Yesterday (April 23), regular host Kyle Brandt and recurring guest Seth Rollins had a testy exchange on the set of NFL Network’s Good Morning Football. The WWE star stormed off after a couple jabs about pro wrestling being “pre-determined” and Rollins’ wife Becky Lynch being the winner of the family, and clips of it quickly made the rounds on social media and got covered at sites like this one (it being the first day of the NFL Draft, most football-focused outlets had other things to talk about).
Football fans watching GMFB on Thursday morning looking for last minute insight on their favorite team’s picks in this weekend’s Draft were probably left scratching their heads. With this coming shortly after Pat McAfee’s WrestleMania worked-shoot angle, and seemingly in the midst of a Jey Uso and Cam’ron’s SummerSlam worked-shoot angle — wrestling fans were mostly rolling their eyes. As The Ringer’s Phil Schneider said, “Andy Kaufman vs. [Jerry] Lawler worked because Memphis wasn’t also trying to do Christopher Lloyd vs. Dutch Mantel and Danny DeVito vs. Bill Dundee at the same time.”
Turns out Brandt and Rollins weren’t working on their own angle for August’s first two-night SummerSlam, or any other show on WWE’s calendar. No, they apparently were doing it give Brandt a chance to play pro wrestler. In revealing their scheme today on GMFB, Seth says it was Brandt’s idea, and that they didn’t tell anyone what they were doing — even GMFB’s two other regular hosts, Jamie Erdahl and Manti Teʻo.
The former Real World star says he got a text from an NFL Hall of Famer asking what was going on, and Rollins claims a high-ranking WWE or TKO executive contacted him asking if he needed to get involved to smooth things over with the NFL’s morning show.
Other than that? Just an attempt to grab some eyeballs on at the start of the biggest event of the football off-season, we guess.
There are a fair few on social media calling this “brilliant” and “masterful”, and — look, I admitted yesterday they both sold the hell out of it. But it seems like continuing to run angles outside like kayfabe is something that has diminish returns at best, and potentially creates bigger issues by further blurring the line between fact and fiction at a time when the world is already having a hard time figuring out where that line is.
Maybe I’m just being a curmudgeon or a worry-wort, though. What do you think of Seth’s latest “ruse”, Cagesiders?
