Last Updated on: 26th September 2023, 01:49 pm
I just saw one of those things that drives me completely batshit nuts every time I see it. Right now on WWE.com they have a short interview up with Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. Right at the beginning of the story, the author of the piece says the following.
“After taking the RKO from “Legend Killer” Randy Orton, Cuban headed backstage to mingle with the WWE Superstars, happily snapping pictures with many of them, and specifically seeking out Kurt Angle.”
What in the hell is WWE thinking letting something like that make it to print? Randy Orton is one of the company’s next big stars or so they want us to believe and they’ve been trying to sell everybody on the fact that the RKO is a deadly and very dangerous move. It finishes off some of the toughest guys in the wrestling industry on a weekly basis. When he drops legendary wrestlers and helpless women with it, it’s a shame and Orton is portrayed as the scum of the earth. But good old Mark Cuban, sports executive? Doesn’t phase him at all. He just heads backstage happy as hell to be there and mugging for the cameras.
Yeah I know, wrestling is scripted and when Orton hits the RKO on people, he’s not really killing them. I’m well aware of all these things but let’s apply the same logic to movies for a second. You watch a guy get blown to smithereens right before your very eyes. He’s done. He’s taking the big dirtnap, at least in terms of the storylines. Now suppose that the next shot you see is the dead guy partying it up with the same guy who just killed him. That would look pretty stupid and nobody in the entertainment business would ever be dumb enough to actually do something like that, right? Well, apparently not.
The WWE website is supposed to be an extension of the company and to a point, its storylines even though they use it, and rightfully so, to inject a little more humanity into the characters and to promote things. But when you word an article the way that they worded this one, it takes away all of Randy Orton’s credibility. A lot of the people who read WWE.com aren’t the hardcore fans who understand how the business works behind the scenes and they base all of their opinions on what they see on TV and what they’re told to think by the company. When you present those people with something like that, why should they ever take anything that happens in the ring seriously again? And for that matter, even those of us who know what’s going on to a greater degree still want to suspend disbelief and we want things to make sense. We want to be entertained by good logical writing and by solid action in the ring. We want to be made to feel like what we’re investing our time into watching and caring about means something. But when we see something like this, it just cheapens everything.
The really sad part is that had they simply not given the time the interview took place and not mentioned the RKO, all of this could have been avoided. Say he was hanging out backstage in the afternoon before the event, no harm done. Why did they have to say that all of this took place afterwards, even if that happens to be true? The wrestling business isn’t above not telling the truth, hell, the entire concept is built on trickery and things not actually being as they seem. Why did they have to pick something like this to be honest about?
Maybe I’m just griping over trivial things but to me, it’s those little things a lot of the time that make something great. And when those little things should be so obvious to people who should really no better, it just makes it even worse when mistakes like that are made.