“Give me some fire there!”
The WWE received a bit of a rub from The Daily Show last night in the subject of immigration. Temporary host John Oliver covered a debate between Michael Cole and John Bradshaw Layfield during a match between Antonio Cesaro and William Regal while Zeb Colter managed Cesaro.
The UK born Oliver, complete with ripped suit sleeves (with a purple tie, he looked a lot like mid nineties Undertaker), a foam WWF Championship (looks like the winged eagle belt so it probably came from someone’s basement) and fiery flame greenscreen was supported by Mick Foley in a “Cactus Jack Santa Claus” shirt. The purpose was to cut a stereotypical wrestling promo, which funny enough the WWE doesn’t do anymore. Foley cut most of the promo speaking on the hard work immigrants do for Americans while taking comical shots at how people are waiting for Jon Stewart to return to replace Oliver. Oliver is currently in Stewart’s chair until September due to Stewart filming a documentary. It was because of this their challenge for “next week” was moved to September, also because Foley is producing a documentary on his own to be released then.
Colter responded on Twitter making it clear that his exception was never immigration but illegal immigrants. Colter has been running an anti-illegal immigration angle for half a year now while usually managing Jack Swagger. He has now taken Cesaro under his wing, a Swiss heavyweight whose gimmick was actually derailed by Swagger and Colter. Cesaro was originally US Champion speaking about the imperfections of America but saw that go to the wayside when a new American gimmick came from Swagger/Colter.
What’s disappointing about the attention is that Oliver gave positive feedback to the debate between Layfield and Cole because they were having an intelligent conversation on immigration reform as opposed to what we saw from U.S. Politics. Why that’s disappointing is that Cole and Layfield’s back and forth about politics is a huge reason wrestling matches get ignored. It’s another level of what we used to get when Tony Schiavone, Larry Zybysko and Bobby Heenan would discuss the New World Order during a cruiserweight match on WCW Nitro. Now we have the commentators getting in political debates during a wrestling match and ignoring the fun stuff that Regal and Cesaro were bringing to the ring. The entire focus is taken off of pro wrestling and onto the storyline that floats around it. This likely won’t help Cesaro much aside from a little extra publicity but if this isn’t bound to happen until September, he might be shipped out of the story in favour of the original Colter agent of Jack Swagger.
That said, this is good timing for the WWE. The WWE has tried to cultivate an image over the past few years of supporting ethnic superstars to grab hold of new markets due to the weakening of the American market for the WWE. This has resulted in big pushes for Sin Cara and the babyface turn of Alberto Del Rio (which just ended thankfully since it was dead in the water) but has slowed down since. With Cesaro now working with Colter, it could lead to a Cesaro/Swagger tag team which would be good for both men since there’s no room for them in singles divisions (by WWE logic). However, they need more than just Mick Foley and John Oliver to shout at, and I doubt the WWE is going to lead this to Oliver or Stewart in a wrestling ring (one should hope!). It would be a good time for the WWE to find two superstars they can have to face Swagger and Cesaro and be in support of the immigration debate. It would be nice to see Rey Mysterio return to get involved with this story, so we don’t have to see something embarrassing like a team up between Kofi Kingston and The Miz. At the very least, this is a good direction for the WWE to go forward with, especially since Colter can more than debate on the subjects legitimately.
You can find video of the segment on http://www.thedailyshow.com/ for American viewers and http://www.thecomedynetwork.ca/blogs/2013/06/daily-show-mick-foley for Canadian viewers.
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