Absolutely fantastic Wai! The part about this that I loved most is we weren’t meant to get it right away. I watched this live and loved the creativity but didn’t fully understand each meaning upon initial watching. Unlike the boneyard match where its great action but very easy to follow, this makes us think long and hard about what each part of the match means. It was a beautifully constructed story with deeper meaning packed in each second of TV time and its meant to be debated and discussed rather than understood. Like any great movie, the more you watch it the more you pick up on and more thoughts it provokes. A great piece of art and storytelling that rewards viewers and allows for discussion and you to form your own opinions. Simply amazing
Fantastic take Wai, thanks for taking the time to write an excellent piece. A part of the funhouse match that I haven’t seen discussed much is the subtle reference to a circus funhouse itself. It’s there. Weird mirrors making Cena look at himself differently…going from room to room in a vaguely conscious haze and a weird clown at the end of the ride.
Ultimately I think it leads to a broader question about wrestling being an art form and what restrictions if any should exist. I can’t answer that but I think the largely positive response the funhouse has generated is a good start.
And just in my opinion, it was better than Lesnar and Goldberg poorly playing the same sad, short, 1 note song that was old ages ago.
Thanks again Wai.
My first time ever using the POST Forum – to tell you how much I loved the match – and this write up.
One important thing I think John P. is missing is that we know the outcomes are scripted – and that John Cena beating Wyatt at the other Wrestlemania wasn’t just about “Wins and losses.”
This breaks the fourth wall a bit – but it’s the reality, and features much more reality than AJ Styles being buried in the ground with his hand sticking out.
The Funhouse Match is my favorite thing I’ve watched in WWE since the Summerslam matches between CM Punk and Brock Lesnar, and Daniel Bryan and John Cena all those years ago.
I liked the way it was presented, but I had a problem with it not actually being a match, this looked more like segments that were to be shown leading up to wrestlemania. for those of us that were expecting a match, we got ripped off. Are we to believe that Cena is now off of any further wwe program, what happens when he does return, is Bray wyatt gonna start crying and bitching that he didn’t get the job done.
Once you shatter the notion of wins and losses within the program you are lost.
You cannot structure a wrestling show around the notion that ‘everyone knows it’s scripted’ or else this show wouldn’t even work. If the argument is John Cena ‘didn’t put Bray Wyatt over’ at WM 30, then what value does this segment hold? That Cena lay down for this guy in a scripted environment and therefore, we should applaud him now?
Throw out wins and losses - the better comparison to this segment would be John Cena not selling the surroundings of the Firefly Funhouse, calling out that they are on a sound stage, there are camera operators shooting this segment, both worked together to help produce the piece, and shatter the illusion of what the segment had created - because for those 15 minutes, the audience wasn’t thinking ‘this is fake’, they were caught up in the story and bought into it. The same is the case for the rest of a wrestling program where, of course, people know what wrestling is, but why would you call that out?
You have to decipher the outlet in which you’re addressing. Wai noted how he couldn’t imagine a Hogan or Austin doing that type of segment - now imagine, coming back and Tom Phillips or Michael Cole made that same comment, therefore ending the illusion and shining a light that this was a pre-produced segment that took John Cena’s cooperation to be executed? It doesn’t belong there and undoes all the work the previous 15 minutes achieved.