RAW Deal: The rushing viper

DES MOINES, IA, USA—All good stories, in order to be considered good stories, need to have a natural, proper trajectory.

At its simplest, there must be a beginning, a middle, and an end. The steam on the way to the middle must be going up so that the story comes to a head once it reaches that point, after which it could easily die down. The best stories accomplish this effortlessly and naturally. The road to the climax—and afterwards, to the ending—is travelled logically, in full.

The WWE attempted to tell an interesting story with the Randy Orton vs. Seth Rollins feud. It wasn’t anything like your typical pro wrestling story; both men didn’t spend weeks on end trading angry tirades and sneak attacks with each other like most feuding superstars do nowadays. It was highly imperfect, but it was refreshing. Even if the savviest of us saw it as predictable, the game became figuring out when Orton was going to finally spring on Rollins. It was fun because, to some degree, it forced you to think.

It finally happened last week, after only three or so weeks of Orton luring Rollins into a false sense of security. While the angle was novel in a present-day era of dumbed-down-for-children storytelling, it was a prime example of the impatient nature of WWE writing. Three weeks weren’t enough for the storyline to build itself up organically. If you were Rollins and you trusted Orton—the guy who you put out of commission, and is theoretically out for your blood—after only two weeks, that makes you look like a giant fool, does it not? (Even when the heel’s job is to look like a fool.)

The execution was just as rushed, with Orton turning on him after only a few scant minutes of action. Orton should’ve continued the ruse well into the match, playing his part until an important climax where they would’ve had Roman Reigns right where they wanted him. But they took away minutes from that and slotted it in Orton’s protracted beatdown, which ironically went on much longer than it should have.

That brings us to this week’s main story. Rollins gets Orton in a main event match as part of the condition of accepting his WrestleMania challenge, and plays a ruse in which the rest of the Authority act all fed up with him, seemingly leaving him to face Orton all by himself. Once again, displaying the lack of restraint of whoever’s writing this, Rollins shows up for the match and brings out the Authority right before he walks down to the ring. 

This move makes Rollins the cartoon villain look even more inept than Orton as a cerebral mastermind. Wouldn’t it be better if Rollins lured Orton into a false sense of dominance, and then have the entire Authority come out to help him? Of course, there was no time and it was to help set up Sting’s interference to save the day, but there was no reason that couldn’t have happened after the match.

I need not go into any more detail about why this is bad storytelling, but I’d like to end with some food for thought. Wrestling fans, thanks to the general overexposure of the product, are no longer patient. No matter what the underlying reason, when they want something, they want it now. Just look at Daniel Bryan’s main event campaign last year; they weren’t interested in seeing Bryan being made to suffer before his crowning moment.

And perhaps—even though this might be a long shot—this is what drives the machine to tell rushed stories. Maybe they’re really confused, even though the answer is painfully obvious. Maybe we’re all confused. Maybe we’re all wrong.

High spots:

• Regardless of what you feel about the Divas, it truly is surprising to see them get extended match minutes. That surprise alone, I think, is justification enough for the #GiveDivasAChance movement. And if you still don’t think much of them, you have to realize that the experience they get in the form of these increased minutes is bound to help them get better in the ring. (For those, of course, with the capacity to still get better.) I’m talking about Nikki Bella vs. AJ Lee, which wasn’t any ring masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a decent little TV match.
• I complained about RAW’s constant six-man tags late last year, and this is what happens when you don’t run every week (and what’s more, when you run them sensibly): they end up being great. Throw in six of your most talented midcarders (as painful as it is to call some of them that) and why wouldn’t you have a damn solid match?
• Paul Heyman’s promos every Monday are about perfunctory in these parts, so aside from these three bright points, there really wasn’t much to write home about this week. 

Low blows:

• What I don’t understand is Rusev (and a lawyer) comes out to disprove Lana’s original consent to a WrestleMania match with Cena last week, but they end up signing the contract anyway. What, then, was the point? If it was Rusev taking the chance to humiliate America, then why not just say that? Why did we have to go a roundabout way of dealing with things? It makes Rusev look dumb.
• And speaking of this segment, I know the lawyer’s Russian accent sounds phony, but the commentators should not be spending their time trying to kill whatever seriousness and legitimacy this segment had left. It doesn’t matter who you’re siding with in the feud, treat the scene with some respect. The commentators should be the last people to treat whatever goes on in front of them as a work.
• The road to WrestleMania should not be a time where the WWE does filler matches. At this point, even if you’re hyping the Andre the Giant Battle Royal, you shouldn’t be doing reruns of Authority vs. Team Cena.

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