Alex Riley Subtweets Seth Rollins, Makes Me Feel Rage

Rollins was the target of a not-so-subtle bash from Riley Photo Credit: WWE.com

I try to steer clear of certain things when writing or forming opinions. I don't care too much about politics in WWE anymore, especially since worrying about them ruined my wrestling fandom for a couple of years. Out of character feuds rarely if ever interest me. I try not to keep track about what loathsome idiots say on an unfiltered medium like Twitter, especially when they can cop out and claim their tweets were somehow "in character" (since wrestlers and personalities are encouraged to use the social medium in character and not as themselves). But in this case, I need to make an exception.

Alex Riley, WWE's wrestler washout-turned-pale Skip Bayless imitation, has a long history of using his Twitter account to irritate the sensibilities of the commonly decent. Whether it be bitching about service at a restaurant and then bragging about the shitty tip he left or just "telling it like it is" on various opinions upon which he has little expertise or moral authority, Riley's account is one of the least essential follows in the history of anything. But then he came out with this tweet last night:

If u are a male that considers cross-fit a sport, let me help u out. Ur a wanna-be gymnast at most. Pick up a ball get on a mat or shut up
— Alex Riley (@AlexRileyWWE) October 9, 2014

If this tweet were just a garden variety, macho bullshit slam at CrossFit not being manly enough, I could have ignored it, but the context around the tweet is just way too enraging. Basically, it was a shot at one of the cornerstones of WWE's future, Seth Rollins, who not only is an enthusiast of the workout regimen, but who uses it to help train students at his wrestling school, the Black and Brave Wrestling Academy.

It's not that I particularly care about people talking shit about Rollins like any number of fans whose sole purpose is to act as a virtual groupie on social media. He's a big boy who can take care of himself, and I'm sure that he doesn't really care about what washouts relegated to the preshow have to say about how he keeps fit. However, the environment that emboldened Riley to press "send" on his browser/phone app is what bugs me, as it speaks to an insidious culture within American business nowadays.

It happens at nearly any workplace. The guy who's there because he knows someone or because he had potential in high school and knows how to kiss ass will marginalize the hard work that another employee is doing for whatever reason. In the gladhanding, bound-by-cronyism world of American industry, that kind of sniping can be seen as a positive. If you schmooze with the right people and badmouth those who actually do good work, you can get a promotion and keep failing upward. Granted, I don't believe Rollins has any danger of losing his spot because Riley shit-talked his workout regimen at all. But the fact that Riley even thought to make that kind of statement, that it was something appropriate, hits my vomit nerve.

Otherwise, Riley is best ignored, but sometimes, his buffonery hits me right in my class-conscious heart. Hopefully, Rollins catches wind of Riley's shit, shrugs it off, and continues to kill it like he is right now. The best revenge is living well, of course.

And no, I don't care to get into a conversation over whether CrossFit is a sport or not, because I don't think that was the point of the original tweet. I don't think it's a sport, but I really don't want to get into a semantic argument over it with people who partake in it, because they pretty much kill themselves during workouts. I also am aware that it could have been a "worked" tweet, but even so, how does it further a story? Is Riley going to get back into a ring, and if so, LOL if he's going to feud with a dude who recently was entangled with Brock Lesnar. Everything about this is enraging and idiotic, and the point of it all is that Alex Riley probably should be fired into the Sun.