To no surprise, I think I have a difficult time connecting with the current iteration of wrestling fans. I question their allegiances, why they pop so hard for certain things, and why they resent particular guys so much, regardless of just how obviously hard they work to better themselves and try and improve; for them.
With Wrestlemania creeping ever closer, it’s that time when storylines begin manifesting for the supposed grandest show of the year. Naturally, in spite of The Steak having come to an end two years prior, it’s still very much a big deal that the Undertaker participates in Wrestlemania. With ol’ Mark Calloway not getting any younger, every year is speculation about when his last Wrestlemania is going to be, and theorizing which of the current guard should be the guy that gets that ultimate rub and sign of respect from the Deadman, to be the one who “ends his career.”
Make no mistake, the Undertaker is going to lose his final match, whenever that may be. He’s of an old guard that firmly believes that no one person is bigger than the business, and the only way to show respect for the business on your way out, is to go out on your back, and lose your last match. Mick Foley lost his last match. As did Ric Flair. Shawn Michaels lost several “final matches,” as has The Rock. Even Stone Cold Steve Austin, at least when it came to wrestling matches, lost his final match.
The Undertaker will lose, when it’s his time to hang up the boots for good.
I just have an extremely difficult time accepting that it’ll be Shane McMahon who will have the ultimate honor in doing so. Needless to say, in spite of what fictional stakes are on the line at Wrestlemania, I don’t think Shane-O is going to beat the Undertaker, take over RAW and take the company to glory. And health permitting, I think Undertaker probably comes back in 2017, and drops a final match, much to the smarks’ dismay, to Roman Reigns.
But let’s backtrack a little bit, and get to the point of why I’m rambling on about wrestling in this post. Shane McMahon. A guy who has been off television for nearly six full years, mostly because he’s a proud businessman who wanted to build a career outside of the ‘Rasslin business, and has supposedly succeeded in such, in his personal ventures. But as a McMahon, there’s something about Wrestlemania, and probably the call from dear dad Vince, proposing a storyline in which Shane comes back, and they turn the biggest show of the year, into yet another McMahon Family Affair.
If not for her political ambitions and aspirations, I would almost have said I’d have bet money that Linda McMahon would show up on television as well, but her political adversaries would just love to be able to make references to her participation in a homoerotic television people where people fight oiled up and in their underwear, in the Senate.
But as for Shane, he shows up on television, the crowd goes ballistic, and if I actually utilized and paid any attention to my Twitter account (yes I actually have one, but don’t ever use it), probably noticed just how excited the internet community was. And I’m over here like, cool, but is he actually going to wrestle? Is he actually going to occupy a spot on the Wrestlemania card, that maybe like… Neville or Kevin Owens could have filled instead?
And then he’s put into a program with the Undertaker, and the crowd is going nuts, the internet is blowing up, even Facebook trends point out what had happened (which actually spoiled it for me, since I never watch live). People are clearly excited for Shane McMahon vs. the Undertaker at Wrestlemania; in HELL IN A CELL.
But I’m not. I’m kind of like ehhhhhhhhhhhh…
The Undertaker is old. Shane McMahon’s entire head of gray hairs also signify that Father Time hasn’t neglected him either. The Undertaker loses a little bit of mobility and functionality every single year, and Shane-O probably has so much rust built on him that he probably could have grown coral on his wrestling career, had it been submerged in the ocean.
Not to mention that no matter how much the WWE tries to have fans believe, Shane McMahon isn’t really a wrestler. Sure, he’s always been a good worker that respects the wrestlers he works with to understand the importance of trying to put on a good match, but he’s still not a real wrestler. He’ll jump off of high things and throw some really bad looking punches, which his opponents will always sell like a billion dollars because he’s a McMahon, but he’s never the guy you’ll see pull of a sequence of takedowns and pinfall attempts. He’s had the luxury of working primarily with very talented wrestlers in his career who have carried him to some respectable performances, but come Wrestlemania, he’ll have to rely on a 50-year old man who can barely walk upright at this point, to carry him to an extremely high-profile match.
Needless to say, I’m not really looking forward to this match, and I don’t have very high hopes that it’s going to be any good. Despite the cell that will be encasing the ring, I don’t doubt that there will be a tremendous amount of outside interference throughout the match, probably from a litany of older faces to create some surprise and shock. But in between, it will probably be somewhat of a snoozefest that starts with Shane-O trying to dance around the Undertaker, doing his little dance with his baby-arm windmilling, before the Undertaker eventually catches him, and shoves his face into the steel cage 20 times.
I say the Undertaker wins, but at the same time, I don’t rule out the idea that the Undertaker deliberately takes a dive, because he wants to see change in the industry, and/or a means to simply screw Vince McMahon for a change. Since the Steak is over, any further losses simply aren’t detrimental to his career at this point, but hopefully it’s not the loss in which he calls it quits after.
Either way, it’s not a match that has any chance at stealing the show, and frankly seems kind of like a waste, for both parties involved. I hear there’s this sub-company within the company based out of Orlando that has a lot of talented wrestlers chomping at the bit, but I also hear that they won’t start being cherry picked until after Wrestlemania. So Shane-O-Mac is pretty much all we get.
