And cue my response to the inevitable TNA backers completely disagreeing with me. I have no problem with that and I expected it, but respectfully, I completely disagree with you guys. Specifically, I'm talking to Zevon and Shattered.
If you guys can't see that using this is such a cop out, I don't know what to tell you. Months were spent building Kurt Angle back up to the point where he should have won the TNA title. He was screwed by Jeff Hardy and really, by Hulk Hogan, who had backed Angle's quest for the title. The logical direction to go would have been for Angle to work his way back to TNA by being on Dixie's team (who's also gone) and having her reinstate him when she gets the power back. While that may take a while, Angle could run sneak attacks at Immortal or something, setting up potentially a match to reinstate Angle or reinstate both him and Dixie in some capacity to TNA. If Kurt wins, they could fight the battle from within TNA so the fans could see what was going on. That would have been logical, but fuck logic right?
Instead, Jeff Jarrett, who essentially screwed over Samoa Joe by turning on him in that match, gets into something with Kurt on the first show after BFG. Why? Beats me. It was logical to have that Samoa Joe feud and that would have worked if Joe didn't get buried. The reason for that though, was that TNA wanted it to build to Angle/Jarrett for some reason. This is merely keeping Angle away from the bigger picture, which makes no fucking sense. Consequently, the easiest way to keep Kurt from the big picture is to give the IWC boners by using the inevitable real life love triangle as a distraction on the level of a penis in front of Clay Aiken's face. Get people thinking about this real life crap, get people forgetting about what Angle SHOULD be doing.
Now, onto why it sucks in general. Wrestling has never and will never be real. Never gonna happen, no way, no how. In the 80s, we were supposed to believe that the whole thing was real. Up through the mid 90s, we were supposed to believe that voodoo men and millionaires and even fucking chickens were real. We were also supposed to believe that the guys who were good on screen were actually good while the bad guys were really terrible people. Wrestling felt that you needed to believe that it was true in real life in order to like it.
Then came the Attitude Era. The lines were blurred more, but the best stuff that happened in that era were storyline driven and had nothing to do with reality. The Austin/McMahon feud was written to perfection and pitted boss against employee. Anyway, it was around this time that Vince Russo started shooting on WCW, telling fans that matches are fixed and going on PPV and telling people that Hogan didn't want to do the job and such. The result? WCW sucked and business continued to plummet.
Basically, my theory on wrestling is that people need to get with the times. It is 2010 and the internet is an easy thing to use. Thus, anyone over 5 with half a brain knows that wrestling isn't real. We know that guys are playing fictional characters on TV and are actors who perform in athletic staged competition with fixed results. If you aren't willing to accept these facts, which have been facts for a very long time, MMA might be for you. Wrestling is about creating stories with experienced writers and playing them out on screen.
I used the example of soap operas not to get a stupid response about budgets (what were you thinking responding with that?) but to use an example that pertains to the "male soap opera" of wrestling. The point being that nobody needs to believe that the people IN the soap operas are actually bad in real life, just that they believe in the character as they watch the show. Keep in mind we accept that openly gay actor Neil Patrick Harris is a womanizer in his role on How I Met Your Mother.
This is produced television and what the wrestlers do is acting. Thus you do not need to use real life scenarios in wrestling. The writers should be good enough to come up with shit so that they don't need to stoop to half assed reality tv. Whether or not the people involved agree to re-enact it has no bearing whatsoever. It's never been a good thing and it never will be. Wrestling is storyline driven, not reality driven. The best wrestling that any of us can remember is purely fictional.
Here's the thing. Wrestling SHOULD be something we can relate to at least in some sense. The stories that are out there should be something we can understand and thus, understand the position of both wrestlers involved. That said, it need not be taken from people's actual lives. You can argue with me until you are blue in the face about it working but it doesn't. Tell me Matt/Lita/Edge all you want but even if that's the one time people gave a fuck, but it ended up being the end of Matt Hardy as anything credible since he lost the feud. When you infuse reality, you also show that in reality (because it's based on that), the douchebag should win. Quite a message to send to your audience!
In this case, it's such an irrelevant point and TNA is just using it to appease the smarks who know about it. Say it was relevant, but only to internet marks. Still, these marks need to realize that TV would be better if stories were logical and coherent, and didn't jump to this just to "be real brother!" It's a bad idea and the truth is, it's not going to bring in viewers. It's not the main story of the show, which your best wrestler (Kurt Angle) should be involved in, not this bullshit. Wrestling isn't real, despite what your boy Anderson's shirt says. Get over it.
