I have a lot of opinions this week and not a lot of time to express them. Blame Netflix for the rush. You don't need full context, just... blame them.
Anyhow, currently, it's not exactly in vogue to criticize wrestling on the internet. It goes back and forth. Sometimes it's "cool," sometimes it's "for lame-o squares." Sometimes people who critique wrestling online even wind up liking things just because it pisses off other people who critique wrestling online. Sometimes people who critique wrestling online for a living somehow like it when people who don't critique wrestling online for a living -- yet critique wrestling nonetheless -- don't like things because those who do it for a living can then distance themselves from the "rabble." It sinks and swells. High tide, low tide. There are no rules for how to do this so it's ever-shifting.
Speaking of "no rules," the WWE currently has a free-for-all problem. Now, a lot went down over the past week, but I'll only be touching on a few things. So, you know, I won't get into how it almost seemed like the women were going to be left off RAW until a very late-in-the-third-hour match that crammed everyone into a 10-minute segment. Which then seemed to make RAW go an extra 10 minutes over, making me think they realized, "Oh s**t, we forgot the girls!" and threw them in eleventh hour-style.
Then that whole final segment, where Cass turned on Enzo, was so poorly contrived that it made me well up with tears like Enzo's cry-cry sawft feel-est guy in the room face.
Honestly though, Enzo's tears were real because, assumedly, he was going through a ton of emotions being split up from Cass after so many years of tagging. And for no good reason.
This was a mistake. And it was done in a super sloppy manner. Why did Angle bring the Revival out if he knew they were innocent? Why did Corey Graves sit on actual video footage of Cass faking his own attack when he could have spared us all of this? Why wasn't any of this sorted out in the days between RAWs since the attacks started? Why was it all saved for an in-ring bit where Angle claimed to have answers, and yet still had to ask Big Show face to face if he did it? And why were there so few suspects when, honestly, people attack each other out of the blue in wrestling all the time?
In the end, I just desperately wanted there to be footage of Enzo faking his own attacks too. Then, Gift of the Magi-style, they'd both have a big laugh, a sly shrug, and go back to tagging. It was my second place dream, right behind the two of them, unknowingly, being the ones attacking each other.
Anyhow, I'm about to talk out of both sides of my mouth. Or my ass. Or wherever you think my thoughts come from. Either/or. The first ever Women's Money in the Bank Ladder Match ended with James Ellsworth climbing the ladder and grabbing the case for Carmella.
We knew he'd get involved. We also knew he might be instrumental in a Carmella win. But I don't think many of us were prepared for the way he helped her win, which, as mentioned on SmackDown, was unprecedented. Even in the realm of MITB match interference. It felt kind of gross and it spoke poorly that these women were making history and that the finish was this glaringly troll-ish.
Now, another part of me doesn't think wrestling, which can be as base and crude as entertainment can get, should be held to such lofty standards that heels can no longer do truly despicable things. We need progress, yes, but we also need our bad guys to break rules and do wicked and dastardly deeds to win. My issue here was that this win, apparently, pointed out that there was no real rule in place, story-wise, to account for Ellsworth's brand of cheating.
Coming out of Extreme Rules, I already had a bad taste in my mouth regarding the WWE's lack of rules. Or failure to adhere to obvious ones. Or, basically, the idea that they think we don't care enough about the rules to mind when they conveniently choose to forget them. Or choose to conveniently remember them, because that happens too. It's random. And it's maddening. The kayfabe rules of wrestling matches are how you tell a wrestling match story. This week on SmackDown we were simultaneously reminded that the Hype Bros, technically, had a title match due while another segment saw a ref, for no reason at all other than because AJ Styles told him to, book a United States title match between Kevin Owens and Chad Gable.
By the way, these are the only Hype(rion) Bros I care about.
Continue on for more about Carmella, RAW, and SmackDown...
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