I Can't Think of a Hook for the Title

Full confession Author's note: My purpose with this blog is trying to highlight lesser known talent and shine a light on things in the industry that I think might make it interesting and amazing to a newcomer's perspective. I'm really trying to make it accessible (God help me, how I'm trying), but sometimes I just gotta rant. They're going to be sparse, but every now and then, they might happen. And with that, I hope you're sitting down, because I've got some bad news about the next 800 words...

Have you ever heard the expression "the first bite is with the eye"? The same is true of wrestling. I'll explain.

The expression refers to the sensory experience of food not just in mere terms of its taste. It isn't merely the flavor on the tongue by which we rate a meal: we look at it in terms of the whole package. It isn't enough for a hamburger's beef patty to melt in your mouth. There's a sizzle. A warm, rich, hearty scent of bacon. The bun has been evenly toasted. The beef has been grilled to perfection. Even the way the grease runs down your fingers feels strangely right. 

Now let's flip the script.

Let's say it still looked juicy, had the same rich taste and aroma, arrived on your plate still sizzling, but every time you brought the burger to your lips it began to tremble in your hand. Your first thought wouldn't be to doubt your sense of touch. You'd wonder what your sense of touch knew that your other senses didn't.

Now let me circle back to Hook.

I mentioned in a previous article  that Hook had an amazing debut (I'm allowed to self-promote on my own blog leave me alone). At the time, he was presented as a killer. And because of that, he looked like a killer. And for a time, they actually made him look like a killer.

And.

He.

Was.

He'd win matches inside of a couple of minutes. The narrative became "could people outlast him and drag him into the deep water and make him drown?" Turns out the answer was yes, and now, despite an impressive win-loss record, Hook appears extremely mortal.

For whatever reason, AEW cooled on Hook. Maybe they didn't know how to book him without putting him in contention for a title. So... I dunno. I'd have just booked him to win a title. Wouldn't he look good with TNT gold? It wasn't even that Hook wasn't working or connecting with audiences. From the perspective of a fan, it one day felt like AEW wrote Hook off because just hadn't hit a level AEW wanted fast enough, so he is no longer being presented as credible to the credible, if you follow me. This leads to the uncanny contrast of a wrestler with something insane like a 28-1 record who somehow comes across as weak. This has never felt more apparent than, while tagging with a 52-year-old-man, Hook is the guy getting singled out and made to look in peril for several minutes in a tag match against a team of bumbling stooge bad guys.

Right? Like... I am not trying to bag on RVD here. The man has an incredible run (and, at 4-0, the longest active undefeated streak at WrestleMania). But the dude is not young. Don't get me wrong. RVD can still go like nobody's business when he turns it on. He's still capable of incredible feats of agility. But RVD is the guest celebrity. He isn't there to make the save. He's there to make the new talent look good. 

This isn't isn't to say it's RVD's fault or Hook's. It's just an incredibly self-defeating way to book a supposedly near-unstoppable fighter. That's why Hook isn't working. Somewhere along the line, AEW stopped presenting Hook as a killer and started presenting him as an accomplice. There's something really disappointing about that.

Despite constantly winning, Hook no longer feels like a winner. It does not take much to convince me that's a dangerous man. Look at him. Hook should not be the lesser member of the team needing to tag in his teammate to save the day; Hook is there to do the saving. He's the ringer.