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http://www.uproxx.com/sports/2014/03/best-worst-wwe-raw-3314-hijackbestandworst
Worst: #hijackRaw
The first thing you need to know about me is that I love pro wrestling. I love it as a thing more than I love any individual wrestler, promotion, moment or memory.
A lot of modern fandom for thing is based around who you like and why … you aren’t a Doctor Who fan, you’re a ‘Whovian,’ and on top of that it’s segmented. You’re a fan of the Tenth Doctor. You probably have a fun name for yourself and people like you. It’s less about watching and enjoying the show and about how good of a FAN you can be, and how much better of a fan you can be than the other fans, and how people who like the Eleventh Doctor are stupid and aren’t doing it right.
I run into that a lot writing this column. People show up who are Rock Fans, or CM Punk fans, and they like, support and enjoy every single thing that person does, whether it’s good or bad having no relevance to the conversation, and they’re so mad and don’t understand why you’re being so stupid and thinking too much and over-analyzing. You’re on a high horse with your PC White Knights and you’re caping up to something something and on and on. They’re in a “fandom.” Because of this, they assume that I’m in a fandom as well. I hear a lot of things like, “if Daniel Bryan did the same thing you’d think it was great,” or, “why are you still watching? All you do is bitch and complain! Do you even LIKE wrestling?”
The answer is that yes, I do like wrestling. I like it more than anything. The hook of a “Best and Worst” column is that there are Bests and Worsts. I like some stuff and I don’t like stuff, and then I write a couple of paragraphs to explain it. I rarely like or dislike something arbitrarily, and when I do, I freely admit to it. I am not the Wrestling Master or the Opinion Police and everything you’re reading here is a desperate expression of my powerful, never-ending love for the stupidest, most regressive thing in the world. If Daniel Bryan does something shitty and I think it’s such, I mention it. Remember when he started getting all sarcastic about everything? I went from “you think Daniel Bryan is infallible and make excuses for him” to “all you do is complain!” in a heartbeat. Sometimes people aren’t reading a wrestling column to find out what a random, unimportant dude thinks about the wrestling. Sometimes they’re scanning it to see if its compatible with their fandom. If it is, they pass it by. If it isn’t, they violently bump up against it to “change” it without any real will or effort, just a vague I’M TIRED OF THE WAY YOU THINK.
The second thing you need to know about me is that I use a lot of hyperbole. I use hyperbole in every thing I have ever said or done. Get it? I call things the “best match of the year” or “my favorite thing in wrestling” because in that moment, that’s how it feels. It’s fury. Bubbling, molten blood firing through my body and making my brain fire off in these weird, emotional directions.
Knowing that, my favorite thing about wrestling — sorry — is the feeling I get from a live crowd. To be more specific, I love that moment when a crowd full of weird, obsessive guys like me gets so locked into and lost in a live wrestling show that we stop being “guys on the internet” or “smart marks” or any other stupid, condescending term to describe some off-brand sect of fandom and become emotion. That’s what happens. We stop being individual people and start being a big, circular mass of emotional response.
Two examples: At Chikara’s King of Trios 2012, the trios tournament was built around two teams … the Spectral Envoy, a team of Chikara stalwarts, and Team ROH, a squad of arrogant “invading foreigners.” The Young Bucks and Mike Bennett. The easiest people in the world to boo. By the end of the third night of the best wrestling weekend I’ve ever had, the tourney came down to those two teams. We’d already been broken to the point of tears a couple of times already, so when our UL-TRA MAN-TIS chant got turned into a “dueling” chant by one lone Ring Of Honor fan (chanting “R-O-H!”) the response was quick, decisive, and organic: we chanted UL-TRA MAN-TIS over it. It was a dueling chant for Ultramantis Black and Ultramantis Black. It just happened. It was a building full of Chikara fans united in support of a wrestling story, happening in front of us in the ring.
The other example is from an ACW show in Austin last Spring. Kyle Hawk, a guy who’d been a regular but hadn’t really had the opportunity to break through, had a killer match with Davey Vega. On top of that, Hawk announced that this was going to be his last match for a while because he was leaving to fight for us in Afghanistan. He talked about his new wife and their children, and how he had a son who loved wrestling … and if the worst was to happen and he never came back, and if the BEST was to happen and that kid would grow up to be a wrestler, he asked us to give that boy the same love we’ve given him. A guy facing an uncertain future speaking all the way from the bottom of his heart. We clapped and we cried, and as he was leaving someone started singing the Star-Spangled Banner. It sounds like a cheesy moment from a shitty movie, right? But he kept singing, and someone else joined in, and soon we were all standing there with our hands over our hearts, singing the national anthem at the top of our lungs with tears in our eyes. When it was done, the place exploded with cheers. It just happened. The crowd had turned into a weird, stinking mass of love.
If you’ve gotten this far, here’s the part where I tell you how much I hated #hijackRaw.
Screen Shot 2014-03-04 at 10.54.53 AM
I was part of the crowd that YES chanted Daniel Bryan, watched him lose in 18 seconds and YESSED all the way through Randy Orton vs. Kane. That bled into the next night, which created a “movement” that eventually became a corporately-owned marketing strategy. Regardless, it just happened. We loved the guy, and we wanted to show him how much. I wasn’t a part of the Money in the Bank crowd that transformed CM Punk from a popular mid-carder into a folk hero, but it was the same idea. Their hometown guy was coming home with furious indignation, ready to take the WWE title from the walking, talking Dynasty and do whatever the hell he wanted with it. They lost their minds all night long and helped fully form one of the most unforgettable moments in WWE history. It just happened.
See what all these moments have in common?
#hijackRaw didn’t just happen. It wasn’t a Chicago crowd coming together to organically share their frustrations with Punk’s situation and what’s been happening in the WWE main-event scene … it was a guy with a Twitter account who got 10,000 followers, then got as many of them as he could to print out a sheet explaining “how” to cheer. It says to chant “this is awesome” for the Shield vs. the Wyatts, to chant “yes yes yes” for Daniel Bryan and to turn your back on The Authority. It says to chant CM PUNK over everything, but to give The Undertaker the respect he deserved. A step-by-step, numbered guide on how you should feel, what you should do and what you want to change.
It’s a purposeful corruption of the thing I love most about wrestling. It’s saying that THIS IS THE WAY YOU CHEER CORRECTLY, and frankly it didn’t even make a hell of a lot of sense. You’re going to a wrestling show featuring 10 guys you’re excited to see and want to cheer for, but the absence of one disqualifies that to the point that you want to organize a grassroots campaign to “take over” the show? As far as I can tell, you only dislike three people, and they happen to be the show’s bad guys. The show’s bad guys who are the evil bosses who run the show in a way fans don’t want to see. What are you hijacking? You’re saying to boo the heels and cheer the faces. Oh, except for one or two matches, because we hate those.
As Aaron Diaz described it, it’s “crystalized petulance.” Outrage over something they aren’t even sure exists. Outrage that comes with an easily co-opted hashtag and instruction sheets. Do I seriously need to point out how phony and soulless that is? It’s not an organic movement, it’s a crowd saying “look at us, this is what WE did.” The worst part is that that kind of attitude can excuse any positive thing on the show … I had lengthy discussions with heaps of polite strangers on Twitter who, an hour into the show, bragged about how WWE had booked a show to keep them from hijacking it. These are the same people who got routinely worked and redirected by wrestlers all night. People who chanted BORING and THIS IS AWFUL chants during Sheamus/Christian, a good f*cking wrestling match, and then counted along with the Sheamus chest forearms and the pinfalls. BUT! That was added in in post! BUT! What do you mean there isn’t “post” on a live show? That audio was probably piped in over the speakers at the arena! We HEARD it! Guess what, guys? There have been good hours of Raw before. Especially on shows in major cities a month before WrestleMania. You know what your hijack movement did? It made Paul Heyman mention CM Punk in a promo at the top of the show. That’s it. And guess what else? He was probably going to do that anyway, because they’re in Chicago.
By addressing Hijack Raw and pointing it out, WWE was able to take it from the group of sad guys attempting to perform it and made it their own. They stole your movement TO YOUR FACE. Why wouldn’t they? You paid $60 bucks or whatever to show up and boo the heels as a statement. As a POLITICAL STATEMENT AGAINST WRESTLING YOU BOOED THE HEELS. You ruined a couple of mid-card matches, and Punk’s still not here. Feeling good about yourself yet?
I like CM Punk a lot. I want him on the shows, but you have to think about it.
In real life, assuming it is not a work, your favorite wrestler and hometown guy quit the company. He wasn’t fired. He “didn’t like what they were doing with him” or “didn’t like the stories they wrote for him” and got miserable and quit. Remember back when Punk was a Ziggler-esque under-card guy who once lost the World Heavyweight Championship because he got beaten up backstage by Legacy? That guy was dropping pipe bombs about how guys like HIM needed to be in the spots occupied by guys like Cena, and how WWE needed to start focusing on wrestling instead of all this ridiculous sports entertainment. He deserved to be champion, and on all the videos and souvenir cups and on the covers of the video games. Fast forward a few years. What happened? CM Punk became John Cena. WWE started focusing on signing and spotlighting guys like Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins, Antonio Cesaro, Sami Zayn. Daniel Bryan is the most popular guy on the show. CM Punk was WWE Champion — WWE Champion, the real one — for over 400 days straight. He recently stopped dating a WWE Hall of Famer so he could date the Divas Champion. He’s been on the cover of the video game and has been in every video and souvenir cup for years. But hey, he’s not happy that he’s supposed to be wrestling in one of the WrestleMania XXX main-events instead of one of the other ones so he quits?
In real life, assuming again that it’s not a work, that guy quitting is not WWE’s fault. They want him on the shows. He’s one of their most popular characters. They just launched a Network and have a Wrestling Mania coming up, they could use him. They have done EVERYTHING for Punk. They made it Punk’s show. The guy’s wrestling Brock Lesnar and victoriously caning his blood rival on top of a Hell in a Cell. POOR BABY. CM Punk is aware that Raw was in Chicago. He knows how much you want him on the show. In real life, this guy CHOSE not to be there for you. He chose to sit at home instead of “going out there and entertaining each and every one of you,” or whatever Cena would say.
In kayfabe, he’s a character who took his ball and went home. They’ve been gentle with his reasons for vanishing. They haven’t really said anything about it other than Heyman pointing the finger at “each and every one of you,” but he’s an unreliable narrator. Regardless, he’s not there, and as convinced as I’ve been since day one that Punk’s hiatus is part of the story, him not showing up in Chicago was an eyebrow-raiser. He’s CHOOSING not to do this.
The Fandom will come up with a bunch of reasons they’ve almost entirely made up about why Punk isn’t here, and why it’s still cool for him not to be. He’s tired. He got burned out. He’s injured and they just aren’t telling you. If that is the case, and Punk’s just a good dude taking a break, why are you hijacking the show to chant his name and demand his presence? Either he’s a piece of shit who doesn’t care about you, or he’s a guy dealing with some stuff who’ll be back when he’s ready. From either direction, what f*cking reason do you have to chant CM PUNK during an Usos match?
You only have one reason. It’s, “look at me, look at what I’m doing.”
CM Punk Chicago Paul Heyman
We’re all going to feel up-our-own-ass entitled from time to time, whether it’s demanding a guy who wasn’t announced for the Royal Rumble get inserted into it anyway and win or demanding the appearance of a guy who left the company for reasons you totally understand by chanting his name at the expense of others who ARE there and hurting themselves for your enjoyment. Again, I’m not telling you how to cheer for wrestling. If you’re there at all and making noise, you’re doing it right.
That said, let me tell you how you get WWE to notice you: dead silence. “Noise” and “reactions” at wrestling shows are seen as positives, whether they are in your brain when you’re delivering them or not. Do you think Stephanie McMahon went backstage last night shaking her head in disgust, wondering what she did wrong, because people chanted CM PUNK over her dialogue? Or do you think she went, “wow, I’m getting Vickie heat out there now!” Triple H has probably been smiling his ass off since last night. You are doing what they want you to do, and you’ve either gotta be fine with that (because you should be, because “being worked” is the entire point) or change your perspective. You’ve got to consider WHY you’re doing something, HOW you should be doing it and what it all actually means.
When you think about things, it’s easy to love them. If you’re in love with the process of pro wrestling, last night was a miracle. A giant “greater than” symbol on the side of the establishment. All #hijackRaw accomplished was making Raw stressful for people who didn’t deserve it.
If you skimmed to the bottom, here’s a summarization in boldface: Congratulations on being worse than Green Bay, Chicago.
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