For years I have had to think on the spot when friends and family have ridiculed the wrestling industry for one reason or another. “Yeah, it’s sometimes silly but they’re great athletes!” I’d usually say, or my argument would be “well it’s better than watching a stupid Hollywood fight scene”.
Now I switch on my TV on Friday nights and I’m forced to watch a man wrestle in a dress. I’ve struggled like hell to come up with a decent defence of this one – “you wouldn’t fight him” I’ll say but I think it’s stupid myself so who am I trying to kid by defending the WWE and their booking policies. It’s not really the fact that Vito is wrestling in a dress that truly bothers me, it’s the reason why he’s wearing the dress. The people at WWE have a really deep, multi layered ulterior motive for this…it’s so there’s a guy on WWE television who wrestles in a dress! There’s nothing else to it.
It’s not WWE’s intention to raise the awareness of transvestites or champion cross-dressing males, it’s just so there’s some dude wearing a dress on one of their shows.
I watched Vito’s match last week on SmackDown – the match lasted maybe a little over 5 mins. Vito was dominant for the majority of the match and how many of his moves were mentioned – NONE! ZERO! NIL! All Cole and Bradshaw did, as they have done during Vito matches for the last six weeks, is talk about Vito wearing a dress. They mentioned one of his opponent’s moves as they happened but none of his.
It upsets me that you have to be a total yes man to get a push in the company nowadays. Where was Vito before he wore the dress – nowhere. He occasionally wrestled on Velocity and occasionally accompanied Nunzio on Velocity or sometimes the odd SmackDown show. He puts on a dress and he becomes a dominant wrestler whose winning streak is mounting up almost as well as Umaga’s on RAW.
I don’t blame Vito for any of it, if he said no someone else would have done it. It’s just a shame that the WWE writers have so little interest in the dignity of the business and also that guys like Vince McMahon or whoever approved this couldn’t care less about ridiculing the business they helped build. Maybe I’m too bothered about this, maybe I should just take it with a pinch of salt and laugh it off and not let it bother me but it does bother me and I think the WWE policy for how to get ahead in the business is pathetic.
Man, this turned into an incoherent rant – sorry!
fye@wrestle-zone.co.uk
