Welcome To The Raven's Forest

I really wanted to enjoy this years mania, the build being bad should have been an indicator of the shows quality but it still felt like they where playing it safe in comparison to prior mania’s, even before Hunter took over booking.

It’s not even that the card was bad or anything, just mediocre. You had some stand outs, the women’s matches ruled, Drew VS Priest was fun, Fatu VS Knight gave us some cool moments, and Night 1’s main event was honestly the better of the two endings (telegraphed Heyman swerves be dammed).

But that’s just the thing, you have to *moments*, not story. I can only recall 4 matches (Both mains and women’s title matches) that gave us actual in ring storytelling. The IC 4 way did have some of that but it was, again, just a moment. Story beats with nothing connecting them beyond the start and end of the matches. The phrase “hype moments and aura” gets thrown out too much for my enjoyment but that’s what a lot of it reads like. Moments made to be clipped and reacted to on social media.

Wait about the mania weekend shows? Did they deliver? While I can’t comment on the quality of them, I can say that a lot of them became turn offs for me for one reason: WWE’s Involvement.

As mainly pointed out, a lot of the Indy shows this year featured WWE talent featured prominently. And while seeing Pete Dunn work Bloodsport is cool, it kinda ruins the point of those shows. They are ment as a showcase of various talent, from legends to rookies, from the future stars to the current ones. Dragon Gate returned stateside for the first time in a decade. Sabu nearly died in a match that on one hand is scary as hell, but on the other is fucking awesome. Suzuki and Butterbean got into a shoot fight!!! But in the background there’s this knowledge that WWE is looking to take some of that “magic” of mania weekend independent shows and use it for their own platform.

And then there’s the big news, the AAA buyout. I’m not going to sit here and pretend I know a lot about modern Lucha Libre, but seeing another company being bought out, while that company is still running shows, is sad. I want variety in my wrestling, I don’t want everything under one roof. And unfortunately it’s only a matter of time before NOAH, TNA, and every other company WWE partners with goes under or is left high and dry. Look at literally every company WWE worked with in the late 2010s.