READER COURTESY: This column was approximately 4.5 pages on Google Docs.
Sunday, April 5, 2020. An empty warehouse training facility for The Grandest Stage of ‘Em All, compromised and brought down to its fucking knees by mother nature biting back at an arrogant, irresponsible species known as the human race.
That’s the last time I have bothered watching professional wrestling in real-time. As humans around the globe panicked over a virus that was bound to always arrive, WWE set the precedent as the leader of the industry, still pushing forward with hosting the Show of Shows and putting its crew and roster at risk, and doing so at a glorified gym without any spectators present.
It didn’t matter that the NCAA cancelled its men’s basketball tournament, and that the NBA, NHL, and MLB all put their seasons on hold. WWE put its TV contract commitments first, and therefore AEW felt inclined to do so as well, both companies taking advantage of Florida’s absolutely ludicrous “essential services” loophole for televised events.
So once the stories building up to WrestleMania 36 got wrapped up, I made the decision that I would simply take a break until the empty arena era concluded, until the human race had finally gotten definite control over COVID-19.
The empty arena era of pro wrestling lost me, as no matter how prepared certain talents with experience on the indies may be to adapt to such an environment, the soundtrack that only a live, captive audience could provide was gone. As ultimately a form of theater without any official competitive scoreboard, the loss of fans being present was too much for professional wrestling to overcome, no matter how much legitimate sporting live events would eventually prove otherwise on their stages. The magic of professional wrestling simply does not exist without spectators.
With a bad taste in my mouth already from pro wrestling continuing to hold shows in the spring of 2020, little did I know that the industry would find even more bad tastes to deliver in the coming months. WWE’s decision to mass-release talent and employees in April of 2020 would lead to me to permanently giving up on ever supporting real-time WWE until the day Vince McMahon fucks off or simply dies (a day that I do not dread whatsoever thanks to his treatment towards the likes of Martha Hart, Chris Kanyon, Ashley Massaro, Melanie Pillman, Nancy Argentino’s family, and so many others).
I truly became lapsed at that point, only bothering with wrestling’s past. After many months, I slightly relented on my WWE boycott, choosing only to give McMahon’s empire my money for the WWE Network archive, and then later Peacock. In the meantime, I began to chronicle the indies and puro scenes of the early 2000s on Voices of Wrestling, and it has since been reset, deemed as The Lapsed Timeline, and undergone the absolute upgrade of migrating over to this very website.
But within weeks of my Voices of Wrestling contributions beginning came Speaking Out. Thanks to the bravery of so many who had been victimized and exploited by the worst parasites of the industry, I underwent my worst pain as a wrestling fan since the Benoit family tragedy. I questioned if I could bother with pro wrestling at all, and my disgust only increased further not just when so many accused violators responded with such a strong lack of remorse and character, but when so many in the professional wrestling media (specifically the one at the very top of it that should be setting the example for everyone else to follow) chose not to loudly, aggressively push the industry into making a complete commitment towards making the business a safer place for everyone, including the fans.
After some time, I returned to my retro reviews, with the hopes that one day I could use my platform to shine a light on the industry’s moral failures, be it related to the pandemic, Speaking Out, or the many other things that have proven worthy of being featured on Dark Side of the Ring. I decided I would not completely walk away from the professional wrestling fandom community, but would do my best to use it as an opportunity to advocate for various causes both in and out of the business, no matter who might be pissed off or rubbed the wrong way as a result.
While moral failings were the biggest reason I became lapsed and lost interest in keeping up with pro wrestling last year, they were not the only reason. Although I had continued attending pro wrestling events (including all three Texas episodes of Dynamite in the 2019-20 winter season, as well as WWE’s events on Royal Rumble 2020 weekend in Houston), my passion for wrestling was seeming to dissolve in the late 2010s, my irritation towards the industry incrementally increasing.
From WWE’s sports-washing with Saudi Arabia, to the company’s lack of producing highly dramatic and epic slow burn programs (such as Randy Savage vs. Hulk Hogan in the late 1980s and Batista vs. Triple H in the mid-2000s), to its decision to hold *FIVE* main roster PPV events over a 9-week span in 2018 (in the middle of the busiest annual period in TV and American team sports to boot), and not delivering anything epic for the 2018 returns of Shawn Michaels, Batista, and Bryan Danielson, it was becoming extremely difficult to keep the passion alive.
Not even the fledgling AEW a year later was good enough. While certainly a cable TV pro wrestling alternative was welcome, especially one that had more resources and stronger minds running it in than TNA has ever had, the promotion was too lighthearted for me, full of too many “Peter Parker” types; excellent athletes with so much potential, but simply not polished enough, not rugged enough, not alpha enough, and not serious enough across the board for me, especially with the lack of variety in other personality types.
AEW’s insistence on ultimately sticking to its Being the Elite roots as a lighthearted promotion, no matter how different in flavor to WWE’s irritating version of lighthearted presentation, was never good enough for me to be more than a casual fan of the company before I completely gave up on current pro wrestling. It didn’t matter that the company had more logical, coherent storytelling than WWE. It didn’t matter that its presentation of individual star wrestlers made them shine and connect more with their fans. It didn’t matter that at the Austin edition of Dynamite a month prior to the COVID-19 shit hitting the fan, I was present for the biggest reaction I’d ever heard Jon Moxley receive in his career as I had a brief conversation with AEW’s Chris “Mookieghana” Harrington.
Not even taking my morals into account, pro wrestling gradually lost me prior to COVID-19 for a very simple reason:
Because simply put, it used to be fucking better.
Of course, it must be objectively acknowledged that yes, AEW is a superior product for the wrestling fan consumer than the version of WWE that Vince McMahon, Nick Khan, Kevin Dunn, and John Laurinaitis distribute. AEW has done a vastly superior job of balancing its commitment to its corporate masters and its supporting consumer base. They’re not just dead-set on treating the fans as faceless tools to drive up future TV contract negotiation rates.
Objectively speaking, AEW does a better job than WWE of making its supercard events matter, of trying to put asses in seats, of getting those people in those seats engaged enough to make noise, and accommodating its most loyal customer base.
Also being acknowledged is that in the past 15 years, there has not been a better, more consistent, more definitively metric-moving tag team in professional wrestling than the Young Bucks. Kenny Omega’s status as a Hall of Famer also cannot be denied – he has earned such an accolade thanks to his drawing power, his acclaimed in-ring performances, his ability to deliver under the brightest lights, and his significant contributions in giving WWE its greatest competition since WCW.
But for this lapsed fan, it simply has not been good enough. I’m not a Young Bucks guy. I’m not a Kenny Omega guy.
And not even the tragic death of Brodie Lee, as well as what I trust was an incredibly heartwarming tribute episode for him, was enough to draw me in.
For I am not just a lapsed fan. No – I am The Lapsed ROHbot.
What that means is that I am a CM Punk and Bryan Danielson guy. They are the ones that I followed since being introduced to ROH in 2005, and later on developed the emotional mark attachment to them that had been missing for years thanks to the painful deaths of Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero.
I bring up Punk and Danielson not just because their imminent arrivals in AEW are what is drawing me back to present-day professional wrestling. I bring them up because since their initial retirements in the mid-2010s, WWE has failed to replace them in those precious “hardcore fan” one-two punch spots that were once held by Benoit & Eddie and Punk & Danielson. For a plethora of reasons to dig into at another time, WWE flushed down its opportunity to position Sami Zayn & Kevin Owens into those spots over the past half-decade, even with its own NXT division having already provided the fucking playbook on how to do it.
When ROH transitioned away from its glory days under the ownership regimes of Rob Feinstein and Cary Silkin, and entered what is now known as “The Smoky Mountain of Honor” era in July 2011, I gave up on ROH, and did so for the rest of the indies as well.
About 24 hours after the 9-year, 4-month ROH “little engine that could” golden age officially ended with Best in the World 2011, CM Punk would sit down in Las Vegas and bring the “Pipebomb” style promo to the mainstream wrestling audience, treating them to a masterpiece on the microphone that lapsed ROHbots such as myself had already gotten the pleasure of living through in the summer of 2005.
Come Money in the Bank 2011, with ROH no longer staying true to its original identity of trying to be an ahead-of-the-curve alternative to WWE, now it was WWE giving these cream-of-the-crop stars of the indies the push they had been entitled to for a decade since the Monday Night War ended. While Punk would be the headlining takeaway in what now still stands as his career-defining moment, it was Danielson underneath in the opener that finally got the seed planted for a future big push, winning one of the Money in the Bank contract ladder matches.
By the spring of 2012, there was no denying that for fans like me, we were no longer just lapsed ROHbots. If we wanted to still be CM Punk & Bryan Danielson guys, we didn’t need to shell out $20 for an indy DVD. All we had to do now was turn the channel to SyFy and USA, and if their storylines were interesting enough, cough up the big bucks or find a nearby sports bar to see their PPV matches. It was a long overdue attitude change in WWE, with Punk & Danielson being the co-captains that had broken that glass ceiling for the stars of the underground.
But of course, WWE got overzealous for so many different reasons as the 2010s progressed, arguably draining the indies at an unsustainable rate. The company had no rational middle ground, going from snubbing its nose at the indy talents in the decade following the War, to attempting to gobble seemingly all of them up in order to maintain its monopoly status.
WWE also opted not to woo back CM Punk when he half-heartedly rejoined the “family” through FOX Sports in late 2019; and three years after coming out of retirement, the company had Bryan Danielson headline WrestleMania once again this year, a desperate ploy to keep him around and also save the Universal Title program involving Roman Reigns and Edge. (To be fair, it must be acknowledged that Reigns had wanted to work a WrestleMania program with Danielson for years, and that per the February 8, 2021 edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Edge and Danielson had desired to work a program with each other this year too.)
In short, even with Danielson’s return from retirement, the magic of him and Punk being that precious one-two punch that they were in 2012-13 was not rekindled through them, in addition to those spots not being fulfilled by Zayn & Owens thanks to WWE’s overall grating business personality.
Not only has WWE failed in the past 7 years to deliver on that magical one-two punch once held by Benoit & Eddie and Punk & Danielson, but they managed to make me not care about Danielson (who at this point is my favorite wrestler of all-time) headlining WrestleMania. It takes a truly special level of arrogance and business operations to pull that off.
In addition to that one-two punch not being present in modern-day American mainstream wrestling, there’s nobody in the business, be it mainstream or underground, be it American, lucha, puro, or European, that makes me *FEEL* like I did supporting and marking out for ROH as well as Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero in the 2000s, and how I marked out similarly for Punk & Danielson in 2011-15, and how I did so to a lesser degree for Zayn & Owens when they were part of the NXT brand.
With the additions of CM Punk & Bryan Danielson to AEW, I don’t just want them in acclaimed matches and moments. I want them to bring the aura of seriousness that catapulted them to WWE stardom and so strongly defined the glory days of ROH and the independent scene. I want that tone of what my peak fandom was back in the 2000s through the mid-2010s to be brought into AEW, so that the company can have a more outstanding gravitas to its biggest matches.
I want Punk & Danielson to be involved in layered storylines that stretch many, many, many months, slow burning to mega culmination matches and moments at events like All Out and Double or Nothing.
I want Punk & Danielson to be the beginning of AEW’s roster becoming more rugged, so rugged that the lapsed fans and old-timers like Jim Cornette can no longer deny the roster of being as tough as those in the past were.
I want Punk & Danielson to utilize their mainstream veteran status and traditional values to do what Chris Jericho has very obviously stopped doing. I want them to give tongue-lashings to AEW’s younger talent who repeatedly choose to neglect simple storytelling traits that require patience like selling and enforcing tag rules, things that will make the action-packed moments and segments in matches mean so much more on an emotional level.
Simply put, I want AEW to utilize Punk & Danielson in such a way in that causes me to stop pontificating that it used to be fucking better.
Tomorrow afternoon in the hours prior to Punk’s imminent return from retirement on Rampage, I will present an additional AEW-centered column, pinpointing what I wanna see from this federation going forward now that I’m on the bandwagon, and the focus won’t just be on the fun stuff like storyline and business ideas, but on things that REALLY fucking matter beyond the consumers’ entertainment value.
I’ll throw one hint at what I will pitch in tomorrow’s column.
I want CM Punk to not only waltz in and get the fast-track to headline All Out 2021, but to cleanly dethrone Kenny Omega for the AEW World Championship in front of his hometown Chicago fans.
On tomorrow’s column, I’ll explain exactly why that (as well as what I have in mind for Danielson) are what’s best for business, and get us lapsed folks to stop saying that it used to be fucking better.
You have my attention now, AEW. Don’t fucking waste it.