Strange Things In Wrestling This Week with Marc Madison
Welcome to the most recent edition of Strange Things In Wrestling This Week with Marc Madison. STIWTW returns to highlight several rather unique recent occurrences in wrestling. This column won’t push you to watch films about creepy clowns intimidating children, or get you to listen to the theme song of the Addams family. What we do is hit fans with several topics that you may not have noticed, or possibly ignored, and try to understand their purpose.
(Please note: While some events did change, what initially took place can’t be ignored…or something like that.)
This week’s edition includes two sweets becoming one, the undead clashing with one another before Halloween, a Fox losing its mind, and wrestlers developing the ability to talk with marbles in their mouths. We, unfortunately, won’t talk to you about why Baron Corbin seems like such a grumpy Gus. Dude, you’re the United States champion, lighten up. We also won’t try to understand the purpose of Pulp Fashion, and why they just won’t befriend The Ascension, as it just seems odd. Without further ado, here are Strange Things In Wrestling for the week of October 20th.
Alicia Fox rationale for losing last week
She’s always been an interesting character. One of the best (or worst) storylines from earlier this year was Fox’s on-screen relationship with NoamDar. Many just looked at that storyline as bad acting featuring two mismatched athletes that went together like peanut butter and tuna fish. (Yes, those don’t go together). On this past week’s edition of Raw, Fox was slated to face-off against Sasha Banks in a rematch of what took place the previous week. Before the match, the focus was on Fox’s claim that what had happened wasn’t her tapping; instead, she blamed the referee.
Now as we all know, heels lie (John often reminds readers of this fact), but her reasoning was so odd that to call it weird would be an understatement. First, she said the referee was blind, but she wasn’t celebrating that WWE had made a conscious effort to be an equal opportunity employer by hiring the visually impaired. But Fox didn’t stop there; she also said that she was in fact not tapping, but scratching her face. Sure, tapping repeatedly and scratching your face involve movements that look completely different, and her timing for scratching her face was questionable, but that doesn’t mean she was lying does it? This unintentionally funny moment was peculiar to see because it appeared more like she was improvising her lines rather than saying something scripted, as normally happens.
Cesaro eats marbles and telegraphed timing
Marbles in his mouth. That has to be the only reason Cesaro sounded the way he did this past week on Raw. During an episode of Miz TV when TheMiz,BraunStrowman, The Bar and discussed facing The Shield on TLC. Each one had the opportunity to share just what they will do and who they will do it too, including Cesaro. As a parent of a 13-year-old and an 11-year-old, both of whom have braces and sound as though they are talking with a lisp, it felt as though Cesaro was in the same boat.
But in Cesaro’s case, he had two teeth pushed so far up his gums that it changed how he articulated his thoughts to the masses. While we are pretty sure that he said something frightening and threatening, we aren’t sure because he wasn’t very clear at all. Later on the show, we detected a sense of uncertainty on the part of Cesaro, during a moment in the Raw tag team titles match where he and Sheamus weren’t sure about what they were going to do because of how Dean Ambrose was being held. Sure mistakes happen, but it was a moment that felt as though it lasted forever, and that particular moment just seemed odd in retrospect.
Demon and Sister and Pay Per View…oh my?
Fans that have been following the feud between Finn Balor and Bray Wyatt saw a unique set of events take place between the two of them recently. Leading up to this, we saw Wyatt wipe out Balor during their first confrontation, only for Balor to exact revenge as ‘The Demon,’ and then win once again during a man against man confrontation. But rather than say that Balor won the war between the two. Instead, the next stage in the story was that Balor would become ‘The Demon’ again and face-off against Bray Wyatt’s alter ego. No no, not as the eater of worlds, or even a God that has the whole world in his hands. Instead, Wyatt dug deep into the ground below his worm-infested compound (which burned to the ground a few months back while he was a part of Smackdown Live) and resurrected someone that has now come to life.
I wish I made this stuff up, but I’m not that creative (or crazy). Wyatt (or so we’re not led to believe) will BECOME Sister Abigail. The most notable difference in his appearance is that he is covered with some cheesecloth. So clearly, once the match is over Abigail will return to making balls of mozzarella (you know since she has the resources to do so). We aren’t sure who could referee a match like this, although Papa Shango making a run in is very much a possibility. Strangely enough, during the Halloween season, WWE didn’t reach into the archives of WCW and resurrect Halloween Havoc. This was one instance where this could really have worked.
(Obviously the match didn’t take place because Wyatt was sick, but the fact that WWE even advertised it makes it very strange!)
‘One sweet’
We normally cover mainly WWE stories here on STIWTW. Our reasons are pretty simple: these stories normally fill the newswire, and the promotion is prone to producing some of the strangest stories in wrestling. This time, however, in an act of either genius or sheer hilarity, wrestling fans outside WWE have been introduced to the ‘one sweet’. What exactly is that you might be asking? Fans may know that current Ring of Honor six-man tag champions and members of the Bullet Club, the Young Bucks are known for using a fairly popular hand gesture, among other gestures done in and out of the ring. The popular tag team has paid homage to the nWo and Degeneration X by using the ‘suck it’ motion and ‘too sweet’ hand gesture.
Though they had been doing these actions for years and years, WWE didn’t give it much attention until a recent event. During a staged ‘invasion,’ which was more comical than serious, when they showed up and spoke to the crowd outside Monday Night Raw, the Bucks were met with a cease and desist court order by the WWE. The response could have been defeated and nothing more, but that isn’t what happened. Instead, they released a t-shirt that stated, ‘Cease and Desist,’ and also took the ‘two sweet’ and created the ‘one sweet’ hand gesture. The action isn’t much different from that of the two sweet, the biggest difference being that the pinky finger is lowered so only one finger sticks up. The visual is one of the strangely amusing decisions ever made.
Zayn and Owens rekindle bromance….and they had time to kill?
If we were to predict anything for these two, it would be that one would be laid out while the other would be standing over them, victorious. And without question, it would have been Zayn laid out and Owens victorious. The nature of their relationship hasn’t screamed of having fun with each other, but here we are. What is strange about this unity isn’t that they are together, it is that it seems as though everything that happened before didn’t mean anything because they are brothers. Brothers hug, and they fight, although you probably wouldn’t powerbomb your brother on the ring apron and try to end their livelihood, but hey, it’s wrestling, and wrestling brothers are an interesting bunch.
The happy go lucky personality of Sami is being played way over the top now, and the focus isn’t on how much he can do and how passionate he is in the ring, it’s about what he’s willing to do in order to succeed. Meanwhile, Owens’ ability to emulate Zayn’s exuberant attitude was comical. However, the strangest part of an exchange they had after their match against Nakamura and Orton was that apparently everything ended too soon because it was still a few minutes before the end of the show and it seemed as though they went to the back and were told, ‘Hey guys, go back out there and applaud and jump around, there is still a few minutes until the end of the show.’ It was a strange situation indeed. We aren’t sure if the segment backstage with Daniel Bryan saying that Shane McMahon will decide what is next for Sami and Kevin was recorded earlier or not because they were quite upset initially, but went back out excited about what they had achieved when they really should not have been pleased about this news.
This ends another edition of Strange Things In Wrestling This Week with Marc Madison, for the week of October 20th. In the past we’ve covered everything from why it’s important to embarrass your boss with a headbutt, to why umbrellas can do more than just protect us from the sun or rain! Not to mention why it’s important to explain mistakes again and again. What develops over the next few weeks will be interesting to see. Will Alexa Bliss remain the Raw Women’s champion, or will a certain Empress come in and wipe out the entire division? For their sake, they had better make like Bray Wyatt and run when Asuka arrives!
For Strange Things In Wrestling, this is Marc Madison saying, if you catch the strange things in wrestling, be sure to always make fun of them, or claim that you love them. But not if you’ve hidden the truth for twenty years, that’s a bit sketchy…
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