WWE Review
As a creative writer, I'm mostly interested in the storylines of pro wrestling. Sunday WWE held its signature Money in the Bank PPV on WWE Network. The focus of the PPV is a briefcase holding a contract which entitles the bearer to a championship match on demand. (Typically it's cashed in when a champion has been incapacitated after a match or surprise attack.) The briefcase during the match in question is hung overhead the ring, and the winner typically fights off a handful of contenders and ascends a ladder to retrieve the briefcase off its hook. In more recent incarnations, a women's match has also been held.Now there aren't rules over who can or should win the match, but it is one way to take the title off in a case of a champion with a size or power advantage. Nevertheless, WWE has often booked the match for former champions or obvious contenders to win, which never made sense.
So last night the wrestlers who won the contracts were Otis and Asuka; I was so pissed I sent off an angry tweet:
Boy, am I glad I didn't spend good money watching this. Putting the men's briefcase on a novelty act? While throwing a legit contender off the building? Not to mention putting the women's briefcase in the hands of perhaps the best pound-for-pound wrestler in the co.?#MITB— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) May 11, 2020
Otis is a superheavyweight partner of the tag team Heavy Machinery. He's probably best known for the caterpillar, a variation of Scotty 2 Hotty's signature worm move, a belly-forward squirm gimmick targeting one's opponent, usually followed by a stand-up elbow drop. It's an inefficient, ineffective move, a slow approach to one's opponent, more of a hot dogging gimmick for fan approval.
It's been clear that WWE has been pushing Otis for some time with a huge crush on blonde beauty wrestler Mandy; Otis has been frustrated by wrestler Dolph Ziggler's rivalry for Mandy's affection. Still, other than some power, Otis is not an obvious contender in the singles ranks, and even in preliminary promos for the ladder matches, the steps were collapsing under Otis' weight, so how could he even unhook the briefcase to win it?
WWE had a plan for that. As AJ Styles and Corbin fought over possession of the briefcase at the top of the ladder, it dropped--into the waiting arms of Otis below the two.
Now Otis has implied that he could use the briefcase to cash in on a tag team title, which would be an interesting twist.
I had recently tweeted my preference for WWE to put the contract on Aleister Black. Apparently Corbin tossed Black and Mysterio over the edge of the building surface top (obviously there must have been a safety net or something similar). I wasn't thrilled by that, although something like that had been rumored. [It turned out they were tossed onto a lower section of the roof, just a few feet down.]
As for Asuka, who put together a brand record of consecutive wins until Charlotte Flair ended it some time back at Wrestlemania, she's a legitimate threat against any female wrestler who doesn't need the gimmick. I always thought Asuka-Rousey was the obvious rivalry.
The rest of the card was fairly predictable with no major title changes. I was mildly surprised they didn't take the Universal title off Strowman and put it back onto his former mentor, Bray Wyatt. Ironically, Strowman used his old Wyatt Family black sheep mask to set Wyatt up for a double-cross pin. We knows what this means: yup, Wyatt's masked Fiend alter ego is going to get a shot at the title.
As for McIntyre's defense against Rollins, I never thought they would take the title off McIntyre so soon. It looks like they are hinting at a challenge from former partner and WWE Champion Jinder Mahal.
Postscript: The above was written before Monday Night Raw. I had wondered a bit why they didn't have Becky Lynch defend her belt and there had been a puzzling spoiler that Lynch would confront the winner of the women's MITB; since half of the women contestants were from Smackdown and hence ineligible to challenge for Lynch's Raw title, was this a hint that a Raw wrestler would win the match?
Lynch ended the mystery by announcing at the start of Raw that she is pregnant (she is engaged to fellow Raw wrestler Seth Rollins) and was taking a leave of absence to be a mother; Asuka, by winning MITB, was the new women's champion.
COVID Era Babies
It's not just Becky Lynch who is expecting a baby; one of my 6 siblings/spouses announced they found out over Mother's Day they'll become grandparents again. That should make 19 grandnieces and grandnephews (two of my siblings, with 5 kids between them, aren't grandparents yet) I have no idea how prenatal care works under the crisis, but one of my nieces is a midwife. It's a blessing to see new life under these tragic circumstances.More COVID Lockdown Diary
I'm not saying these observations are beyond anecdotal, in my experience only, and I'm not sure my observations are representative. But I live in a fairly integrated neighborhood. Now there are lots of places like grocery stores where in Maryland there are face mask mandates in place (Hogan's edict). But I've seen a number of patrons who do stuff like pull up masks over their mouth and nose, which pretty much defeats the purpose of wearing face masks.
But most people of color I've seen are not wearing face masks other than in grocery stores. Now personally, I think most face masks, like the homemade ones I own, aren't really very effective at stopping microbes and most people I've seen are fairly spread out in airy (versus closed circulation) systems. I don't see much of a risk, and I'm certainly not an alarmist/snitch. I am concerned whether the word is getting out there. Now I ordered my masks before I knew about Hogan's mandate, but it seems that most of people I've seen diligently wearing masks are older white folks.
