A little over a month ago, I wrote a piece on International Object about wrestling commentary. I argued that in its current state it served almost no purpose (in fact, I called it harmful), and that one may very well enjoy the show more without it. As a general rule, I’m a theoretical journalist: I observe, posit new ideas, and let people think about them. And while there were quite a few people who did just that, I’m not sure anybody turned the volume down to watch wrestling because of the article. But I did.

Since I wrote the article, I’ve only listened to the audio on a wrestling show once: The Royal Rumble, as I watched that with a group. Every other show I’ve watched has been served in silence.¹ I’d like to take this time to go over a few interesting realizations during this experiment.

1) I miss the crowd.

There’s just no way around this: crowd noise is seductive. It’s instantly understandable why a wrestler’s job is to create as much of it as possible. Without crowd noise, it would be very difficult to tell how the pace of a match is going with the selected audience. It’s also seductive to other audience members—I found myself yearning for the crowd noise at times, wondering what the collective found good or bad about a match. Even though I find myself to be a quiet fan most of the time, there’s something very assuring about knowing the reactions of 20,000 people.

But because it simply wasn’t there, I had to look at match quality from different angles. I had no commentary to tell me if a move had been done very well or poorly (or, as what happened on Raw this week, the schizophrenic feeling when a move is done incorrectly but the announcers call it like normal), and no audience reaction to guide me. I was on my own completely to judge the quality of the matches I saw.

Because of this, I found the largest change was that I actually had to pay attention. You can’t half-watch video with no sound. There are no cues to tell you when to glue both eyes. I couldn’t surf or tweet or fold laundry at the same time—I had to just watch. This confirmed a theory I had in the original article:

Over time (during the 20th century, before everyone had more than 5 channels at home), radio broadcasts of sports events, audio plays, and the like became quite popular, and in many circles still are. There are still people out there who prefer their entertainment to be audio-only. Perhaps its just habit, but I like to think it’s because an audio broadcast sparks imagination in a similar way that reading does: by providing only part of a thing, your brain has to paint in the rest.

By eliminating the audio, I had to imagine the crowd noise and imagine the commentary. And, just to spoil my next point, my imagined commentary was always better than the reality. I can confirm the opposite of this, as well. To test this theory, I went back and listened to some Gordon Solie, Gorilla Monsoon, and Bobby Heenan commentary. Based only on their words, I was able to paint a pretty great picture of an imagined match.

2) I do not miss Michael Cole, Jerry Lawler, Booker T, Josh Matthews, or any wrestler’s voice.

So, I figured I’d enjoy a respite from Michael Cole. But what I didn’t exactly expect was that I wouldn’t really miss any announcing voice. What were they going to tell me that I didn’t already know? I know which moves are which (not that they really call moves that often anyway). I know what’s coming when Randy starts pounding the mat. I know that an injustice has been done when Daniel Bryan steals another victory on Smackdown. I don’t need their help or explanations or hand-holding. The wrestlers are performing in front of 20,000 people who can’t hear the audience, and they have to communicate what they’re doing to the back row. Surely, the zoomed-in camera is picking up their intentions.

Without them, I also didn’t feel any shame in watching wrestling. Michael Cole especially makes the audience feel like they should feel guilty about this guilty pleasure. Nobody feels good about this. Without him, without any of them, I could watch wrestling in peace. I could think about it without being reminded what’s happening later in the main event. It was really nice.

Another thing I didn’t expect was that I wouldn’t really miss the promos. As I just explained, the wrestlers are playing to the back of the room even when they’re talking, so I could figure out what was going on. If Jericho coming back and not saying a word was genius, no wrestlers ever talking would be a revolution.

3) Language is not essential for a great performance.

Watching wrestling with no sound heightens the art of it by an order of magnitude. Without commentary, I have absolutely no choice but to pay attention to the individual wrestling moves, stack them up in my head, and figure out the rhythm and build.

If you haven’t seen The Artist yet, please go do that. It’s a wildly good move that is entirely without audible language. One of the points the movie makes is that silent actors have to ham it up in order to communicate their feelings. This supports wrestling as a visual artform, says Roland Barthes:

“Each sign in wrestling is therefore endowed with an absolute clarity, since one must always understand everything on the spot. As soon as the adversaries are in the ring, the public is overwhelmed with the obviousness of the roles.”

The movie suggests that films with sound would so easily trounce silent films because actors could be more realistic with their emotions. But wrestlers have microphones and announcers and they’re still overacting. The Artist flips this throughout, showing both the up and downsides to audio. It highlights a lovely point: there is room for all kinds. It’s a point you can see almost anywhere, because there are so many art forms that work like this. To see how a great overacted performance can be received, take Daniel-Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood. As Andy Friedman of Esquire reminds us:

For roughly the first 15 minutes of Paul Thomas Anderson’s magnificent oil-baron epic… Daniel Day-Lewis doesn’t speak a single intelligible word. There’s a fair bit of grunting, hissing, and moaning — his character, name of Plainview, is just a journeyman prospector at this point, physically engaged in the grimy nuts and bolts of digging wells — but no actual dialogue.

It’s not just films. Ballet dancers will communicate epic love stories with no voices. Cirque du Soliel performances often have no speaking roles. And, of course, there are the mimes. We must never forget the mimes.

And yes, very few of these mediums work with no sound whatsoever. Music often accompanies them to heighten moments and keep the audience engaged. Do not misread this argument: I’m not saying we need absolute silence. I would love a live audience option on my remote. I would be delighted to hear that a wrestling company hired an orchestra.² But I do not need the announcers.

As it stands, I don’t really feel any great desire to turn the volume back up. I’m enjoying wrestling more. If I miss a funny line, undoubtedly I see it embedded on Tumblr somewhere. Almost every wrestling plot boils down to “let’s wrestle” or “let’s wrestle later,” and I can piece together who’s feuding with who. It is really not that difficult. And as a nice perk, I don’t wake up my girlfriend as I catch up with Raw on Thursdays. I might just keep doing this.

Last June, when Apple announced iCloud, they did so by de-emphasizing the Mac. Steve Jobs explained that the Mac was now just another device—alongside the iPhone, iPad, etc—that connected to the cloud. The cloud was where your files would be. The “true” file was up there, somewhere.

For fifteen years, you could confidently say that the “true” narrative from WWE was Monday night Raw. But I don’t think you can say that anymore. The “true” narrative of WWE is now WWE.com.

WWE.com used to feel very much like an afterthought^⁠. It was a place to find the most rudimentary things that you’d think a wrestling website would have. It has been revised at a steady clip, has always clearly had a healthy budget, but was rarely the place to go for wrestling fans to get the most important stories about the narrative itself. For that, you had to watch Raw.

WWE.com was redesigned earlier this year. The change seemed sensible enough; the site was now more blog and entry-based. Permalinks made more sense, and content was easier to find. Due to these improvements, I’ve found myself linking to WWE.com more and more.

Raw has always been WWE’s flagship show, and that was true even when they were emphasizing Smackdown. Raw is more important to WWE than PPV’s (even WrestleMania, at least most of the year). But lately, if you only watch Raw, you’re not only missing out on stories happening on Smackdown, Superstars, and NXT, but you’re beginning to miss chapters in stories about the characters on Raw. This weekend was a prime example of this. Punk’s interruption of HHH at the San Diego Comic Con^⁠ and his appearance at an indie show Saturday night^⁠ will, I would suggest, never be shown on Raw. But the Comic Con video is available at WWE.com, and I wouldn’t be surprised if sometime soon there is a news item on the site about AAW.

Now, think about this. If you want to watch Superstars or NXT, you have to go to WWE.com. Smackdown is available in full a day after it has aired. Many segments on raw are viewable the next day. WWE.com is the centre of the universe. It’s the “true” narrative. Watching any WWE show on television these days means you’re only getting a slice.

WWE has been subtly doing this for a while. For example, the relationship between Daniel Bryan and Michael Cole debuted on NXT in 2010 before moving to Raw, and now Smackdown. To a television viewer, that would be understandably confusing. But to a WWE.com devotee, it flows just fine. They’re getting clips, stories, and explanation as scenes of the story unfold, regardless of where it aired.

The first thought I had about this was that WWE has emphasized the site for creative control reasons. There is no “network” deciding what WWE can and cannot do on their own site. But that seems unlikely because a) I’m not sure USA, SyFy, or any network is terribly concerned with policing WWE, and b) WWE makes a lot of money from advertising. Television is important, but what’s more important is being on the edge of technological distribution. Much like pornography, wrestling has always been on the very edge of this. Wrestling was the first “sport” to really take advantage of national and regional television. Wrestling essentially built the PPV market, as well as VHS/DVD live event distribution. WWE Classics on Demand was one of the first on demand cable channels to be offered internationally. WWE, like pornography and video games, bet on Blu-ray instead of HD-DVD for its premium HD releases.

The future is the web, and it’s very important for wrestling to carve out its place in the future before the rest of mainstream media gets there. By de-emphasizing Raw as the “true” narrative of WWE and replacing it with WWE.com—led with a transgressive story of a rogue champion out in the great wilderness of an independent wrestling life—WWE is carving itself a place in that future.

K Sawyer Paul is an author and publisher living in Toronto. He tweets and tumbls. In the wrestling world he is known for This is Sports Entertainment and The Footnotes of Wrestling.

Edited by Jason Mann.

Jason: I’ve noticed that wrestling fans on the Internet sometimes have opinions about things. And one of the opinions commonly expressed lately is that Zack Ryder is an uncommon talent capable of great things who is being held back for some reason by WWE.

Mitch: As an opinionated wrestling fan who doesn’t have the Internet, I don’t know who you are talking about.

Jason: Well, Zack Ryder, in addition to being a competent to brilliant pro wrestler (depending on who you ask), has created a series of Web shows that have put fans in stitches (note: this is a strange expression for laughter). But despite showing such initiative and ability to entertain, Zack Ryder hasn’t found his way onto WWE TV very often, certainly not in a prominent role. Some fans have even threatened to riot for lack of Ryder, although I’m not sure I take this seriously from a group of people who happily tolerate Michael Cole shrieking for eight hours a week.

Mitch: Rioting should be reserved for something more serious, like maybe losing a hockey game. Actually, even that I don’t understand. So your city lost a hockey game and you trash and torch your own city? Would that mean if Zack Ryder loses a match he should beat the shit out of himself? Sorry, sidetracked, continue.

Jason: Actually that might be a clever character, a wrestler who beats himself up. Anyway, though, I think we can agree that Zack Ryder seems to be at least pretty good at the stuff WWE likes: he’s tall, tan, has nice short hair, can talk, has a personality, doesn’t break the law and seems to have pretty good matches without hurting anyone. So what’s holding him back? Is it just because the annoying Internet fans like him, too? Should fans, as Bryan Alvarez once seems to have suggested, not take to the Facebook and the Twitter, and campaign for him?

Mitch: If that’s the answer (it’s not), then someone needs to email tweet facebook message text call hunt down Vince McMahon with a lasso and slap him for totally no-selling the opportunity before him. For the first time EVER, fans are able to directly communicate every want and desire that they possess when it comes to the WWE, and they would be insane to completely ignore it. I don’t believe it’s the campaigning that’s holding him back, I think there’s more to it than that.

Jason: So assuming it’s not a weird way to get Internet fans angry or punishment for him forgetting to shake someone’s hand or wearing the wrong T-shirt, what could it possibly be? Is the Zack Attack maybe not quite as good as some of us think he is? I’ve seen comparisons to Chris Jericho in 1998 (even from the man himself), which I quite frankly find a little ridiculous.

Mitch: And I quite Mitchly agree with you. Zack Ryder and 1998 Chris Jericho are both funny in a non WWE “DAMN! A MAN IN A TUTU AND AN OLD WOMAN MAKING SEXUAL ADVANCES ON MEAN GENE OKERLUND DAMN! EVERYONE DANCE” kind of way, and that’s probably where that comparison ends.

Jason: And, in fairness to Ryder, he’s not wrestling the likes of Dean Malenko, Juventud Guerrera, and a spry, youthful Rey Mysterio, either. Those level of guys can make your wrestling year a lot of better.

Mitch: Wait, so you don’t consider Vladimir Kozlov as a spry, youthful Dean Malenko?

Jason: I consider Kozlov almost half as good as Goldberg. Though at least he has the decency to actually wrestle Zack.

Mitch: These references are beginning to put my brain in a pretzel. But if someone doesn’t start wearing a “RYDER 1 KOZLOV 0” t-shirt soon I’ll RIOT

Jason: So what are some other theories: Could WWE be trying to galvanize a social media movement by keeping Ryder off TV, bringing him back once it peaks?

Mitch: Now this, THIS is the honesty part I was talking about. Er, I mean, it’s the part I was talking about when I said there could be more to it than Vince McMahon holding him back because of campaigning fans. I don’t want to make crazy assumptions and give credit when it’s probably not due, but what if WWE really is manufacturing Zack Ryder’s popularity simply by holding him back? Would Zack Ryder be popular if he wasn’t held back? Bro?

Jason: Don’t call me bro, brah. I guess it’s not impossible WWE is keeping Ryder off TV a while longer to keep the movement going (especially once they realized it had gained some steam), though I wouldn’t bet on it. But if it is true, what happens when WWE puts him back on TV? How does he get pushed? Is the movement big enough for him to get major reactions outside of New Jersey? Where does he fit on the card? Or most of his backers just wrestling hipsters who will bail once WWE “ruins” him? Why am I asking so many questions that you really aren’t likely to have answers to?

Mitch: Another question I don’t have the answer to.

Jason: One thing I found really interesting about Razor’s interview with Jeff Katz of Wrestling Revolution was the idea of applying the principles of the entertainment industry to wrestling and that WWE, even though it desperately wants to be considered legitimate entertainment, doesn’t really do that. He even used Ryder as an example; if he tested well in metrics and showed good numbers in drawing in audience, he would be used regardless of any personal bias against him or the fans that support him. Now I think that one of the strengths of WWE over the years has been that it’s largely been the vision of one man alone, but I wonder if the limited thinking that comes from that one man could cost them another chance at an appealing attraction.

Mitch is a regular contributor to Fair to Flair and the founder of PIZZABODYSLAM. He is on Tumblr and Twitter, where he talks about how he watches and writes about and thinks about wrestling all-day everyday. He is also a grown-up.

Jason Mann is co-editor and co-founder of Fair to Flair and founder ofWrestlespective. He is probably engaged in a vigorous debate about wrestling right now on Twitter or Facebook. E-mail him at Editor(at)FairToFlair.com. He prefers pens over pencils.

Edited by TH.

Author’s Note: Fake Sir Michael Cole stole WrestlingTheory’s computer for a few hours post-Raw, because he felt an overt need to bring up some message of some sort to the world. I don’t know why, either.

In the midst of John Lennon songs and Mason Ryan matches Monday night, I realized that I would have to broach the subject of Jim Ross to my community because no matter what, I can’t escape it. It’s sort of like how any announcer covering football tends to be seen out as blander (or less popular) than John Madden. But let me make a specification that those announcers cannot make: Jim Ross is the best wrestling announcer of all time; I am the ideal sports entertainment broadcaster.

Before you get on me for “making up terms,” I can tell you facts that prove this. In the 1980s, my boss Vince McMahon almost put it upon himself to make his voice as familiar with the company’s fans as he could. He put it upon himself because the product was (and still is) his vision. It’s like Woody Allen movies. People label his methods as narcissism, but Vince totally sees it as what he has to do and what is easiest for him to understand. And if you owned a billion-dollar company, it’s kind of hard to view your whims as bad things.

Vince’s voice is a sports entertainment voice. It’s a voice of a product that sort of seems like professional wrestling but can be so much more. It’s not some Ted Turner mickey mouse “rasslin’,” it’s a creation of a different point of view altogether. I don’t question it mostly because this is my job, after all. If I’m told to kiss a guy’s foot while barbecue sauce is poured in my eyes while a guy bends my legs to the back of my head, I feel I pretty well have to do it. Jim Ross has done the same thing, of course. But that’s our only true similarity: company first as a mantra.

But Jim Ross and Vince are not the same. Obviously, they never have been. People like Jim Ross because he puts over contests and performers. I like Vince McMahon because he puts over stories. I’ve been shaped in his mold, honestly. I’ve barely hinted at my past in things like NXT where I’d bury the lack of importance of something by quipping that I was a “war correspondent.” The heel thing to do is pretend that you are the action. In reality, I merely told the stories of a pretty short war in Yugoslavia. My job then and (what I thought) my job in WWE was for a long time to report the stories and get out of there.

I will defend my work versus Jerry Lawler as the storyline that would have been what Vince would have done had the Austin bit not fallen into his lap. You may think Vince has this narcissism about him, but think of his track record at WrestleMania. He more often than not gets utterly embarrassed on his own stage. When he became the evil dick of the WWF in the late 90s, he also knew that eventually, he would have to get a violent comeuppance. And not to sound selfish, but you look at my match with King and you’ll see a situation that echoes Vince and Austin, even if the nerds on the internet aren’t throwing snowflakes at it.

Vince McMahon was the first sports entertainment correspondent. He spent years honing his announcing and personality. People accused him of nepotism because of Daddy. Other people were confused as to why he and family took such a small role in his product at first. And he had a pompadour. And he saw something in me in that same sense. I won’t pretend I’m better than Jim Ross, at least in private. But comparing me to Jim Ross is oranges to apples. At least I hope.

Fake Sir Michael Cole is a ripoff artist, former war correspondent, and perpetually angry man that can be found on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook. Wrestling Theory can also be found on the same outlets (Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook), but he only provided the laptop.

Edited by Jason Mann.

This Raw review comes to you in our trademark WOO! vs. BOO! format. Everything “WOO!” was awesome, while everything “BOO!” was a bastard, or fat, depending what word offends you more.

WOO!

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES > ACTUALLY HEARING

When Raw starts with Alberto Del Rio already on his way to the ring, or a Battle Royal already under way, it doesn’t feel crazy and chaotic like they want it to, as if Monday Night Raw is so unscripted that who knows when shit will happen. It feels like they don’t know how to start their show on time and then they look dumb (maybe because, scripting something to look unscripted always looks hyper-scripted).

But when a show starts with Michael Cole and Jerry Lawler legitimately confused and R-Truth is climbing the upper bowl shouting JOHN CENA T-SHIRT DON’T WOO ME, I feel like no one knows what’s going to happen (including R-Truth). Maybe it’s because it was a real mistake. Maybe it’s because they just shove R-Truth through the curtain after spinning him around a couple times. I don’t know.

Also, I kind of prefer making up John Cena and R-Truth promos. Without the sound, you can break down Cena’s promos to giggles and air quotes. The problem is R-Truth, whose lips are unreadable because you can’t put any context to what he’s saying. Sure, he’s talking to John Cena fans, but he could be saying ANYTHING. Like, “KNICK KNACK PATTY WHACK HAPPY EASTER, SUGAR CRISP BEAR - ARE YOU MY SON?! … do you know him?”

I also hope that John Cena is truly conspiring with Little Jimmy. It might explain where he gets his material. LOL?!asdfdf

CM PUNK VS. REY MYSTERIO

Dolph Ziggler vs. Kofi Kingston was fun. It had a few of those “whoa whoops no you go here uhhhh what’s punch again, B?” moments. But I liked it. And then I watched Rey and Punk remind everyone what wrestling is.

This was fun ****ing wrestling to watch. It had a big dive, exciting counters, a wag of the finger from Punk, Rey selling a move by lying completely still and opening his mouth as far as it can go, and that’s all. Whenever I watch a match like this and look back at how I watched any previous match on the show, I wonder how I could’ve even possibly enjoyed it. Sometimes I forget that there’s better wrestling than Dolph Ziggler and Kofi Kingston tripping over each other (and I still had fun watching that).

KHARMA IS A (FAT) BITCH

YIKES.

So this whole thing sent wrestling fans everywhere for a loop. To address that, here’s what I said on my blog yesterday (Part 1 | Part 2). Now, to talk about how awesome this was.

THIS WAS AWESOME. It was real, and people in Omaha, Nebraska, seem to care about what Kharma has to say. 

We never truly knew where Kharma stood. She was neither heel nor face, and just seemed to bust people’s boobs because she could. But coming out and saying she was told she was too fat to be a Diva, everyone cheered. Because she is not a Diva.

A Diva shows her cleavage while Michael Cole throws to commercial. A Diva has a lot of butt-related offense (I’m looking at you Kelly Kelly. Maybe you should team up with Steve Corino). A Diva shits her sparkly short-shorts when Awesome Kong shows up, because she knows she’s going to get the extensions beat off her and there’s nothing she can do about it. Because they have to fight each other, because Kharma is still a woman, and that’s the only qualification that being a WWE Diva should have.

That is the story here. And that’s why it was awesome when the Bella Twins called Kharma fat, and she responded by saying “in exactly one year I will MURDER YOU.” Only Kharma could do that. Melina couldn’t go “in one year, I’ll… do the splits on your neck?” NO.

This is perfect. It strikes a nerve in people. Making fun of a woman’s weight and her unborn child is what I want to see on my pro wrestling program. To quote Lance Storm…

“How are we as an industry supposed to draw an emotional reaction from our fan base if we aren’t allowed to anger people on some level? If our industry were always under the handicaps of today’s “moral standards” where would we be?”

Honourable Mention: O RLY, ALEX RILEY?!

I don’t know how, but Alex Riley got a pop with his generic rock theme music. And, while we’re talking about that, can we leave Union Underground and MurderLIFE and Truth Chinstrap wherever we found them and have some cool songs again?

Alex Riley might have the most complicated contract history of any Superstar, if contracts actually existed in the way they talk about them. He went from NXT Rookie, to losing NXT, to being hired as a personal servant, to being fired, to being rehired as a VP of Miz Marketing (or something) to being drafted to Smackdown to being fired by the Miz to being maybe on Raw too I don’t know? Do they know?

Riley showed that last week wasn’t a fluke. He’s got serious fire, a kind that John Morrison slow-motion prays for every night, and people seem to be getting behind him.

Also, I hope “bastard” catches on, and he’s known as “The Bastard” Alex Riley.

BOO!

I MISS THE RULES

Don’t you guys? Don’t you miss the times when you didn’t have to cock your head to the side like a puzzled dog and wonder why the rules weren’t followed and no one commented on it? 

I just ****ING HATE when rules are ignored for literally no reason. There are a million different ways R-Truth could’ve won by countout. The one way he couldn’t have won, is if he ran out of the ring at the count of six or whatever, and ran back in to make the count of ten, because exiting the ring restarts the count, and talking about this out loud fills my body with nerd shame.

But it’s true! Eveyrone knows that the rule, and they KNOW everyone knows that, so why do it? And why make me write about it on the Internet? I know you’re thinking “they’re not making you” but they ARE because they were the ones that ingrained these rules into my 9-year-old sponge-brain when I was watching the exact same show that is abandoning these same rules for no reason AHHHHHH.

There’s a lot I can let slide. Like Bret Hart punching CM Punk in the face when he’s the referee. That’s funny and who cares. But when they’re advancing a storyline, and a rule isn’t followed that was probably (I, uh, am just guessing) followed earlier that very night, I have to wonder what the **** happened.

AN OPEN LETTER TO MASON RYAN

Dear Mason Ryan,

Please choose an appropriate length for your sleeveless Nexus t-shirt. Sometimes you look naked from the waist down. Sometimes you look like you’re wearing a cocktail dress. Sometimes, like tonight, you look like you placed a clown nose on the tip of your penis.

Sincerely,

Me

P.S. I ****ing hate you.

THERE IS NO SAVING THIS COMMENTARY

The thing about WWE commentary is, if you space out for even a second, when you space back in, Michael Cole is saying “Clark Griswald from Vegas Vacation” and you have to try and piece together just what the **** he could be talking about.

Jerry Lawler is no better. He might even be worse. He now can somehow sit beside the guy who insults his dead mother on a regular basis (can’t Lawler smash Cole’s face into something once a show still?), but he also is a hypocritical douche nozzle, as best explained by Brandon Stroud, a guy I’ve referenced an inappropriate amount of times.

The most telling sign that the commentary needs to change is when you watch Kofi Kingston and Dolph Ziggler wrestle. Jerry Lawler can’t stop googling fat jokes to unleash on Vickie Guerrero and Michael Cole can’t stop making sarcastic cracks about how beautiful she is. And then there’s a brief moment when they talk about the wrestlers wrestle each other, and your ears release this horrible tension they’ve been holding as you try and match up what you’re hearing with what you’re watching.

It’s because Kofi and Dolph are without a storyline. So they wrestle each other, and the announcers talk have to talk about Vickie Guerrero. But then, just for a minute, they talk about the match, and not about anything else. It’s so refreshing. It’s like watching Superstars, where jobbers wrestle each other, and because they have no storyline and John Cena isn’t on the show later, the announcers HAVE to talk about the match. It feels so good. So right. Can we go back to that? 

Or at least to the good old days of JR and King?

Honourable Mention: John Cena, lower your voice, because I heard you call parts of the match without even paying attention.

And stop doing this face. And stop being so incredulous whenever the GM Email Alert sounds. It’s been like a year and a half. Just accept that a stranger emails you your life instructions from now on. But keep defending the honour of the Jimmy family, and please make your Capitol Punishment match a LumberJimmy match. 

I want to hear from Medium Jimmy.

Mitch is a regular contributor to Fair to Flair and the founder of PIZZABODYSLAM. He is also on Twitter, where he talks about how he watches and writes about and thinks about wrestling all-day everyday. He is also a grown-up.

Edited by Jason Mann.