La Zona Muerta

Here’s another WOL rant from 2022 about famous worked shoots that people told me they liked. Note this is when I first started to worry about one MJF:

Ah, the “worked shoot” promo. A way to say that you want something real in your fake wrestling. A way to make you feel like you saw something you weren’t supposed to see. A way to make you feel like you’re on the inside.

Here are a couple of examples of the worked shoot.

Brian Pillman – “I respect you, bookerman!” Pillman laid down for Kevin Sullivan, the booker of WCW and growled this on PPV one minute into an I Quit match, something maybe one percent of the audience would have understood; to everyone else, Pillman appeared to just be a wacky weirdo who randomly started a match, lost and walked off. Arn Anderson had to rush out, for real, to salvage the remainder of the match that Pillman had walked out on. This was part of a bizarre scheme too long and difficult to explain here that led to Pillman tricking his boss into letting him go to the WWF.

Vince Russo – “Tonight, Hulk Hogan wants to play his creative control card!” A mere snippet of a ten minute promo where Russo tells us we will never see the Hulk Hogan character again, which ended up being true, making the fake promo seem all too real, especially when Hogan alleged that Russo went too far in his comments. In the promo, Russo tells us that the “bullshit politics behind the curtain” had been too much for him to deal with, but he came back for the young talent in WCW. Hogan, however insisted on staying champion, so Russo said we would never see “that bald son of a bitch again!” Russo to this day maintains that Hogan knew about the whole promo ahead of time; Hogan said that this promo damaged his ability to get work and that he made less money in WWE because of it. People liked (and like) this one because it buried Hogan, but it led to an expensive lawsuit that the remains of WCW would eventually settle with Hogan for an unknown sum, said to be in seven figures.

Joey Styles – “I’m not good enough to call Backlash?!” WWE had fallen out with Jim Ross for the third or fourth time, and since the wrestling rolodex tends to run thin sometimes, suddenly Joey Styles found himself as the lead announcer of RAW. Trouble was, the powers that were didn’t WANT Joey Styles as the lead announcer of RAW. He was undermined almost from the beginning, saddled with the terrible Jonathan Coachman and a surly Jerry Lawler and told over and over again to not call wrestling holds, but to speak in sound bites and to “tell stories.” Eventually, he was pulled from WrestleMania and then even Backlash, so real life frustration surely fueled this promo which saw Styles get goaded into violence by Lawler and led to him cutting a promo where he “quit” Monday Night RAW (only to end up as the lead voice of WWECW).

CM Punk – “I’m the best in the world.” The most famous one; the promo that cemented Punk as a top superstar in WWE. Punk points out that he doesn’t hate John Cena; he merely hates the manufactured IDEA of John Cena and how he’s supposedly the best. Punk says that, in his hands, a microphone is a dangerous weapon, a pipe bomb (echoing another famous promo he cut in Ring of Honor several years prior). Punk then airs a lot of grievances, talking about the inequities in WWE, leaving to go work in New Japan or Ring of Honor, gives a shout out to his former homie Colt Cabana, and finally talks about how WWE will be better off when Vince McMahon is dead before his mic is cut when he brings up the “Be a Star” anti bullying campaign. This one had real life repercussions, but not negative ones like the Russo debacle; CM Punk, with one promo, became a superstar and mainstream media sat up and took notice. Here’s the amazing part about this classic promo, however… not only was it not real (despite how much truth was in it), not only did Vince actually write off on it, McMahon suggested things for Punk to say! He thought that this promo was a HEEL PROMO, and that Punk would appear to be a whiner for, I dunno, going up against a machine too strong, I guess.

Those are just a handful of examples; in the territories, particularly places like Memphis (Lawler LOVED pulling out shoot comments, casually dropping real names of opponents or squeezing out real tears, invoking the real death of his tag team partner Sam Bass when some pathos was needed) or ECW (too many times to list), this stuff happened all the time to a largely unknowing audience. WCW had a lot of this stuff, too, particularly towards the end… lots of times where they would tell you everything else was fake, but this situation, by god, was REAL.

Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to the MJF promo last nite. I can’t stand writing much more about whatever happened with MJF this weekend; suffice to say that he has apparently been unhappy for some time with the state of his pay and, even tho’ he is featured prominently on AEW TV, rarely loses and has another two years on his contract, he may have threatened to no show the pay per view this weekend. He did appear and did his scheduled job for Wardlow, but the behind the scenes drama completely overshadowed the match, and really, the pay per view in general. So, it was with great interest that I looked up when AEW announced that MJF would speak on Wednesday’s Dynamite.

MAX FRIEDMAN (Maxwell T. Friedman, real person, not to be confused with Maxwell J. Friedman, TV character), not selling the beating he took on Sunday, came out to tell us that he was better than the people in the back who wanted his spot, better than the people cheering him who thought he was unprofessional over the weekend, and better than the mark running this show. He said he was better in ring than the people in the back because he didn’t “pretend to watch New Japan” and didn’t “drop anyone on their head.” He then basically turned himself baby face by saying he was better and worth more than all of the ex-WWE guys that AEW has brought in. Then he demanded to be fired and called Tony Khan a “fucking mark” until his mic was cut.

Look, as always, if you liked this, that’s fine. All I can do is tell you what I thought about it and why. I thought it was a pale imitation of Punk’s infamous “pipe bomb” promo. I think it was dumb to mention that he was a better, safer worker than his colleagues and peers. I think it’s borderline dangerous to let a talent become a babyface against the company, particularly when the company is generally perceived as a positive thing. Remember, Punk was supposed to be a HEEL in that promo; they couldn’t understand that him airing his grievances against the oppressive WWE would turn him face. There were an awful lot of people who thought MJF was unprofessional 72 hours ago, but now he’s making a point that AEW is potentially holding him (and, if you extrapolate, others) down by bringing in ex-WWE wrestlers… and that point got him cheered.

My other big problem with this is how does this end? Does MJF challenge Tony Khan to a fight? Does Khan become a TV character? Does Khan have to hand select someone to put MJF in his “place?” I just don’t foresee a lot of positive outcomes for this scenario. Meanwhile, as always, if you DARE to question something in AEW, you hate rainbows and wrestling and fun according to some. I PROMISE that, if you didn’t like this promo, it’s okay.

Look, I’ve been a big MJF fan for a long time, well before there was an AEW. I cackled when he showed up at that initial press conference, because I knew how good he was while idiots said that he was a second-rate Miz. I don’t know what to make of the events of this weekend other than I think that there was some truth that (obviously) turned into a TV storyline. I don’t think anything good will come of it. I hope I’m wrong.
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