On Being a Time Traveling Smart Mark

Oftentimes I will watch pro wrestling matches, and I'll have thoughts on them.

Wyatt Family vs. John Cena, Sheamus & Big E, WWE Raw 4/7/14

I dug this 6 man from a week ago, with the crowd loud and smarky the whole way through. Booing the good guys, cheering the bad guys. It's New Orleans, Wyatts are billed from Louisiana, okay. Hearing them boo all of Sheamus' moves and cheer Rowan's comebacks was fun, and Sheamus got into it and let it fuel his beating. We had some loud "John Cena Sucks" sung to the tune of Cena's entrance music. Hot crowd. Smarky crowd.

But one guy.

One guy on hard camera side had a sign which read "Who Booked This Crap".

Yep. That guy.

The guy sitting in the middle of one of the hottest periods of WWE TV and matches of the last 8 years, just completely flustered by the product being presented to him. "Who Booked This Crap" feels like the most impossibly dated sign one could bring to a WWE show these days. I mean, I saw a car with a Kucinich bumper sticker the other week, but it's not like they'd show up to a WWE show with a scattering of "Other Channel Jackass" or "Be Fair to Flair" signs. Now in fairness to the guy with the Kucinich bumper sticker it's likely he wouldn't bring those signs to a WWE show because he'd be at home eating kale and catching up on the most recent Fresh Air and also would have zero interest in attending a live pro wrestling show.

But Who Booked This Crap? What the fuck MORE could a smart fan want out of current WWE!? I mean, sure, all of the best indy guys from the last decade are pushed high and get to have long great matches on a weekly basis, but Yoshi Tatsu never gets TV tiiiiiiiiiiime. Colt Cabana wasn't given a chaaaaaaance. Vince killed ECWWWWWW.

And then he hit me with an unexpected blow:

His next sign read "Save us Y2J".

My world was turned upside down. Either he is just reusing all of his signs from a WCW Thunder taping he attended in 1999, or he's working the most precise smart mark gimmick I've ever seen. He's ostensibly the guy who gets invited to an 80s party, and shows up wearing a precise recreation of what somebody may have looked like in May 1986, and gets pissed off the whole party about people mixing years and genres. "Look at that guy in the Hypercolor shirt. That was early 90s, asshole! And that guy over there is just wearing sunglasses!"

Who wouldn't want that guy sitting behind them during a wrestling show!? Since few of us had that privilege, I will use the powers of prose to insert probable soundbites you would have heard from that guy, throughout this match. Hopefully it will put you right there in the middle of the action, with him.


Sheamus and Rowan pair off in an awesome display of ginger on ginger violence that you just don't often see. I suppose it's because there aren't that many large gingers around who people would want to see clubbing each other (".....remember Blitzkrieg guys? That guy could could be working Em Oh Tee Whys every fucking night if they brought him in. But it would never happen because you know these idiots would just job him out to.....").  Big E does a triple backbreaker on Rowan which could not have been easy. Big E was straining and his hand was nestled deep in Rowan's ass to make it work, but it came off like the crazy feat of strength it was and the crowd was down (".....so then I was like but have you seen how sweaty Mark Henry gets!?....."). Harper gets to work Cena a bunch now and they really match up nicely ("...God but if they had the guts to bring in Taz he would fucking shoot on all of these guys. They wouldn't be able to stop it..."). Cena vs. Monster is one of the best match styles of the last decade and few guys currently are as beastly as Harper (".....Oh God what if Shane Douglas did a run in!? That guy don't give a FUCK. He'd call Cena out on alllll his phony shit....."). Sheamus does his sweet rolling torture rack senton to Harper, ONTO a prone Rowan, and Harper then bumps huge to the floor on a clothesline. Harper's bumping is awesome and his wild dive is one of the great spots of 2014 (".....so yeah, you bring him in, put him over everybody, and then boom. You have AJ Styles vs. Shawn Michaels main eventing Wrestlemania.....") And damn do I love the Bray Wyatt crab walk. Big E takes Sister Abigail right on the side of his head and makes it look killer (.....God these guys are so FAKE! I've seen wrestling from JAPAN.....").