Playing in Brother’s Sandbox: An Account of WWE Summerslam Weekend, Part 2
This is Part 2 of a two-part series on Brandon Howard’s visit to Brooklyn for Summerslam weekend. Part 1 was posted yesterday.
NXT Takeover and WWE Summerslam, on consecutive nights in the same arena, ended on completely different notes.
The Summerslam setup had a more elaborate stage, with an LED ramp and new LED ring posts, both showing the event’s logo in various forms. The venue was glowing with entertainment, accentuated by the Barclays Center’s seat’s especially steep angles, designed for watching, all but funnelling spectators into the ring.
The John Cena vs. A.J. Styles match was by far the best of the night. It was perhaps the definitive Cena pay-per-view match of the current era: one stacked with new moves, nearfalls and a long dramatic facial expression worthy of becoming a popular animated GIF had WWE not called in its favor to Twitter to strike down user accounts that perpetuate such memes.
As Cena and Styles traded pin attempts, from my cheap corner seats, I could look over and see the entire level flailing their arms out along with the referee’s count, with various degrees of anticipation and dread: the outbursts becoming more intense as each nearfall became more believable. Each time Cena or Styles kicked out, some writhed in protest and others applauded furiously in relief, depending on who was being pinned and who they were endorsing. A boy behind me, who’d been cheering for Cena, confessed to his dad: “My heart is beating!”
When Cena’s Attitude Adjustment off the second rope failed to finish the match, the crowd broke out into “Yes” chants, because such a big move not getting the win for Cena signaled almost certain victory for Styles. And when Styles won, it was validating for many in attendance, somewhat the way the entire NXT event the night before was validating — but it didn’t last.
If Takeover had an air of trust about it, Summerslam had an air of fitfulness: a sense of frustration due to passion and time invested: two-hour SmackDowns, three-hour RAWs, five-hour pay-per-views. For what rewards in return? Maybe the less you watch WWE, the more you’ll enjoy it. Still, there’s an importance to main roster WWE, especially a big PPV show, which nothing else can match. Whether the company helps make the matches feel important or not, the main roster is the big time. The irony shouldn’t escape us of the tailored fast food advertisement that played on the show. WWE is the big corporation with all the money and visibility, dubious ethics and the beaming product that does much to sell it to you and little to nourish.
Not just the crowd, but the show never really recovered after the Cena-Styles match, which was immediately followed by the mind-blowingly stupid but unsurprising force-feeding of former Daily Show host Jon Stewart, who was first portrayed as a stereotypically impish wrestling fan, then trotted out and rejected by the audience while backing babyface tag team the New Day. The only thing that could’ve saved the segment was a heel turn by Stewart, which never materialized.
Equally disappointing though, later, was the crowd’s fixation on the design of the new Universal Title belt while Finn Balor and Seth Rollins wrestled their hearts out. It was another signal of the frivolity WWE crowds are drawn to express to deal with the frivolity of much of the promotion’s creative direction. The company has allowed its own audience to become the most volatile and interesting character on its show. More of the same could be found the following night at RAW, when, for example, attendees rounded the building with “the wave”, determined to connect with each other should the program fail to.
After being momentarily rescued the night before, by the end of Sunday night, we knew we were back on the island. Randy Orton laid in a puddle of his own blood at the abrupt end of his main event match with Brock Lesnar: an icon of hypermasculinity, a man for whom there are no consequences, whose own manliness apparently needs artificial regulation from drugs like clomiphene.
Lesnar legitimately ripped Orton’s head open with elbows. The former hovered over the latter as many perplexing and stupefying moments passed until the bell rang and the match was finally called off. The audience paused and stared. Is that it? Is that the end? Was that how it was supposed to go? Lesnar gave Shane McMahon an F5 and retreated up the ramp. The crowd, perhaps waiting for a surprise run-in from Bill Goldberg or any other kind of show-saving exclamation point got no such remedy. Seeing the copyright graphic flash on the big screen and the pay-per-view fade to black, it hit them: it was over. That was what you’d traveled the world for and paid to see. As the telecast ended, the boos rained down and the drug-busted Lesnar returned to the back to collect another huge single-match paycheck.
There, Lesnar reportedly found Chris Jericho arguing with Michael Hayes, the agent for the match. Jericho, concerned for Orton, demanded to know how the match was supposed to end. Hayes, representing WWE’s desperate and impotent attempts to outsmart its audience, refused to tell anyone the business of a match involving Lesnar: another example of the special set of rules in place for the star who twice tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs before his UFC fight in July, and who received no subsequent punishment from WWE. Jericho and Lesnar then got into a scuffle, which included Lesnar calling Jericho “a bunch of names that would probably get Brock in a lot of trouble if what he said got out,” according to Dave Meltzer.
Distinguishing the difference between “good heat” and “bad heat” is another issue self-righteously confounding many inside wrestling today, again, particularly those who came up at a time when audiences were less self-aware, when the mystique of kayfabe was stronger and almost all heat was in fact good heat.
I love marks that talk about being bookers and what shud b done … Just watch & enjoy – ur supposed to b mad half the time- so u will watch
— Rip Rogers (@Hustler2754) August 23, 2016
It’s probably not a coincidence many of these kinds of arguments, as if to prop them up, invoke an accompanying ad hominem character attack: proposing those who aren’t inside the business — ticket-buying, Network-subscribing customers — actually can’t have the most valid opinion on matters of their own reactions.
How wrestling works is always changing. Now increasingly abound with programming and social media, it’s changing as quickly as ever. You can figure out where the new current is going and keep up, or get washed aside. The great wrestling veterans have an endless number of valuable lessons and experiences to share and many important rules to offer, but some of their rules worked best at another time and place, not this one. The challenge of this or any era is that you have to break some of the rules, but know which ones to break, and if you do, you’ll beat everyone.
There's a difference between the kind of heat the Revival got after winning on Saturday compared to the heat Lesnar, and really the company itself, got on Sunday. The Revival, heels, won via less-than-admirable means in a believable manner, with a clear winner and loser, in a climactic finish that deprived fans only of the babyface victory they badly wanted. Eventually there will be a pay off: someone will beat the Revival for their titles. Many found the finish of the Lesnar-Orton match, albeit brutally violent, unsatisfying and anti-climactic. Enough felt one of the most heavily-promoted matches of the year underdelivered. Add in Lesnar’s perceived and real preferential treatment, and the fan base was ripe to lose respect for him. Many are now less interested in seeing Lesnar wrestle again. His stock was hurt more by dissatisfaction with the match than it was helped by the legitimate gash he put on Orton’s head. That's not good heat.
What it takes to manipulate fans in this era is a good wrestling product– something the Chairman and CEO of WWE has continuously demonstrated he’s unable to deliver in modern times, despite his “amazing track record”, which people like Paul Levesque have no choice but to resort to reference in his defense. Lacking any ability to master his customers at Summerslam, the Chairman elected instead to try to fool them into thinking something that was a work was a shoot. He succeeded in that. There was confusion and shock at the violence, people wondering whether Lesnar took liberties. But in achieving that, he dissatisfied a large portion of his audience in one of his biggest main events of the year. A big match burnt the goodwill of fans once more. Many were sent home feeling they didn’t get their money’s worth. And sure, people will still turn up for the next show. WWE will sell-out three straight nights in Brooklyn again in 2017. The company will be more profitable this year than it was last year. The bottom isn’t going to fall out. But because of instances like this one and dozens of others each year; this company; which could have four million RAW viewers, only has three; which could have two million Network subscribers, instead has 1.5; and WWE; which could be cool, isn’t.
In the arena, fans scattered out the gates, some confused, some intrigued, some disappointed. Those on the floor who paid many hundreds of dollars to sit there folded up their commemorative take-home chairs and exited, revealing a mess of stained papers, concessions and lonely gaggles of some of the world’s most serious fans. There was a familiar sense of being stood up for a date or dashed again at the altar. The venue emptied amid hypocrisy about blood and sponsors, and about WWE’s defense from its class-action concussion lawsuits and the ridiculous elbows thrown directly at Orton’s head. The few lingering behind were reminded who was ultimately responsible for all this as the giant scoreboard video screen switched to colored bars and the overlay text read: VINCE.
At the gates and outside under the arena’s canopy, venue staff set down cardboard boxes full of single-serving containers of cereal, which fans scampered to tear open and pillage, as if some kind of consolation prize for the night’s event. Out there too we crossed the great internet abyss and met in-person for the first time people we’d so far only interacted with through text. You could hear people going up to each other, introducing themselves, mentioning something about Twitter or a podcast and shaking hands. The handful of people I met at Summerslam weekend were all incredibly nice. Meeting them reminded me there are other people out there who also believe in pro wrestling enough to go great distances for it.
Rather than try the busy subways, I got back to where I was staying by walking across the Manhattan Bridge. The bridge gives a big picture. Maybe there isn’t a more total view of the sum of human labor. Vanity graffiti was sprayed on the walkway, as well as anonymous, simple, inspirational messages. I was surrounded by traffic of every kind, on all sides. Cars flowed below. Trains hammered away at 50-mph a few feet to the right. Planes cut through clouds above at midnight. An office building told the time and the temperature in red digits. Boats sailed out to the harbor on the left, past the business downtown, toward the small silhouette of the faint lady in the distance. We came to New York hoping to find something we’d lost, maybe something from our wrestling childhood, hopelessly trying to mature it; but the city too had something missing. We lost it all together a long time ago, and mistook it for innocence in the first place.
This is Part 2 of a two-part series on Brandon Howard’s visit to Brooklyn for Summerslam weekend. Part 1 was posted yesterday.
