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| That Slammy might as well have had "To the fairest" written on it Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Lore says that a couple of well-connected folks threw a fancy party for their wedding and invited everyone except Eris, whom the Pantheon agreed was a real downer. Everywhere she went, trouble followed. Arguments, disagreements, strife... all were never too far away from where she stood. Of course, given that every Greek myth ended in some kind of crazy undoing of the narrative (kinda like how WWE tries to craft its own stories, for better or worse), she caught wind of the snub, tossed in a golden apple that said "To the fairest," at the big feast was interrupted by an all out free-for-all among the big three goddesses, Aphrodite, Hera, and the normally level-headed Athena. Funny how both the most rational of folks can be persuaded into a fight over vanity and how ingrained misogyny is in popular culture's history. But I digress.
Tonight, Eris first made her presence felt when Bryan was a lit fuse connected to a powder keg of hometown fans, whose rabidness for wanting to see him given every single accolade is amplified by at least 150 percent thanks to home cookin'. Even before the principals for the unification match on Sunday came out, Seattle let Triple H know the man they wanted in the ring on Sunday holding hardware was neither the Face nor the Champ, but the Beard.
Then Orton spewed his invective, and Cena retorted in the most magical way. Instead of shutting down the crowd and keeping the spotlight on himself, he stoked the flames from Bryan's crowd explosion, and like a Machiavellian lord in the 16th Century Italian peninsula, he got all the support he needed for himself, turning the dueling chants into stone cold support without making it seem like he wasn't putting Bryan over in the process. The polarization got more and more severe.
Then, Eris threw the proverbial apple in to the ring. Orton preemptively struck Cena for the right to take the apple. Punk hopped in when he saw it convenient. Triple H didn't like his investment being touched by a grubby tattooed hobo with shitty drawers, so he knocked back. Michaels didn't want his BFF to get hurt. Bryan saw a chance for revenge. McMahon was just in the way, and that was enough for Trips to finally make his first overt turn against Orton.
And the only one left standing was the one who threw the apple. Eris not only saved RAW and sold TLC, but she may have set a chain reaction towards WrestleMania XXX that could rival the Trojan War in grand scale. Or, her actions tonight could be a one time thing. I got my hopes up too much for the Autumn of Bryan after SummerSlam. Either way, tonight's RAW proved to me once again that sometimes, all a wrestling show needs to feel special is to have a bunch of people in a scrum fighting over a golden apple.