Kane is Back: It's Not Something to Celebrate

you wanna know what WWE is? It’s Twilight. It’s dumb, ill-thought out, inconstant, and relays a horrible message for those watching. But god damnit we love it. We know we shouldn’t, but we do.

If this is honestly your worldview, I almost pity you.

People who watch Twilight don’t watch it because they know its horrible, they watch it because they believe its awesome. Twilight fans feel no guilt over their enjoyment of the product, if they did, they’d give up watching.

Sure, you get the occasional morbidly curious viewer watching Stephanie Meyer’s atrocity for the Battlefield Earth-esque aspects, but the thing is, the people who watch it for that reason are both entertained by the perverse awfulness, and spend just as much time watching or reading things of that genre that are actually good.

WWE isn’t bad enough to inflict unintentional comedy most of the time, often, it’s just dreary, joylessly terrible, and rather than only possessing terrible screenplay and godawful actors, WWE possesses enough high quality talents, production abilities, and minds to where it would never need to put on a bad show for any reason ever. Not to mention, whereas Twilight is one of dozens of movies to be seen in a major cinema across the country every year, WWE is, for most people, the only source of new professional wrestling they have easy access to. WWE is the only hope for professional wrestling as a whole to ever be successful or respected, and they’re flushing everything they could be down the toilet. It’s completely unacceptable, and if you honestly feel this way about WWE, you really don’t have a reason to watch.

Don’t you dare believe you will convince anyone here that we are wrong for loving what we love.

This isn’t what people love. Kane got the exact same push last year. He was beating everybody, he beat Undertaker three times in a row, he main evented a PPV over Cena’s match, and was the complete and total focus of his brand.

Everyone hated it. The buyrates were awful, the ratings were abysmal, zero merchandise was sold, and almost everybody on the Smackdown roster had to sacrifice their heat to prop him up. It didn’t work at all, it completely devalued what little integrity was left in the Smackdown world title, and everyone wanted Kane to go away.

It’s nothing new that people are ignoring this. Fans of anything are willing to put up with almost unlimited bullshit on the off-chance that the product they love will become good again only for the fanbase to gradually chip away until all that’s left from the once mighty iceberg of fanatics is a broken refrigerator of human misery waiting in vain for the temperature to drop.

You’re not stupid for waiting to give something a chance, you’re stupid for falling for the exact same trick over and over again.

I don’t care. Seeing Kane come out made me happy. I enjoy being happy. One might even say being happy makes me happy. I’m pretty happy being happy.

This is one of the most transparent cases of circular logic I’ve ever seen a human being conjure up. You can’t just be happy because being happy makes you happy, you have to have a reason for it, even a shitty reason would be better than this.

Why is it Kane makes you happy? Are you looking forward to him having a match with anyone? Do you want to buy a PPV with Kane as the headliner in a 20 minute match? Do you think that there’s anything a 44 year old guy who’s never had anything better than a decent match in his life still has left to offer? If you like the unstoppable badass heel, why do you want it to be Kane who’s pushed as that guy as opposed to someone younger, more mobile, and with an actual future who gets the chance to steamroll the roster?

The fact that you didn’t sight even a single tangible reason as to why you’re eager to see Kane means that you have put zero thought into this post. The very least you could’ve done was link me to a Kane singles match from the past six years that was up to the standards of maybe a good Cena match.

I just know from last night that isn’t happening.

Kane’s next feud will be with John Cena, it’ll be the central focus of the show its on, the matches will be really bad, and nothing will be generated from it. Cena and Kane shouldn’t be facing each other, they should be facing one of the dozens of people in WWE who’s desperately trying to have a crack at the glass ceiling. It wouldn’t be so bad if a Cena/Kane match could actually generate a buyrate or sell a gate, but anyone with half a brain knows that it’ll generate the same number their PPV’s always get.

Then you have the fact that judging by the new gear, WWE has the potential to be planning for another Undertaker/Kane match, maybe even a Wrestlemania match. This match must never be allowed to take place. Every Undertaker/Kane match has been awful, and considering Undertaker’s next Wrestlemania match is probably the biggest match WWE can run this side of a Steve Austin or Brock Lesnar return, wasting it on Kane is something I cannot tolerate.

The “just wait and see” defense only works if the people in charge have a consistent track record of delivering on their promises. It’s why I’m forgiving of things such as the Season 4 Finale of Sons of Anarchy, because Kurt Sutter has consistently delivered on the storylines he’s built up. WWE doesn’t have that luxury anymore, and until they can get back to a record of consistent quality, there’s no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt for what looks to be a terrible angle.

I don’t give a shit about politics or being a nice guy, I want wrestlers to put on good matches, or at least have the chance to put on good matches. Kane has never done that, and its why putting this effort into giving him another huge push is a waste of time on WWE’s part.

The last PPV I bought was MitB, I haven’t watched RAW or Smackdown since WM 27, and I don’t intend to watch again until WWE makes it worth my time.

Not that it matters anyway, because you probably think my criticism is invalid for complaining about something I don’t watch anymore.

Last year when Kane was world champion, people said to “wait and see” where it was going, that WWE had a plan. To the surprise of nobody who’d actually been paying attention to the way WWE’s been run for the past several years, they had no plan, and the only things people were rewarded for by “waiting and seeing” were three amazingly bad matches with Undertaker, with Kane always winning, bad matches with Rey Mysterio, with Kane winning, and bad matches with Edge, ending in Kane losing at a 4-way TLC match so he didn’t have to eat the pin to end his title reign.

If WWE had a consistent track-record of delivering well on their payoffs, “waiting and seeing” would be a valid excuse, but since WWE hasn’t been consistently great in a decade, this philosophy needs to die until they get back on track.

Both Mark Henry and Kane are getting huge, unrelenting pushes when the guys who really needed WWE to put their faith in them, guys like Wade Barrett, Sheamus, and Alberto Del Rio, get jobbed into oblivion. At least a dozen people on the WWE roster alone are more deserving of a consistent push than Henry and Kane, but they aren’t getting it because Vince McMahon is still acting like a little bitch over Brock Lesnar and Bobby Lashley leaving.

And what evidence do you have that Henry and Kane are over? The PPV buyrates for the shows they’ve headlined while champion have been some of the worst numbers WWE has ever pulled, ratings aren’t that great, and Kane hasn’t been a big merch seller since he had that mask the first time, and even then he only sold a lot because he was being booked to steamroll a roster he was inferior to.

Pop size is not indicitive of quality unless the guys are getting pops at the level of, or just shy of, the likes of Hogan and Rock. Henry and Kane get the same level of pops the Godfather got back in 1999, and the Godfather never sold a PPV, never increased ratings, and was probably the worst wrestler of all time.

When guys like Henry and Kane are pushed, wrestling isn’t good, and it makes me sad.

If WWE put the same level of dedication into pushing Alberto Del Rio and Sheamus earlier this year as they put into Mark Henry and Kane, they wouldn’t be circling the financial drain they’re in today.

Del Rio elicits a channel flip every time he opens his mouth. He is boring and highly repetitive on the mic. Why does he deserve a push now? He had one for the better part of 2011 and hasn’t made it stick. That’s on him.

Del Rio was jobbed out for months to get him to “pay his dues.” I was fine with WWE jobbing him out after his title reign flopped, but the fact that WWE jobbed Del Rio out when he should’ve beaten Edge at Wrestlemania is WWE’s fault, not Del Rio’s fault.

Swagger…the all-american/american/american. Is that it? Has he taken it upon himself to show more in his character than that? Frankly, Swagger is just a body with no charisma. Why push him?

Then give him a manager. It’s a lot harder to find a great athlete and worker than it is to find a great guy on the mic.

Sheamus….he’s had two runs…and been fed to Trips and Cena.

Sheamus was fed to Hunter, Cena, Evan Bourne, Mark Henry, Randy Orton, the Great Khali, etc. before he had the chance to get over. He was treated like a jobber during the entirety of both his title reigns. It was stupid parity booking, and if WWE had so little faith in Sheamus that they weren’t willing to give him victories and credibility during his title reign, they never should’ve made him champion to begin with.

Dolph and Miz are kinda in the same boat but coming from different positions. This is Dolph’s second big push, and they’re taking time with it.

Miz sucks, so I don’t give a shit about how his push is going, as long as it’s downward.

Ziggler’s heat being killed was indefensible. If WWE didn’t have faith in Ziggler when they first gave him the title, they shouldn’t have given him the title in the first place. It was weak parity booking, it made the title look like a joke, and it made Ziggler look like a joke.

WWE’s parity booking, terrible title reigns, and jobbing out of their fresh talent who could have the potential to be stars at the expense of old standbys who used to be over (Cena) or never were over in the first place (Henry, Kane) is moronic, and needs to die a quick death.

I haven’t watched RAW or Smackdown since Wrestlemania 27, I haven’t paid for a PPV since MitB. I have absolutely no desire to fork over any of my money or time to WWE in any way until they start putting on something deserving of it.

I’ve just been following Cageside on the off chance that WWE gets better.

Not that it matters anyway, because if you knew I hadn’t been watching, you would be bitching about how I’m out of touch just because I’ve only been following the recaps.

I am just starting to read this.. but let me point out.. ROH doesn’t work 250+ days of the year.. so their performers can do more crazy stuff.

You don’t have to kill yourself or perform needlessly dangerous spots to have a great match. John Cena vs. CM Punk at MitB was a very safe match, apart from the over the ring suplex spot, and it was the best match I’ve ever seen in my life. The Jumbo Tsuruta/Billy Robinson matches from 1977 are all very safe matches, and they’re some of the greatest matches of all time. Bret Hart was one of the safest workers ever, and almost never deviated from his routine, and he had at least a decent match every night against just about everyone.

Not being able to do dangerous spots is not an acceptable excuse for being a shitty wrestler, if you can’t find a way to work an entertaining match in a safe fashion, you’re not a good worker.

In addition they like the guys that come across as larger than life.

Larger than life is supposed to be a figure of speech to represent somebody who exudes an aura of godliness. CM Punk, Ric Flair, Chris Jericho, Steve Austin, and to some extent Randy Orton all have this without being 7 ft tall, or roid mosters, or some combination of the two.

I want Kane’s whole thing to just be walking around chokeslamming people to hell for no apparent reason because 10-year-old me loved the shit out of him when he was feuding with ’Taker.

It’d be much more prudent on WWE’s part to have the guy who’s squashing people to be someone with a future. As much as people love seeing guys get pummeled, it takes time and effort to bring people down to the ground, and it takes heat away from the guys getting pummeled. Because of these sacrifices, it should only be people who are actually good who steamroll the roster.

Think about what would’ve happened if anybody else in the roster got to randomly steamroll people for no reason, and kept that up for weeks or months? It’d really help them, wasting that effort on Kane helps no one.

Also, if you’re going to tell people how dumb they are for liking something, you should at least use spell check.

I’d rather go in a younger talent being pushed direction.

People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.