lolwwe: Examining the Return of the Dudleys and Sting in a Broader Perspective

Introduction: On the August 24th edition of Monday Night RAW, three professional wrestlers made surprising returns to the WWE: not only did Sting surprise WWE World Heavyweight and United States Champion Seth Rollins in the main event segment, but earlier in the evening, Bubba Ray and D-Von Dudley returned after WWE Tag Team Champions the New Day had successfully defended their titles against Los Matadores, with the Dudley Boyz putting Xavier Woods through a table with the 3D. In a vacuum, depending on how you feel about older/legendary talent, these segments likely fell somewhere on your radar from “Best. Show. Ever.” to “Ugh, these guys again”. But these incidents, and others like them, do not exist in a vacuum, and I am going to examine the reaction of wrestling fans at large to both returns, as well as look at how what appears to be a majority of fans’ reactions are troubling in the greater context of professional wrestling as a whole.

First off, let me start by saying that I am not particularly enamored with the return of Sting or the Dudley Boyz. While I recognize that all three men have made great contributions to an era where professional wrestling enjoyed a much greater popularity than it currently can claim, I feel like both acts are being used improperly. Sting’s booking, especially, makes little sense, as why would a man with one WWE match under his belt be given a shot at the WWE World Heavyweight Champion, especially when that one WWE match is a loss? This becomes even more puzzling when you consider that the WWE World Heavyweight Champion is allied with the people responsible for booking matches, including the man who despises Sting and holds a victory over “The Vigilante” in his one WWE match. If the Authority explain it away as Sting being a washed-up old man that even a part-timer like Triple H can beat (obviously Triple H would never refer to himself in that context, but you get my meaning), and therefore an easy opponent for Seth Rollins, then it would actually make sense. But, at this point, the way Rollins and Triple H sold Sting’s appearance last week, that is almost certainly not the case. Sure, Rollins plays a cowardly heel, but there’s a time for arrogance and a time where discretion truly is the better part of valor, and for a guy like Rollins, who has proclaimed loudly and longly that he is better than his Authority mentor and was one day removed from going toe-to-toe and move-for-move with arguably the most infallible pay-per-view performer in modern WWE history, the final segment of last week’s RAW would have been a time for arrogance, at least in my mind.

And that attitude, to me, would be to the greatest benefit for both Rollins and Sting. Let the younger, more athletic, in-his-prime champion go into his title defense against a seemingly inferior opponent nearly three decades his senior with all of the confidence in the world, only for the crafty veteran to use his experience and ring smarts to surprise the champion. Ideally, in that scenario, Rollins would still win cleanly, but the match would take him to his limits and make Sting look like a million dollars with a hard-fought loss (absent all of the shenanigans of his Wrestlemania loss to Triple H, obviously). And Rollins actually earning a completely clean win over a legend like Sting would help to silence some of the detractors who feel like he is incapable of winning a match on his own.

In spite of the WWE World Tag Team Championship being treated with much less reverence by the WWE creative team than the World Heavyweight Championship, the Dudleys actually represent the more problematic return in my eyes, and not just because a pair of forty-somethings signing full-time main roster contracts almost guarantees that younger wrestlers are going to lose out on valuable television time. In WWE’s main event scene, this is not as big a deal, as all roads eventually lead back to Cena, but the tag team division was just starting to look like it might actually gain real momentum. But that’s not even the real reason I think that the Dudleys’ return to WWE is bothersome – it is because of how so many fans on the internet have reacted to it. For the past week, I have read hundreds of comments on wrestling sites and Facebook, most of them largely positive, regarding the return of the Dudley Boyz to RAW (and Smackdown).

So why is the return of a nostalgia act being so well-received making me so uneasy?

Because of the hypocrisy in it all. Where were these same fans almost exactly a year ago, when Team 3D reunited to try to give legitimacy to the Impact Wrestling tag team division? The people who read the paragraph before last and thought to themselves “New Day going over the Dudleys at Night of Champions would give the younger tag champs legitimacy”, did they give Team 3D (or the Hardyz, for that matter) the same benefit of the doubt last year when they were working with the Wolves? By and large, I am going to say no, based on a vast majority of the comments I got when I was covering episodes of Impact last summer/fall. Dino Zee, Len Archibald, and myself have all written at length about how wrestling fans need to stop being so critical of one another, and if there is one good thing about the Dudleys return to WWE, it at least offers the chance for some of those same people who lambasted TNA for reuniting Team 3D last year to consider why it is okay for WWE to do it this year, when the performers who portray Bubba Ray/Bully Ray and D-Von/Devon are a year older and farther removed from holding any tag team gold.

Because this is the internet, so I doubt the hardcore TNA critics will do anything even remotely that introspective; however, it fascinates me at the gaps in their logic that they have to (perhaps unconsciously) jump through to justify Sting in WWE’s next main event or the Dudleys starting a program with the tag team champs. Just as Sting is 0-1 in his WWE career, if you discount TNA, the Dudleys haven’t won a match of any significance in a decade or more, so what is the logic behind them going after the tag team champions, especially when there were three other teams involved in the match when New Day won back the tag team titles? At least when the New Age Outlaws beat the Rhodes Brotherhood for the tag team championships back at Royal Rumble 2014 (an unpopular decision at the time, I might add), they had won a few matches against legitimate tag teams, including a non-title match-up against the champions, before they received their title shot. (Oh, wait, no – WWE rushed the Dudleys through that process as well, having them beat the tag champs on their third night back with the company.)

What surprises me the most about these returns, though, is how genuinely excited people who incessantly complain about WWE’s booking seem to be. Granted, a lot of them are fans like I wrote about last week, who think TV-PG is what ails WWE right now, and it would make sense for them to latch onto any act who harkens back to the Attitude Era. But for the majority of those of you who commented on my last column agreeing with me that the issue is not the constraints by which the creative team’s hands are bound, but the creative team themselves, then you are probably at least somewhat cognizant of the fact that bringing in the Dudleys is, at best, a Band-Aid for a division that has not been booked properly since probably the era of the Smackdown Six. And at worst, as I mentioned above, it is going to be more guys who were relevant ten years ago taking spots from guys who might otherwise become relevant, just when the division has shown stirrings of life.

[And in the interest of full disclosure, I will repeat my opinions on both Sting and the Dudleys here, which I have reiterated time and again in various forums. In my mind, Sting has not been responsible for a good match since Nitro went off of the air, as his handful of above-average matches in TNA were largely the result of talented opponents like Kurt Angle and AJ Styles who were able to hide his deficiencies. And the Dudley Boyz, right down the “z” in their name, are a product of a bygone era that is better left behind. The return of the “Wassup” diving headbutt and D-Von’s “Testify”, and the recurring use of tables tells me that WWE is giving them the full nostalgia push, though hopefully they will stop short of having Bubba Ray put a woman through a table, especially after the controversy that arose the last time the then-Bully Ray did that.

But I’ll also state that I do believe that there is a place for acts like the Dudley Boyz and Sting in professional wrestling in 2015, and that all three performers still have something to offer to both WWE and its fans. The key is going to be in ensuring that they are utilized properly and not at the expense of younger talent.]

Are there fans excited for them to return to WWE in late summer 2015?

Absolutely, and honestly, I hope that we get the best-case scenarios for both of these returns – the old guys get one last run in the biggest wrestling company in the world and help to build up the popularity of the people who are still going to be on RAW two, three, or even ten years from now. But even in a worst case scenario, what is far more interesting to me is what the excitement to see Sting and the Dudleys in a WWE ring in 2015 says about wrestling fandom as a whole, especially the “smart” contingent that populates a great deal of the internet. So please, if you read this and cannot wait for Sting to face off with Seth Rollins or the Dudleys to take on the New Day, the next time you consider making a “loltna”-style comment slagging on promotions like TNA or GFW for bringing in aging talent or ex-WWE guys, just take a minute to consider whether or not you really want to click the “post” button.

Wyatt Beougher is a lifelong fan of professional wrestling who has been writing for 411 for over three years and currently hosts MMA Fact or Fiction and reviews Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.