A Celebration Of Our Glorious WWE Champions
All four main champions in the WWE right now seem to spring from the same archetype, but the nuances in details of each character, along with their presentation, the characters surrounding them, and their music differentiates them perfectly.
All four champions, Kross, Lashley, Reigns and Walter, are essentially the same archetype of wrestler: a brute with a brain, someone who can beat you clean 99% of the time but might go dirty if they have to. All of them represent different stages or evolutions of this character as well, tropes seen often in professional wrestling.
If this were a chart of this type of character, like Darwin would make, I think it would look like this:
Walter (initial push, unstoppable monster)
Karrion Kross (first reign, skilled monster)
Bobby Lashley (Prime, technical tactician monster)
Roman Reigns (weathered veteran monster)
If you look at Roman reigns career, you can see that he was always a version of this character, no matter the gimmick or storyline. What’s brilliant about the current Roman Reigns is of course not just the above-average dialogue writing in his segments on SmackDown, or brilliant supporting cast, but the amount of detail put in by Reigns himself.
The very evident subtext of the current character is someone filled with resentment and fear over a long career of frustration and defeat, fucked over repeatedly by everyone during his time at the top of the company, who never really became THE guy. I would say there’s a direct emotional through line here in the character if you want it composed of several key elements: being pinned in the streamers, the match with John Cena, losing to Brock, the leukemia, the time off he feels he was shamed for taking, even back to the betrayal of Seth Rollins…You could even say that Dean Ambrose leaving is a part of this as well. Roman never really stopped in to his power like this, and now that he’s finally doing it, he’s doing it in the worst way possible.
Now, he finds comfort from these nagging thoughts of anger and resentment in his heritage, which he’s become obsessed with, frantic to finally take some sort of inarguable title for himself. What’s incredible about Roman’s performance as this character here’s the stuff he does in the ring; this Roman Reigns is riddled with self-doubt, and often times talks to himself during matches, very occasionally getting so worked up he looks near to a total emotional breakdown.
The very evident terror and cowardice of this Roman is present constantly, and his bullying and domination of Jey Uso (a man he couldn’t beat!!!) beautifully demonstrates how truly out of control he really is.
The current Roman reigns character is someone who’s lost touch with himself, and he’s frantically faking it, even as he starts to look weaker and weaker in matches themselves. Finally, a heel becoming weaker after they turn evil makes sense: his panic and anxiety is so present in his matches and behind-the-scenes vignettes, a man consumed by anger and paranoia.
Roman Reign’s music, and entrance, both invoke the idea of him rising above his old self, with the giant statue of Roman and the old Shield riff hidden inside of the orchestral blasts of music. It’s actually like next level brilliant, really wonderful.
Moving down to NXT, we find a frightening bruiser whose down and dirty violent judo style of wrestling is contrasted by… Well everything else about him.
Karrion Kross’s lore and mythos have been dolled out at a pitch perfect pace. The fact that this big brutal journeyman wrestler guy appears to be a part of some sort of Macbeth-style Shakespearean prophecy involving him dominating the entire WWE, which was told to him by a witch straight out of a goth erotic fantasy novel.
How did this brute come into contact with the witch? What exactly is the nature of the prophecy he’s a part of? Both of these questions have been left thankfully on answered, as instead Kross’s actions speak louder than any exposition ever could. Of course he’s not telling you the story: He’s the monster at the end of the story. it’s not the devils job to teach you scripture, you’re going to have to catch up once you’re already in hell.
His finishers are violent and grimy, but his entrance and music is something from a 1990s death metal wet dream, a bizzaro piece of performance art that plays with the line of literality of wrestling; i.e.: are we meant to literally think this is a fog machine and a woman in a costume and colored lights? Or can we accept that what the show wants us to believe is that this is actual fucking magic?
The brilliance of the character lies in the refusal thus far to engage with the aggressively presented supernatural elements. This gives even his eloquent but snarling bad guy promos a kind of a eerie brilliance, like, who the fuck is this guy? Is this dude just going to show up on Raw and kill Lashley next week? Is this guy the fucking Thanos of the WWE and he’s just casual about it?
That does seem to be the implication and that means everything he does is charged with a wonderful layer of paranormal drama, without the silliness of a monster mask or special effects.
I finally understand why Shelton and Cedric had to get kicked out of the hurt business: it really did need to be all about Bobby.
Bobby Lashley‘s character has finally crystallized over the last few months, a selfish asshole who’s not terrifically smart and wants to be champion because someone told him it was time to be champion and now he’s champion and he really wants to be champion because “you get laid a lot and paid a lot and yeah owner or whatever the fuck MVP is talking about but honestly how laid am I getting this is sick.”
The nice suits, the jewelry; they might as well be Christmas tree ornaments for MVP to decorate him with.
Still, his vapid asshole ineffectual personality is counterpointed by the sheer physical dominance of a veteran unleashing 15 years of frustration. In the ring Lashley is a fucking killer, a gifted striker who doesn’t even need half the weapons in his arsenal to finish you off. When the strikes stop, the slams start, and then it’s only a matter of time before you’re caught with the deadliest finisher in the company, The Hurt Lock.
His music, Titan, could literally only belong to a champion. It announces him with those horns, that’s a class, dominance, power, aggression, scale. When Bobby Lashley enters he feels fucking enormous, more so than Kross or Roman, just in sheer physical presence, not even pound for pound muscle. He really does seem like something out of a monster movie, something that would fight Godzilla and maybe win.
The wonderful thing about it is that Lashley doesn’t fight smart; he’s almost always a step behind when he comes up against top guys. But he’s motherfucking relentless and if he catches you with that spine buster, it’s over.
Finally there’s Walter, a member of the wonderfully weird crossover group Imperium. Styled after fascist European authoritarians of the early 20th century, Walter’s group presents with crisp and clean efficiency. Again, in a total contrast to the three other champions, Walter, though still a big beefy brute, is a wrestler first and foremost. Everything about Walter and his group screams “prowrestling,” but it feels like you’re watching pro wrestling from some eastern bloc dictatorship where the wrestlers are only allowed to wear black and enter to classical music and must compete as violently as possible or they will be executed.
Just classic European fascist bad guy schtick is always a homerun when it works, and oh man do these guys make it work. Walter himself is one of the only prowrestlers I can think of that I would describe as terrifying. He looks like the sort of person who would kill you in a bar, or kill you on a battlefield, or kill you in a cave, right after he killed the saber tooth tiger with his bare hands.
Walter doesn’t even have a proper finisher. He just hits you with wrestling moves until you’re dead, like somehow he’s so powerful that he’s beyond the storytelling devices of individual or unique moves and instead he’s just like suplex chop slam power bomb pile driver slam drop chops punch elbow headlock like he’s an unedited create-a-wrestler with maxed out stats.
What’s incredible is that while WWE programming is it many different levels of quality across the different shows, all for champions right now are absolutely wonderful, with music, costumes, and, for the most part, storytelling, that consistently backs up their characters.
What a time to be alive.
