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Happy birthday to us! Rachel Talks Wrestling turns 1 year old today, and I couldn’t be happier. In the past year, I’ve learned a lot. And, hopefully, by keeping at it, I can continue to bring you an interesting and critical perspective of professional wrestling. To keep the momentum going, I want to kick off year two by starting with a post about “the man”.
“The Man”
Simply the term “The man” for a lot of people refers to an unseen entity or persona, usually in a position of power. It can also be used to refer to someone who is to be respected for their accomplishments. For the WWE, “the man” may be a little bit of both.
Currently, if you’ve been watching WWE in the past several months, you are aware of who the man is. Becky Lynch is the man. And as the man, she has caused quite a stir.
She has become so popular and so wanted, that she may have jeopardized her WrestleMania moment.
What’s a man to do?
What was originally set to be the blockbuster main-event of Ronda Rousey versus Becky Lynch is no longer to be. Because when you’re the man, your spot is not guaranteed. People want nothing more than to take you down and dethrone you. And, with the help of Vince McMahon, that is exactly what happened.
Charlotte is in and Becky is out. With the advent of “the man” story line, Becky Lynch, Ronda Rousey, and Charlotte Flair are the story moving toward WrestleMania. Of course, RTW will watch with bated breath to see the conclusion. But this got me thinking about “the man” in general.
As a more recent fan of professional wrestling, I wanted to know if this had been done before. Had there even been a “man” before? And, if not, why was this working so well now? So we begin where we always begin; some research had to be done.
It appears this is a novel idea. The closest comparison, and one that gets made often, is the similarities between Becky Lynch and Stone Cold.
Similarities between Becky Lynch and Stone Cold
- Feud with Vince McMahon
- Killer accents?
- General bad-assery (though she really should have been thrown out of Raw last week)
- Completely infatuated fans
So, as a new idea, this is working very well. We all like a story that involves Mr. McMahon and the women are on an all-time high. So why is this working so well right now?
Is it a women’s evolution or Becky-mania?
The first-ever all-women’s WWE pay-per-view is only a few months in the rear view. We just crowned the first-ever WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions at Elimination Chamber. And we could see a WrestleMania main-event featuring the women’s division. With all these historic women’s moments in a traditionally male-dominated industry, some could argue that this is what is making Becky Lynch so popular now. I, however, have a different theory.
Yes, it could be that Becky is a woman and the women have never been on a higher level, but let’s not discredit everything that Becky herself has done in the past few months.
Becky has been hitting her stride on the microphone. She delivers perfectly timed “punch” lines and keeps the momentum shifting back to her. Her feud right now is with the other two hottest women’s wrestlers in the company, and between the three, she still stands head and shoulders above them as the dominating favorite. She spent a few weeks in there trying to convince us that we didn’t want her and almost tried to make us hate her, but that didn’t stick. And now, she is the hottest wrestler on the roster PERIOD. Simply put, it’s just Becky’s time.
We are ready for it and for her because we like the struggle. We love the underdog rising after being pushed so far down. We are behind her because it seems that nobody else is.
