Four things I learned from WWE Raw live

On Friday night, I was forced to accompany consensually chaperoned my younger brother to the O2 Arena, which was hosting the London leg of the WWE Raw British tour. As an avid fan of the WWE’s brand of pugilistic thespianism in my youth, I was admittedly quite excited by the prospect of witnessing one of its shows live, despite being relatively unfamiliar with the vast majority of today’s cast.

Instead of living up to my excitement, the event, on the whole, disappointed. Not akin to the sort of soul-destroying disappointment that followed the purchase and first listen of Metallica’s St. Anger, but a more mild, manageable disappointment,  like finding out that all the chocolate in your advent calendar is covered in disconcerting white residue.

Here are four things I learned from Friday night’s debacle spectacle:

1. WWE crowds are even more partisan than football ones

I forget exactly how many ‘fights’ took place last night, but in each of them, the billing pitted one crowd favourite against one seemingly pantomime villain-esque bad guy. When one of the latter characters emerged from the entrance tunnel, my brother, like many around him, proceeded to boo and shout age-appropriate obscenities (‘sucker’ and its variants seem to be the average nine-year-old’s preferred derogatory epithets).

The fights tended to follow the same format – alternating periods of domination, with the pantomine villain-esque bad guy usually putting on a stronger display, but somehow mysteriously succumbing to the weaker crowd favourite. It’s almost as though the organisers wanted to pander to the crowd…

2. It’s not just the fights that are a fix

Prior to the intermission, two of the WWE’s most ditzy divas, the Bella Twins, took to the ring and announced that a crowd contest would be taking place. Apparently, four voracious WWE fans were to be plucked from the audience and coerced into contesting a ‘dance-off’, with the winner – to be decided by a makeshift crowd noise-o-meter – permitted the opportunity to go backstage and meet one (yes, just one) WWE superstar backstage.

One of the WWE’s minions potted around the barricades surrounding the ring, ‘randomly’ selecting four over-the-moon candidates from the standing audience. His selection comprised a relatively accurate microcosm of the audience’s sociological make-up:

1 x quiet, unassuming seven-year-old boy, replete with John Cena cap and t-shirt
1 x creepy, middle-aged wrestling fanatic (a man far too old to be  attending a WWE event without children)
1 x slim blonde girl in her late teens
1 x frumpy brunette girl in her early teens

The quartet formed a line, and each contest was given roughly ten seconds in which to dance under the spotlight to some generic, mind-numbingly mundane backing track. The creepy, middle-aged man went first and his repertoire was unsurprisingly awkward, but he almost predictably elicited a strong response from the crowd. The two girls then went next and performed very standard teenage dance moves, displaying decent levels of technical ability, but were greeted with choruses of boos from the largely young male audience.

The extremely shy seven-year-old boy was next. He barely moved at all when the music started, nervously shuffled his right leg, before standing still again. For some unknown reason the crowd went wild, and the Bella Twins, who had only watched the preceding displays, decided to join in. They promptly held his hands, grooved and attempted to make him dance like a puppet. Slightly unfair advantage, no? They continued dancing with him until the end of his spot, before prompting the audience to cheer.

In order to decide the winner of the competition, each contestant’s name was read out with the Bella Twins ‘measuring’ the ferocity and loudness of the audience’s response. After a deliberation period of roughly three seconds, the little boy was announced as the winner. Who would’ve thunk it?

The Bella twins - a calibre of female I could never hope to have a relationship with...

3. Mason Ryan has a body that resembles a brain.

Even from our relatively distant vantage point, Mr. Ryan’s absolutely ridiculous muscles were as clear and defined as…well, see for yourself.

'Body like a brain'

4. The WWE uses some absolutely ridiculous, morally-questionable rules

Due to his charismatic aura and stellar choice of entrance music, I was quite looking forward to seeing CM Punk take on Alberto Del Rio. This billing constituted the evening’s ‘main event’ – the final act if you will. It became evidently clear within minutes of Alberto Del Rio’s entrance that point number one was in play – Del Rio was fiercely heckled by all, and CM Punk was greeted with rapturous adoration.

Once all the flexing and preening and psyching up of the crowd was out of the way, the two began their tussle – a fight which saw Del Rio’s WWE Championship belt on the line.

After alternating periods of domination, CM Punk gained the upper hand, and appeared to be within grasp of victory when he unleashed his finisher upon Del Rio. Unfortunately for him, the referee had conveniently exited the ring and sustained a ‘head injury’, so Punk’s attempt to pin his opponent was in vain.

Amazingly, the referee regained consciousness and re-entered the ring, with Punk maintaining his competitive advantage.  He then attempted to deploy his finisher again, but Del Rio’s gimp personal stage announcer Ricardo struck CM Punk with a ‘steel’ chair and the referee was forced to disqualify Del Rio.

Happy days then? The detestable Del Rio shorn of his title by the affable CM Punk?

NO.

Apparently, as my brother explained to me in not so clear terms, the ‘fight’ had been designated as a ‘pinfall-only’ one, which meant that Del Rio could only lose his belt if Punk managed to successfully pin him. Despite his pal’s illegal intervention, Del Rio retained his title. What sort of message is that to send out to kids!?

“If you cheat you’ll definitely come out on top in life.”

Abhorrent, repugnant, reprehensible. To quote the man pictured below…”IT’S A FUCKING DISGRACE!”

Didier wouldn't stand for the pinfall-only rule

Animals are over-rated

Yesterday I was the victim of a vicious, unprovoked attack. Despite several people bearing witness to this assault, and indeed knowing the soul responsible for said violence, the perpetrator will go unpunished, let off scot-free, unfettered in its pursuit of another heinous atrocity.

The assailant in this instance, you see, was not of the mortal variety.

The offender… was a kitten.

A cute, adorable, [insert similarly nauseating adjective of choice] kitten.

Allow me the opportunity to elaborate.

On Sunday I had accompanied my parents to a family friend’s house. While the adults conversed, I noticed the furry little bastard, coyly hiding underneath a glass table.

Pretending to be someone who adheres to conventional social norms, I (foolishly) attempted to stroke the feline – because that’s what people do in those types of situations, right?

The kitten initially put up resistance, playfully irritatingly evading my welcoming hand, before eventually staying still. After approximately ten seconds of gentle, albeit hesitant stroking, the cat swiftly swiped its left arm limb and slashed my right thumb, which in turn produced a disproportionately excessive quantity of blood to seep from beneath the skin.

Stunned and in search of sympathy (and a plaster), I exited the room. Unfortunately, sympathy was in short supply, with those I had been looking to elicit sympathy from instead enquiring as to how and why I had irked my heartless tormentor.

The little bastard.

Animals are over-rated

As the title of this blog (and the above anecdote) suggests, I’m not much of an animal ‘fan’. I don’t really ‘get’ them to be honest – since the advent of cars and other things like that in the developed world, most animals don’t have a tangible, practical function.

Horses, for example, are no longer required for transport and haulage – apart from the spectacle that is horse-racing, they seem to be virtually redundant, a bit like pagers (outside of the medical profession of course).

Whenever my disdain for animals is brought up in conversation, the sort of reaction that is deservedly reserved for Gary Glitter tends to emerge. Despite a whole-heartedly rational resistance to animals, my stance tends to bewilder.

But not any more.

Here are just three of the reasons why I think animals are over-rated:

1. Animals don’t speak English

This is no racist admission or expression of unwavering nationalism. It’s a simple truth.

Animals literally do not speak English. Or any of the other 6908 catalogued living human languages for that matter.

When an animal doesn’t speak English, or any of the languages I can readily translate on the internet, how the fuck am I supposed to understand what it’s thinking and what it desires?

If someone else’s mangy overenthusiastic mutt is haring towards me at breakneck speed, how am I supposed to know if it’s doing so without any form of malicious intent? Animals and paralinguistic features are not the most compatible of bedfellows, so my scope for interpretation is limited to say the least.

2. Animals aren’t clean

Admittedly this point is heavily indebted to my almost OCD-esque level of cleanliness; as someone who washes his hands up to 20 times a day, I generally tend to expect comparable commitment to hygiene from others. It really isn’t too much to ask.

Dogs, chief offenders and objects of my ire, slobber and slaver, always looking to share their foul oral fluids. They also leave their disgusting little hairs everywhere, and because they can’t operate hoovers or a dustpan and brush, they leave them there for other beings to clean up. It’s fucking selfish.

And then when I play the hygiene card, people point to cats, and how they intermittently clean themselves using their own tongue. That can’t be that that hygienic, surely? I mean, if someone asked you to be friends with a person who refused to shower and instead opted to lick themselves up and down wherever the laws of physics and biology permitted, you’d swerve that motherfucker pretty damn quick.

3. Animals are boring

Over the years I’ve successfully deduced that animals, for some, serve some of entertainment function. Not wholly practical in the strictest of the word, but functional to some degree.

With things like the Xbox, cable/satellite TV, books and alcohol, that function seems virtually obsolete now too. Why spend all that money on a pet, and then pay to feed/groom/nurse it when you could just buy a games console, which definitely won’t excrete inside the house or emit bad smells or require feeding. As logic goes, that’s pretty damn irrefutable.

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