Wrestlemania #7: Should Real Life News Be Incorporated Into Angles?
As you know, this show was built around the real life Gulf War. This was viewed as stupid because the war was already over, but that’s not the point. Should there be angles based on real life events?As usual, I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. Having the real life stories play a role is fine, but having something like this is ridiculous. The war ended a few months ago so it wasn’t like this was even fresh news at this point. The show wasn’t that good and with the ending never in doubt, the timing was bad on top of it all.
Thoughts?
I think it depends on the stories, but absolutely real life news and stories should be incorporated. Wrestling has always done so, and it almost always works. Especially if you can get out of the storyline/angle before the real story dies down.
The Muhammad Hassan character was a good one (placed on a bad wrestler), and it involved real life issues (Arab-Americans being mistreated post-9/11). Slaughter was over as an Iraqi sympathizer, although the end of the war hurt that (if the war was still going on, Mania VII likely would have been huge). Hell, the Iron Sheik got over based on news. He called his manager Ayatollah Blassie during the peak of the issues with Iran and Ayatollah Khomeini (of whom Sheik made mention of numerous times).
Look at the heels throughout history. Seemingly a large majority of them were foreigners. Soviets, German (fake Germans like Fritz Von Erich), Japanese, Middle East, etc. At the end of the day, Americans will root for the Americans over the foreigners, especially when the foreigners are representing enemy countries.
Should Real Life News Be Incorporated Into Angles? In my opinion, absolutely not.