Howdy, once again my ever-faithful tatfans and welcome to another incident packed shrink-wrapped edition of The Announce Table. So what am I withering on about this time, you may wonder? I’m going to examine the first-ever Marriage Match that’s about to take place at Summerslam.
The match will see Kane take on Matt Hardy V.1, and the winner will marry the flame-haired temptress Lita. This match came about because, you see, ever since Hardy decided that yes, he did indeed want to date Lita again – maybe as a result of being friendless in the Raw locker-room – Kane has taken it upon himself to force Lita to sleep with him and is now claiming he is the father of Lita’s baby. Much to Hardy’s chagrin.
In another classic WWE yarn that cleverly sees the utter suspension of reality, we have been lumbered with this match. Now, I’m not a nit-picking smark; I love watching wrestling, and I love the spectacle that they put on, too – but this angle has witnessed blackmail, sex, pregnancy, paternity issues, violence and now a possibly forced marriage. On a previous Raw Lita graciously accepted Hardy’s marriage proposal, so who decides that she has to marry Kane if he wins at Summerslam?
And what if Kane does win at Summerslam? What then? When do they get married? Who presides over the ceremony? Reverend D’Von? Vince McMahon? Eric Bischoff? Eugene? They could have a staged wedding in the ring, I suppose; Kane and a tearful Lita being united somehow – and all will be pretty cringeworthy, maybe kudos-damaging, too. Hardy could rush to the ring and stop the wedding but surely the wedding would have to take place anyway, at a later date, seeing as the stipulations of the match state: you WILL marry Lita.
But if Hardy wins then this would surely kill off Kane as a credible monster. Hardy battered Kane with a chair shot at Vengeance for the win, and WWE surely know better than to actually go through with this whole Kane-Marries-Lita angle, so Hardy should win this, right? His second PPV victory over Kane in two months. Kane will have emerged as the monster who cannot take a chair-shot, cannot beat a guy half his size, twice, cannot win the girl and is unfertile. Shucks…that’s bad.
Recently, however, the WWE Creative team have confounded us all rather well, and developed characters and angles that have had surprising credibility and longevity. JBL as champion is gaining momentum; even the most cynical smarks have been conceding respect here and there. Eugene, who I was very sceptical about, has progressed into a fabulously interesting character. Since losing the belt, Eddie Guerrero has become fresh again and of course, Kurt Angle is back as a whimpering heel.
So I’m looking forward to a Matt Hardy victory (besides he deserves a couple of big PPV wins after getting soundly beaten by a peg-leg), a sickly, gushy in-ring wedding and a slow, but sure, rise back to the big time for V.1. You never know, he may become Intercontinental Champ before the year’s out?
As for Kane: he’s just hoping the Creative team pull something out of the bag for him, too, or he will be forever stigmatised as “The Comedy Monster”, and that would be criminal.
Cheers!
Boyo