On Monday night mourning, Edge – the 47-year-old winner of Sunday’s Royal Rumble—Came to the ring to discuss his future. His victory gave him a championship fight on WrestleMania on March 28 against WWE Champion Drew McIntyre or Universal Champion Roman Reigns. Here he is opposite the Raw titleholder, McIntyre, and instead of the usual champion-against-potential challenger interaction – blower and beats in some combination – Drew greeted him with praise. Edge exclaimed to him, ‘I appreciate the compliments. And Drew, I like you a lot and I was a mentor to you, so I have to be blunt with you. What is wrong with you? … Instead of kicking my head off when I came through these ropes, you overloaded me with compliments. ‘
Edge had a point, but you can excuse Drew for falling back on his fandom. He was 13 when Edge made his WWE debut in 1998. And he was in a nostalgic mood, having just retained his title the night before against none other than Goldberg, the icon of the Monday Night Wars, which still somehow looks like the part. Goldberg has struggled a few times since retiring in 2016, and if his skill has deteriorated, it’s hard to say; he was always more of a phenomenon than a technician.
As Drew crosses the spectrum WrestleMania, he will have defeated 54-year-old Goldberg, 48-year-old Edge (who returned from a degenerative neck condition a year ago after nearly a decade of retirement) and his former partner Sheamus, 43, and a 12-year-old WWE veteran. And Goldberg and Edge were not the only mummies dug up Sunday. The men Royal Rumble match includes appearances by Carlito (who made his WWE debut in 2004 and left in 2010), Christian (who is 47, retired in 1998 and 2014), Kane (53, in 1995), and Hurricane Helms (46, released in 2010). The women Rumble featured Jillian Hall (leaving WWE in 2010), Alicia Fox (2019), Torrie Wilson (2008), Victoria (2009) and Mickie James. James made his debut in 2005, left in 2010, returns in 2016 and has been on the WWE active roster since last fall; she segued seamlessly into living legend-dom. James is not alone in the section: Jeff Hardy, Randy Orton and Rey Mysterio are all icons of bygone eras that are still hiding. (Mysterio’s son Dominik, who first appeared on screen in 2003, is now a full-time wrestler.)
Wrestling fans are trained to believe in immortality: if Hulker Hogan’s monk did not convince you that superstar is eternal, he might have done his 40-year career. But even with that in mind, the Ponce de Leóns parade on Sunday evokes credibility. It was a big win for sentimentality – and for HGH and testosterone injections – but one has to wonder if there is a limit to the charm of nostalgia. Edge, Kane, Goldberg, Victoria … I’ll hit the nut when I find the group of action figures at a garage sale. But like me WrestleMania main lines in 2021?
To be honest, wrestling legends that contain the top card are nothing new this time of year. Complaints about part-time theft WrestleMania places of stalwarts in the main roster are a refrain every spring. The Rock, Undertaker, Triple H, Goldberg – they all made money WrestleMania salaries while wrestlers sat at their best in the locker room. WWE took the practice to a new level with the six-year championship of Brock Lesnar, who returned from his UFC career in 2012 and was only occasionally present for WWE events. The part-time legend is the new archetype.
There is a kind of business logic to this. The onslaught is lower, and the sea of fans who have moved the attitude period to new levels of pop culture importance has moved to greener pastures. Those who want a solution for the Rock of Stone Cold Steve Austin in 2021 can turn to movies, podcasts or YouTube highlights. WWE’s own streaming service, the WWE Network, has been a modest success to date, but it has not brought such a large number of bored fans back into the fold. And if you needed more proof that that was the point, look no further than last week’s news that WWE is closing the network after it’s sold to NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service.
As a result, every stool fan who spent $ 10 a month on PPVs and the WWE Library now gets the full catalog of The office thrown in. More importantly, mainstream viewers who pay to stream The office, Yellowstone, and the Saved by the clock reload will have WWE at your fingertips. NBCU is making a big bet on its future-oriented channel by playing to viewers’ nostalgia with old shows, old actors and remade versions of old shows. As of this writing, the Peacock homepage contains a series of “Best of WWE” pasted in between Betower and Frasier—Which does not happen to be offline for a recharge at the rival Paramount +. No wonder WWE goes back to the 90s in all seriousness. Looking back is apparently the way to the future.
And it is no wonder that current stars like McIntyre are urgently honoring their ancestors. There was a time not long ago when the returning legend, who was dragged back for the last time, was branded as the underdog. Now – after the Undertaker’s decade of Mania moments and the career title reigns of Goldberg, Triple H and the Rock – the real underdog is the complete timer. No matter in what form the new stars are, they can never surpass the star power of someone whose heyday was in an era of higher viewers.
This is the luxury and the curse of a fake sport. If the NBA could get time The Last Dance to come out while a 57-year-old Michael Jordan pulled back and won another championship, the league would have done it – or at least his PR division and network partners would have been in favor of the idea. In the WWE, that kind of stupidity equals the course. And to a world that (at best) thinks of the early 2000s when they think of pro-wrestling, the old guard is the institution, the money, and the Q-rating gods. If Drew McIntyre – or, hell, even Roman Reigns – is ever going to rise to the level of his predecessors, it will be by literally defeating them. There’s a reason why Reigns versus the Rock is on Vince McMahon’s dream wall, and why John Cena’s WrestleMania availability is a constant source of speculation.
Just a few weeks back WWE turns Raw in a “Legends Night” to try goose ratings. It did not bring back the millions of fans who watched in the 90s, but it was a preview of the things to come. WWE will debut on Peacock in time for WrestleMania this year, and anyone who sends out reruns of their favorite old sitcoms will suddenly see the chance to get some of their favorite old wrestlers to boost the WWE’s product. It’s a lot to ask of a bunch of wrestlers bumping themselves out of the highlight packages and ‘Best of’ box sets, but anything is possible within the square circle, in the land of baby oiled and tattooed demigods. Back in WWE’s heyday, when Steve Austin mr. McMahon drove around the arena with a beer truck, it was common to say that he appealed to all the people who wanted to have their boss appear one day. McMahon made the figurative literally for the enjoyment of fans. Well, never forget that WWE likes to call WrestleMania the “showcase of the immortals”. ‘Too literal’ is not in McMahon’s vocabulary.