I'm starting to feel the burn of reviewing RAW every week.

Now, when I get home from work on Tuesday I don't immediately start writing. I fire up the XBox Series S and play Starfield. And that's all I want to do - play Starfield and watch Severance with my wife.

As I was writing this week's review I realized something fairly substantial (and worrying). I don't actually enjoy watching RAW. I find so much of it grating - the advertisements, the backstage segments, the scripted promos. There's usually one good thing each week, but that's not enough to justify giving two and a half hours of my life to something. As far as improvements to the show, I think they've gone as far as they're willing to go (better editing, interesting camera angles, a more structured start to each episode). Backstage segments clearly aren't going anywhere. No amount of criticizing them, no matter how right I am, is going to change that. The ensemble cast of characters fluctuates wildly in terms of quality. On one hand we have CM Punk and Roman Reigns and on the other we have Dominik Mysterio and The Creed Brothers. The interviews, no matter where they happen in the arena, are terribly performed and terribly written. I wince through them, wondering what in the blue hell I'm even watching.

JOURNAL ENTRIESTim KailMarch 21, 2025journal, tim kail work of wrestling, tim kail's wrestling journal, wwe, monday night raw, austin theory, grayson waller, gunther, jey uso, wrestlemania

Tim Kail's Wrestling Journal, 2/13/25

For this blog entry I simply want to reflect on the state of my wrestling fandom and The Work Of Wrestling. It's not a review or an essay - think of it as a journal entry with little structure. I wrote it because I felt like it with no immediately apparent purpose. Let’s see what shakes loose.

For the past six weeks I've watched and reviewed Monday Night Raw. During that time I've also caught up on AEW Dynamite. One show is not particularly better than the other. They share so many similarities that their differences hardly register. If I showed one show to a non-fan and then the other show a few minutes later and asked them to tell the difference, I don't think they'd be able to.

I'm particularly perturbed by AEW's backstage camerawork.

It's indistinguishable from WWE's, and they've even started doing that thing where the camera lingers on the subject or interviewer for a few seconds after the scene is over. I cannot fathom why AEW would do this. Someone in a position of power is actively making this terrible creative decision. There is no visual wrestling rule book dictating it be done this way. Also, don't they want to distinguish themselves from WWE? Why not do so in easy, simple ways like camerawork?

JOURNAL ENTRIESTim KailFebruary 13, 2025journal, raw, aew, wwe, Seth rollins, criticism, arts criticism

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