Rematches not required
The time has come, or so the WWE wants us all to believe. A time of change. A time for the usual boring matches, with the same wrestlers, over and over, for weeks on end. As Monday Night Raw went through the motions the company did their best to convey things were changing. Even if not too much did. However as apart of that change, there was a single announcement that really stuck with me. Triple H himself walked out and informed us all that the usual rematch clause that can normally be exercised after nearly every title match is gone. And I can only ask why?
For those of you who may not know, allow me to spoil the entire business. Wrestling is predetermined. The outcomes, the matches, the opponents, and the spots are nearly all pre-planned. This doesn’t take away the amazing feats of strength and athleticism nor does it take away the characters and stories we follow. It does mean that wrestling is can constantly be a blank slate. WWE has never been shamed by dropping a story entirely and pretending it never happened. Entire feuds suddenly end without conclusions and the machinery of matches continues on.
Now that you understand wrestling as a storytelling entertainment service, and that at any moment whatever floundering story or wrestler can simply be replaced by something better, answer me this. Why on Earth would you announce rematch clauses no longer exist? Wrestling is written, it’s determined. Seth Rollins doesn’t need to have a rematch with Dean Ambrose is the WWE determine Seth or Dean belong somewhere else. Finn’s continual run-ins with the mid-card from Hell can just simply end if he, and the many writers behind the scenes, can just appear to contend with the main title. Any SmackDown star could appear on Raw and any Raw star on SmackDown, or NXT, or 205. Nothing in wrestling is written in stone.
So why announce this? If the story is “WWE has gauntlet match to determine IC title scene,” then just have the match. Consistently and despairingly the WWE find ways to overbook promos and reasoning. Whereas WCW added hundreds of finishes to every match they could in the waning years of relevance. The WWE finds way to take normal kernels of logic and add more bells and whistles than 90s wrestling entrance pyro displays.
I’ve asked for a lot through these ‘hot takes’. I’d like wrestling to be treated more like a sport logically. I’d like to see intergender wrestling. I’d like to see the stars who sit on the bench and wrestle matches no one will remember utilized in a respectable way. But most of all I want to see some internal clockwork that makes sense. A realization that wrestling isn’t a holier than thou sport needing protection nor is a slapdash goof filled show meant to make little kids believe in magic. It’s an odd, strange thing that slips between the ether of reality and make believe. And I really wish those who run the largest and arguably strongest company understood what wrestling meant in 2019.
