But We Hate Him Now!
Well, that didn’t take long, did it? The audience turned on Ambrose faster than a Cannibal Corpse song. It really wasn’t long ago that Dean was poised to hit the top of the game and hold the position as the go-to guy for solid matches who could explain his reasons even if they were a little left of center. A mic warrior, clad in blue jeans with a wild stare.
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There were whispers that he was the next Stone Cold Steve Austin, with slightly more hair. He was easily the most popular and well-rounded member of what could be the greatest modern faction, period, The Shield.
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How cool was The Shield? In my book, really cool. And Dean Ambrose was the coolest out of the lot of them. The fans loved him. Both the men and the ladies, the diehards and the casual fans, the marks and the smarks. Aficionados knew he had a dangerous history in the indies.
The ladies loved Cool Dean. Everybody was at least intrigued with this unique psychopath because he didn’t quite fit the mold of typical WWE Superstar. Hell, he didn’t really fit any mold which is a recipe for getting over. But even with the right ingredients dinner has to be prepared right, and that may be where the dinner party went sour. Also talking about “dinner” and “mold” is making me lose my appetite so let’s move on and figure out why The Lunatic Fringe has suddenly become The Monotone Middle.
Whatever Happened To Anarchy?
Let’s start with the forced nickname: The Lunatic Fringe. Are politics the first thing you think of when you hear that term? No? What, you didn’t grow up in the early 1900s? That’s fine, it’s evolved to also mean someone with extremist views, eccentricity beyond what political party you support into just everyday regular stuff. My opinions on Jurassic Park III could be considered “lunatic fringe.”
But the name is meant to conjure up thoughts of a wild man who will do anything to win. An unpredictable wrestler who uses the mic like a pistol whipping our hearts and brains. And in The Shield, he played that up to great effect.
Then Seth Rollins became the infinitely more interesting character when he turned on his brothers and joined The Authority. But it was Ambrose’s face in that moment that we all connected to. We were as shocked and heartbroken as he was, and we felt even closer to Dean.
Then he started hiding in car trunks and novelty-sized Christmas presents as a form of “wacky” guerrilla warfare. He rode the Q train all the way to Coney Island to get a hotdog cart, then fashioned the condiments into weapons. He was being consistently outsmarted by holograms and exploding TVs that were plugged into...I guess some sort of anti-exploding surge protector, and when you unplug them they immediately detonate.
And don’t even get me started on that rope rebound lariat. It was fun exactly twice. Now he literally just throws himself into the ropes when nobody is doing anything else. One of his signature moves is stepping on the second rope so he can turn around at a slightly elevated angle. He punches like he’s trying to respectfully get your attention. He stole Mick Foley’s OTHER finishing move.
In-ring Flaws
We all know being a high-flyer or a technical wizard is a large part of what draws us to a wrestler, especially these days, but it’s not the only thing. Joe “Crap Brains” Briggs has famously gone on record saying “physicality isn’t everything” and I believe him.
Wrestlers across history have hit the very top of their field, and pop culture as a whole, being able to barely wrestle at all. Hogan, The Rock, Stone Cold...all of them hit dizzying heights in spite of the fact that they were mostly color-by-numbers in the ring.
That’s not a dig at any of those guys, it speaks to how good they were even when they weren’t blasting people in the face with chairs to cover up their ho-hummedness when it came to wristlocks and limp transitional moves.
To get to their level they used emotion and wordplay that connected universally with the audience. While those guys were Dave Chappelle on steroids at the office Christmas party, Dean’s a broken Charles Bukowski on his 9th whiskey, sitting alone in a booth at a dive bar. And he seems kinda fine with that.
This is not the Dean Ambrose I had envisioned when we chose him as the true leader of The Shield. It didn’t make sense and seemed almost purposefully designed to backfire. What if one of the owners of the cars he hid in got off work early and just like, drove home with a sweaty tank topped guy in the back?
Now one of them is wanted for kidnapping and the other missed out on a possible tag team match to headline that night’s Raw. That match was probably penciled in an hour before Raw went live.
Lonely At The Top
The brand split did little to nothing for Dean Ambrose. Sure, he brought the company’s top belt to the Smackdown Blue. Then he had a feud with Dolph Ziggler. Listen, I think Dolph Ziggler is one of the most talented wrestlers today, but...let me rephrase that...I Think Dolph Ziggler is THE most talented jobber in all of WWE.
He’s Shawn Michaels if Shawn Michaels had Zack Ryder’s friends. Nobody gave it their all in the build to their Summerslam match. Dean seemed unmotivated at best and Ziggler just slid his MO over from Baron Corbin, then after failing to win the big one jumped immediately into a losing feud with The Miz. It’s not entirely Dolph and Dean’s fault, They seemed to know how everyone else was thinking anyway: When does AJ get the belt?
AJ Styles is a world famous pro wrestling star. He came into WWE cocked and loaded, stumbled slightly on the mic end of things but recovered nicely, before turning everything he did up to 11. He #beatupJohnCena, made Cena sad enough to abandon one of his arm bands in the ring, then immediately set his sites on the WWE Heavyweight Championship.
Despite his match with Ambrose at Backlash being passable, if not forgettable, AJ was launched, and there wasn’t much room in our hearts for someone else. Especially when that someone else seems to barely care that he was given the responsibility to elevate his show.
On Dean, the championship looked like a literal and figurative anchor on his body. On AJ it solidifies him as the actual new guy in town. The guy who everybody knew and nobody thought would ever hold WWE gold, much less be IN WWE. The guy who has held every title that matters across the globe and now he’s got one up on John Freaking Cena.
That’s the other problem Dean Ambrose ran into on Smackdown. The main event is damn near empty. Who else was gonna challenge him for the top prize, or even challenge him to put some gusto back into his performances? Ziggler couldn’t do it, Bray is off in a corner talking about The Purge trilogy or something, nobody seems to be able to break out of the mid card (but that’s also pretty thin so maybe leave them there) to step up to the plate.
AJ swooped in and now has all eyes on him, with the best possible opponent for him being John Cena and Cena’s desire to tie Ric Flair’s World Championship record of 16. That right there is a better story that already has a beginning that’s been cemented, a middle that’s just starting, and an end that is one hundred times more interesting than “fans used to like me.”
That’s where we’re at with Ambrose. A fan favorite who coasted his way straight to the bottom of the top. It’s not all for him to shoulder the blame, fans can be a fickle bunch as a rule, but to those of us who have been truly rooting for The Luna Refrigerator, we’re let down. Part of it is the weak in-ring performances, part of it is the lack of competition. Some of it, at least on my end, is not being able to focus on what he’s saying because I’m busy trying to pinpoint exactly where his hairline is today.
Like I said earlier, some fans like to compare Dean to Stone Cold Steve Austin. That’s ridiculous. I compare him to Nirvana’s Nevermind. When most of the mainstream first caught wind of Ambrose, he was Smells Like Teen Spirit. New, exciting, scraggly hair...any real fan knows that’s not the best song on the album, though, and soon we’d grow tired of that song being played all the time, regardless of how good it is.
We had to find a replacement for that particular song to take residence in our ear brains as the actual go-to song we played for ourselves and our cooler friends. What we ended up with was Come As You Are when what we really wanted, what we deserved, was Lounge Act.
