WWE superstar announces a real battle against leukemia.
Professional wrestling is the only fictional art form criticized as fiction. For opponents, this is the benchmark jab, how can you care about an unreal sport? For fans, the nuance between storytelling and reality is the sweet spot. Suspicion pauses to the point where you question what you see, the blurring line between the greatest conflict between sports games and comic books. . Outcome the heroes and villains in life. Then rarely, but not often, and sometimes reality will break this gap and break the storybook bubble of professional wrestling. At moments like Roman Reigns, his real name is Joseph Anoa'i, the biggest name of the world's wrestling entertainment company, the company's current champion, John Cena and the heir to his previous Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, opened the Monday night One episode. It was announced that his leukemia had relapsed after 11 years in remission.
The reaction of the crowd at Dunkin’ Donuts Center in Rhode Island is one of the most surreal live performances you’ve ever seen on TV; this is when thousands of people are gradually realizing that the novels they pay to read are becoming the facts in front of them. sound. Roman Reigns is a divisive figure; "I said I would become a wrestling champion" and the audience booed his appearance. "The reality is, my real name is Joe..." Then the hiss stopped in a chaotic silence, "...I have been suffering from leukemia for 11 years," he breathed in his voice and air. . Mentioning cancer in the WWE ring is like King Kong breaking free from his shackles, a real-life monster to destroy entertainment.
But watch that segment back and you'll see just as much confusion as you will shock. A significant part of that tentativeness is the fact that a cardinal rule of professional wrestling is that nothing is sacred in the art of tricking the audience. When Eddie Guerrero died of heart failure in 2005, the villainous Randy Orton crashed Guerrero's trademark low-rider on an episode of WWE Smackdown just a few months later as part of a storyline. When manager William "Paul Bearer" Moody died in 2013, heel CM Punk dumped his "ashes" on an opponent's head to further a feud. One of the most memorable segments of all time saw Mark Henry seemingly break character to announce his in-ring retirement due to serious injury, a speech that had the audience in tears for more than ten minutes until Henry dropped John Cena with a surprise body slam. From the moment a carnival attendee first forked over a penny to watch a simulated brawl, pro wrestling has been an art form with deception built right into its blueprint.
But Reigns' announcement is, tragically, not fiction, which only adds to what made the moment feel so specifically uncanny. It came at the very beginning of a three-hour show, a show that then continued on to tell fantastical stories of undead morticians and demonic tattoos. In the entertainment world, Vince McMahon's traveling band of men and women most resembles a three-ring circus, and a circus is nothing if not a "the show must go on" line of work, for better or for worse. When a faulty release trigger sent Owen Hart tragically plummeting hundreds of feet to the ring in 1999, the show went on. When performer Chris Benoit was found dead in his home eight years later, having just murdered his own wife and child, the show, somehow, went on. Even as recently as this week, with WWE gearing up for a show in Saudi Arabia amid the news of journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder at the order of KSA's royal court, the show is (for now) seemingly going on.
So with the news that the company's most recognizable star would soon head into cancer treatment, the show went on, but in this case that occasionally questionable edict only highlighted the type of performers that populate this insane profession. There aren't many words to describe how much guts it took for Roman Reigns to stand in front of thousands of people and tell his story, just like it's hard to describe what it means for his coworkers to then lace up the boots and perform. Professional wrestlers don't get enough credit for what they sacrifice, traveling town-to-town for three-quarters of the year to throw their bodies on to ring made mostly of steel and wood. It's a business that knows far more tragedy than triumph, an art form that takes so much and more often than not gives back fused together knees and necks shoved behind a convention table.
And partly because of that, and partly because the shock of Reigns' announcement never quite left the arena, the rest of that Monday Night Raw is one of the most oddly moving, heartbreakingly beautiful episodes of TV you'll ever experience. It's a night where the audience was rooting equally for characters and the people playing them; it was the type of melding of reactions that all drama—not just in wrestling, but in film, TV, books, and video games—strives for, where real-life emotion informs on-screen art.
The highlight of the night witnessed the WWE Tag Team champion defending himself against Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins. In terms of context, Raines, Ambrose, and Rollins made their debut in WWE in 2012 as the "Shield" trio. They spin each other's orbits off-screen and thereafter, uniting as characters and people. together. On the night his true friend announced his fight against cancer, Ambrose and Rollins had another show to do. Even if you have never watched a wrestling match, I suggest you watch this match, because you are unlikely to see such a match again. The crowd alternated between sadness and incredibly loud silence, devoted to these characters, yes, but also devoted to getting Corby Lopez (Rollins) and Jonathan Goode (Ambrose) to appear there. On the ball as needed. The explosion when they win is not programmable. This is a unique human roar that can only be compared with the shared joy of a local Super Bowl victory or a perfectly performed live concert. This is one of the moments when the fake sport of professional wrestling became the most real thing on earth. Then, before Raw cut credits, Ambrose violently made his teammate Rollins one of the most common teammates. -Use funky twist endings in wrestling history. Like I said, nothing is sacred; there is no other art that can use a person's cancer diagnosis from the first hour to contribute to the failure of the third hour. But there is no delicious story worthy of a person's health. Even WWE knows it. This is why the most memorable shots of my three-hour experience did not even take place in front of the crowd. It happened behind the scenes when a visibly shaken but Superman active Roman Rains left the stadium, in a rented car and uncertainty. The show continued.
It’s easier to change hands than the title I want, more than I want someone to kick them both, more than I want a hand to grab the rope, I look forward to the day that Roman reigns`, when Joseph AnoaŹ»i`s, the story is still Continue.