I am not touching the Vince McMahon situation in this article or how completely disgusting it was on RAW last night that the show didn’t open with a tribute to “Sensational” Sherri Martel. WWE is truly a classless organization.
That being said, after you read this article, feel free to head over the the Balrog Babblings archive to look at some of my past June columns. There is some great stuff in there including a column from 5 years ago when I attempted to explain why younger, “over” wrestlers should absolutely be pushed over the established stars without having to pay any fictional “dues” first. Good stuff.
This column is a few weeks behind the subject, but that’s what happens when there is so much to cover in the wrestling world. I see this column as an extension and upgrade of a previous column that I wrote in August 2001 called The Low Road. For the purposes of expediency, this low road was the fake injury angle that WWE pressed on Jeff Hardy because he did too many high spots during his matches. If you remember, the big backstage push at the time was to stop the younger wrestlers from doing all of this high-flying and to find a way to make the fans not look forward to the high spots, too.
WWE attempted to accomplish this through a fake injury angle with Jeff Hardy that didn’t quite work. I bring this up because, at the time, it was disgraceful for WWE to try to control what the audience felt about certain wrestlers and their high-flying style. But here we are nearly six years later and WWE has not learned a thing about tasteless wrestling angles. Again, I’m not even going to touch the Vince McMahon debacle in this column.
A few weeks ago on RAW, Randy Orton decimated Rob Van Dam with repeated kicks and blows to his head. He waited until after the match and gave RVD a one-of-a-kind (sorry, had to) RKO that saw Van Dam oversell the move and land directly on his head (safely, somehow). The point of this? For Randy to continue to get over as a “Legend Killer” – this time killing the legend of extreme.
This followed up a “match” against Shawn Michaels where HBK also had to forfeit the match due to not being able to compete. Once again, the reasoning was excessive head trauma causing a concussion.
Concussion angles are a tasteless disgrace to professional wrestling AND sports entertainment.
I will never deny the writers or wrestlers the ability to put on an angle or storyline that ends in a performer having a fake injury, but the severity of concussions is not something to be taken lightly. Tens of thousands of high school athletes suffer concussions each year. Hundreds of them can no longer return to action. A rare few are permanently disabled or even die from these injuries. The same is true of college athletes, though more college athletes are simply injured for life when they get a severe concussion. Many have problems with walking and talking for a long time after the most severe of concussions.
And WWE makes an angle out of this? Shawn Michaels and Rob Van Dam will be back in the ring (though it might be a TNA ring for Van Dam) and they will continue to fight another day because they were given scripted concussions. What about the young athlete who really DID get a concussion? What about his or her anguish and the pain that their family must endure because of the concussion?
If wrestling needs an example that is much closer to home, go up to Calgary, Alberta, Canada and ask “The Hitman” Bret Hart how he feels about fake concussion storylines in professional wrestling. Here is a man who was completely wiped off the wrestling scene because of a misplaced shot by a green main eventer. This kick was so vicious that it permanently ended the Hitman’s in-ring career. Of course, Bret’s subsequent stroke also limited his engagement with professional wrestling, but the concussion began his in-ring downfall.
For a global organization that is a publicly traded company, sometimes World Wrestling Entertainment has absolutely no class.
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