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| Sheamus, pictured above in all his jerkery Photo Credit: WWE.com |
It's true. He doesn't deny it. He randomly started attacking Sheamus in the hallways after WrestleMania for reasons that I'm sure aren't greater than "King Kong ain't got nothin' on me, and neither does this ginger." It's Law of the Jungle. You either eat, or you get eaten, and since Henry wasn't strong enough to chow down on the WWE Champion at present time, he went for the next best option. That's what hyper-masculine society is built upon, and while it's not a world I want to live in, it's definitely one that is entertaining as all get out to watch. But the key about it is that the guy doing the sneak attacking is the bad guy. Sheamus should be content with bruising and brawling and taking the fight to Henry. That's what he did at first. Again, I don't agree with "eye for an eye" as a personal philosophy, but in the wrestling world, I can justify it. You hit me in the back, I'll hit you. That's normal escalation. The bad guy starts it, and the good guy retaliates accordingly, at least in most cases. It's always the villain who ups the stakes, because he or she can in more devious ways.
Obviously, there is always room to change the story, but when you start justifying dick behavior, you might want to pump the brakes. I'd like to say that Sheamus moving from attacking Henry backstage in retaliation right to bailing on competitions he was clearly losing just to stick it to Henry was new for him or for the company's babyface ethos, but it's not. We've moved to a point in WWE where it's okay to be an overly aggressive manchild in response to anything that happens (if anything happens at all) to a good guy. I don't know about you, but that feels strangely discomforting to me at least now.
The counterargument to this is that "Well, Steve Austin did it in the Attitude Era and you were okay with it then," as if people don't change and context is always the same. I could be wrong, but it always felt like the McMahons approached levels of cartoon supervillainy that had not been seen before and really haven't been seen since. Austin didn't escalate all the time; it's just that his responses were more flamboyant than the evil that Vince McMahon and his legion of family members and minions would unleash upon him. But even if it was Austin ramping up the dickery all the time, does that really mean that I find it okay now? No. I'm a grown-up now. I was an angsty teen then. People change. Companies change. Back then, the WWF was all about getting rowdy teenagers and young adults to watch them, consequence be damned.
Now? They want kids to watch. There's a whole different ethic that needs to be instilled in your programming if you want to appeal to children, and more importantly, the adults who have to raise those children. Even more comical is the B.A. Star Campaign, which targets bully prevention. It's the ultimate in "do as I say, not as I do," programming, and it would be like Adrian Grenier doing anti-drinking PSAs after an episode of Entourage that saw him get piss drunk to absolutely no consequence. People say "It's just wrestling," and that violence is inherent in the action. However, bullying by the good guys is not.
Now, to be completely fair, it's only attempted bullying in this case, because when you say you're bullying someone, the implication is that victim can't defend him or herself. Mark Henry showed he's a grown-ass man and that he whoops on the bad people. But that doesn't excuse Sheamus' asshole behavior. If anything, it flips the entire heel/face fabric on its face. Traditionally, the roles would be reversed, and if they were, this would probably be an awesome story being told. It only makes sense to me if Henry is viewed as the good guy. In all actuality, if the first episode of RAW in a long time that a given person was watching was last week's and they watched everything WWE put out up through last night, Mark Henry might be the biggest babyface in the company to them.
But that's not the case according to the party line, and it hasn't been in a long time. Escalation is now the domain of the babyface, and who cares if it's cruel or not? Yeah, John Cena being taken hostage by the Nexus was bad (even if it was the most pathetic indentured service in history of recorded man), but dropping a billion chairs on Wade Barrett in retaliation doesn't seem a bit excessive to anyone? Sheamus himself responded to Alberto del Rio cheapshotting him not by cheapshotting him back, but by stealing his property and pooping in it. I'm sorry, but shouldn't being a good guy entail being, y'know, good? Why can't WWE figure out a way where they can have a good guy be fundamentally not rotten and still come off like a badass?
Actually, "still" is the wrong word here, because at least to me, Sheamus doesn't look like a badass. He looks like a sore loser and a punk. I don't want to root for him, and I sure as hell don't want him to talk to my kid about how you shouldn't bully people. WWE has to decide to whom they want to market their product, and if they decide it's to children, even in part, then maybe the babyfaces shouldn't be acting this reprehensibly. Yeah, the moral of the story should be that you don't pick fights with people, but you also shouldn't justify the way Sheamus has been acting towards Mark Henry either. There's a way to do things right, and it feels to me that WWE writers, agents, and show runners are either too lazy to do it, or they just are too warped in the head to know what that is all about.