Year In Review

Whether or not I publish the next weekly review article early or not, the official dating on it will run to 1st January 2023, and there’s no major PPVs left, so this seems like a good time to take stock of where the wrestling world is at. First, I’ll run over some highlights and lowlights of the year, then I’ll have a look at a clutch of different promotions and outline my gut feelings on where they stand and where they are going.

Highlights of 2022

Vince McMahon Fucking Off

It’s really hard to argue at this point that, as of the start of 2022, Vince McMahon was WWE’s worst liability. An extensive history of inappropriate sexual behaviour came to light over the year, and various older stories about abusive behaviour on his part got aired again in the wake of that, and obviously it was never a good or appropriate thing that someone should act like that, especially someone with such power over a company and people’s careers as Vince.

The quality of the wrestling product is and should always be a very, very distant secondary concern next to the more serious harm Vince did, and it is kind of appalling that it took as much as it did to precipitate his resignation. As is too often the case, abuse and criminality will go away if you throw around enough money, unless and until you start doing stuff the SEC would raise an eyebrow at (like using money to cover up your abuses in such a manner that it should really have been reported in WWE’s financial statements), at which point the hammer comes down.

That essential preamble being said… Vince’s management of Creative had, by this point, become catastrophic for the company. The massacre of talent being purged from the company for “budget cuts” (despite record profits) was an absolute scandal, and would have been more of one had it not alleviated one of WWE’s other infuriating habits – namely, calling people up to the main roster and doing fuck all with them. Then again, for many talent being used in a storyline would be more of a curse than a blessing – outside of a select circle of well-protected stars, getting TV time generally was bad for people’s credibility.

It would even be bad for Vince; the last bump he took in a ring was a painfully awkward Stone Cold Stunner at Wrestlemania. After that, his TV appearances would largely either be quixotic attempts to push Austin Theory to an extent that fans weren’t going for, or (once the scandals broke) a rear-guard attempt to appear indispensable by underlining how much affection the WWE fanbase retained for him.

Many would argue that AEW probably would not exist, and definitely would not have as strong a roster as it does (even with this year’s departures) or a fanbase as large as it is, if it had not been for years and years of WWE taking its fanbase for granted, driving away audiences, and creating an environment where a company which didn’t treat its talent and viewers with absolute contempt would seem like the good guys. Tony Khan and his team did a good job getting AEW to this point, and it wouldn’t have gotten there had they made a bunch of TNA-esque botches – but they wouldn’t have been able to expand as far as they have if WWE hadn’t left a wide open goal for them, and that’s entirely on McMahon.

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Triple H Stepping Up

God, Triple H has had a rollercoaster year. He started it still recovering from his scary heart issue from late last year, wheeled out largely so he could officially retire and then giving every appearance of being isolated and sidelined, along with Stephanie, and a slew of firings focused on those generally regarded as being his favoured picks for behind-the-scenes crew. Then Vince got the boot, Stephanie and Nick Khan took control of the board, and Triple H took over Creative.

The upshot has been a sharp uptick in the quality of WWE programming. Has Trips fixed everything overnight? Of course not, part of the problem with the booking under Vince was not just down to individual shows being bad, but because of talent being either utterly devalued or outright tossed aside, leaving the roster needing extensive rehabilitation below the top card – but at least Triple H is making a good show of starting that process.

Rhea Ripley Becoming Our Mami

Rhea Ripley’s been gradually built into a star for a while, but this is the year when it seems that things finally clicked for her. She’s had all the ingredients for a while – a great look, sharp delivery on promos, athleticism and strength in the ring, and all that good stuff – and stuff like her tag team with Liv Morgan or her take on “modest” garb for Saudi Arabia events (getting around the “no skin showing below the neck” rules by taking the PVC catsuit route) were fun early in the year.

It was Judgment Day which was the making of her, though, a rare instance of late-era Vince booking working out well – though I would argue that a lot of credit has to go with how Triple H has taken this particular ball and run with it. It’s pretty obvious that he and the rest of Creative see a lot of Chyna in her, and are interested in exploring her getting some intergender fighting in – her match against Tozawa being the culmination of a process which included a string of great moments like her bodyslamming Luke Gallows – and she and Judgment Day have been a fantastic clique of swaggering, arrogant bullies. Those are just a few of the reasons why she’s the wrestler I look forward to seeing on TV the most each week.

Other reasons, on the other hand, are entirely prurient.

WWE knew exactly what they were doing with the Rhea/Dominik Mysterio plotline, and horny online Rhea-enjoyers rose to the bait right on cue. It’s not special or unusual for WWE to work on the basis that sex cells, but Rhea’s whole look isn’t what WWE (or conventional mainstream media in general) usually presents as attractive, and moreover the Step On Me Mami Rhea thing isn’t what her entire presentation is based around – it’s more that the way she’d already been carrying herself gets this response, and she and WWE are playing up to that, and I’m happy to enjoy the ride for as long as it lasts.

Sami Zayn and the Bloodline

Sami’s work with the Bloodline has not only yielded some of his best (and funniest) promo work ever, but it’s also meant that there’s been a solid storyline involving the Bloodline which can be advanced even when Roman Reigns isn’t showing up in person – which the faction badly needed. It’s got me excited to see how it’s going to an out, and best of all it’s yielded some wonderful moments in matches. In particular, the men’s War Games match at Survivor Series this year hinged on Sami, and it’s that strong story which made that match work despite it being the second War Games match we were seeing that evening.

AEW Minting New Stars

MJF had his coronation this year; Wardlow got a big feud with him, which pushed him to a height which his somewhat bland character work probably isn’t sufficient to handle but which it was nice to see AEW give him a spin at; Jamie Hayter saw the crowd get behind her which translated into an organic push which has seen her become champ; Ricky Starks is more over than ever. Despite the issues they’ve had this past year, I think it’s worth noting that AEW have in fact been successfully creating new stars off their own bat.

Lowlights of 2022

Vince McMahon Clinging On

Reports swirl that Vince McMahon regrets retiring from running WWE, and wants to come back.

Sure, this is largely a lowlight about a thing which might happen in the future, rather than a thing which is for sure going to happen. However, I am including it because it casts a pall over my enjoyment of WWE. WWE has far from perfect since Vince has gone – as I am about to get into – but it’s undeniably improved from the absolute doldrums it was in towards the end of Vince’s reign, but all of that goodwill could vanish in a second if Vince comes back, and since he has the majority of the voting power through his ownership of high-class shares he can certainly make an attempt to do so.

Whether it would succeed is a different question – as a publicly-traded company, WWE’s Board of Directors have responsibilities to the shareholders as a whole which can create a situation where they need to defy the shareholder with the biggest voting power for the sake of everyone else. On the other hand, could Vince mount a bid to take WWE private and then force through a return? We’ll have to watch how this develops in 2023.

The CM Punk Clusterfuck

AEW’s backstage brawl between CM Punk and the Elite disrupted their booking for a good chunk of the year, and contributed to a general sense that AEW’s lost some of the momentum it had. At the same time, I kind of have to wonder whether there was a silver lining to it going down the way it did. It certainly isn’t good that violence happened (though, if the report that the Elite brought along AEW’s head of legal to supervise their discussion with Punk, it does seem like it wasn’t premeditated on their part and much more likely that Punk lost his temper), but at the same time at least it lanced the boil and led to Punk leaving AEW.

Sure, sure, he was a ratings asset and his return last year was a joy to watch; if you told me at the end of 2021 that I’d see Punk leaving AEW as a net positive, I’d look at you like you were absolutely crazed. Hell, if you told me I’d be coming to that conclusion before I watched the infamous media scrum, I wouldn’t believe you. By rights, CM Punk should have been top of the world that evening, after beating Jon Moxley in an excellent return match and facing down MJF to rekindle a feud which, at the start of year, had constituted some of Punk’s best work in AEW.

However, just imagine a parallel world where the All Out scrum went down as it did, but the brawl didn’t happen. Would you be confident that Tony Khan would have taken action to address the astonishingly unprofessional behaviour on CM Punk’s part, after he’d hijacked the press conference to air a bunch of grievances rather than advancing any actual storylines? Would you trust that AEW’s management would have taken appropriate action against someone who’d used that platform to launch a torrent of public abuse directed at Colt Cabana, completely unprompted and unprovoked? Do you think that Tony is the guy who’d be able to handle the backstage morale problem caused by CM Punk running down more or less everyone else on the AEW roster as collateral damage in his rant?

I’m not sure I would. I can imagine a situation where Punk remains in AEW, the brawl never happens, and he just keeps doing this shit (remember, he’d hijacked a live TV show to take an unscripted cheap shot at Hangman Adam Page previously), and it remains weird and awful until something like the brawl eventually happens to stop it. The situation clearly wasn’t tenable, and stopped being tenable once Punk was done speaking at the scrum.

The Fizzling of Thunder Rosa’s Title Reign

Punk would not be the only AEW talent who would spend time out due to injury and/or be at the centre of a morale issue. Andrade got sent home after starting a fight with Sammy Guevara backstage, and rumour as it he did it on purpose to get out of his contract. Miro has been AWOL for ages, and conflicting rumours circulate – some claiming that Creative have nothing for him, some claiming that they’ve offered him pitches for storylines but he’s turned them down. Darius Martin spent a hell of a lot of time on the shelf injured, Jeff Hardy’s drinking issues relapsed, and Hangman Page got himself sidelined with a nasty concussion. A certain amount of this goes with the territory, but AEW seem to be either particularly unlucky or particularly mismanaged on this front right now.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment for me, however, is how Thunder Rosa’s run as AEW Women’s Champion was handled. I started out the year all in on supporting her, and I was very pleased when she finally clawed her way to her successful title shot against Britt Baker, but the booking of her title reign itself seemed decidedly lacklustre. Rumour had it that she wasn’t thrilled with the lack of television time, and frankly she had a point; online fans also amplified accusations of her sandbagging opponents, which she perhaps misguidedly ended up hyping up.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed her ThunderStorm tag teamup with Toni Storm, and was looking forward to the Toni Storm vs. Thunder Rosa championship bout which everything seemed to be building towards – but then everything came to a grinding halt. Rosa was injured, had to take time off, in keeping with long-standing AEW policy an interim champion was crowned who ended up being Toni Storm, and then… then weirdness happened. Rumours swirled about Rosa feigning injury or otherwise being unco-operative because she didn’t want to drop the belt to Storm – rumours which were only fuelled by some of Toni’s media scrum comments, which outright implied that Rosa was dodging her.

By the end of the year, after Jamie Hayter won the belt, an announcement was provided that Thunder Rosa wasn’t coming back especially soon, she was vacating the belt, Hayter’s interim title was now the official title, and Toni’s reign as interim champion was being retconned as an official championship reign. And that was… kind of it.

It’s disappointing all round, but I think the thing which bothers me the most about this saga is Storm’s press conference comments. Sure, sure, they may have been in the interests of advancing an angle – but they intersected with the online insinuations in an unpleasant way, and I generally don’t think it helps that much to cast heelish remarks in the direction of wrestlers who are healing up at home, aren’t on TV and so can’t respond, and generally aren’t in a position to do much about it. I hope things can work out in 2023 and Rosa can have a big comeback, but if she has another title reign down the line I hope it’s treated a little better.

Bray Wyatt’s Interminable Comeback Angle

Bray made his big return at Extreme Rules, back at the start of October. We’re nearly three months into his return. He has not wrestled a single match.

Look, I get it. Supernatural gimmicks tend to operate on different rules. But even so, characters on a wrestling show should evince at least some tangential interest in, you know, wrestling. Bray has not taken part in any match in any capacity. He has not competed. He has not interfered in anything. He has not acted as a manager or been in anyone’s corner. He has not been a special guest referee. He has not sat in on commentary. He has not participated in a post-match angle.

All he does is show up, do a self-contained promo, interact a bit with LA Knight and Uncle Howdy (who could still be eventually revealed to be an alter ego of his), and then go away again. Rinse and repeat, for a quarter of a year.

I feel bad for LA Knight. The weird thing about most of Bray Wyatt’s feuds is that typically they haven’t done anything for anyone in the eyes of the audience – whoever he’s feuding with usually ends up diminished, and Bray’s schtick gets wearing the longer it goes on without new twists or him actually working a damn match. Bray has been on this rollercoaster before and will probably come out alright; LA Knight needs this to work to help him rehabilitate his character after the whole Maximum Male Models fiasco. It feels unlikely this feud will do that for him.

Debut-Based Booking

Both AEW and WWE have gotten into a pattern where they make a big thing of unveiling a new person arriving or returning to the promotion (mostly arriving in AEW, mostly returning in WWE), only for the moment to fizzle in the long term when subsequent booking doesn’t match up to the hype. The Bray Wyatt thing is an example of this in WWE, but they’ve also had stuff like Hit Row coming back in only to expose how green some of them still are in recent high-profile matches, and Braun Strowman showing up again only to ruin the tag division yet again.

I can see why both promotions are doing this; AEW want to look like an attractive location for free agents, WWE want to send the signal that the sins of the past are behind them and they’ve become the cool aspirational place to work again, and debuts and returns always get a bit of buzz. But we’ve had so many of them lately but I think they’re risking making us all jaded about these – I’m already getting that way.

State of the Grapple

WWE

WWE went from the absolute doldrums at the start of the year – when I couldn’t even bring myself to watch the entire Royal Rumble (in which the men’s Rumble was infamously wrecked by Shane McMahon’s ill-considered booking decisions) – to something which is back on my radar. However, by this point I only really go out of my way to watch RAW, whilst SmackDown only gets my attention if there’s a match that excites me or an angle generates buzz.

This is largely down to the booking situation Triple H has inherited: he just doesn’t have enough stars who haven’t been devalued by sloppy booking to fill five hours of weekly TV with high-quality storylines from start to end. Instead, he’s got about enough for one really solid show, and one show largely dedicated to rehabilitating talent damaged by the old regime, and SmackDown seems to be taking on proportionally more of the latter category of work.

Also, Rhea isn’t on SmackDown. So there’s that.

AEW

The honeymoon period for AEW is definitely over, both for audiences and for performers. I think they’ve been on an upswing very recently, but it took a bit of a slide before they could get there; in particular, Rampage is now clearly a B-show in comparison to Dynamite, the roster’s taken a hit, and the booking feels like it’s been off for a while.

Whether Tony Khan and company can turn it around is an open question. All promotions go through these slack periods, and it’s possible that this is just the inevitable contraction after AEW’s rapid early expansion, along with the inevitable correction which would have already come once Vince left WWE.

Perhaps a fruitful approach could be to really concentrate on the women’s division in the near future. It’s been a weak spot for ages, but with WWE’s handling of their division as shaky as it is then it feels like a soft target. Jamie Hayter is over as hell as champ, Saraya is a big name acquisition, and if their rumoured recruitment of Sasha Banks goes through they may be in a position to do something special with it.

Impact

I haven’t paid attention to Impact for a good while, but after checking them out this past week it seems to me like they are on an upswing. They seem to be performing before audiences larger than previously and still rolling out good storylines and featuring interesting talent, but they’re taking it slow and steady rather than going for the rapid expansion AEW enjoyed, even though Impact have billionaire backing too these days. Perhaps in the long term it will turn out that playing the long game made more sense.

MLW, NWA, NJPW

I’ve dipped into all of these in the past, but I more or less ignored them in 2022 and don’t expect to follow them that much in 2023. MLW seem to be chugging along, but they decided to give NZO a job and I’m not seeking out that content. NJPWs involves jumping through a few too many hoops to follow and watch for my tastes. And as for NWA…

Wow. I had been quite into Billy Corgan’s revived NWA when they launched Powerrr, but since then they’ve really backslid. The best talent from that show has ended up in AEW over the long term, the major exception being Nick Aldis, the NWA’s secret weapon – who Billy seems to have spent the last year pointlessly alienating, in favour of pushing, of all the goddamn people, Tyrus. No thank you.

Indies

For me 2022 didn’t throw up much exciting in the world of the indies, I suspect because many of them were still in the process of cautiously recommencing regular operation after the pandemic. Let’s see if 2023 spices things up further.