Who was “trumped” Monday night?
On the one hand you can argue that the fans were trumped considering many felt the angle to be a letdown when most were expecting a sure-fire hit decision with the announcement of Ric Flair as Raw’s General Manager. On the other hand, you can argue that the media was trumped as there are actually major outlets in the world that are reporting the “sale” of Raw as a legitimate business transaction. It was even said that WWE stocks took a small dive yesterday with investors confused and worried about the announcement made on Raw the night before.
Will we ever live in a society where people accept pro wrestling as a work?
If people always claim pro wrestling is low-brow, for the masses, and for people who have IQ’s less than their own shoe sizes, why is it that the “intelligent” folks who work for the media are continually baffled by wrestling story lines? Why is it that whenever something like the Trump angle happens in WWE, I am always asked by my “smart” friends who are way too intelligent to watch wrestling “so was that real what happened with so-and-so last night?”
Maybe all of you out there who are superior to wrestling have been trumped by what Vince and Donny did this past Monday night.
But before I continue on this line of thinking I want to address my personal feelings on the angle and how I felt watching it unfold. Overall, I thought it was fun for one night, but I don’t see it having much lasting power. Donald Trump is one of the busiest men in the world, and there’s realistically no way he will make a full time commitment to appear on Raw on any type of consistent basis, so my question becomes, “where does this angle go?”
In my opinion, we’ll see Donald appear on Raw next week, we might even see him appear on the show the following week, and then we might see him in a few pre-taped vignettes for the next several weeks, before he finally appoints a new GM to run the show in his absence. So let’s say you’re someone who really enjoyed the angle, which I did because it made for some very fun television on Monday night, you’re not benefiting from it in the long run because it won’t be around for more than a couple of weeks. It was in essence a glorified hot shot angle, and WWE needs to be careful about running too many of these because in the process they lose sight of working on detailed, creative story lines for their wrestlers that have lasting power and viewer interest which can be held for months.
Here’s another draw back to the Trump angle. Where does this announcement leave Shane and Stephanie? This question could make for some compelling TV, but again, I fear that Trump won’t be around long enough to actually participate in these kinds of story lines. This could be the biggest draw back of them all: if Trump is not willing to participate on Raw on a semi-regular basis, or at least put in the amount of on-air time that Vince usually does, then the fans are going to be screwed out of potential story lines that could have included one or more members of the McMahon family. Remember, Vince is “out” now, so if this Trump angle lasts for years, then we’ll never again see McMahon related story lines on Raw, which could be a huge letdown if Trump only pops up on TV once or twice a year.
Having said all that, however, the one minor up-side to this angle, like I pointed out in my Raw review, is that a new General Manager will likely have to be named in the coming weeks, so unless Trump decides he’s not going to have a GM run the show when he’s “not around,” then we have that announcement to await in the future, which provides some excitement.
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
