Even if you don’t have a kid in your life, all you have to do is turn on the television to see commercials reminding you that it’s back to school time at the beginning of September and that’s what is going to dictate a lot of attention for the next few weeks.
Movie theaters know better than to have big openings around now, since nobody will be going out as they’ll be too busy buying school supplies and stressing out over the complexities of a new class.
With that in the current cultural zeitgeist, I figured I’d go with the flow and do something related to the topic: what are some lessons the talent in WWE should try to pick up over the next year?
Forewarned, this is one of those “fever dream” kind of posts where I’m really tired at the moment and I thought it would be funny to be a little tongue-in-cheek, but I do plan on throwing in some legitimate biting realism as well along the way.
Also, keep in mind that with those critiques, this isn’t coming from some “I can do it better” angle as that couldn’t be further from the truth. I wouldn’t be able to pull off even 0.00001% of what these men and women are capable of doing. However, just because you’re not a world class chef doesn’t mean you can’t tell if someone’s overcooked your steak (*cough* I said medium-well, Outback, not well done *cough*) so the same thing applies to criticism of the professional wrestling industry.
With that being said, let’s nitpick the WWE roster and give out some lesson plans, because yours truly has a legitimate teaching degree and can’t get it out of his head that he’d be writing these notes down for parent-teacher conferences with the superstars.
Bray Wyatt
This guy needs to learn how to start a feud in any way other than picking his next opponent, attacking him, and then cutting a nonsensical promo afterward.
Every single feud since the character’s debut has consisted of this overly-repeated recipe and, well, it’s formulaic and tired by now. To be fair, it got tiresome two years ago, but it just keeps happening.
Yes, that’s Wyatt’s gimmick to a certain extent, and you can say The Undertaker had similar aspects, but I can’t help feeling that there was usually more to those feuds than what we get out of Wyatt and I’d like to see some more flexibility with his programs going forward.
Mojo Rawley
I like the intensity and I like the passion, but Mojo needs to learn how to calm down a bit and use his inside voice.
I feel like Rawley is WWE’s equivalent of the kid in class who was constantly fidgeting and had way too much energy, but could never quite figure out how to put it to good use. He’d get distracted during tests and he’d cause a disruption to the other students, which is a shame, because if he could channel that energy and focus, he could accomplish a lot.
Instead, he’s really only good for watching go ballistic during recess when the bell rings and he bolts halfway through the field flailing his arms, kicking basketballs off the court for some reason. Yes, there was a kid that used to do that in my elementary school, among other things. Curious what he’s up to these days.
Baron Corbin
If the reports are true about Corbin’s heat spawning from a somewhat tense conversation with Dr. Joseph Maroon about concussions mixed with the way he’s been interacting with fans (or rather, detractors) on Twitter, it seems like The Lone Wolf’s primary lesson to learn is when to speak up and when to bite his tongue.
Sometimes, it’s best not to raise your hand and wait until you’re called on, as you can be skipped over in favor of someone else. However, you need to make sure if you have something to say, it’s worth listening to and you’re not going to do damage to yourself in the process.
A few more slip-ups like this and Corbin could find himself in hot water after developing a reputation of being someone who just doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.
Enzo Amore
Speaking of that, Enzo has to learn how to stop pissing people off backstage.
Every single week, there’s a new story coming out about how he’s in the dog house for being obnoxious or rubbing people the wrong way or tipping poorly at a strip club.
Granted, some of those reports might be fictitious or blown out of proportion, but the fact that they haven’t stopped for weeks is definitely suspicious.
In wrestling, it’s good to learn how to take aspects of your personality and turn it up a notch to provide a genuine character you can pull off while still being entertaining. On the flip side, this seems to be a case where Enzo needs to learn how to turn himself down a tad in reality.
And I bet you thought I’d just go with the easy joke that he needs to learn how to spell “soft” correctly.
The Revival
Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder might call themselves The Revival, but the way these guys have operated on Monday Night Raw seems to be on a completely different page as they’re doing the opposite of reviving things.
Since making the jump to the main roster, both of them have suffered injuries that have forced them to take a step back for months. This has prevented them from getting the ball rolling and I don’t think I’m the only person who feels like they haven’t even actually been on the main roster at all yet at this point.
These two need to learn how to stop getting injured every time their partner returns to the ring! The tag team division needs them!
R-Truth
After all these years, I think it’s about time R-Truth should finally learn what’s up with the people over there.
He’s been asking since what, 2008? It’s been almost a decade. Just tell the guy what’s up, even if it’s “nothing much, R-Truth. What about you?”
Paige
Can I just cut to the chase and say Paige needs to learn how to behave? That pretty much covers it.
She’s good in the ring and she has value, but the past year has proven that Paige needs to learn how to grow up and stop acting like a spoiled brat rebellious teenager because it’s doing nothing but harm for her career and the lives of the people surrounding her.
Lars Sullivan
Lars needs to learn how to pick better tag team partners. Clearly, that’s a skill he hasn’t picked up yet, since every single one of them fails him miserably.
Elias
If I knew how to play the guitar…or how to sing…I’m sure I could come up with something about his chord progression or maintaining his pitch or whatever, but I can’t even read sheet music, so that goes out the window.
Instead, Elias needs to learn how to play Wonderwall by Oasis. If it works for your average random dude on someone’s couch at a party, I’m sure it’ll work for the very rude and disruptive crowds that are so focused on booing him that they don’t even think about asking for requests.
The Ascension
Yeesh, these guys need to learn how to go back to the basics and recapture their glory days from when they were in NXT.
The entirety of their main roster run pretty much from the absolute start has been atrocious. Outside of a few matches here and there, they’ve never been anything but jokes, but in NXT, they were supremely dominant and it looked like they had a ton of promise to them.
Now, they’re lucky if they have a guest spot eating pie on the latest Breezango parody segment. Sometimes, it isn’t even good pie!
The Fashion Police
Side note: Breezango need to learn how to bake better pies.
Sasha Banks
Alexa Bliss already brought this up, but it bears repeating: The Boss needs to learn how to defend the Raw Women’s Championship at least once in her career.
Four times she’s been champion and all four times, she lost the title on her very first defense.
That’s an awful track record and a streak that nobody should be proud of having, so she has to turn it around.
Sadly, at this point, I’m not interested in seeing Sasha win the title back and be a 5x champion so soon, so given a choice between putting the belt on her and allowing her to keep it a few months to rectify the problem or to just brush it to the side for now in favor of other women, I’d choose the latter.
It’s a shame, because the damage is done already and WWE can’t go back in time to undo it, but that’s what happens when you do stupid booking without thinking of the future (or even the immediate present, to an extent, as Charlotte gained nothing more out of those wins other than extra numbers to her title reign list).
Tye Dillinger
If being a Perfect 10 isn’t cutting it, he needs to learn how to become a Perfect 11. Yes, I hate me, too.
Finn Balor
Particularly in high school and college, that’s where people can develop who they are and start to formulate their individual personalities.
Finn Balor desperately, desperately needs to do that.
He’s talented in the ring, but good lord does he need an injection of personality as he’s as bland and uninteresting as they come once you strip away a few little aspects.
Yes, the demon face paint is neat (but not as neat as it used to be as we’ve seen it a bunch of times and they don’t change it up enough) but outside of that, what is Balor? A talented wrestler? So is everybody else. A passionate fighter? How is that different from Apollo Crews or Sami Zayn?
When Balor is cutting a promo, it’s like watching a kid in class give a book report on a novel he skimmed while he’s nervous about public speaking. None of it comes across interesting or interesting, it’s very manufactured like reading bullet points off note cards and the few sentences that are genuine to his character just so happen to be boring as hell.
Shinsuke Nakamura
This one is obvious in that Nakamura needs to continue to improve learning English and cutting promos as that’s the only thing holding him back right now, and man is it doing that.
Nakamura’s being protected as well as WWE can figure out how to protect him, with pre-taped segments and extremely short promos. This is hurting his feuds, though, as there’s no real substance to them beyond that he happens to be challenging his opponent.
If you can tell me what his program with Jinder Mahal has been about other than “he became the #1 contender and then he also became the #1 contender a second time” then you’re reading into this more than WWE is putting out there.
What sucks is that WWE wants to keep him looking strong in the ring to compensate for this, so that means he isn’t wrestling every week either to avoid having him beat everybody and have nothing else to do, so instead of having Nakamura really sinking his teeth in anything on SmackDown, he’s mostly existing as a superstar that we’re being told is amazing but can’t show that off too frequently, and only in a pure wrestling capacity.
Jinder Mahal
Since we’re talking about him, let’s bring up how Jinder Mahal needs to learn how to cut a single promo that doesn’t consist of merely “I am your WWE champion” and “you people don’t respect me” and “now I will speak to my people in my language of Punjabi.”
Yes, that’s the core of his gimmick, but The Miz finds a way to turn “Hollywood douchebag” into a variety of different promos, so why can’t Mahal say anything other than the same five or six sentences every single week?
That’s about enough for this period, so your homework for today is to leave your comments below with some suggestions of other lessons WWE superstars need to learn. Should Roman Reigns learn how to get through a promo with John Cena without getting lost? Does Emma have to go back to the Performance Center to figure out what her gimmick can be? Can we trust Lana to teach Tamina how to be ravishing or is she a bad tutor?
Class dismissed.
