Old man Vince McMahon is said to be so out-of-touch with what the crowds want that he keeps rehashing the same tired old drivel over and over again, in hopes that, just as the adage has it, whatever is old can be new again.
Apparently the Muhammad Hassan fiasco wasn't enough for the WWE - there had been some more, shall we say, exotic influx of culture, talent and flavour in order to try and make the end product here ever moreso "current"... And so, now, in comes Jinder Mahal - new WWE "superstar"!
Make no mistake about it now: old man McMahon is
still the one with the final say in all the storylines, what direction is taken, whose character get pushes, whose don't... He will continue to helm the ship until it sinks - hoping to be as successful at that in the exact same way that Bill Gates is ever since he "retired". Or as Hugh Hefner, a more plausible comparison too. Old man McMahon might get to be as productive as Steve Jobs was, instead - practically to his dying breath and still thinking of the end product... But you have to give it to the old man: he has known exactly when to extract himself from the proceedings, so as to not overexert himself so much, like a Ric Flair who, pushing 70 and is still way too much involved in the action... McMahon is slyly staying away from full-blown pressure - and thus, he may just succeed in outliving Jobs, Flair, Gates, Trump, Murdoch, Hogan, Michaels, Hart and everybody else of that ilk and caliber...! He is already assured of getting to be older than Savage and Jobs, isn't he. For a man like McMahon; you have to know that that has considerable importance for him... He's gunning now for the records of longevity held by his dad and Classie Freddie Blassie! Aren't you getting a bit overzealous though, Vince? You do have the Undertaker in your corner though, true. But we are digressing...
Why have an openly muslim wrestler at all, WWE? Just to make him the heel of choice, pre-destined to be the antagonist, no matter what? Isn't
that far more offending than not having a group represented at all in your little universe of circus freaks now - wouldn't you agree? No one needs this - no one really wanted an Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff walking-and-talking-caricatures either, back in the day: the NWA's Nikita Koloff was, at least, light years more realistic and respectful of what a Russian could be, especially in respect to the evolution of such a character. Can "Jinder Mahal" here ever evolve like this, in the present and future context? Highly unlikely. The very best that this character can ever hope for is to lose to main eventers for a (short) while - all the while carrying on his mediocre mid-card activities feuding with the likes of the Reality-TV Nexus crowd. And then - he will fade back to obscurity just like Hassan and a 1001 other mid-carders, jobbers and the like.
Now, if a certain other Vince was
still at the helm of the writing chores, I could see Mahal (and his little brother Taj) form the core group of an extremist faction composed of four determined men - small in stature, not all that impressive by any stretch of the imagination, but an effective unit nonetheless. The whole would be, once again, considerably greater than the sum of the parts! They'd quickly take on, on a regular basis, four brats from the latest (supposedly) Tough Enough/NXT batch. (Pathetic to see, by the way: a four-letter word that isn't dirty at all get trimmed and compressed into a three-letter word - just for coolness' sake? Pathetic. And desperate.) And then the Qatar quatuor (let's say) would feud lengthily with a gang of Nexus rejects. And then some other faction that has yet to be done in the WWE universe (let's see now: they did bikers with the old D.O.A. and they did righteous extreme right Christian groups with the R.T.C. (Right To Censor). They did latinos with Los Boruicas around that same lamentable era - and they got the N.O.D. out there too (the late, oh-so-lamentable Nation of Domination.) They did every conceivable variation on the old NWA Four Horsemen - so, perhaps, all they need to do is bring back any one of them at this time? That's the ticket: a false sense of tradition through some hackneyed, forceful parody of continuity...! But I am digressing again...)
Soon enough, though, we'd have a bunch of factions at odds with one another - gang warfare, once again, because it is always what it winds up being in pro-wrestling anyways! Tis the very nature of the beast: you always have at the very least TWO: the faces and the heels, in their own terms/jargon... Two gangs or two
brands - rght, er,
right, Vinnie Mac?
And the table would be all set, then, for Mahal to declare a jihad on the WWE - another first for the company! Yay!
But perhaps that would be taking things way too far into the "realistic/sports entertainment mirroring reality" approach.
And even Titan Sports is afraid of doing that.
Thus, all Jinder Mahal can hope for is a quick three count (the equivalent of the 15 minutes of fame) make his exit and then come back as an anonymous masked wrestler whose sheer "mystery man" value might be enough to propel to... mid-card "superstar" status - again. Talk about running around in circles... That's what this sort of circus does with its performers - run around in circles and jump through hoops. And then, sometimes, when the hoops or cables are not reliable, an accident happens and they wound up crippled for life - or dead.
But that is another story - yes.
However, in this particular case here and knowing the WWE as we do, the hoops might imply a literal take on the name "Jinder" - turning the character into the worse possible farce as he becomes... "Jinder Bender".
Well, it worked for
this guy, right...?
Labels: Rasslin
