Pro Wrestling jargon. (The Rock x Cena promo from RAW 2/27/12)
Just caught the Rock x Cena promo from last nights RAW…and the ending of the segment was nuts…see, as a pro wrestling fan, I’ve learned a lot of things…from inside the ring…to outside the ropes…a lot of the ins and outs of the business…and from knowing that…on camera…there’s things you say and things you don’t…and I’m not to sure if the whole “promo on the wrist” bit was a work to bring the “realism” into the feud…but I know for sure that’s one thing you don’t come out and say. See, pro wrestling has a language they go by back stage…words that only pro wrestlers and/or people who really follow this thing (like myself) will know…for instance…when the Rock said “babyface” during his promo…that means the good guy or hero…when a person refers to a guy being a “heel”…they are referring to him as a bad guy or the villain…all these personas and characters you see on screen is all centralized under the umbrella of everything being “kayfabe”…kayfabe is basically staying in your character the whole time…kinda the golden rule i guess you could say of being a pro wrestler…when Cena dropped that “promo on wrist” line…you could see Dwayne break kayfabe for a min and got serious…like he wasn’t expecting a “shoot” or real comment like that…I guess that’s why the Rock ended up stuttering and wrapping up the promo soon there after…what the promo on the wrist refers to in the wrestling world is basically for rookies who aren’t great on the mic and needs reminders on what to say…so they write it on the wrist and go out and work the promo…so to a veteran like the Rock…for him to have promo notes on his wrist is quite odd and confusing. I honestly think Cena came out of pocket and smacked Dwayne with a cheap shot…but if this was a work…like the Rock purposely wrote on his wrist to give Cena ammo to fire on him with…then it was genius.
(left wrist with the promo notes)
