Is Sami Zayn's Monday Night RAW Entrance From Montreal A Turning Point In WWE's Visual Storytelling?

First impressions are everything.

For years, WWE had a standard visual template for how wrestlers came out to the ring. If the music didn’t hit with the crowd or the gimmick was dead on arrival, there was very little WWE could (or would) do about it.

But as a famous tag team once said, It’s a new day, yes it is. In the past six months, in this post-Vince McMahon era of WWE, old long-standing production heads like Kevin Dunn are out and a bevy of new people and creative ideas are in.

Many fans have noticed little touches and visual cues lately that, while small on their own, do a lot of heavy lifting. Wrestlers will walk through the backstage area and seamlessly segue right into the next story beat, a camera will slowly pan up to the ring, already in action, and give an almost voyeuristic sense that we’re peering in on a fight already in progress instead of one set up by a booking committee.

But the biggest example of stellar creativity came with this week’s Monday Night Raw, where massive babyface and hometown Canadian hero Sami Zayn was returning home having just won Intercontinental gold at Wrestlemania.

Instead of having Sami come out from center stage like he had a million times before, we started out with Zayn & Jey Uso somewhere in the arena looking up wistfully. Sami taking in the moment of being back home as a conquering hero. He says, “Tonight I walk in here the same way I did all those years ago: through the front door.”

The camera swings around behind Sami and it’s revealed that he is indeed at the front door and is walking through the concourse, fans screaming, Sami tossing a recycling bin, the place is unglued and he’s not even in the arena-proper yet.

This is how you show, instead of telling. We can actually see how much Sami means to these fans. We don’t need to be told his backstory. Even a new viewer, in those 30 seconds, can now get a grasp of who Sami is and that he’s a man of the people.

When he does make it to the stands, the camera has the entire area in the background. Further emphasizing the visual cue that this entire place is literally & figuratively behind Sami Zayn.

Again, this is not groundbreaking television. The WWE should have regularly been doing dynamic pieces like this years ago. But I’m glad they finally are.

For years, WWE’s visual production was stuck in a holding pattern. If it worked in 1998, why shouldn’t it work in 2018? Because times change and you could have it so much better.

Everything from theatrical films to music videos have had their eras where the product on the screen seems just a touch more inventive & creating than what came before. Could we be entering that era for WWE and wrestling as a whole? The fact that I’m excited to find out is more than I could have said even five years ago.

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