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| Sent home for going off-script... what a time Photo Credit: WWE.com |
This story has a lot to unpack. One, Zayn and Owens disregarded a scripted item, which hurt the show and put a damper on the build for a match that involved six of their fellow workers. However, it's not to say they were completely in the wrong here, and if they did wrong someone, it wasn't McMahon or the writers, but New Day, and to a lesser extent, The Shield. See, the dirty secret that wrestlers either know but mostly ignore or are ignorant to is that without them, one cannot produce a wrestling show. Bookers, promoters, agents, and writers may make it a lot easier to produce, but if one were to remove any of those four elements, you can definitely have a show. If you remove the workers, then it's a bunch of people planning stuff that can only be executed on paper. In effect, those bodies engage in lucrative and expensive fantasy booking without workers. It's the same in any other business; no labor, no product. But in wrestling, it's even more dependent on the labor because the labor itself is the product. So in essence, a wrestler is right to be persnickety about their presentation.
More pointedly, a wrestler should never take instructions from capital without asking themselves two questions: is it good for me and is it good for the show presentation? If the answer to the first question is no, then that wrestler should at least ask questions about why they're asked to do it and at least try to exert some creative control. Of course, "creative control" to a megalomaniac like McMahon is even more poisonous given that the Montreal Screwjob happened 20 years ago yesterday because he gave Bret Hart that and then wanted to do takesies-backsies when Hart exerted it on his way out of the company. The question then becomes, "Did Zayn and Owens voice their concerns with the script before the finish, and what was done, if anything, to remediate before the show was scheduled to begin?" I don't know if that answer is ever going to be fully answered with clarity. As much as it was a shitty thing to do to New Day though, it was the most direct action that could've been taken. If McMahon continues to abuse the independent contractor label, maybe he shouldn't be surprised if his contractors act independently?
Because in all honesty, it didn't feel like an objectively correct thing to do to "feed" the brand's top heels to New Day to build for a match that two weeks after Survivor Series won't matter anything. Obviously, one can take the side that being fed to New Day now is an investment into a future story trope where Zayn and Owens could get some heat back for a match at Royal Rumble or either Roadblock or Elimination Chamber, whichever event ends up being put on the Smackdown side in 2018. It's not a slam dunk case of McMahon/capital being wrong and Zayn/Owens being right, but I still feel like the two members of labor are more right than they are wrong here, especially since they're still at mercy of extreme influence and power. Not only were they sent home, but when Official Useful Idiot of Paul Levesque Justin Barrasso wrote his account of what happened, he framed it as one of the cardinal sins of any wrestler, "going into business for themselves."
It's that phrase that has some sort of currency with all wrestlers and appeals to their most leftward tendencies, that the collective is more important than the individual and that everyone should be treated equally and fairly. However, that sentiment only works when everyone truly is treated equally and fairly. The problem is that wrestlers like New Day and the former Steenerico are treated equally, but equally as garbage by McMahon and the rest of capital. Maybe Zayn and Owens were wrong to wait to lash out until that segment when nothing could have been done. Maybe they could have stricken before the show and given the showrunners a better chance to do right by New Day. Of course, trusting WWE to do that is also dicey, and the show probably would've ended in a promo burying them the way McMahon's mind seems to work. But regardless of the circumstances, two wrestlers got sent home from tour to discipline them for speaking out against something they felt was wrong. It's not a good feeling.
I'm not going to speculate on their long-term future with WWE, because I don't know them and I don't know how they operate. I also don't know whether McMahon and his braintrust will treat them as someone like Emma and just bury them on camera until they leave or whether they'll make nice and do business if they're willing to do the same. I just know that I don't have a good feeling about any of this at all, and I wish the biggest domestic threat to WWE at this point wasn't a company owned by an even more thirstily fascist communications organization that has to rely on backing from New Japan Pro Wrestling in order to do any kind of good business, which is to say, Ring of Honor isn't a threat to WWE at all.
