“Get off of my lawn …”
Honest to god, I’m not that guy. I’m not big on nostalgia, I didn’t walk up hill both ways in the snow to school when I was kid, and “back in my day” isn’t a phrase in my vocabulary.
Things are what they are, when they are, and that’s that. In life and especially in pro wrestling.
Over the decades and decades that pro wrestling has existed, it’s changed. A lot. What started out in carnivals is now generating billions for television networks and streaming platforms. Wrestling is supposed to change, but it needs constants as well.
Where are all the bad guys?
A key constant is the idea of the bad guy and I’m not sure how we lost that. Where are all the heels?
We’re in the middle of the busiest time of year for pro wrestling. WrestleMania is a month away, AEW kicks into gear with the Revolution PPV event this weekend, and the New Japan Cup tournament is rolling. The weeks are jam packed with pro wrestling content and because of that, you’d think there’d be a need to tell easy A to B storylines between good and evil. Good guys and bad guys. That’s been replaced with strange nuance and pick your own adventures that ditch what makes wrestling work.
For the sake of discussion, let’s look at the two WrestleMania main event matches. First up is CM Punk vs. Roman Reigns for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. Punk is a good guy. Reigns too. Both are beloved by the WWE audience, but they’ll fight at WrestleMania 42 because, well, they hate each other.