Hello sunshine, Justin Houston here with the newest edition of Rubbed RAW! This week, we start off with the recap of everything that literally just happened on Monday Night RAW. Finally, I wrote a bunch of stuff about heels and faces in professional wrassle-fighting. It was originally just going to be a raging observation posted as a comment to one of our articles here but I finished and realized that the comment was longer than this week’s original Rubbed companion piece. So I thought I might as well just run it here instead. I have (sort of) reformatted my comment and now it’s (definitely) a vitriolic op-ed piece. Dandy. Juuuuust dandy. READ THAT SHIT BELOW!
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RAW Recap
– Monday Night Raw kicks off with the triumphant return of Daniel Bryan! His wife Brie Bella is there waiting for him and they get to do a tandem “Yes!” chant. DAWWWWWWWW. Stephanie McMahon comes out and rains on their parade. Steph says she’s got a wedding present for Bryan: he’s defending the title at Extreme Rules against Kane. She advises him to watch out for Brie, as Kane in “demon form” is uncontrollable. Kane’s music hits. He surprises Bryan from the crowd, scaring off Brie and destroying Daniel with a tombstone piledriver on the floor. Stephanie pleads with Kane to stop but he tears the steps from the post. TOMBSTONE ONTO THE STEPS. I guess Bryan ain’t wrestling tonight. Stephanie has her horror movie vixen voice on. Kane comes back out and just goes fucking crazy. This would be tremendous if it wasn’t for Stephanie’s horrid, shrill voice. Kane sets Bryan up on the announcers table. Yep. Tombstone there, too. It doesn’t break though. Steph calls Kane a bastard. Strong, necessary segment save for Stephanie horrible screeching to reestablish the Big Red Machine. Unlike the Triple H beating before Mania, this was actually important. Plus, it gives Bryan time to grieve the loss of his father, too, who passed away a couple of days ago. Post commercial, they are STILL trying to get him to an ambulance. Hurry up, fuckers! Kane could come back at any moment! Stephanie stays, holding the world titles and getting herself some more heat. Because it is IMPERATIVE that Stephanie Fucking McMahon gets heat for some reason. Fuck. Also there’s three more matches left in the Intercontinental Title Tournament. Both semifinal matches are tonight! ONE OF THEM IS RIGHT NOW!
1. Bad New Barrett d. Sheamus via Bull Hammer. Really good, super stiff match. These European guys love beating the piss out of each other. Good time to have a money match after that beating, too. After an awesome near fall from White Noise, Barrett rolled out and caught Sheamus with his signature elbow as he tried to chase. Crowd was crazy into BNB by the end.
– Hugh Jackman is coming to Raw next week! Awesome. That guy is always super game for whatever they ask of him.
– Bray Wyatt is out with Ginger Sheep and Black Beard. Bray says that Cena is losing fans evry single week. Wyatt starts singing again and the crowd joins in. Weeee.
2. El Torito & Los Matadores d. Hornswoggle & 3MB via pinfall. More Torito/Horny stuff, which I actually enjoy. McIntyre eats the good guys’ three man finisher and probably doesn’t even remember his “Chosen One” days at this point.
– Evolution is out now. Trips has a raspy voice tonight. It’s kind of funny. They show a video package highlight why we’re supposed to give a fuck about Evolution coming back. All I took from the video is that everyone in this current Evolution group is now bald. So there’s that. The Shield come out and Evolution smirk-bolt. Ambrose says they’ve been beaten up before but say none of them are humbled. He calls Orton a creampuff. Amazing mic work. Rollins gets lots of time, too, and he’s excellent. I mean, this is probably his best work. Reigns gets the final word. He brings up the creampuff line from before. Amazing. The Shield goes to attack and a billion guys come out. Triple H says there’s always an option three and dares them to fight. Evolution leaves.
3. The Usos d. Goldust & Cody Rhodes via superkick. RybAxel is on commentary. Ryback is doing all of the talking and is quite good. Axel laughs every once in a while to remind me he’s there at all. Short match. The Rhodes brothers argue after the match so they’re totally breaking up. RybAxel attacks The Usos from behind so they’re totally facing each other at Extreme Rules.
4. Emma d. Layla via Cobra Strike. Layla is wearing nothing but gold tassels tonight. Emma pulls out a pink sock from her boot and destroys Layla with a cobra strike for the win. The feud is perpetual and somebody’s weird version of hell. JBL insinuates that the two cobras are fucking as they celebrate. It’s awful.
– John Cena is interviewed. He says stuff. Ahhhhhh poop break.
– Cesaro and Paul Heyman come out. Cesaro’s new entrance music is preceded by an air raid horn. It’s nuts, and also kind of annoying. Heyman starts in on a promo and it cuts to commercial inexplicably. Whoops. We come back and Heyman is still going on and on and on. He’s doing that thing I’ve heard about where he gets people to boo him and thereby draw heat for Cesaro. SUCH RARITIES.
5. Rob Van Dam via Cesaro via count-out. The guys were a little off to start with and never got 100% back on track, but it was still a fun match. Cesaro obliterated RVD with a Tiger Bomb at one point. It was brutal. Cesaro was going for the Big Swing when Swagger interfered. Cesaro got counted out and it’s Barrett versus RVD in the Intercontinental Title Tournament finals. Afterwards, Cesaro dumps Swagger and goes for the Swing on Zeb but Swagger breaks it up. Bleh. Who the fuck are we supposed to be cheering and booing here? The fans don’t know; they just sort of reacted to shit randomly. I guess that’s what management wanted to happen? I dunno. It was weird.
– We get an update on Daniel Bryan. It’s a stinger. Also, there’s some extremity numbness. That’s it. What? THAT’S IT?!?! He took THREE fucking Tombstones at various levels of peril. He should be pissing out of his eyeballs for fucks sake. Also, I have no earthly clue what tonight’s main event is.
– RVD is interviewed backstage. Heyman and Cesaro interrupt. RVD tells Cesaro to stay away from Heyman because he’s…he’s, like, mean or a thief or something.
6. Paige d. Aksana via Scorpion Crosslock. Aksana actually got an entrance. It’s horrifying. As my girlfriend put it, “Who comes out to sex music?” Aksana does. Match was fine, pretty long for a Diva’s match. Fans did not give a FUCK, which sucks because they really were trying. Good pop for the finish though.
– Lana comes out. I’ve read people who says she amazing or some shit. She’s literally never done a fucking thing worth mentioning or said anything worth mentioning, so I don’t get it. She even has her own music now. Anyway, feast time.
7. Alexander Rusev d. Sin Cara via camel clutch. More than a squash; it’s an actual (albeit short) match. Commentary puts over every lousy thing Rusev does. Got fun when Sin Cara started hitting moves out of nowhere, but fans were bored. He wins with the camel clutch. I’m not calling it whatever thing he calls it because it’s a fucking camel clutch.
– Oh yeeeeah. The main event is John Cena versus whoever the WWEU voted for him to face. Thanks to us, he’s facing all three members of The Wyatt Family. JBL immediately tries to cover for us screwing him over like we did because we believe SO strongly in him that he’ll still pull out the win. Suuuure he will……
8. John Cena d. The Wyatt Family via disqualification. Goddamnit. This was just a mountain of Cena-in-peril pornography. Shit, I voted for this match myself but I didn’t think it’d be the fucking main event. Cena hits Bray with the AA and would’ve won but Harper and Rowan broke up the pin to earn the DQ. Wyatt hits him with Sister Abigail and sings, cradling John’s head as the show ends.
– Weird, immensely boring Raw. Barrett/Sheamus was good though.
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The Good, the Bad and the Gray
First things first: go read Jim Ross’s comments on nice people and nasty people in today’s wrestling landscape. It’s RIGHT HERE. I made it easy for you. Next, READ THIS. Yes, there’s more reading. PWP’s own Barry Murphy wrote a response to it…sort of. It’s less an answer to JR and more of his own opinions on what current heels are supposed to do and how they serve modern audiences. It’s not terribly long and, oooh, he has a picture in his article! And it’s captioned?! We can DO that here?! He also compares wrestling to Breaking Bad for a bit and he does other stuff and oh my god I am NOT summarizing it. Just go read it. It is thought-provoking and it’s without a definitive stance on the issue so you shouldn’t get offended. But I’m me, so I totally got hot in the face and groin. Hoppin’ mad, one might suggest. Not at Barry, mind you. I don’t know Barry, but I’m sure he’s an upstanding, sexy teenager like the rest of us here at PWPonderings. In fact, we agree about a ton of stuff. Everybody’s allowed opinions, too…except Matt Waters. His opinions are terrible and wrong. So this isn’t meant to be a personal attack or anything like that. I’m just going to aggressively piss on things he wrote about in a barely-sensical, pseudo op-ed that originally started out as a website comment…that I wrote at work. Adjust your expectations accordingly. Alright, did you read those two things above? You’re going to be completely lost if you don’t. Fine, whatever. Here we go.
Anti-heroes are NOT heels. There’s nothing wrong with being an anti-hero, but being one is not the same as being a bad guy. Barry addresses JR’s complaints about heels by propping up anti-heroes. Fans in New York cheered Kevin Steen’s promo at ROH’s Best in the World 2012 despite him cursing their fickle ways because he told some truth, the greatest weapon an anti-hero has. Truth is meant to be unbiased and is usually always respected by fans so long as they buy the premise. A heel is anyone doing anything to get people to ACTUALLY hate him. Scenario: a wrestler shows up to some town that hates puppies. They just…they fucking HATE puppies, okay? So he comes to the ring and just FUCKING SNUGGLES A PUPPY LIKE CRAZY. Guess what? He’s a heel! It doesn’t matter what he did, only that the crowd disliked him for it. Then, some guy comes out, tears a baby dachshund in half and everybody cheers. In this context, he’s the goodie good guy. Another chap saunters down the aisle and is all, “I don’t care one way or the other, but you loooooove me, right?” That fucker is the anti-hero: a cool guy relative to the situation who does not carry the traditional traits a hero covets. So all those guys mentioned before: Steen, Wyatt, Punk–they’re almost always anti-heroes, NOT heels, unless they are actually aiming to be booed. Punk knows the difference better than anyone. Wrestling is not like Breaking Bad, just like Barry said….but he doesn’t say WHY it isn’t. Wrestling is a living, breathing thing that demands response to work correctly, just like all live events. So shades of gray are just fucking dandy when having a theological discussion in a beanbag chair. It’s impossible at a live, LOUD wrasslin’ show. You can only react to certain elements in the barest sense. I cannot judge motivation as easily as sheer activity. Scenario: Bray Wyatt cuts Batista’s leg off. OHMYGOD! What the hell, man?! But wait! After the match, Bray reveals that Batista is a pedophile! Whuuu?! Wow! SO MUCH GRAY! Who’s the bad guy, here?! Who is good?!
WHO FUCKING CARES?!?!?!?
Nobody, that’s who. Instead of screaming along alignment lines, fans are staring, wondering what the fuck to do with themselves. The Shield versus Evolution is the best most recent example. The Shield are faces and they beat up defenseless people. Evolution are a gaggle of cocksuckers but nostalgia so yay? The audience has seemed baffled by this dynamic already judging by the last few RAW endings. That’s what you get when motivations and characters are muddled: a bunch of feral fans reduced to confused children. Like children, crowds crave structure: who to root for, things to chant, music cues to pop to, moves, finishes, etc. That doesn’t mean they will, like Barry said. Sometimes, they do whatever they want. But if you’re doing your job right, they almost always react the way you intend. You just have to be unbiased and honest. Batista was a buttplug when he came back so he went from polite applause to buttplug heat. But if tomorrow, he starts parading around the ring with Bryan on his shoulders, tossing out fist-fulls of cash and playing epic air guitar, he’s going to be cheered. Because that’s awesome…and because he’d be doing his fucking job. His job is to make people give a fuck, no matter what. He can save his shades of gray for Guardians of the Galaxy. We NEED bad guys. Wrestling is about getting an audience emotionally invested. You can’t give them too much to chew because thought processes can stunt or even remove crowd reaction altogether. Give too little and there won’t be enough for a crowd to latch on to at all. It’s a fine line, but it’s one that’s been walked successfully for years. You just have to stop worrying and learn to love the hate.
I like Kevin Steen and I know that if he REALLY wanted to get that NYC crowd angry, he could have done so. He could have insulted New York for days, Yankees and Mets fans alike. It WORKS. When interns become full doctors, they don’t eschew scalpels for something else. They use the fucking scalpels because they are the best tools available. Certain heel tactics are classics because they WORK. Steen could have expressed a deep-seeded desire to join the WWE. He could yell how sexy he is after every move and rub himself or some shit. Whatever. But he didn’t really want to be hated, because being hated usually costs you cool points. He wanted to be The Cool Guy™. The term anti-hero doesn’t apply to wrestling as aptly as cool guy does. He does morally uncool things like beat the shit out of an old lady or calls another wrestler by his REAL FUCKING NAME! OHHHH LAWDY NO. But he acts sooooo cool when he does it that, hey, who gives a flippity fucking doo if it’s the kind of the thing an asshole would do. Do you honestly want to know why we have so many anti-heroes today? Because people are much more open about being, or wanting to be, fucking scumbags. Almost every talked-about show during the award season, from Mad Men to House of Cards, features a central male anti-hero…and by “anti-hero”, I mean a self-centered, psychotic dickhead. We learn to appreciate the gray areas because, secretly, we want to be those assholes, wishing we had the courage to say FUCK IT to everything and do what feels good. Some people do. Mostly teenage boys and corporate CEOS. The rest of us are left to wish and focus on the gray. Those specks of light in the ominous dark make being a monster palatable…and appealing. We will be evil, but we shall also be understood. We take what we want and people sympathize with us. Our deviance is acceptable. It’s not the villains that we have redefined, like Barry says in his pieces. It’s the heroes that have evolved.
I don’t like John Cena because I don’t think he exists. Sure, my eyes tell me he does. And yes, I accept that his tireless charitable efforts make him truly a heroic person. But he’s TOO heroic for today. The heroes of old all wore bright colors and told us how to lead healthy and productive lives. Our heroes taught us how to fit in. It’s 2014 and nobody wants to fit into anything, ever. We are seventy fafillion super special people all occupying the same relative space, and gone is any desire to live the lives our parents had. So Cena, unfrozen moralistic mid-80s caveman that he is, is not how we define our heroes anymore. Every movie franchise now is looking to go darker, grittier, more REAL. With 24 hour news and global economic downturns, the world is significantly bleaker than it was just thirty years ago. Like you said, Austin changed the game. No babyface after him was ever spotless and we came to both appreciate and identify with that more than with the kings atop the moral high ground, many of which turned out to be real-life bullshitters, too. Squeaky-clean heroes are few and far between today. Nobody’s bullet proof anymore, so when someone like Cena is shown to be immune to everything, it frustrates the lot of us who want someone who truly represents us as we see ourselves: flawed and aggressive. The heroes for the dark times are the darkest people. CM Punk struck a chord because his frustration was believable. That struggle to change the industry cost him his sanity and, eventually, his drive. He left wrestling because he felt he wasn’t getting through anymore. Daniel Bryan, despite getting through, suffered immensely for YEARS. He was always dismissed, always put down, well before The Authority began shitting in his dinner every night. His struggle to achieve resonated. We cheer Wyatt and Cesaro and The Shield because some part of them is just like us. We are not a positive people anymore, or at least not as much. It is our heroes that have grayed, not our villains. Bad guys are always bad guys…but you tell me that a bad guy had an abusive father, I might wonder whether he’s so bad anymore. I wonder if I’d be the same way. He turns into something very close to the heroes I worship. And because our heroes HAVE changed…they’ve turned a little bit into villains. So if, thanks to those grays, that good grapes and bad apples have more in common than ever, than it’s time for a change. Not the heroes—we’re still too jaded for a rebirth of the squeaky clean. What we need…is new villains. ACTUAL villains. We need hatred that we cannot accept or approve of. We need us some real bastards.
I’m starting to realize that Barry and I wrote a lot of the same stuff, so I’m systematically going through and unasshole-ing a lot of this. Yes, this finished product you are reading is LESS hate-filled than it was previously. SIGNIFICANTLY. Seriously, don’t ever write something when you are the MOST pissed off you can be. However, if you’re a bad guy in wrestling, your goal should always be to push people into that place as fast as you can. SEGUE KING! Heels have to learn to get heat and be hated without sacrificing match quality profusely. And honestly, I don’t think it’s that hard. Cheat a little bit. Yell at children. Slow the pace down for a little while. Honestly, the WWE probably just doesn’t see much value in big, nasty bad guys anymore. “Hey, Damien Sandow may be a heel but he never, like, bit Mark Henry in the scrotum or did anything parents and kids would find vile so he can still go around building playgrounds for orphans! Yay!” That’s wonderful. The work they do with those goddamn little orphans is magnificent. But if Brodus Clay is a monster heel on TV and he’s going up to kids and they’re not 100% terrified he’s going to swallow them whole and fart them out a few hours later, it’s hurts the believability of the sport a little bit. Like I said, wrestling is about emotion. You HAVE to get swept up in kayfabe for it to work, otherwise, as I’ve said so many times before, it’s just shiny giants in Speedos rubbing and touching each other. Barry doesn’t take a definitive position in his article, so I can’t tell whether he cares if all the heels in the world die to make room for anti-heroes and cool guys or not. You’ll have to ask him. Me? I think the era of apple pie champions is good and dead; we like our good guys to have a little bad guy in them. Because of this, our bad guys are eerily similar to the good guys now. Being a bad buy isn’t all that hard; you just have to commit to forfeiting your Cool Guy Club Card and all the perks that come with. And if the WWE continues to keep the majority of their wrestlers near the same spot on the moral compass, audiences will continue to decide he who is favored and he who is not. We’re not hijacking shows; we’re just doing their job for them.
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– You should read Chris Bacon’s This Week in WWE TV for full results from last week’s new episodes of Monday Night RAW, Smackdown!, Main Event, NXT, Superstars, Heat, Velocity, Jakked, Metal, Shotgun Saturday Night and all the other shows WWE run on a weekly basis. It’s super comprehensive and color-coded. I dig it. Also, ask him to start doing live Raw results because then I won’t have to.
– Disagree with anything or everything I’ve written? Have something to say? Comment below! Also, apologies for any spelling, tense or punctuations errors. I am no a best grammar. Thanks for taking your time to read the column. You are a good person.
