PWP Nation’s Zak Fellows talks about the current predictable booking style of WWE leading into WrestleMania 32.
In the aftermath of WWE Fastlane, the match we all expected has been made: WWE World Heavyweight Champion Triple H will be defending his title reign against the victor of the #1 Contender Triple Threat Roman Reigns. And, as is becoming a very persistent running theme when it comes to Reigns, fans have reacted with cries of outrage, disappointment, declared this to be the point where they will stop watching which… yeah, right. But the consistent word in reaction to the result was, as you can probably guess, predictable.
I’d rather not dwell on the could have’s and maybe’s as to what my desired outcome would have been for the main event. I thought Reigns was going to win, I’m very much a Reigns fan who’s want to see him succeed and I’m sure the match at Mania will be perfectly fine. Point being, fans wanted to be pleasantly surprised be it with a Dean Ambrose win or a Brock Lesnar win (HHH/Lesnar IV? Dodged a bullet there) and were disappointed at a seemingly telegraphed result.
Surprises in wrestling are really the livewire of the product. Especially in the phoenix insurgence of social media and the internet you can quite easily get a fix on how into a product fans are. Hell, you need look no further than the Pro Wrestling Powerhouse Facebook Page in the wake of Shane McMahon’s return to know just how much people were into that segment compared to the other more…regular content.
However, while surprises are nice and all and I do enjoy getting caught off guard by moments and events that never once sprung into my area of probability I do not necessarily believe that having a product or outcome telegraphed is inherently a bad thing:
In any narrative, be it in pro wrestling, movies, literature, etc. there has to be a beginning, middle and end all planned out. Some of the best stories, still revered to this day, have surprises and plot twists that can change the way an indulger views it. And with wrestling being a never ending story it can get away with having twists and turns on almost every spectrum of the card.
So, while I do find the appeal of surprises nice and all, it does have to adhere to the storyline that it is in aid of benefiting otherwise your surprises become artificial… you know kind of like what the Money in the Bank is slowly becoming. Speaking as a wrestling fan myself, I like to have to have structure in my story without an overabundance of surprises otherwise it would just come across as sloppy and disorganized storytelling.
When I saw Mankind win the title at SummerSlam 1999 instead of Triple H I don’t think “Wow what a surprise” I think “Why?” and as a general rule if your questioning why in disbelief you are not looking at the greatest of immersion.
But to me, the whole predictability of a product is just a symptom of the greater desire of a wrestling fan which is a quality product. For the purpose of a generalization, a match or storyline is ranked lower by the opinion of a single fan if what they are expecting either doesn’t go to how they would like to go and/or if it feels lacklustre at the more important stages. This is when the predictability of a certain event is thrown to the aside as a negative because the end result becomes so good.
For the sake of example, let’s go to Daniel Bryan. Yes (pun intended), the approach to WrestleMania 30 was not expected and potentially was done out of fear of backlash but when he wrestled his two matches that night, despite it being a foregone conclusion that he was going to win and get his moment, the telegraphing of his title reign didn’t cross my mind or many others for that matter because we were so invested in the matches that were great.
And this isn’t the only example. The emotional involvement in Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels last WWE match negated the result being fairly easy to see coming, big babyface title wins at WrestleMania, as long as the fan investment is there something predictable can be pulled off without the thought of telegraphing even coming up as an issue. It applies to wrestling and it applies to every other art form.
So perhaps the big criticism in Reigns winning comes less from predictability as opposed to it does come from the storyline of him versus Triple H coming across as inherently uninteresting especially when you compare it to some of the other storylines such as Ambrose/Lesnar and Shane/Undertaker, I guess.
Wrestling, in of itself, is predictable and easy to understand. You can be a new fan and within two weeks be able to pick up just enough to be able to confidently say how a storyline could play out: That’s how viewer friendly it can be. Surprises are nice and all but as long as the product is good then I could care less about something being predictable or not. Predictable results may impact the lasting impression but it doesn’t affect quality of the journey towards.
Roman Reigns winning the title at WrestleMania is a big possibility so make the journey and match towards it interesting, compelling and all those other big critic words and I’ll be all good. “But they are going to boo him,” and then he’ll still be better than Orton WM25 won’t he?
[Zak Fellows really doesn’t like WrestleMania 25]
They don’t care so much they won’t shut up about him.
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