*Blog post was started on April 5, 2021.

Daniel Bryan, Will Ospreay, and Why Every Heel Should Be John Lithgow

Watching NJPW's Sakura Genensis at Ryokogu was probably the best way to start off this WrestleMania week. It was a solid card with great upcoming bookings lined up. And perhaps it will line up Kota Ibushi to appear at AEW Double or Nothing. With Cesaro versus Rollins and Zayn versus Owens this weekend, I think it is okay to be optimistic.

Thankfully for me, "Being the Elite" will be my Monday night wrestling fix, so Vince McMahon cannot screw the vibe up. It sucks for AEW that they cannot use Impact Wrestling as a lead in any further. This does make booking the first Impact after WrestleMania interesting. We know that AXS TV will never beat USA in the ratings, but if they book Kenny Omega, can he keep NXT under one million viewers.

Two paragraphs, both of them either hint or state Kenny Omega's influence on the business. He is obviously the heel with the most power. Sorry Roman Reigns. If only you did not have to share it with Paul Heyman.

Perhaps if Reigns would do some weaselly stuff. I know that is what Heyman is for, but the biggest news not directly involving the IWGP Cody-versal Championship (should I have called it the Tattooniversal) is Will Ospreay delivering an Os-cutter to his real life girlfriend Bea Priestley to show that the IWGP World Championship is worth more than his lover.

 

 

 

A lot of fans feel that this is New Japan promoting domestic violence. With Ospreay barely surviving #SpeakingOut fall out when it came to his influence blacklisted Pollyanna (I know the promotion, IWL, said it was their call to remove her from their card, but it was probably done with the intent to appease Ospreay.), these fans were claiming that this move went from bad to worse taste. If you have read my blog, "Bad Taste: Peter Jackson, The WWE Intercontinental Championship, and Billy Corgan", you will know that I am all about not half-assing efforts to disgust.

If you look at the first video posted in this blog, you know that a move like this is suppose to indicate that pure evil can only serve itself. It can be argued that Lithgow's character from "Cliffhanger" was stuck in a scenario where all his efforts were for not if he did not make that move, but if Qualen was as smart as he thought he was, surely he could have not murdered his girlfriend. The point of the scene is to show that he only cares how things turn out for him, and he will take the most brutal actions to demonstrate that.

Will Ospreay is now the top heel, and he has to demonstrate it. The only way around this would to make The Great O-Khan a cowardly hype man due to the language barrier. If your translator wrestles with a mouth guard that feature the image of razor sharp teach, to turn all scaredy cat on us would not serve him well.

For all the fans clamoring for Attitude Era angles, but when they get something that you would see from back then, the response is "Not Like That!" There were similar complaints about TNA building towards the top heel villain, Dixie Carter, being powerbombed by Bully Ray. No one complained about Judge Dredd dropping Ma-Ma from 95 stories after making her inhale a drug that slows down one's perception of time.

Once we let the marks know the term kayfabe, they should have been conditioned to accept that what a character does in the ring does not represent the performer's real life. I am all about disclaimers and context warnings. Putting one that indicates the events portrayed are fiction and do not reflect the performer's values is something I am not opposed to. If we had those back during the Monday Night Wars, it would have served as a great notice of when to hit record on the VCR.

As for the title of this blog, have the best villains not been comparable to the great John Lithgow? Daniel Bryan seems to take from him. The planet's hero was as righteous as the minister in "Footloose". Lord Farquaad from "Shrek" has never been matched when it comes to that franchise. Bryan may not have used him as a heel, but you know he wrestles with that small/short guy chip on his shoulder.

Any authority figure can act like John Lithgow. If only Vince McMahon actually watched movies, his onscreen authorities figures would be so much better. Lithgow's performances should have given us a clue that Donald Trump was always the villain. There was a straight up B.Z. from "Santa Claus: The Movie" vibe around that asshole.

What I am getting at is, if you can see Lithgow doing something that a wrestler is doing, it is okay for the narrative. If you want to see genuine bad taste, think about this.

The Bella Twins did absolutely nothing for women's wrestling, but they get to be in the WWE Hall of Fame. They represent a low point in wrestling, but their portion of the narrative is deemed important. Chris Benoit at least treated the wrestling business a hell of a lot better. I can appreciate that Benoit's inclusion would mean a lot of difficult questions to explain, but the inclusion of the Bellas is nothing but questions.

So does a body count allow you to ignore a part of history? I suppose that is why Hulk Hogan is hosting WrestleMania.