Mick Foley has posted a new Facebook blog, discussing last night’s WWE Payback PPV. Here is what he wrote…
SOMETHING SPECIAL
I’m really not looking for any controversy here, but I think our current generation of wrestling fans can get a little bit jaded sometimes. As some of you may know, I’m closing in on 50, so I grew up in an era where it wa s extremely rare to see a good, competitive match on the old WWF broadcasts that aired at midnight on Saturdays, after the horse-racing from Yonkers. Every once in a while, we’d get a moment of greatness, like Rocky Johnson and Tony Atlas defeating The Wild Samoans in December 1983, but for the most part the programming I grew up on were a series of one-sided squash matches, designed to make stars look good, without much emphasis on the overall quality of the matches,
Things are different now. We expect not only several good, competitive wrestling matches a week, but coherent story-lines, and character development that is seldom accomplished with just a string of lopsided victories. I really think that we have gotten so used to good wrestling on such a regular basis – in WWE, NXT, TNA, ROH, NJPW, the Indys. etc., that we’ve just kind of become jaded.
I watched much of #WWEPayback like the jaded fan I’m sometimes guilty of being. I wished Ziggler and Sheamus had gone longer, and I wished #WWE had shown some extreme close-ups of the nasty gash on the Zig-Zag man’s head. I even caught myself using the phrase “back in my day” in front of my son. I chose not to focus on how John Cena – WWE Universe and Rusev were working their butts off, and instead focused on why referee Mike Chioda (not sure if I spelled that right…I’ve only known him for 19 years) was asking “do you wanna quit” instead of allowing the wrestlers to control the microphone as they/we had in every classic #Iquit match I can remember – from Flair/Funk to Magnum/Tully to Cena/JBL, to a couple of the ones that I was involved with. Like so many of us, tweeting about the matches we kinda/sorta watch has become just as important as actually watching.
I really wonder if trends went down during the #Fatal4Way. If so, I hope it’s not interpreted as a sign of disinterest, but instead as a sign that guys like me realized that something special was materializing in that ring, and chose to put down their phones and actually enjoy the hard work, sacrifice and dedication that guys like Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, Randy Orton and Dean Ambrose put forward in an awesome match.
As I’ve often mentioned, great moments are what manke great matches – or at least great memories – and that that moment where Reigns told Ambrose that “loser buys the beers” gave me legitimate goosebumps. It was also a match that served notice that Ambrose belongs in these type of main event matches, and that the #WWEUniverse absolutely buys him as a main-event performer.
Feel free to share your thoughts…if you made it this far…if you didn’t get tired of the old guy shaking his fists and screaming “get off my lawn!” How about Cesaro & Kidd? Amazing, right? Win, lose or draw, those guys are my tag-team of the year!
Who’s ready for #NXTTakeover #Unstoppable?
