Tell Me Now, What's the Point of EVOLVE?

Post inspired by a Twitter conversation today with Sean Williams

Is the concept of EVOLVE being executed on correctly?

EVOLVE's been open for business for 20 months now, right? I was excited for the promotion from jump, and yeah, two of the three shows that I watched from it were really good. However, I'll be the first to admit that I'm an anomaly when it comes to wrestling fans. I can watch wrestling for wrestling's sake. I don't necessarily need context to enjoy a match, even if a good backstory always enhances a match for me, if that makes any sense. Most people would watch a real sport if they just wanted to see people do moves to each other all the time. I had high hopes for EVOLVE when it first started. A pure sport promotion, done right, could have been huge, could have been great.

But again, when pure sport is the only thing going for it, then it gets boring. You can tell me that whoever wins and loses matters and has meaning, but saying it and showing it are two different things. By now, I expected EVOLVE to have an endgame, a sort of thing that the wins and losses amount to. Instead, what are their metrics? What are, as KSP and Jason Mann would say, the MacGuffins? According to the mission statement, having the best record and having the longest winning streak are the only real prizes, and in the meantime, the other focus of the promotion was getting to know the "real" person.

The former to me feels like spinning wheels. Okay, you can have the best record or the most wins in an ephemeral sense, but that's just it. It's an intangible thing. Pure sport doesn't operate that way. Team sports have year long seasons. Combat sports have Championship belts. Individual sports like golf and tennis may not have tangible season long titles, but the thing is, each event isn't just a collection of head-to-head battles. They're tournaments with one winner.

But again, wrestling is not like "real" sport because it's not a sport. It has sporting elements, but in an environment where most of the fans, especially in the indies where everyone's moved past the whole "kayfabe-as-gospel" stage, know it's staged, it needs to have more pronounced stories to hold interest in a general sense. So how does that fit into a pure sports build? It doesn't mean that the stories have to be just like they are in Chikara or even in WWE, but they have to be pronounced. Even if it's chasing the right to be in a playoff system to compete for a Championship trophy to complete a season, that's a solid story right there.

I know what you're saying, a tangible Championship is no greater a story or no more tangible than a wins record or a winning streak. To a point, that's true, but only to a degree. Saying you want to win the most matches is great, or wanting to have the best record is fine, but at the same time, there's no transference. I can retire with the best record, or with the most wins, but there's no changing of the guard when I go, and that can be perfectly acceptable in the barebones scheme of things. In sport, that's okay because it's wholly results driven. In wrestling, having something be results driven is pointless because having the best record never means you're the best at what you do. It means that someone likes you or you're a great politician.

People see through that, and it's a HUGE reason why stuff like Shawn Michaels losing his smile or Impact Wrestling booking angles to strip titles so frequently go over like farts in church with many fans, hardcore or not. Stories need resolution, and in wrestling, stories need conflict. Any story where a guy can surpass another without ever facing him feels cheap. Especially when a lot of what has been used to sell tickets and DVDs for the promotion has been guest stars, from Ikuto Hidaka to Bryan Danielson to Finlay, that cheapness comes through when the main thrust of the fed isn't even the concept anymore, but the guys who come in and act as "gets" for dream matches.

Typical ROH Fan jokes on Twitter that Davey Richards leaving Gabe Sapolsky in the lurch was a big reason why EVOLVE was destined to fail. I'd say that even if Richards had stuck around, the concept would still be where it is because of the plan₁. It feels nebulous, and it feels like it's pandering to a crowd that doesn't exist, or at the very best, is small because they still like wrestling but don't realize what wrestling is all about. People who want to watch "real" watch UFC. I admit that I do want realism in my wrestling, but wanting realism and wanting it to be "real" are two way different things. I would even go to say that they're missing the point about what kind of realism they want. Again, putting on a pure sports fed where people are "real" would mean that there needed to be something to fight for more than just wins and losses or having a temporary prize like "the most wins" or "the longest streak".

I do admit that they have done some things right. The Style Battle was a neat diversion, they have done a few pretty cool - albeit short - feuds and yes, after the dreadful EVOLVE 1 card, the actual matches have been good for the most part. That being said, when there's not guiding principle at the top and too much focus is put on guest stars, things get stale and directionless.

So, 20 months in, I'm not sure it's an unfair question to ask what the point of EVOLVE is. What are they providing that isn't being provided, and are they doing it well? Even if you have an answer to the first question, I'm not sure that you can answer the second question in a positive manner. Wrestling for wrestling's sake is not an effective longterm vision for a good company, and I just don't want to see EVOLVE become just another fed that missed the boat because they were directed to a demand that just wasn't there.

1 - To be fair, so did Typical ROH Fan.

Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein - Please visit his site to view the plentiful amounts of pictures he's taken for DGUSA, ROH and other indie feds: Get Lost Photography

Promoting the Ultimate Conspiracy Theory: Why R-Truth Should NOT Get a Rematch

Little Jimmy gets his revenge and Truf bitching about it would be gold!
Photo Credit: See the watermark to the left

R-Truth got his first-ever shot at the WWE Championship last night at Capitol Punishment. It was an unsuccessful endeavor after a "Little Jimmy" threw soda in his face, the ultimate full-circle moment in the five-week build that allowed John Cena enough of a distraction to put Truf down with an Attitude Adjustment. While the match felt like a blowoff to most who watched last night, (and reading recaps, it read just like a blowoff as well) the trend in WWE is that when you get one PPV title match, you usually get three or four of them, regardless of how many of them in a row you lose. I fully expect Truth to come out and blather on about how he was robbed and expect to get a title shot.

And that's exactly why he shouldn't get one. Because once he gets denied, are you going to doubt that the meltdown will be anything less than epic? I don't. The thing with Truth is that as great a character as he's become in the last month, he really hasn't evolved in the ring to match his character. Yeah, we all loved his Larry Z stall-job to earn said title shot, but at the same time, that was wholly independent of anything he could do in terms of moves, selling, pacing etc. He played cat and mouse, and while it was great theater and awesome storytelling, what would come to pass when he had to actually wrestle?

If you give Truth the title shot at Money in the Bank, that's what you're banking on, Truth carrying a rematch angle on the promise he and Cena can deliver a good match. Even worse, the other scenario would be the GM giving Truth what he wants, and then making it a steel cage match so that the "Little Jimmies" of the world can't get involved. From a traditional storytelling background, that is obviously the best thing to do, but at the same time, this really isn't a traditional character. Well, scratch that, the conspiracy victim IS a traditional character, but it's not a character where this traditional storytelling trope works.

Keeping Truth away from the WWE Championship would create, in my mind, a better opportunity for a very limited WWE Creative team to generate a memorable story. I'd say have Truth beg for his shot because he was done in by a fan who had no business interfering. The GM denies it, citing the numerous shots Christian got on Smackdown as an example of guys who clearly don't deserve it continuing to get shots, and saying he doesn't want to be like Teddy Long because Teddy Long is an awful human being. The ensuing meltdown would be epic, and the next couple of months could see Truth trying like hell to get his shot back, either by legal means or by continually calling the GM to the carpet for trying to screw him out of his rightful second title opportunity. Or better yet, have Truth win Money in the Bank for RAW and every time he goes to cash it in, have some sort of nefarious circumstance prevent him from cashing it in. That would keep the story going and it would give Truth an out to get his title opportunity down the line.

Besides, we all know the money program here is to start prepping Alberto del Rio for his SummerSlam title opportunity. I mean, they already tipped their hand with this Youtube video that WWE Games put on their channel. They told as good a story with as good an ending for the time being in five weeks as they could have, which is more an argument to me for eliminating the number of PPVs and extending time between them than it is continuing the program with Truth for the time being. Let it go for now and start ramping up to SummerSlam.

I know that Truth has gained a lot of fans over the last month. I know, I'm sort of one of them. However, the idea that titles are the only thing that mean importance nowadays is pretty antiquated. A title means something in the right situation. For Truth, the lack of a title in his future is the best story. In the modern day, and really, any time in wrestling history for that matter, the story is always the most important thing. What's the better story that can be told? TO me, it's R-Truth complaining about The Man keeping him from a title opportunity, not him getting the obligatory, warmed-over weaksauce build that tends to happen in the second PPV of a several-PPV-title-feud.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!