Monday 24 August 2015

Quick Thoughts #5: Summerslam's Shortcomings



I’m going to start off here by saying this article will barely touch on the astoundingly bad booking of last night because I feel that should (and will) have been covered by everyone and their dog by now.

This article is focused on another area where Summerslam fell badly short – in the ring.

I found watching the show last night extremely depressing as I realised how damaging the complete lack of psychology was in the two biggest matches of WWE’s biggest show of the summer.

Take Brock vs. Undertaker, I sat there and watched Brock hit three F-5’s on ‘Taker and not once did I think there was even a remote chance of that being the finish.

When that’s the case how can I even slightly get excited and into the match?

The answer is I couldn’t.

I sat there and watched as Brock brawled with ‘Taker for a bit before the whole thing just descended into yet another finisher orgy.

I openly pondered how many finishers it was going to take before I bought into the finish of the match.

10, 15, 20?

I’ll never know because I didn’t even get a chance to find out with the asinine ending that they decided to go with.

It’s weird to think how we’ve got to this point since for years if I was watching an indie show people would tell me that it wasn’t nearly as good as WWE because the psychology wasn’t there.

At this point that psychology no longer exists, at least not in the big matches.

I think I can trace the problem back as well.

To trace it back to what feels like the origins of this lack of psychology we have to go back to one of the greatest matches of all-time.

The stage was Wrestlemania 25 and the match was The Undertaker pitting his undefeated streak against Mr. Wrestlemania himself, Shawn Michaels.

There were multiple near falls and several finisher kick-out’s and it was an absolute masterpiece.

However, it was only a masterpiece because of the psychology that had been previously built up.
Prior to that match you knew the Tombstone Piledriver was a deathly finishing manoeuvre and, to a lesser extent, so was Sweet Chin Music.

So Shawn and ‘Taker kicking out of those moves meant something.

The problem is WWE saw that formula worked for them and ran with it for other big matches too.
It worked for a while as well, because they didn’t do it too often so the psychology somewhat remained intact.

Money in the Bank 2011 saw CM Punk and John Cena kick out of each other’s finishers repeatedly but it still meant something.

The problem is, over the five years since that amazing Shawn/Undertaker match these matches have become more and more frequent.

It wasn’t just Brock vs. ‘Taker that was culpable last night either, Cena vs. Rollins was equally guilty.

And that seems to be a recurring theme for Cena recently, they’ve went into overdrive with this type of match for him this year throughout his US Title Open Challenge’s and his PPV encounters.

It used to be that if you kicked out of Cena’s AA that was a huge moment and really made whoever kicked out seem legitimate.

Now, it means nothing because we as an audience have become conditioned to expect it.

Did Rollins kicking out of the AA last night make him look like a star?

Or help recuperate the months of horrendous booking he has gone through?

No, because everyone kicks out of Cena’s finisher now, so it means nothing.

I think the change for me in terms of just being conditioned to expect this was the second Cena/Owens match earlier this year.

I thought the first match was excellent and unpredictable.

Then they had the exact same match at Money in the Bank just with a different winner and followed it up with an exact replica of that match at Battleground.

You could say that I’m clearly just another jaded wrestling fan who needs to walk away from the fandom as a whole but I consume an insane amount of wrestling every year from companies all over the world and WWE is the only one making me feel this way right now.

I watch ROH matches and can get into them, same with Lucha Underground or PWG or NJPW or even WWE’s own developmental organisation in NXT – and that’s a pretty damning indictment.

Going back to last night I was watching Summerslam with a group of friends and we’d decided that since we were going to be watching Summerslam together we’d meet a few hours early, avoid spoilers and watch the previous night’s NXT Takeover event too.

There was a tag team match on that card between then NXT Tag Team Champions Blake and Murphy and now NXT Tag Team Champions The Vaudevillians.

It was quite an old school match with the way they built up to the hot tag and by the end of the match I was out of my seat cheering The Vaudevillians on – and I wasn’t the only one in the group doing that.

It was because of the excellent ring psychology of that match that I got so into it.

And that tag team match, second on the card at WWE’s developmental show, had more psychology to it than Brock/Undertaker and Cena/Rollins put together.

Something about that isn’t right.

So I personally feel that it’s not just me being a jaded wrestling fan, it’s WWE as a whole losing sight of the psychology and storytelling that pro wrestling is built on and conditioning fans to do the same.

And if it keeps going it could be really damaging for the brand because why should you care the next time someone hits an F-5 or an AA or a Tombstone Piledriver when I know that the opponent’s just going to kick out?

That’s not a road they should want to go down.