The most recent AEW embarrassment is the video making the rounds of two-time former world champ Jon Moxley tapping out to a jabroni in an amateur jiu-jitsu match.
This is the kind of thing that would have gotten you fired in the territory days.
Seriously.
Think, Bill Watts in Mid-South, who told his guys, you go to a bar, you get in a fight, you win the fight, or you’re done.
The rule made sense.
Now, yes, OK, it’s not the 1980s anymore, and most of us are well-aware that pro wrestling is entertainment.
I say most of us. I was in attendance at the AEW Revolution pay-per-view in Greensboro earlier this month. It became clear to me a few minutes in that more people sitting in my section than I expected are not up to speed with the rest of us on the concept of kayfabe.
I digress.
Most of us are aware, but even for the those of us who are, there still needs to be a pretense that the people that we watch in the ring are at least somewhat legit tough guys.
If nothing else, so that we can tell the skeptics who wonder why we spend so much of our time following ‘rasslin, well, yeah, but, Kurt Angle won an Olympic gold medal, Brock Lesnar was a UFC champ (before the pee fetish became widely known).
This said, I’m all for Moxley, who came to pro wrestling with nothing in the way of a previous athletics background, trying, later in life (he’s 38), to develop legit tough-guy skills.
CM Punk, we may remember, another guy who broke into pro wrestling with no previous athletics background, tried UFC during his wrestling hiatus, actually getting two UFC pay-per-view fights (both were bad losses, one to an early choke, the other a unanimous decision).
It’s one thing to train full-time at MMA for three years and lose two UFC PPV fights, and another to fit jiu-jitsu training sessions into a full-time wrestling schedule, and lose to a guy with a full-time non-athletics job in a high-school gym.
And then wear a Death Jitsu T-shirt to the ring.
Even for the those of us who know the deal with pro wrestling, there’s the concept, suspension of disbelief, that still applies.
It’s hard to suspend said disbelief when you’re watching a match with a guy the announcers are putting over as a top-shelf badass that you just saw getting choked out by a guy stocking shelves overnight at the local Walmart.
That toothpaste ain’t going back in the tube, unfortunately.
Maybe Tony Khan can give the kid who got Mox to tap a contract, and have him feud with the BCC.
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Chris Graham
