411 Fact or Fiction Wrestling: Will Hulk Hogan Be Back For WrestleMania?

Welcome back to the latest edition of 411 Fact or Fiction, Wrestling Edition! Stuff happened, people loved/hated it and let everyone else know. I pick through the interesting/not so interesting tidbits and then make 411 staff members discuss them for your pleasure. Battling this week are 411’s Jake Chambers and Jack Stevenson!

Questions were sent out Monday.

Participants were told to expect wrestling-related content, as well as possible statements on quantum physics, homemade pharmaceuticals, the Turtle Total Trip Theorem, pizza and hydroponics.

1. Hulk Hogan will be back with the WWE in time for WrestleMania

Jack Stevenson: FICTION – I know it’s President Trump’s America now, but I still possess just enough optimism to believe that the vast majority of wrestling fans aren’t itching to give a hero’s welcome to a man who’s been recorded cheerfully using an abominable racial slur. I’m deeply uncomfortable with the idea of a man’s private conversations being disseminated all over the internet for people to pore over, but I’m more uncomfortable with the idea of everyone welcoming Hulk Hogan back with open arms like nothing ever happened. I don’t want his legacy to be entirely erased from history, I don’t want his Hall of Fame induction to be rescinded, I want his matches on the WWE Network and his contributions to the industry recognized. I also want there to be a lot more water passed under the bridge before he’s back in front of live WWE audiences. I believe that the most important figures in WWE will feel the same way.

Jake Chambers: FICTION – I suppose they could trot Hogan out and have him stand alone in the ring with a teary, contrite expression, turning his head slowly to a raucous standing ovation that morphs into another cool chant while the announcers talk about how he’s “overcome his demons”, but I’m still going FICTION here because the WWE has nothing to gain at this point by bringing back Hogan. Even if the WrestleMania main event is John Cena vs. Roman Reigns, the WWE is gonna be the #1 trend on Twitter and get articles on the front page of ESPN, and that’s all they really care about. They’re not going to get one returning pro-wrestling fan to watch RAW, new subscriber, or extra PPV purchase because of Hulk Hogan in 2016/17, let’s be real. Are they creative enough to have Hogan come out and play a bigoted, sexist “character” who becomes President of the WWE? Unlikely. Even though this would definitely guarantee a couple of days of hyperbolic social media outrage and pundit think-pieces about how this horrible racist, misogynist monster will bring about the downfall of pro-wrestling society as we know it, I don’t think the WWE wants that kind of negative press no matter how “realistic” a storyline it might be. In my opinion, the real question should be: Will Hulk Hogan be in Ring of Honor in time for WrestleMania?

2. WWE would be better off focusing 30-45 minutes of Raw on developing the cruiserweights rather than creating an entirely new hour of TV to produce each week.

Jack Stevenson: FACT – I’ve rambled before about the futility of creating a Cruiserweight division in an age where everyone wrestles like a Cruiserweight anyway, but if we must have one, their best chance of success is on a flagship, televised WWE program, rather than quarantined away on the Network, a shameful post Smackdown secret. Three consecutive hours of Raw is an unreasonable amount to be asked to sit through each week, so perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to implement a kind of ‘show within a show’- forty five minutes of cruiserweights with the purple ropes and code of honor and stuff, serving as a kind of pallette cleanser. I’m sure it would be ratings poison, at least for a while, but it would make me happy and if that is not the ultimate mission of WWE, and indeed all pro wrestling companies and people in general, then I am quite frankly disgusted.

Jake Chambers: FACT – I find it hard to justify giving the WWE another hour of time to produce more potentially terrible television, but there are just too many great wrestlers signed to the cruiserweight “division” to wish them on that shit-show RAW. RAW (and Smackdown) currently love to throw around the term “division”, but does two lame matches per week a division make? And what if those matches are also constantly repeated week after week? That’s a “division”? I mean, what are we watching when like Titus O’Neil squashes Curtis Axel in 2 minutes? Is that the “Universal Championship Division”? The WWE has no idea how to balance these different so-called divisions outside of one basic format: champion beats challenger, new challenger comes out of nowhere and beats champion in a non-title match, they then gets multiple titles shots and/or wins title wins and rematches, and repeat. By tacking on 205 Live at the end of a Smackdown taping, I don’t believe it’ll possible to recreate the small venue atmosphere that was necessary for the Cruiserweight Classic series to be so great, but I’m at least willing to give them a chance to try and recapture that magic. All logic says it’s gonna end up like the “New” ECW, but at least it’ll hopefully allow some of these great cruiserweright talents outside of the title shot cycle to stave off being just Braun Strowman fodder for one more week.

3. WWE using Rusev as a sacrificial lamb to Attitude Era Stars (Rock, Austin, Goldberg) does nothing but hurt his stock as a current WWE performer.

Jack Stevenson: FICTION – Because WWE are so incapable of making genuine stars out of anybody these days, merely putting Rusev in the same stratosphere of your Rocks, Austins and Goldbergs is better for his credibility than having him feud as an equal with Roman Reigns for three months. It demonstrates that WWE have faith in Rusev, that they feel he’s worthy of sharing the ring with these icons of the past. Quite right too, Rusev’s ace. A good wrestler, a fine promo, a terrific sense of comic timing, a convincing character. While he may end up eating a Jackhammer or a Rock Bottom, he’s capable of holding his own in segments with some of the most beloved wrestlers in history, and that says a great deal about him. Outside of becoming the Universal or WWE Champion, screen time with a Hall of Famer is your only chance to break free of the midcard quagmire, even if just for ten minutes, and I’m sure Rusev doesn’t feel any sense of disappointment or ennui when he’s told he’ll be doing segments with returning legends or business transcending movie stars.

Jake Chambers: FICTION – Jake Chambers – FICTION: Eh, Rusev is a mid-tier heavyweight guy who isn’t going to be a main event-er anytime soon – if ever – so what harm does it do? Being on RAW, or the WWE in general, probably hurts his stock as a pro-wrestler, but certainly if he wants to be a WWE performer then he’s getting great experience doing stupid bits with these Attitude Era stars. Besides, we know how the WWE treats guys who they have long-term main event plans for, like Roman Reigns or Seth Rollins, and then we know how they treat guys like Sami Zayn and Dolph Ziggler. Rusev clearly falls into one of those categories and at this point he’s just gotta be waiting for someone above him in the hierarchy to get hurt. Until then, take another Stunner, Spear, Rock Bottom or F5, at least it keeps your name out there.

SWITCH!

4. Monday’s episode of Raw was bad and WWE should feel bad for producing such a boring and lifeless show.

Jake Chambers: FACT – Not only was Monday’s episode bad, but RAW is such a generally horrible show at this point it’s wild that I even continue watching it. Or that anybody does. And yet here we are. Discussing over-and-over the ways we’d change things. But isn’t “change” a futile concept, really? Fantasy booking, analyzing business strategy, critical theory, mark-ish behavior; does any of it really matter? Does anything we do really create any kind of actual, deep change in a cycle of boring, lifelessness? For example, the original brand split era got so bad that everyone insisted the WWE needed to make it all one brand again, but the shows were still the same quality afterwards. The WWE had two world titles because of this, and so we heard how much better things would be when they only had one world title, and then we got one and everything was the same. Or how about when Daniel Bryan needed to change things and be champion at WrestleMania 30, but then somehow the next year it was okay that he was back in the mid-card because he’d already been world champion once. Then it was supposed to be a great thing when Brock Lesnar took the one world title away from the WWE so things would feel “special” when he came back, but he did eventually come back and nothing felt special. And now all of a sudden we need the brand split again because THAT will make things better. And sure, there’s been some good, even great, wrestling matches throughout this long period of time, no doubt, but most of the TV has been boring and lifeless. So yes, the WWE should feel bad. By producing content that fools us into making emotional connections with their characters and outcomes we inevitably hope the WWE will be more than just a private business that is attempting to make money for themselves, their employees and stockholders. It feels like they owe us something more since they seemingly cash in on our loyalty, and carve a piece out of our soul, with every episode like the one we saw last week. We are both naive and audacious, I suppose, to hope that the WWE is not just a receptacle for the backroom politics that sell us t-shirts and chocolate bars, and that the “art” they produce can provide some kind of transcendent epiphany from a world where each match is just the link in one long economic chain. Unfortunately “change” isn’t as easy a concept as bringing in new writers, pushing Kevin Owens instead of Roman Reigns, or having a 5-star match every once in a while; and so everyone submitting to this capitalist cycle should feel bad.

Jack Stevenson: FACT – It was pretty dismal, although I don’t think dramatically worse than your usual episode of Raw. The problems are the same week to week; the presentation of the show hasn’t moved on significantly since 1999, three hours is far too much time to fill if you want to put on a punchy and consistently entertaining show, and storylines lack any kind of hook or incentive that makes you want to follow them live on a weekly basis. There’s usually at least one really good wrestling match to compensate ever so slightly for all of this, but this week we didn’t even get that. I mean, I don’t want WWE to ‘feel bad’ about this. They’re not forcing us to watch. They can put on whatever program they like. But I agree with the spirit of the question, which I believe is ‘was Raw pretty crappy this week, perhaps even slightly more so than usual?’ Yes! Yes it was.

5. Smackdown has been the superior show to Raw since the draft.

Jake Chambers: FICTION – Yes, fine, Smackdown has been more entertaining, had some better matches, maybe been a little more logical, but it’s still a WWE formatted show. And as long as you’re doing the WWE format, RAW will always be your superior overlord. Smackdown, NXT, TNA Impact, Ring of Honor, all this crap conforms to one basic standard of pro-wrestling television programming dictated by the RAW stencil. So for Smackdown to somehow break free from this cage and be the superior show it would have to do more than just put on a couple of subjectively better matches, it would need to rise above the generic WWE format, as Lucha Underground and NJPW on AXS have done. Otherwise, Smackdown is just one bad week away from being a piece of shit all over again.

Jack Stevenson: FACT – Smackdown has only two hours to fill, rather than three, which is a considerably more surmountable challenge. Perhaps more importantly though, it’s free from the pressure of being the long running A-show, which means it can take bold gambles like inserting James Ellsworth into the main event picture, carefully rehabilitating seemingly dead in the water midcarders like Dolph Ziggler and the Miz, and turning AJ Styles into a genuinely imposing, unimpeachable champion (in comparison to Kevin Owens who has never really felt like the star of the show on Raw). All of these things have turned out spectacularly well, and made Smackdown feel like a real land of opportunity where everyone gets a decent shot at success. On the whole it’s more hit and miss than I’m making it sound, and it’s certainly not all time great TV or anything, but it’s almost always extremely watchable, and comfortably the better of the two brands since the second split.

6. What is your current excitement level for The WWE Survivor Series PPV?

Jake Chambers: 5 out of 10 – Yes, I know, I must sound like a hypocrite for even caring at all after everything I’ve written so far. But am I a hypocrite or an addict? As stagnant and lame as I assume the WWE will be from week-to-week, PPV-to-PPV, I always return. And while watching for those few hours I actually feel “right”. The rhythm of these shows, the droning of these announcers, the haze of my hate-watching, and the feeling that that we’re always just on the verge of something really awesome happening, is my normal. I know that as Survivor Series draws closer I will begin to fantasize about the cool things that might happen. I’ll go through the steps of how Dolph and Sami can have a “back-and-forth” classic, try to justify how a horrible match on paper like Brock vs. Goldberg might surprise me, and dream of the epic Survivor Series matches we might get that aren’t just guys getting eliminated after celebrating having eliminated someone else. So I’m going to say my excitement level is a 5, but please, pray for me. Those who will read this with hatred in your hearts, know that I am in pain and show some compassion rather than wish me dead for saying things about wrestling you don’t like. Those who will read this with clear eyes and full hearts, this is a time for us to comfort each other through the rollercoaster that is a 5 today, a 10 on PPV Sunday afternoon, and a 1 on Monday morning.

Jack Stevenson: 6 out of 10 – here’s not been a really terrific Survivor Series in over a decade, I think, but it can still be a fun and distinctive PPV if the traditional elimination tags come off well. With the battle for brand supremacy underlying them this year, I think that they will, and the Brock Lesnar-Goldberg match should, one way or another, be a spectacle- I’m surprised at how interested in it I’ve become. At best, I’d imagine it will be the fifth or sixth best show of the year, and to be honest TLC tends to promise a better night of action these days, with at least one exciting and dangerous Ladder match always guaranteed. Still, I may well make the effort to watch Survivor Series live, and going in with low expectations I think I’ll be fairly pleased with the show. It can’t be much worse than last year’s…