My Message To the Pro-Wrestling Journalists & Podcasters Of The Future

At the end of 2016 my weekly podcast, The Work of Wrestling, will go on hiatus. During that hiatus I plan on restructuring the show so that, in the future, it will be distributed in a highly focused, seasonal format. I do not yet know how long that hiatus will be and I do not yet know how long those seasons will be, but I am excited about the prospect of reinvention and return.

While I still plan to continue writing about wrestling whenever the mood strikes, it feels like a good time to offer a "see you later" (rather than a goodbye) to The Pro-Wrestling Community, particularly to the younger writers & podcasters currently honing their crafts. You are the ones who will take up this mantle, push it into the 21st Century and beyond, and change the way people think about professional wrestling (for the better). Your passion, your ingenuity, and your progressive perspectives will be needed for our Community to ever grow up.

What Summer Slam Taught Us: A 3-Point Plan For WWE

Once cooler heads prevail and feelings aren't so hurt on all sides, there are a lot of positive lessons WWE can learn from this year's SummerSlam.

And I do not mean that in the condescending “Here’s what I’m going to teach you!” kind of way (I'm an advocate for the WWE being exactly what it really wants to be without making concessions to an audience that it simply isn't designed for). I mean it in the way that any reaction to any creative endeavor yields a lot of incredibly useful data.

Roman Reigns And The Dangers Of Deserve

Almost every day I see comments from frustrated professional wrestling fans claiming that Roman Reigns "doesn't deserve" all of the opportunities WWE has given him. This comment is incredibly reliable regardless of how Roman Reigns evolves and regardless of how his booking changes.

At this point, if a pro-wrestling fan is reciting the same laundry list of criticisms that have been leveled at Leati Joseph Anoaʻi over the past two years, I tend to question their true intentions as it relates to their love of professional wrestling.

THE RAW REVIEW

RAW existed in that bland middle-ground of inoffensive but forgettable this week.

It wasn’t especially bad, but it wasn’t especially good.

Three hours chugged along, and only about thirty minutes of it seemed to matter while the rest of the show was…fine.

It was mostly Randy Orton’s show, and your investment in the episode hinged largely upon your willingness to get invested in Randy Orton’s psychology.

THE RAW REVIEW

“I feel like I’m watching something that hates me, and hates itself.”

This is what I texted to a friend in the middle of Monday Night Raw. This is what watching Raw’s laborious three hours can feel like for a fan, and especially for someone who’s been writing about the show for three years.

The Writings