This week I have been thinking long and hard about what I would write about, mainly because nothing much is happening. Then, on Sunday my inspiration came at Battleground. It actually had very little to do with the PPV itself, and more to do with the reaction from a certain section of the world to what unfolded.
I am talking about the bookmakers, who offer odds on wrestling for some strange reason. They wont take bets on Coronation Street, or Game of Thrones. The first time they start offering odds on The Fugitive, all my money is going on the one armed man being the bad guy. But for whatever reason, they will offer odds on a WWE event.
Now I am not saying they should not do that, all I am saying is that if they DO, they have to accept that strange things may happen.
A friend of mine likes to add a bit of interest to his PPV viewing by placing a couple of bets on the outcome. He will put on an accumulator bet, where he needs a set of results to go his way, which pays out quite well, then adds a single bet on one match, and if he picks a dead cert, puts on a bit more money, to cover the cost of the first bet.
The he watches as his accumulator goes bust when Cameron beats Naomi, safe in the knowledge that his losses will be covered later in the night when Seth Rollins wins. Except the bookies changed the odds. The bookies suspended payouts on Seth Rollins as he won by forfeit.
Like I said earlier, bookies should just put up with that if they are going to take the bets.
This may surprise nobody in the world, but the results of the PPV are pre-determined, at the start of the show, the wrestlers know who will win every match. If you are greedy/stupid enough to offer odds on something like that, then sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and take what’s coming on the chin.
If you bet on a football match, and one team decided not to show up, you would quite rightly be asking questions. If every horse bar one in a race stopped running, and the jockeys got off for a smoke, you would be a bit cross with them. In wrestling though, we all know that what we are actually betting on is not the wrestling match, but that we can predict what goes on in the head of a crazy pensioner.
This PPV in particular was not one where anyone betting would have made much anyway, Cameron winning was a shock, Jericho beating Bray after jobbing to Fandango has to be a surprise, and the twins keeping their belts would have bust many a coupon, so the bookies would have made money.
They would have paid out if the match had gone ahead as normal and the whole locker room had interfered in the match, but a forfeit? Nope, not paying out. The result is the same, the outcome was predetermined, so just pay up already.
But this all got me thinking, what if you owned a wrestling company that seemed to be struggling a bit, and you had a bit of cash…
Now I could be speaking about the owner of ANY wrestling company, before the lawyers come looking for me. But what if, for instance you had someone undefeated in say, 21 attempts…
Everyone would be piling money on that person, lengthening the odds on the other guy, allowing you to clean up. Not saying that happened, or naming any names. all I am pointing out is that the possibility exists for such a hypothetical situation to occur.
You would not even be able to call it match fixing, because, well every match is fixed anyway, and everyone knew that before we started.
Lets face it, anyone who takes part in the predictions league here at SLTD will know how hard it is to know how matches not involving Cena will turn out. You watch storylines develop, you factor in who seems to be getting a push, and how far you think that push will go, then take your pick. But again, you are still guessing at what is going on in the mind of one man really.
The Miz is a great example, 12 months ago he was jobbing to Khali, now he is IC Champ. Cesaro is another, getting a push, now he is thrown over the top by the Heath Slater. How is anyone supposed to predict that?
So Bookies, do us a favour. If you are gonna take bets on wrestling, accept that the outcome is decided before the match takes place, and accept, like we do, that anything can happen to get to that result. Then respect that result and pay out.
Before I go, I should probably mention the Lana thing. Apparently she referenced an airliner that was shot down over Eastern Europe earlier this week in her promo.If she did, I never noticed it. She said something about ‘current events’, and I honestly never connected the two. However, WWE has, lets face it, never been the moral compass for anyone.
Any company that will film an employees heart attack and show it the next week, turn an openly racist group like the Real Americans face, be involved in anti bullying campaigns while building a business which encourages bullying, or have commentators who will make jokes about absolutely anything will never be the standard I use for good taste.
They make fun of alcoholics,little people, gingers, anyone who is not American, poor people, fat people, tall people, ugly people, in fact anyone they want. If they referenced that airliner,and I am not sure they did, they would not have crossed a line they have not already crossed a thousand times before.
And we have allowed that to happen, they may have sneaked it up on us, but we still let it happen. Anyone who laughed at Vicky Guerrero when the Rock sang his song to her, or smirked as the little bull took on the leprechaun. Anyone who stood up and shouted ‘We the people’, or booed Rusev out the building for being ‘Russian’.
All those times we allowed WWE to be racist, or have a Eugene, we told them that anything was fine by us. Getting upset at a perceived reference to a tragic event would seem to me to be a bit hypocritical. You cant mention that, but go and throw that midget in the pool of custard again….
As always, the deadline is approaching, and I must mention all the other writers who do such a fantastic job here on SLTD. The work involved in putting together an article like mine is immense, I can only imagine how much the guys who actually do some research and stuff put in. Go check them out.
Also SLTD radio continues its domination of the airwaves, while the MFX podcast, even though they have already done about 150, for reasons which no-one can fathom are about to reach a milestone of 100 episodes, making it the longest running episodic podcast on mfxpodacst.com. To celebrate the event, I would urge everyone to listen while wearing some of their excellent Tee shirts, I myself will be wearing my ‘I’m a Miz’s Dad Guy’ when they reach that milestone in two weeks.
And Twitter, this is tough, just as I had given up the fight, I got another 20 followers, making the long running battle with my girlfriend close again, so follow me @GrantCookDFC safe in the knowledge you CAN make a difference.
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