’s focus; but, with Monday’s episode of <em>Raw</em>, <em>SmackDown’s</em> rampaging Bloodline (led by Jimmy and Jey, <a href="https://youtu.be/Ee9ltUDYDMM">at the behest of Roman</a>) has further shifted the dynamic of WWE’s weekly television shows from places where anything can happen to a place where it explicitly <em>does</em> on either show. </p>
<p id="uXzs6A">When it was used to attempt to goose the ratings and focus eyeballs during the yearly Survivor Series campaign to try and make us care about whether someone is <a href="https://youtu.be/VxDDIl4r1mU">wearing a red or blue shirt during a match</a>, it fell flat. Now, at least it has a reason that goes beyond “Oh shit, we forgot to preheat the oven again, just throw some stiff punches and shots of riots in the locker room in the air fryer.”</p>
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<p id="EEr8qK">Jimmy and Jey showing up to wreak havoc on <em>Raw </em>because the Bloodline doesn’t like Kevin Owens (as opposed to showing up on <em>Raw </em>just to beat up Kevin Owens because they don’t like Kevin Owens) means more than it appears on the surface: Although the borders between the shows have always been permeable, when they are explicitly challenged outside the context of some bullshit “brand warfare” is when the idea actually works and feels alive. And it’s not simply the Usos, Sami, and Solo showing up because they want to create havoc, or Roman Reigns trying to sabotage the other network’s show for shits and giggles. </p>
<p id="IueN9A">Having both the Usos and Reigns as unified champions has essentially reshaped the entire men’s half of the WWE Universe in their image and, in response, the rules of engagement have changed to better suit their needs. Now, instead of merely functioning as some kind of raiders or agents of a specific brand, the Bloodline’s dominance means that all that the light touches is now their kingdom, but they also get to be the hyenas in the elephant graveyard. </p>
<p id="H0UDXY">They are on <em>Raw</em> because those are the performers they would need to compete against to maintain their stranglehold on the divisions, which is—even if it’s considered kind of shitty to do in kayfabe—a totally valid reason to shit where you eat (and/or antagonize literally all of your co-workers, even those who work in the Stamford office). What’s more, at least from a “logical storytelling” perspective, is that because they have an “us vs. the world” mindset, the Usos showing up together (alongside Sami Zayn-Uso and Solo) makes infinitely more sense than Roman showing up by himself or even with a crew. </p>
<p id="bc5JTE">One person, even when surrounded by their own army, will need to watch that army’s back nearly as much as their own. With partners like the Usos—twin brothers-in-arms—the nature of both their real-life relationship (even in kayfabe) and the requirements of their career (i.e., they each need one another to win) has built that kind of multitasking in the face of danger into who they are as characters. Tag guys are who you line up with when you want to cause trouble or teach someone a lesson so they’ll fall in line. </p>
<p id="QqRUhO">And by essentially ordering a <a href="https://www.looper.com/427156/what-a-code-red-really-means-in-a-few-good-men/">code red</a>, Reigns has made it crystal clear that <a href="https://youtu.be/9FnO3igOkOk?t=83">he wants his cousins on that wall, that he <em>needs</em> them on that wall</a>. However, running such an offensive operation is not exactly something that a leader like Roman usually does unless they are either unsure of themselves and the future, or so overconfident that they may end up putting the Usos in situations like the one they found themselves in this past Monday night. Their loss in an exceedingly charming shitshow to close out the December 19 <em>Raw</em> against Seth Rollins and Kevin Owens may have come at the end of a string of run-ins, but the interference was—excluding Austin Theory attacking Rollins, obviously—largely a series of self-inflicted hoists by a variety of Bloodline-brand pitards planted throughout the night. </p>
<p id="hqeuNl">Which as the Bloodline spreads itself thinner—though we have to assume they will largely stay away from <a href="https://www.wrestlinginc.com/news/2020/10/wwe-performance-center-is-now-known-as-the-capitol-675506/">the Capitol Wrestling Center</a>—is exactly the kind of thing that Jimmy and Jey may no longer want to fuck around and find out, especially if they might perceive whatever request as the bidding of the Tribal Chief (after, say, losing their unified tag titles). At which point, all of the things that have been suppressed over the last two years between the three of them—along with their own brother Solo and the Honorary Uce over the past few months—may come to a head and will likely end with each of them doing things that they will end up regretting. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="5rgPki">For now, however, the Usos find themselves the Twos—like, in a fun, charming way—carrying the Bloodline to the highest levels in company history, while pushing their division’s, faction’s, and family’s legacies forward in equal measure in a way that not even Roman Reigns can quite claim. We will have to wait to find out whether, whenever this entire unit becomes unsustainable, that’s a truth that Roman Reigns can handle.</p>
<p id="nkvUOW"><em>Nick Bond (</em><a href="https://twitter.com/THEN1CKSTER"><em>@TheN1ckster</em></a><em>) is the cofounder of the Institute of Kayfabermetrics and provides weekly updates to </em><a href="https://wrestling.theringer.com/">The Ringer<em>’s WWE Power Board</em></a><em>.</em> </p>
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https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2022/12/21/23519771/the-usos-undisputed-wwe-tag-team-champions-dominance-tag-team-revivalNick Bond