Not a fan of Finn Balor outside of his in ring ability. He has the charisma of a cabbage. Him putting on paint which gives him special powers just makes him a little bit lamer and him spinning around on the floor trying to be intimidating as the demon makes him look like an idiot.
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Maybe we should think of Vince McMahon’s shows (Raw, Smackdown) as the pre-retirement collect-the-paycheck tour for any talented wrestler?
He doesn’t have one. It’s the same issue you see up and down the roster.
Balor. Reigns. Dean. McIntyre.
There’s no life or colour to be found. Just a steady shade of morally ambivalent grey, literally and figuratively. The WWE thinks dark-shaded cargo pants and a scowl is shorthand for badass and mistake silence for mystery. What all this really adds up to is a promotion full vaguely fleshed out clones that lack motive and struggle to invite emotional investment.
It makes you yearn for the days when half of the WWF roster was made up of gimmicks based on white-collar jobs. Sure they were silly, but at least when a tax officer steps into the ring with a unionized garbage man, the angle comes built in.
He’s the Demon?
I disagree. Balor, Reigns, Dean and McIntyre at least get a reaction from the audience. If Duke The Dumpster and IRS had a match on Raw in 1995 you could hear a pin drop in the audience. They may need more personality and audience appeal, but you forgot how god awful the WWE was then most of the time. Sure you had Owen, Bret, Bulldog, and Shawn, but the rest was a lot of shit and guys that couldn’t draw at a flea market.
They get reactions, but it’s off of charisma, an intimidating presence, or a combination of these and other qualities. But those qualities aren’t channeled into any identifiable, coherent character. You can’t draw motive from those qualities.
And honestly, there are guys who can get by on that. Character isn’t _absolutely_necessary, but I think it’s pretty close, and it definitely makes booking and building up matches a lot easier.
The problem isn’t that any one wrestler lacks clear character, it’s that it seems to be a trend amongst the roster.
I was joking about the white-collar gimmicks.
Except IRS. Schyster is a top-5 character in any era.
Well, I’d say Ambrose is working on reinventing his character even as we post these messages.