Dean Ambrose quipped that the only way the winner of the battle royale to determine his challenger on the SummerSlam pre-show would defeat him would be if it were the Ghost of Andre the Giant. Treated as a punctuation mark on another excellent Shield promo, the statement also served as thematic for the show at large. Andre was not a regular performer for too long in any territory. I could be wrong, and I wouldn't be offended if historians of wrestling corrected me on what I'm about to write. However, I am somewhat positive that the run Andre had in the WWF at the very end of his career may have been his longest by tenure in any company. He was the special attraction defined.
As the caravan rolls into Los Angeles for what looks to be the most loaded SummerSlam card in 21 years, one could argue Andre's ghost has haunted the creative team already. John Cena vs. Daniel Bryan is a special attraction match, an ideological war between the entertainer who just happens to be good at wrestling and the wrestler who just happens to be an adept entertainer as well. Their match will be what Hulk Hogan vs. Bret Hart should have been, and regardless of how many groans went up when Cena delivered his impassioned half of the verbal repartee, he did what he had to do, which was defend his way of life.
Cena hand-picked Bryan, but I'm not sure he, the character, knew what he was getting into. In a way, Bryan's feelings of disrespect were inherently justified in the way that Cena picked him. The Champ didn't pick challenger because he thought it'd be an easy win, like Bryan, the character, seems to have in his head. Cena thought Bryan deserved a chance, that he was doing Bryan a favor by giving him the stage.
But Bryan, by his nature, doesn't want to be given anything; it only justifies Cena's rhetoric about needing to earn respect. In a way, Cena's promo was recursive, a self-fulfilling prophecy if you will. The cycle repeats itself, and Daniel Bryan becomes just another Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Batista, or CM Punk. Bryan doesn't want to be just another anything though. He's an iconoclast, just like Hogan was before him. Comparing Bryan to Hogan feels wrong, but really, WrestleMania 3, the first watershed moment in the WWF's modern history, was predicated on the cult of personality shattering the special attraction wrestler and assuming his essence. The Ghost of Andre lives in Cena.
That spirit also lives in Brock Lesnar, who is just the weirdest special attraction guy of all-time in my estimation. He is booking-proof. It doesn't matter that in his first match back, Cena beat him, or in his highest-profile match, Triple H, the human wank machine, wanked all over him. Critics can say he's ruined, but every time he's on the screen, whether to beat the shit out of Punk or to conduct weird sit-down interviews, he remains must see. I will put aside Daniel Bryan, because I'm obviously biased towards him, but with that in mind, no one in WWE comes close to having that kind of shine, no matter how many appearances they make.
And so CM Punk now is in the role of being fodder for Lesnar's most compelling opponent to date. Perhaps he is the most interesting foil for The Beast Incarnate on the roster because of the strange webbed relationship that those two and Paul Heyman all share. Am I going to hate myself for comparing both Bryan and Punk to Hulk Hogan in the same review? Maybe. Will that stop me from doing so? No, because both comparisons weirdly fit, if I'm correctly assuming which hosts that Ghost is haunting for SummerSlam.
The hater inside me says Ambrose ducked out easy, but Rob van Dam is definitely a special attraction kind of guy. However, I would be utterly shocked if he escaped the pre-show with the belt everyone runs from. However, just because Ambrose didn't draw the Ghost of Andre the Giant doesn't mean the First WWE Hall of Famer will be absent from SummerSlam. RAW tonight had a lot of ups and downs, but they delivered where they needed to, and not coincidentally, those soft spots happened to be imbued with the Holy French Spirit.
As the caravan rolls into Los Angeles for what looks to be the most loaded SummerSlam card in 21 years, one could argue Andre's ghost has haunted the creative team already. John Cena vs. Daniel Bryan is a special attraction match, an ideological war between the entertainer who just happens to be good at wrestling and the wrestler who just happens to be an adept entertainer as well. Their match will be what Hulk Hogan vs. Bret Hart should have been, and regardless of how many groans went up when Cena delivered his impassioned half of the verbal repartee, he did what he had to do, which was defend his way of life.
Cena hand-picked Bryan, but I'm not sure he, the character, knew what he was getting into. In a way, Bryan's feelings of disrespect were inherently justified in the way that Cena picked him. The Champ didn't pick challenger because he thought it'd be an easy win, like Bryan, the character, seems to have in his head. Cena thought Bryan deserved a chance, that he was doing Bryan a favor by giving him the stage.
But Bryan, by his nature, doesn't want to be given anything; it only justifies Cena's rhetoric about needing to earn respect. In a way, Cena's promo was recursive, a self-fulfilling prophecy if you will. The cycle repeats itself, and Daniel Bryan becomes just another Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Batista, or CM Punk. Bryan doesn't want to be just another anything though. He's an iconoclast, just like Hogan was before him. Comparing Bryan to Hogan feels wrong, but really, WrestleMania 3, the first watershed moment in the WWF's modern history, was predicated on the cult of personality shattering the special attraction wrestler and assuming his essence. The Ghost of Andre lives in Cena.
That spirit also lives in Brock Lesnar, who is just the weirdest special attraction guy of all-time in my estimation. He is booking-proof. It doesn't matter that in his first match back, Cena beat him, or in his highest-profile match, Triple H, the human wank machine, wanked all over him. Critics can say he's ruined, but every time he's on the screen, whether to beat the shit out of Punk or to conduct weird sit-down interviews, he remains must see. I will put aside Daniel Bryan, because I'm obviously biased towards him, but with that in mind, no one in WWE comes close to having that kind of shine, no matter how many appearances they make.
And so CM Punk now is in the role of being fodder for Lesnar's most compelling opponent to date. Perhaps he is the most interesting foil for The Beast Incarnate on the roster because of the strange webbed relationship that those two and Paul Heyman all share. Am I going to hate myself for comparing both Bryan and Punk to Hulk Hogan in the same review? Maybe. Will that stop me from doing so? No, because both comparisons weirdly fit, if I'm correctly assuming which hosts that Ghost is haunting for SummerSlam.
The hater inside me says Ambrose ducked out easy, but Rob van Dam is definitely a special attraction kind of guy. However, I would be utterly shocked if he escaped the pre-show with the belt everyone runs from. However, just because Ambrose didn't draw the Ghost of Andre the Giant doesn't mean the First WWE Hall of Famer will be absent from SummerSlam. RAW tonight had a lot of ups and downs, but they delivered where they needed to, and not coincidentally, those soft spots happened to be imbued with the Holy French Spirit.