Credit: WWE.com
I am writing this just after Elias beat King Corbin a week after getting pushed off a balcony. It disgusted me from a narrative standpoint. How do you put a babyface in peril if they refuse to sell? How do you get heat on a heel if the babyface won't sell? If nothing you do to your wrestlers matters, how do you sell tickets and PPVs?
We are in a dark timeline where no one has a finish because everyone kicks out of everyone's finish. Why should we believe that Goldberg hitting The Fiend with a few spears and the NOT Jackhammer was enough to end him when we have seen him no sell several curbstomps?
I want to point out that I wrote everything before this sentence when I said I did, and now this point forward is after having had days to chew on and digest what I saw at WrestleMania. Next: marks are saying that this was not WrestleMania because to them, WrestleMania is the crowd, fireworks, the fancy set and as many celebrities as WWE could muster. It is inarguable that if we weren't living in the worst timeline, Roman Reigns would have gone over and people would have crapped all over it and said it was the worst. I honestly hate the fans that go to WWE shows because they don't do anything but try to get themselves over. WrestleMania is a construct, WrestleMania was what we saw and I liked what we saw. The two worst things were the women's tag match where they were obviously working for fans that weren't there and the Elias thing I want to harp on some more.
Let's say we lived in a parallel universe where WWE wanted to present Baron Corbin... I mean King Corbin as a main event level heel, and elevate Elias as well. Elias comes out first. He is taped up like a mummy and can barely walk. King Corbin attacks him from behind with his shillelagh. Or scepter. Whatever we're calling that thing. He beats him repeatedly in the back with it and then puts him in a camel clutch with the scepter around his throat. Officials come out to get King Corbin off him and then trainers and medical professionals want him to go to "the medical facility". Of course he doesn't want to go. King Corbin is in the ring cutting a promo on how he should be declared the winner. Elias fights off the people trying to cart him off and tries to run to the ring but falls on his face. Corbin laughs. Elias fights to get in the ring. The ref asks if he really wants to do this. Elias is insistent that he rings the bell. Big boot from out of frame. End of Days. 1. 2. 3. King Corbin gets a chair and lays a couple of shots in and leaves. They take him out in the ambulance. Let's assume the virus went away in time for SummerSlam. King Corbin is getting heat on some hapless babyface when Elias strums his guitar. The announcers go apeshit and remind us that we haven't seen Elias since Mania. Elias is still taped up, since, yanno... He's selling that he fell from a great height. King Corbin has realigned himself with Dolph Ziggler and Bobby Roode. Out come Mojo Rawley and Gronk. They propose a scaffold match at SummerSlam. The finish is: Elias throws Corbin off the scaffold through tables they set up. You follow up on this with an angle where Elias attacks him in "the medical facility" and man, that is 1000% more interesting going forward than what they did is.
I think a lot of wrestling fans notice that the women are having the best matches and can't articulate why. The shortest answer is: because they sell. Rhea Ripley got over in losing to Charlotte. I have a feeling that WWE is going to majorly switch around the rosters. On Raw, Becky Lynch has already beaten everyone. The thing I want to see them do is take their time building Bianca Belair. IF the plan is to bring back Rousey and let her beat Lynch for the belt, then I would push Belair after that. Knowing how WWE does, she'll get a title shot this summer and lose. I'm not interested in seeing Baszler vs Lynch the long program. But Baszler vs either Bayley or Sasha Banks could be interesting, once again, IF they took time building to that. Baszler going RIGHT after Lynch and failing is pure hotshotting. The WWE's women going forward is the thing to look forward to. Unless they don't shuffle the deck correctly.
The last WWE draft is part of the reason Raw has been shaky over the last year. WWE needed to put a lot of star talent on SmackDown to make it look like they didn't sell a billion dollar bill of goods to Fox. There are so many guys who would benefit from going back to NXT. Rollins. Bryan. Nakamura. AJ Styles was never on NXT but send the whole Club. UE vs OC. DREAM MATCH LOL. WWE needs to send some stars to NXT to get more people to watch it. Period point blank.
I wanted to do "RIP NXT TakeOver" in long form around the time WWE tried to hotshot some viewership by having stars invade and then NXT won most of the matches at Survivor Series. I thought then would be a good time of ending NXT TakeOver as a separate entity. IMAGINE if instead of having separate shows they cut down on the undercard and loaded every PPV with the biggest matches from all three brands?
One of the biggest problems with NXT is one of the things marks think is the bees knees: every match on the card is roughly equal in importance and quality. Those same marks note that it dilutes Elimination Chamber and Hell in a Cell when they open the show with one of those matches and follow it with unimportant midcard matches. And then you can't do all the same spots in those matches knowing the main event has to follow it and improve upon it. Fans only seem to understand the sanctity of the main event when WWE puts Roman Reigns and part timers in those spots. Any other time, they're fine with every match from the opener TO the main event roughly being equal. Look me in my font and tell me I'm lying, mark. The way wrestling works is when you are here to see what is going to happen in the main event and nothing happens leading up to that main event causes you to tune out. The undercard should not upstage your main event. Everyone knows Savage and Steamboat was the best match from WrestleMania 3 but everyone remembers that show for the main event.
I rambled as is my predilection however, in some way shape or form I was always either talking about selling as in acting approriately hurt OR selling as in tickets or Network subs or merch and how those correlate.