On Monday, February 8, 2016, almost nine months after his last match, Bryan Danielson announced his retirement. With twenty-one words, including a hashtag, the much speculated future of the former WWE champion was revealed: it’s all over.
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Up until recently, being a fan of wrestling could be a very expensive and space-filling hobby. If you were interested in having copies of events to watch on-demand, then a home video library would be the order of the day, especially if you were a fan of multiple promotions. Whether they were obtained legally or otherwise, wrestling fans around the world would have had to keep piles of VHS tapes and later DVDs in order to keep up to speed on their favourite groups.
On Friday, WWE released five talents from their NXT roster, including someone who was something of a comedy figure, and a former tag team that had really been forgotten about. These releases were a reminder of just how hard it is to make it, particularly in the current NXT climate.
When I first joined the internet back in 1998, wrestling was in the midst of what’s been nostalgically labelled as the Attitude Era. Whether you were a fan of WWE or the about-to-die WCW (or even ECW), there were likely guys on the roster who weren’t being pushed as much as you wanted them to. Although it was unlikely that they would ever usurp the top-line guys like Steve Austin, the Rock or Hulk Hogan, it was nice to have someone in the midcard to cheer who wouldn’t always be turned into a joke simply because they had supporters.
With WWE just about coming out on the other side of their horrific injury run, there’s a lot been said about how they’ve managed to get in the state they were in. Some have speculated that it’s due to training. Others, the ongoing need to impress to earn a (better) spot… but what about the schedule itself? Is there a need for house shows to continue in their current format?
So, the first pay-per-view of 2016 is in the books, and WWE has a new champion. Perhaps the biggest surprise on Sunday was that the company kept their surprises limited to two: a debut, and the new champion.
In years gone by, it’s been a bit of a stereotype – you can’t bet on wrestling, it’s fixed! Well, in recent times, bookmakers have been offering odds for pay-per-views for several months now, with those odds usually shifting at the last minute (particularly if a certain dolphin-themed Redditer has his say!)
In amongst the responses to my “Royal Stumble” column over the weekend, there was an interesting alternative viewpoint to “why WWE has a dearth of credible championship challengers”, and the answer is simple: they’ve sacrificed everyone in an attempt to build up Roman Reigns. Although WWE did ultimately achieve their end goal of getting the fans to accept Reigns, ironically, it was at last year’s Rumble where the signs were clearly displayed that this was the wrong time to push Reigns.