wrestling / Columns
Mixed Match Chambers – Jake’s MMC Review – Week 6
Loading...This past week has demonstrated more vividly than most how the WWE continues to confuse perception and reality.
The ideology of this company has been in question for years, from something like the pro-war imagery / war-logic ignorance of the Hulk Hogan vs. Sgt. Slaughter Iraq War feud, to the catch-up-to-society announcement of a “Diva’s Revolution” inside a fictional universe that wrote the female characters like they were insignificant in the first place.
Is the WWE a global humanitarian project with their sights on helping to Westernize the culture of entire countries through symbolic play fighting? Or are they a politically neutral, for-hire propaganda tool that will play a bat mitzvah or a dictatorship’s stadium, just as long as the cheque clears? I suppose you can be both, and many corporations and governments today are, but unlike say Google, Canada or the NFL, the WWE is the only place peddling in pretend reality. So is it’s hard to navigate what we see and why they script when determining where you are supposed to situate yourself as an “enlightened” fan.
Monday Night RAW was a sobering example of the head-scratching corners of confusion the WWE paints us into. They opened the show with Universal Champion Roman Reigns coming out of character and acknowledging his real-life battle with leukemia. Instantly, the majority of the live audience and his legion of detractors online switched from irrational hatred to stunning sympathy. The mood was as electrically frozen as the aftermath of a lightning strike. And rightfully so. Here was a real guy, one so many had irrationally criticized for years, facing an objectively life-threatening disease, and this caused a lot of fans to reflect on their fandom choices.
While clearly a tragic situation, when the opportunity arises the WWE will use these 4th-wall breaking moments to drive their economic narrative. And thus we saw the contrast to this very real opening segment against the very fake ending segment. The friends of Roman Reigns “broke up” when Dean Ambrose turned on Seth Rollins just hours removed from the touching moment when the three embraced following Reigns dramatic real announcement.
Of course, we all KNOW Dean Ambrose did not just turn on one of his best friends. So this signals to enlightened fans that it’s okay to pretend to be angry because that’s the emotion Ambrose is supposed to evoke as an performed. The WWE did nothing with the epiphany created by the realism of the Roman Reigns moment they presented on the very same TV show, and instead went into to their typical playbook of grrr argh aggression. The audience now must to pretend to hate a guy they like, after just having the ice water of reality thrown on them for hating a guy they were supposed to pretend to like.
What will be heralded as a “brilliant heel turn” for a week, though, will burn out quickly for this enlightened audience as the dice rolling of the WWE creative ideology juts randomly in the next nonsensical direction. Whatever creative reflection that could have come from the heart-wrenching Roman Reigns story about the ways they could present personality and character will be lost in a fog of contradictory politics, exploitive storytelling and safe choreography.
The Mixed Match Challenge stood at the precipice of change for the WWE at the beginning of 2018. A digital show that would be distributed exclusively through the world’s largest social network, eliminating the hierarchy of network meddling and the economic gateway of the Network. This freedom would allow them to present the men and women on an equal playing ground with no restriction for a mass audience. All the lip service of the “women’s revolution” could be fulfilled not in hashtag historics but in sustained equality. However, lack of care, patience, persistence, and creativity, has turned this show into just another gear in the WWE capitalist machine. How to get the most return from the least effort? Simple: repeated dancing sequences and attempts at the same jokes done over and over with less and less context.
I have no idea if I should like Roman Reigns, hate Dean Ambrose, watch the Crown Jewel, or support equality as an enlightened WWE fan. Am I supposed to play the role of the fan I think I should be, or am I already subconsciously playing the role of the kind of fan they want? This is what happens when a corporate mindset seizes a creative endeavour. The WWE is no more concerned with crafting artistic performance than McDonald’s is in preparing a great meal, Drake is in making great music, or the Avengers is in making classic cinema.
And thus I will continue my reviews on a Mixed Match Challenge season that has fundamentally let me down, but out of a sense of loyalty more than any joy left in this lazy, confused, dumb-ass show.
As always, 411mania is the home to the greatest show/match reviewer alive, Larry Csonka, and his weekly review of this show will breakdown the matches and expertly rate them in relation to his extensive knowledge of the pro-wrestling canon. However, naively created this alternative “star ratings” rubric to specifically focus on the MMC universe, thinking WWE would produce levels of matches on this series, and not just mail in 2-star performances on average. Wrong again.
5 Stars – a transcendent match that truly evens the playing field for the male and female wrestlers involved at a main event level.
For example = Ronda Rousey & Kurt Angle vs. Stephanie McMahon & Triple H: enraptured a Wrestlemania audience with action, drama and moments of believable inter-gender combat. It is unlikely any match from MMC 2 will be able to reach this rating level.
4 Stars – near-flawless and exciting wrestling action, where characters are out of the element and realistically trying to win the match in dramatic fashion; elements of inter-gender wrestling will be a strong bonus.
For example = MMC S2 – Week 1 – AJ Styles & Charlotte vs. Jimmy Uso & Naomi: featured a house-show level competitive back-and-forth between Charlotte and Naomi, fun verbal interactions between Styles and Uso, and inter-gender elements that resulted directly in the finish.
3 Stars – solid, clean wrestling where you don’t notice any continued errors or lethargic sequences; if lacking in drama or action, superior exterior features such as macro or micro storylining and/or character flourishes are taken into account.
For example = MMC S2 – Week 2 – Alicia Fox & Jinder Mahal vs. Mickie James & Bobby Lashley: Some very well-timed sequences fit together like dominoes, giving four wrestlers with often little opportunity to stretch their legs on the main roster a chance to fill out a compelling and satisfying match.
2 Stars – even if the wrestling performed is average or the outcome predictable, a match at this level should feature a solid pace that stops it from being boring or pointless.
For example = MMC S2 – Week 3 – Naomi & Jimmy Uso vs. Lana & Rusev: Overly relied on dance off segments that failed to pay off, but the quick-paced short wrestling segments rescued the match from being dull.
1 Star – basically a match that goes through the motions, relies heavily on rest holds, or features a lop-sided effort from competitors of one gender; mistakes and botches that stand out significantly more than any of the actual action in the match.
For example = MMC S2 – Week 3 – Finn Balor & Bayley vs. Jinder Mahal & Alicia Fox: a mess of awkward exchanges and rest holds featuring wrestlers who were clearly not having fun but straining to make it look like they were.
Match #1: B ‘n’ B vs. Team Paws
A pretty lifeless match that represents the current creative state of Mixed Match Challenge: dull wrestlers being produced to artificially have fun, rather than fun wrestlers being allowed to do their natural best.
The mixed partners on both of these teams are awkward, and the gendered match-ups across the ring are bore. Nothing illustrated this better than Roode and Balor, two of the most un-fun guys going, trying to sell a jacket/robe swap in the beginning sequence that went absolutely nowhere.
The “highlight” of the match, I suppose, was Bayley and Natalya doing slow-motion catch-as-catch-can work mid-match, although it looked about as important and strategic as a practice session in the Performance Center.
Relying on Balor and Roode to finish the match was standard fare, with only a brief callback to the identity switch moment from the beginning of the match, before Balor sleepwalked through another victory. Not as horrible as the matches from last week, but certainly nothing to get excited about.
Match Rating: **
Clearly, worst of all, is that there is no connection to the mounting tension in the block standings for the RAW side. With Team Paws coming in at 0-2, there should have been some seriousness on their part to need this win rather than the continued goofy stalling and confusingly un-fun attempts at having fun. The WWE are totally no-selling whatever it means to win this season, which is an insult to the viewers, the wrestlers, and the history of pro-wrestling.
Match #2: Awe-ska vs. Day One Glow
The best thing about this match were the subtle hints of the great “heel” Michael Cole commentary persona throughout… ah, those were good times!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRGhcMsZV8Q
A slightly better match here than the first one, but certainly not 3-star territory. At least The Miz is kind of unstoppably great in everything he does, and his refusal to recognize the hugging, only to tease leaving and then get put into a bear hug, was cute enough. Although, the writers here are clearly bored. I mean, “hugging” is the Bayley and/or Team Hell No gimmick, but they just throw it in randomly here, and frankly, it makes no sense in context anyways. If you’re trying to win a tournament, why would you stop in the middle to hug your opponent? I saw that happen in a Floyd Mayweather match once…
We have another match where it didn’t matter that it was part of a big tournament for wrestlers to try to win. The quote/unquote “fun” of these matches has nothing to do with it, as there was plenty of fun in the first season while still making everything about winning and moving on in that single elimination tournament. As I said last week, the WWE is using the round robin style to not actually add any complex drama to the show, but instead just make room for a bunch of empty, pointless matches to presumable fill time. Shame on me for thinking they might just be better than that.
Match Rating: **
So who’s gonna win? Sadly, it feels at this point the finalists – at least – are pretty clear.
Obviously, they are building to Country Dominance vs. Monster Eclipse on the last week with both at 3-0. And, even without the likelihood of Braun becoming Universal Champion at Crown Jewel, it’s hard to imagine them putting him on the TLC PPV with Ember Moon in the finals of this lame-duck tournament at this point. So you can pencil in Country Dominance representing the RAW side.
On Smackdown, again, even if Styles and Charlotte aren’t this brand’s respective gendered champions, it’s impossible they’d be slotted in to the Mixed Match Challenge finals on a PPV, so we can guess that in the final week, Awe-ska will defeat them and head to TLC.
Throw a few curveballs WWE, you’ve still got time. But nothing I’ve seen the past three weeks indicates they care at all about making this a quality pro-wrestling show.
