A Pro Wrestling Conversation About...WWE Raw, Part 3
The title of this post, A Pro Wrestling Conversation About…, signifies a new periodic series for The Pro Wrestling Exuberant and something I’ve long wanted to do in the written format, going back to my days in the ‘90s writing for pro wrestling magazines.
The concept is simply that two people discuss in-depth different pro wrestling topics with each other. Wrestlers. Promotions. TV Shows. Current Storylines. Past storylines. Basically, anything pro wrestling related.
I am seeking others to converse with for future installments:
· Fans of professional wrestlers, new and long-term
· Other pro wrestling writers
· Writers who are fans of pro wrestling but have never written about it.
· Writers who are curious about pro wrestling and will watch it for the first time for this series.
If you’re interested in participating, send me a Chat message here on Substack.
Here is the third and final part of my conversation with Robbie Marriage, the writer of Sports Passion Project on Substack.
Robbie, a football writer, is a very knowledgeable wrestling fan. In this part, he provides in-depth analysis of the feud between Gunther and Jey Uso that will culminate with their world title match this weekend at WrestleMania 41.
If you missed either of the last two parts of this conversation, here’s the links:
A Pro Wrestling Conversation About...WWE Raw, Part 1
A Pro Wrestling Conversation about...WWE Raw, Part 2
- Russell Franklin
The Pro Wrestling Exuberant: After watching that angle on WWE Raw back on 3-31 where Jimmy Uso bled heavily after his match with Gunther, I got me thinking about my philosophy in terms of blood in pro wrestling as a viewer.
There are two points to it. Point one, blood should be a rare occurrence on TV. Point two, when it does get used it should be done in a calculated manner. That is, it is used during a strategic moment to get the most value out of it. It’s not about shock value. It’s about furthering a storyline.
For me this goes back to the '80s when blood flow felt like a common part of pro wrestling, yet it often was held off for a time in a feud until it would make the most statement to move a storyline along. When it occurred as part of a match that was not rooted in a grudge, it came off as gratuitous. It did back then and still does now for me.
For my viewing tastes, I like Gunther's presentation as a world champion. I think he plays his character well and conveys a nice mix of cockiness, technical skill, and intensity.
Jey Uso's elevation to the role of world title challenger was absolutely necessary based on the crowd reactions to him. I talk a lot about the sometimes tepid crowds of modern wrestling compared to when I go back and watch wrestling from three, four and even five decades ago, as I have been prone to do of late. However, whenever Jey is out there, I feel that same kind of energy from the audience that I felt with the most popular wrestlers of past decades, people like Sting, Ultimate Warrior and Hulk Hogan, in his mid-'80s run, when I use to see them live or on TV.
So, I like the dynamic here with Gunther and Jey on paper for WrestleMania, but what really worked for me here in elevating this feud was the use of blood on the 3-31 Raw. I thought the attention to detail was well executed.
Jimmy Uso bled heavily, and the visual looked good, in the post-match beatdown he received after his match with Gunther on the 3-31 Raw, but what took it to the next level for me was Gunther's continued assault of him. The blood elevated the intensity of the moment, and the image of Gunther standing supreme with the blood smeared on him added to the aura of ruthlessness that should be projected with him. It looked like the conclusion of a brawl, where the only byproduct could be blood, not just blood for shock value.
What are your thoughts on Gunther as champion, Jey Uso as his challenger, and do you think the blood on that angle on Raw helped add an additional dynamic to this feud or was not necessary at that point?
Sports Passion Project: I said earlier that I’m not a big IWC guy, and the internet and I disagree about wrestling a lot, but where our opinions overlapped was in our disappointment at Jey Uso winning the Royal Rumble. The internet wrestling community did not like this, and I didn’t like it either. I can’t tell you their reasons, but I can certainly tell you mine.
First of all, even though Jey Uso gets big crowd reactions, he gets them in isolation, as he’s generally kept apart from other stars whenever possible. When the Royal Rumble match was actually going on, this got exposed a little bit. You could tell from the crowd in Indianapolis that he was approximately the eighth biggest star in that match.
Of the people that were in the Royal Rumble, the crowd had bigger reactions to all of (in order of entry) Jacob Fatu, Roman Reigns, Drew McIntyre, John Cena, CM Punk, Seth Rollins, Logan Paul, and debatably even Dominik Mysterio. This does not even include people who were not in that match (i.e. Randy Orton), nor does it include people who got bigger pops than Jey did because they were surprise entrant (AJ Styles and Joe Hendry).
If you assume Punk, Rollins, and Reigns were already slotted to fight each other at WrestleMania by the time the Royal Rumble happened, and that John Cena was already slotted to do his match with Cody, then Jey does technically fit the bill of the biggest babyface available to take on the heel champion Gunther. When the biggest babyface available is the fifth biggest babyface in the match (John Cena hadn’t turned yet), it isn’t hard to rationalize the disappointment that a lot of people felt.
I feel like this has somehow become Gunther’s problem, as he’s stuck trying to elevate a babyface that is not world championship level. Jey is close to being world championship level, but fifth biggest babyface in the Royal Rumble (sixth biggest in total, with Cody Rhodes not being in the Royal Rumble match) is not quite there, and as we all know as wrestling fans, there’s a big difference between being on the cusp of the main event and actually being a main event guy.
So, Gunther is left to have a great Gunther-style match with an upper-middle of the card guy. For whatever reason, the WWE seem to have deemed the proper place for him, because ever since he won the World Heavyweight Championship, who has Gunther wrestled?
He’s beaten Damian Priest (mid-card guy) a couple times. He’s beaten Jey Uso (upper-middle guy) a couple times, and he’s taken a loss to Cody Rhodes, in the one time he got a chance to fight an actual main event wrestler.
In my opinion, this has put Gunther in a terrible position. His gimmick is that he’s this large, imposing, unbeatable force. However, at the moment, he is neither large, nor imposing, nor unbeatable, because he beat some guys that (based on their presentation) he should’ve beaten easily. The one guy who could give him a real fight he lost to. I feel like Gunther is falling into the 1989 Four Horsemen position, in that his invincibility is being a bit too easily expended. More on this later.
For my money, Gunther is probably the best pro wrestler in the world right now. Nothing gets me more excited than the prospect of watching a match of his. Both of his matches against Ilja Dragunov are probably my two favorite WWE matches of the 2020s. I love this man to death. You don’t have grounds to say I’m dissing him, but he has been put in a position to fail.
Back when he was the Intercontinental Champion, there was the feel that Gunther could face anybody at any level on the card, and that person was going to have very little chance to beat him, but ever since he won the world title belt, he’s been facing people lower on the totem pole than himself, and he’s been struggling to beat them. Too much struggle in my opinion. More on this later.
Therefore, we are going into WrestleMania, stuck with this matchup of convenience, which isn’t even that convenient. Gunther works best as this imposing heel champion, who nobody has a chance against, but a rotating cast of underdog babyfaces keeps trying anyway.
However, all of the WWE babyfaces who actually work when presented as an underdog are tied up with other people. We’re left with Jey Uso instead, who is not a natural underdog babyface. Instead, he gets over by acting like he’s the coolest guy in the room all the time. In the time since Jey’s Royal Rumble win, the WWE has been trying to make this square shaped peg (Jey Uso) into this round shaped (underdog babyface) hole, but I’m don’t believe it’s been working well.
The proof for the hypothesis I’ve just posited comes in the form of an anecdote from me about the worldview of a casual wrestling fan. I often watch wrestling with my girlfriend Margaret, who is the epitome of the casual wrestling fan. By this I mean she generally cheers the babyfaces, boos the heels, and isn’t really swayed by all the other stuff that internet wrestling fans often care about. Her favorite wrestler is CM Punk. Her least favorite wrestler is Logan Paul. This is the kind of fan we’re talking about.
I’m too far in the wrestling bubble to really tell what an average fan thinks, so whenever I want to see how well something is getting over, I check with her to see how much she cares about it, and when I asked her prior to the 3-31 Raw in preparation for this collaboration who she plans to cheer for when Jey Uso faces Gunther at WrestleMania, she said she hasn’t chosen a side yet.
Uh oh.
When the ultimate casual wrestling fan has not chosen a side four weeks out from what should be the biggest show of the year, that’s how you know this angle is not getting over very well, and I think it’s because they’ve decided to go with the dreaded crisis of confidence angle.
Wrestling is not real. That’s a key thing to remember, as I tell you that stars don’t have crises of confidence. I remember Jim Cornette said this once on his podcast, and it rang so true. Real life stars have confidence issues all the time, but pro wrestling (and pro sports in general) is not real life. You can’t get away with the same things in a pro wrestling presentation as you can get away with in a real-life presentation.
Name me one babyface who’s ever had a crisis of confidence angle, and come out of it on the other end looking better than they were before they went in. Heels can get by with it sometimes (i.e. MJF vs CM Punk), but as for babyfaces, I can’t think of one, and I think that’s the point of my criticism here. If the whole point of this WrestleMania match between Gunther and Jey is to see if Gunther can’t drag Jey up to his level, I’m not sure this is the way I would’ve gone.
To me, this has felt more like the build to a competitive squash type of match at WrestleMania. This is not how you build a new star babyface. At every turn, Gunther has psyched Jey out. He’s gotten the better of him, and Jey has done nothing to show he’s had any chance at all at winning. This could work, if not for the ‘confidence’ stuff.
Underdog babyfaces, even if they get one-upped at every turn, never lose belief that they’re going to win. Jey Uso on the other hand, is on the verge of giving up. As such, I perfectly understand why there was the need to heat it up this week, to at least give us fans something to chew on, in an attempt to make us believe that Jey Uso can possibly win this. Even though this was a fantastic bit of pro wrestling TV, all of the issues that I’ve discussed before are going to show themselves again, in a way that I will explain momentarily.
It’s Jey’s brother Jimmy Uso, in a single match against Gunther, which Jimmy purports as being for the purpose of giving his brother some confidence back. This is reasonable, as if Jimmy can be competitive, Jey (who is pretty much being presented as a slightly but strictly better version of his brother) may have a chance to beat Gunther.
However, as this match turns out, it makes me feel like WWE have forgotten how to do a good old fashioned squash match. Let me explain why.
Jimmy Uso gets far too much offence. Not even three minutes into the match, Jimmy hits the big splash and gets a near fall on the world champion. This is wrong in so many ways. Let me count them.
First of all, what I said earlier about Gunther’s invincibility being used up too easily absolutely comes into play here. If this guy is getting within an eyelash of getting beaten in three minutes by Jimmy Uso, who is a middle of the card guy (if we’re generous), as a single, what chance does he have against CM Punk, Roman Reigns, or any of the other real top babyfaces?
It’s one thing to give the job guy some offence in a squash match, but it’s another to give Jimmy Uso a two and a half count over the world champion. You can say I’m picking at nits here, but wrestling fans notice this stuff. Somebody should’ve said no to this. It’s not up to Jimmy Uso to say ‘no’ to a near fall over the world champion, but the producer should’ve said no, and if not that, Gunther himself should’ve said no, because it undermines everything that’s going to come after.
What comes after is a fantastic three-minute squash match. Jimmy Uso gets a bit of offence, basically one superkick and one German suplex, each of which take the champion off his feet for about half a second, but other than that it’s all Gunther. He ragdolls Jimmy, playing with his food for a while before finally putting him down with a sleeper hold for an easy win.
Far be it for me to know who put this match together, but this felt like a compromise reached between one person who knew how to do a great squash match, and one person who had no idea what they were doing. Nobody should’ve greenlit a near fall over the world champion in any context other than a championship match. Nobody should’ve greenlit the ability for Jimmy Uso to hit his finisher on the world champion. Somebody messed up badly here, and it hurts Gunther’s presentation, at a time when Gunther’s presentation has been hurt enough already.
How high on the WWE roster would you say Jimmy Uso is, in terms of singles wrestlers?
20th? 25th? Even worse?
If this is what he can do to Gunther, then what is this once imposing Austrian going to do once he faces a real opponent? This is pro wrestling folks. It’s all about manipulating the perception of the audience. Don’t say they don’t notice things like this. They do notice. This was a simple mistake. An amateur mistake, made by somebody who has bitten off more than they could chew, because they clearly did not know how to lay out a squash match.
If I were the booker here, I would’ve been fuming at the producer for allowing this to happen. I would’ve been fuming at Gunther for allowing this to happen to him, and I may have even been a little mad at Jimmy Uso, as a man who’s been in wrestling for a lot of years. He had to have known what he was doing here.
The reason why I would be so mad is that this segment does not end at the bell. After the match ends, Gunther decides to beat up Jimmy some more. Jey comes out to help (although he has to wait for his entrance music before helping his brother) and sends Gunther scampering. However, after we wait for a commercial break to finish, the world champion comes back again, attacking Jey from behind, handcuffing him to the middle rope, before he sets back to attacking Jimmy again, and this is where the near fall from earlier really hurts this segment.
If we cut off the first three minutes of the wrestling match, keeping only the final three minutes, which present Jimmy Uso as if he’s not in Gunther’s class, this beatdown after the bell would’ve felt unfair. It would’ve felt like the evil world champion attacking a helpless innocent, while forcing his brother to watch. It would’ve been like beating up a woman, except in a fashion that can be shown on TV.
This is the feeling they were going for, with Jimmy being completely helpless, and Jey being able to do nothing but watch as Gunther attacks his utterly helpless brother. However, when Jimmy Uso gets within an eyelash of winning the wrestling match, it undermines this whole thing, for the simple reason that it keeps on the front of your mind that Jimmy Uso is not helpless. In fact, Jimmy Uso is somebody that Gunther has to keep an eye on, lest he actually lose.
This is the story the match told, but it’s not the story the post-match told. All of a sudden, in the post-match and the post-match only, Jimmy Uso has suddenly, without reason, become completely helpless. Almost helpless enough to make me forget he was a legitimate world title challenging threat just four minutes ago, but not quite.
This is what I was getting at before. If whoever booked this wanted Jimmy Uso to be helpless, so we can all feel sorry for his brother Jey when he can’t do anything to help his helpless brother, why was he presented like a legitimate threat to win the world heavyweight championship literally five minutes ago?
This feels like a bad case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing. Whoever laid out the squash match had nothing to do with booking the post-match angle, and it shows. This is two fundamentally different segments, featuring two different Jimmy Usos.
One Jimmy Uso is a legitimate world championship challenger, judging by his performance in the match. The other Jimmy Uso is an opening match guy, who is incapable of defending himself when the world champion decides he needs a beating.
The final three minutes of this Gunther vs Jimmy Uso match, plus the post-match, were a fantastic eight minutes of pro wrestling television, even if Jey Uso is entirely incapable of making even a slightly concerned face, which also hurt this a little bit.
If I could take the tape of this show and cut off the first three minutes of the match (which, not coincidentally at all, is exactly what the WWE YouTube channel did when they uploaded this segment), this is one of the best pro wrestling segments I’ve seen in a while. I think I’m going to get a bit of heat for not liking it very much, but I suspect a lot of that heat is going to come from the people who’ve only watched the WWE YouTube version, and not the full show, because it’s only the full show that undermined the whole thing.
What happens in the post-match just doesn’t work when you conceptualize Jimmy Uso as a world championship caliber wrestler, which is what the poorly laid out squash match had just forced us to do, if you were watching the full Raw show.
If you just watch the highlight clip, you don’t see the poorly laid out squash match, and you’re not confronted with the duality of Jimmy Uso somehow both being a man capable of defeating the world champion, and a helpless innocent victim at the same time. Under those circumstances, this was a fantastic bit of wrestling television, but a lot of the allure was lost due to an amateur mistake, both on the part of somebody who has no idea how to lay out a squash match, and on the part of several people who should’ve said something about it.
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