Column: Is Evan Bourne Crying For Help?
So, the big news this week has to be the Evan Bourne suspension saga. First he is suspended for fake pot, then he points the finger at R-Truth. Upon his return, he is suspended again for something else, so we are lead to believe. Rumblings are that WWE wants to future endeavor him before he comes back to TV. The real issue though, is once again locked up in the details. There have been certain hints for a while now that things are not all rosy for Bourne in the WWE, and so I ask the question: Is Bourne trying to get fired?
First of all, a warning to all of you. I’ll be upfront now and say that I am straight edge. I have been for years now and I believe that marijuana is just like any other drug. Everybody is entitled to their opinion and in this piece, I’m not going to talk about whether Evan is right or wrong for his drug use. By all means, voice your own opinions on the drug issue, but don’t start telling each other why you are right and they are wrong. Let’s all be buddies, ok?
Now, I want to take you all back in time a little bit. We need to go all the way back to the 4th of November. Evan took to Twitter to make a good natured jab at the WWE Twitter campaign, like so many of us have done before. His exact words were:
“I wonder if WWE ’13 will have our twitter handles, random tweet pop ups and Cole talking tweets? Might make gameplay as annoying as viewing.”
All in good fun, am I right? Certainly not an original quip, it’s one I have heard in various different formats for some time, even before he made the comment. Plenty of people have made comments on the overbearing WWE Twitter hype, me included. However, Bourne wasn’t finished. He added:
“My guess is WWE 13: “The Network”. You are Vince and control the WWE with a WWE “Univers(e)al” Remote. Create history and earn money!”
Now, here is where my ears prick up a bit. CM Punk’s recent work-shoot comments sound familiar right about now, comments about Vince controlling everything to make money. Punk is golden in the WWE now, an accepted part of the upper echelon. Do you think Bourne has that kind of safety net? I don’t think so, so to make a jab like that at your boss is a risky move. Bourne essentially took a shot at how Vince has not only his fingers in every pie but his whole damn arm as well. Remember what happened with Paul London? He had backstage issues, broke the rules on screen, ended up being the accidental focal point of the ‘Who killed Vince’ story and then was released at the earliest possible time.
So, we say for now that Evan pushed the envelope with those comments and ruffled a few feathers. WWE values Twitter more than some of their own wrestlers, so those comments won’t have gone unnoticed. Even more interesting, looking over Bourne’s Twitter reveals something even more curious, Evan is the only WWE Superstar who regularly swears on Twitter. I looked on John Cena’s, Kofi Kingston, Randy Orton, Mark Henry, CM Punk and a few others, none of them swear. I mean the big words too. The F-Word and the S-Word, are words that a family friendly entertainer like Bourne shouldn’t be using. It’s not a million miles out of the realm of plausibility to think that, because WWE is in a PG era, there will be kids who use Twitter, who will follow Bourne and read those tweets. WWE brass will not be best pleased with this in my estimation, as they like to keep their programming as clean as they can. Bourne’s use of profanity on Twitter, a media WWE is pushing hard, isn’t going to win him any fans quickly and only makes him a more visible target to his detractors.
Bourne’s political stance might be an issue as well. Vince is a known loyal republican, while one look at Bourne’s Twitter feed over the last 3 months shows how liberal he is. His ideology no doubt clashes with Vince’s, which may not be an actual issue in most cases, but when it happens on Twitter, Vince will care. Vince wants you to read what he wants you to read, not what you want to. That’s why the Twitter frenzy is happening, because WWE can stack the deck, fish out the positive posts and push negative ones under. It’s a forum they can control to a degree. Talking to RVD about Ron Paul being right about some policies might not get you as over with Vince as you think, something else we can put in the case for Bourne wanting to leave.
The most telling thing is how he responded to his second suspension on Twitter.
“Sorry y’all. Sometimes we become our own worst enemy.”
It’s a very flippant response. It doesn’t imply much ownership or understanding of how much of an issue this is to WWE. They likely see it as him not caring, thinking that WWE are blowing things way out of proportion. The second strike is the last one you can have while keeping your job and for this to be his response isn’t very positive if I’m the WWE. His reaction to his first suspension was to point the finger at R-Truth as being his partner in crime, which while it was fair to have Truth be suspended as well, it came at a bad time. Truth was in the middle of the hottest angle on WWE TV and had managed to get himself more over than he ever has been in his career. Bourne stopped all that, albeit with a legitimate claim to equality, but Bourne is the reason Truth was suspended immediately. If it had been kept quiet, Truth would have likely had a suspended 30 day suspension, taken after the story, when it was time for him to go away. Instead, the story got interrupted because of Bourne wanting Truth to be treated the same. I agree with him and Truth shouldn’t be treated differently, his immediate suspension was fair and consistent, but WWE won’t see it like that. All they will see is the money and TV rates they lost from Truth having to leave TV. If you ignore all the Twitter stuff, this act alone will have cost Bourne a lot of fans backstage.
Truth be told, the only person that knows the truth is Bourne. Only he knows what’s going through his head. Bourne is one of the elite few wrestlers from this generation that built himself a following before WWE and much like Punk, Joe, Styles and other names like that, they know that money can be made outside of the WWE bubble, so if he were out of the WWE, he wouldn’t be out of pocket. It also has to be said that while WWE has made many leaps in size diversity, Bourne doesn’t fit the mould of WWE champion quite like some of the other talent on the roster now. Maybe frustration has been coupled with realisation that he has reached his limits in the WWE has caused his string of bad behaviour. In my estimation though, his behaviour has been very strange recently, and I get the feeling that Bourne may be feeling the urge to fly outside the WWE universe once more.
So, that’s my opinion on the situation. If you have an opinion, let me know here or on Twitter at @NoHopeForSome. Remember to like the Facebook page for Wrestling Truth and on Twitter. Should things get sorted sometime soon, I will be getting to have a chance to speak with current NWA champion Adam Pearce, which is personally a big deal for me. If anybody has any questions you want me to ask him, please let me know and I will do my best to ask him. Once I get more info, I’ll let you know, but for now, let’s hear what you have to say about Evan!
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