The Return of Attitude
Last night, WWE’s Great Balls of Fire exceeded my expectations in a huge way. From the first match, between Neville and Akira Tozawa, something felt different. In that match, Neville and Tozawa showed little hints and motions of the infamous Japanese Strong Style that WWE seem to be angling towards now more than ever.
As the night went on it became clear that we were watching something different. Big Cass was realistically treated like an absolute monster. He actively bullied and squashed Enzo Amore in a very enjoyable way, despite Cass being the quote unquote ‘bad guy’ in the feud.
Sitting there in my living room, casually enjoying the old school sight of Matt Hardy’s face pouring blood, I realised that I was watching something that I hadn’t seen in a long time. Something that had been tested on the modern audience at Summerslam last year when Brock Lesnar opened Randy Orton’s skull. Great Balls of Fire was not PG.
Sasha Banks chased Alexa Bliss up a ramp. That double knee was incredibly dangerous in Banks’ atypical ‘Imma-hurt-us-both-to-hurt-you’ style. The Miztourage is classic attitude era factions, which is what The Miz has offered since Maryse’s return. Wyatt of course belongs in that throwback era, at a time when The Undertaker and Kane were in their pomp to give him what he needed. Wall to wall this was old school.
When Reigns vs Strowman came on, I was naturally excited. For everything that people have against him, Roman Reigns has been the closest thing in the modern era to that old school butt kicking attitude era star. Destroying Triple H at TLC, fighting through the crowd with AJ Styles at Extreme Rules. For all his popularity Roman Reigns delivers. This time he went even further, losing his cool and destroying Braun Strowman in the back of an ambulance.
There was a time, early in 1999. I’m going to say May, when The Rock fought The Undertaker in a casket match on Raw. Triple H would interfere, trap Rock in the casket and absolutely go to town on that casket with his trademark sledgehammer. Watching Strowman emerge from that ambulance really reminded me of that.
This was legit badass Triple H and this is the sort of thing that I have missed in our new PG era.
Brock Lesnar has never been PG. That’s always been part of the charm. The plan remains to have Roman Reigns dragged through hell on his way to not only taking the title at Wrestlemania but essentially taking Lesnar’s top position on the card. Brock delivers attitude. So does Roman. That much has always been the case.
At Great Balls Of Fire, we had a throwback PPV where everybody delivered attitude. Did we also have a sign of things to come? With the way that Styles, Nakamura, Neville, Joe, Reigns and Lesnar are positioned at the absolute top of the industry, WWE can provide Strong Style to match Japan. They can also go further, returning to their attitude era roots and using that to draw new fans and bring back former fans.
If this is the beginning of something special then it is something special that I can not wait to see. If, however, it’s a one and done? Well, you burn me WWE. You burn me deep.
Thanks for reading all.
— Tom Colohue
