Welcome to another edition of WWE Heat Index, where one of the biggest stories from the past week is examined under a microscope and picked apart for analytical purposes.
With a name like Heat Index, what better topic is there to discuss than WWE’s newest pay-per-view event, Great Balls of Fire?
When it was initially announced several weeks ago, wrestling fans across the globe let out a collective “huh?” before immediately ripping the name to shreds.
To be fair, the names of WWE’s events aren’t the most important thing in the world, as there isn’t much to separate Battleground from Roadblock, but given the nature of wrestling fans in general, people have their favourites, and they will criticise anything that seems to have justifiable cause.
Also read: WWE Great Balls of Fire 2017: 5 reasons why Samoa Joe should beat Brock Lesnar
For some, this is just a huge oversight. Why have such an insane name when there are so many other events waiting in the wings to be brought back instead, like King of the Ring, Breaking Point, Over the Limit and more?
For others, something new wouldn’t be bad if it were just a good name to begin with, but Great Balls of Fire is laughable.
Retro isn’t always in style for everything and for WWE to opt to go with something that has such synonymous ties with a different generation just comes off as being more out of touch than we are sometimes even willing to admit.
This isn’t even a relatively recent generation, either. Something from the 1990s looks dated to kids nowadays, but this song is from 1957! There are grandparents that weren't alive when this song came out!
Old School Raw has a classic feel to it because that’s the whole point, but Great Balls of Fire doesn’t. Everything is the same as the standard events save for the silly name and the promotional material feeling like it applies more to American Graffiti than a professional wrestling program.
It screams like the byproduct of someone who refuses to admit they’re no longer in the target demographic but still wants to advertise itself like the hip product everyone should pay attention to.
Is our next guest host of Raw going to be that hot new young star Donald Sutherland? Should WWE do cross-promotional work with Bonanza?
WWE tries to have musical performances from people who are big stars at the time. When “Greenlight” was performed at WrestleMania, it had only been released for a few months. “Great Balls of Fire” is 60 years old.
Whatever your tastes may be, it’s impossible to argue that LunchMoney Lewis isn’t more relevant in pop culture right now than Jerry Lee Lewis.
To make the matter worse, WWE even ran into legal issues in trying to use this name and the accompanying song it’s inspired from!
At that point, why not scrap the name and go with something else? Having to settle on some kind of monetary settlement to avoid copyright infringement just to retain the name of an event people think sounds absurd seems like a battle that doesn’t need to be fought.
Perhaps at first, the criticism was scoffed at. Clearly, it was unjust and only a small vocal minority, right?
Someone high up enough in the company who has fond memories of yesteryear or an affinity for the hipster vibe where they like to go to restaurants that try to replicate the feel of Happy Days probably thought that it was a title worth fighting for and the backlash would blow over—even though people still call the Universal Championship ugly one year later and Chicago crowds still chant for CM Punk.
However, things have only gotten worse in the past few days when the logo was changed for the third time.
In what feels like something out of a sitcom, WWE’s idea of how to make this event seem cooler was to create a new logo that is quite phallic—something you can’t unsee once someone has pointed it out to you.
Yes, an event named Great Balls of Fire has that design to it.
Since those criticisms came out, WWE has been using the second version of the logo on the promotional material.
Of course, while this is all nothing but negative for the event, as the comical logo, the ludicrous name, the outdated sensibility and the bad energy in general only harms its potential to succeed, it’s really down to the matches and the builds to those matches which will determine if this show is good or not, right?
Even in that regard, WWE is facing an uphill battle.
Yes, it’s intriguing that Samoa Joe will face Brock Lesnar, as that’s never happened before, but this is a recipe for disaster where WWE has painted themselves into a corner, and nobody will win.
If Joe loses, he’ll be looked at as not as dominant anymore, hurting his impact for future months when he’s relied upon to be a top heel while Lesnar is off television. Worse off, if Joe is destroyed like Lesnar has done to people in the past (Randy Orton, for example) then that hurts his credibility dramatically.
On the other hand, if Lesnar drops the title, people will complain that he won it from Goldberg for no reason just to drop it at his next title defence. Basically, if either man wins, the other will look worse, and if there’s a draw, the match will seem to have been pointless.
The rest of the card appears to be made up of a few rematches, like The Miz against Dean Ambrose and The Hardy Boyz against Cesaro and Sheamus. Those aren’t going to turn heads to make people think they’re seeing something fresh and exciting.
Coming off the lackluster Extreme Rules event, Finn Balor has done nothing to get back his momentum, Roman Reigns is in no better shape as a top babyface, Alexa Bliss is still washing off the stink of the “Bayley: This is Your Life” segment, and there’s still no Braun Strowman in sight to save us.
Meanwhile, SmackDown is planning an historic first-ever Women’s Money in the Bank ladder match, Lana will be starting her in-ring career, and the biggest criticism of the fresh and new WWE champion is that he must be on steroids because he looks too jacked.
How is the Raw writing team floundering so much when they’re given the same access to the same resources as SmackDown’s, and they have an extra hour per week along with an entire cruiserweight division to help handle the load?
All of this combined makes it hard to think Great Balls of Fire won’t go down in history as one of those events like December to Dismember where people just cringe when it’s brought up, and WWE only has a few weeks to turn public opinion around on not just the card and the feuds, but the name of the event, the theme of the show, the logo, and everything associated with this pay-per-view.
Goodness, gracious.
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