WWE News: Cesaro Signs Were Confiscated At Night Of Champions?
Cesaro signs were confiscated at Night Of Champions, according to multiple fan reports as noted by Wrestling Inc.
While the company has a history of confiscating signs that it disagrees with, this, if true, is particularly unusual since Cesaro is an active part of the WWE roster and he was in the Match of the Night at Sunday’s pay-per-view.
The last time that WWE reportedly took a fan’s sign away, it was over an incident that involved support for the WCW, the organization’s one-time rival that went out of business in 2001 after a run where it beat WWE for 87 weeks in a row in the ratings.
To be fair, the fan was also said to be drunk and belligerent and later proved himself to be of low intellect in a vulgar online rant.
Mismanagement and massive talent egos led to the company’s eventual undoing, and made it possible for Vince McMahon to buy up the entire brand, library and all. Placed in that context, it’s easier to see how a guy like McMahon could be more ticked about the WCW sign. With Cesaro, though, it’s a real head-scratcher.
The only explanation we’ve heard that makes any sense is this: Cesaro is being booked as the heel in his feud with Sheamus, and any visible fan support clearly detracts from those booking plans.
(Perhaps this is something Vince McMahon should have thought about before breaking kayfabe on the wrestling business several years ago?)
Fans already cheer against perennial face John Cena, and it can be quite confusing if you grew up watching in the days prior to the Attitude Era as to who are the good guys and the bad guys.
Essentially, wrestling fans have screwed up the very “sport” they fell in love with by refusing stars their traditional roles, a fact that Jim Ross and Cowboy Bill Watts lament about at length in the most recent episode of The Ross Report podcast.
Ross and Watts, however, place most of the blame on where Vince McMahon has taken the business because “there are no rules to break anymore.”
“How can you have a heel when there are no rules?” Ross remarked.
Watts, a former wrestler and promoter in the Mid-South territory, added that in the days of kayfabe — when wrestling was promoted as real — there was an element of “mystery” to the business, where fans didn’t believe everything they saw was “on the up-and-up,” but they believed enough of what they saw to suspend their disbelief.
Nowadays, fans just pull for the guy they think is cool regardless of creative direction.
Perhaps by removing the Cesaro signs, WWE was trying to cram the genie back in the bottle. However, at this point, that’s probably impossible.
What do you think, readers? If WWE did remove the Cesaro signs, as many fans have indicated, what do you think their motivation was?
