Braun Strowman has been the talk of the town for many reasons over the past few weeks. This time there’s question about his attitude and tardiness in WWE. Regardless of the job you have, or the stuff you need to do, one thing remains: you have to be on time!

I tend to assume that most of the people that read my writing on the Internet are a lot like me. We’ve been obsessed with pro wrestling for most of our lives. We really care about what happens on Raw, SmackDown Live, NXT, Impact, ROH, NJPW & any other televised wrestling we happen to watch. It takes up way too much of our attention and hampers our ability to do other things. Having social lives & paying our bills. Things like that.

It limits the amount of time we have. Most of us have a lot of things we need to make time for. 24 hours in a day isn’t enough, especially when you add in the sleep that we need. We need to watch our wrestling. But in order to afford the $9.99 per month for the WWE Network, or various amounts of money from other sites like NJPW World or powerslam.tv, we need to have jobs. We need to get out there, work & earn our keep. Once we do that, we can get out on time, go home and watch our precious wrestling that makes us happy.

The last thing we need is people that can’t be on time.

No matter what kind of job you have, you’ve dealt with these people. You make a meeting time and they’re always late. It’s not a one-time thing, either. They are continuously late and you end up adjusting your expectations based on it. If you tell them to meet somewhere at 4:00, you don’t expect them before 4:30. Because they have no concept of time and are always late.

It’s obnoxious. I don’t have a lot of tolerance for mistakes from other people anyway, but at least most of them are excusable. Being late one time is excusable. Being late all the time for everything ever really isn’t. You have to correct that mistake sooner rather than later, or your boss is going to take notice. Until you get to a certain point where you do your work better than anybody else can & you’re untouchable, you need to show up on time.

You need to be a professional and be where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be there.

The word around the campfire is that Braun Strowman has yet to figure this out. In fact, he regularly violates two of Bill Watts’ cardinal rules. I know everybody thinks the ol’ Cowboy was way behind the times in 1993 & even further behind now, but there are some basic things he expected from his employees that are timeless.

1. Show up on time.

If your boss expects you at a certain place at a certain time, you need to be there. I don’t see the argument against this. Watts’ employees had a much tougher road getting somewhere on time, with the wonderful road system in his territory, than WWE Superstars do with their airplanes & rental cars typically driven in easier places to get around than where Mid-South Wrestling ran shows in the 1980s. To be a WWE Superstar & continually late to shows you have to be supremely incompetent & completely lacking of a clue. Is that Braun Strowman?

2. Stay for all the matches.

Watts’ idea was that the wrestlers lower on the card should watch the later matches in order to learn from them, and maybe pick up something to add to their toolbox. There are exceptions to this rule. Mick Foley mentioned in his first book how Ricky Steamboat wasn’t allowed to leave the locker room to spend time with his family in Charlotte when he was working one of the early matches, and clearly that was ridiculous because Steamboat wasn’t going to learn anything from anybody else working after him.

A family exception is more than fair for anybody, even if you’re not as great as Ricky Steamboat. Unless a WWE Superstar has family in every single town they work like they’re a Dudley Boy or something, that shouldn’t be a regular issue. Especially in this day & age where most people that become wrestlers were already fans to begin with, it’s hard to believe that most of these people wouldn’t stay for the whole show.

Apparently, Braun Strowman has a difficult time adhering to both of these rules. Which is a shame, because Watts would have loved to have somebody like Strowman working his territory. A guy with Strowman’s credentials in strongman competitions & various high school athletic endeavors would have had the Cowboy salivating. He loved big athletes that could kick ass wherever they went. One would assume that the Monster Among Men would have no problem with anybody at the local watering hole that wanted a fight, which covers another one of Watts’ cardinal rules.

Don’t get beat up in a bar.

The whole showing up late thing would be a non-starter though. Unlike many wrestling bosses, Watts had a certain expectation level for the people working his cards. And I don’t think those expectations are too far off from most bosses in business, or most of us in general.

I’ve seen some people defending Braun Strowman on this issue. I can only assume these people have never worked actual jobs, or are the type of people that always show up late. The real answer is that they’re fans of Braun’s, and want to make excuses for him just like everybody else makes excuses for people they mindlessly follow in 2018. It’s understandable. It’s certainly easier not to think with context in this tough day & age.

I’m a fan of Braun Strowman. I was more of a fan before the botched heel turn nonsense they sent him on over the past couple of months, but I still want the guy to succeed and be a major player in WWE for years to come. That being said, I want him to show up on time and be a professional. If he can’t do that, then I have no problem with WWE jobbing him to Brock Lesnar.

Of course, WWE will be hypocritical about these things. I have no idea if Lesnar shows up on time at the few things he’s booked for. I mean, I assume Paul Heyman gets him there on time because he seems like a guy that has his shit together, but I don’t know.

People like to point out how Bret Hart had a reputation for showing up late. He did, but we have to recognize that Bret was one of those guys that could get away with it. He was somebody that the creative team could put into any situation and would trust it to work out because it was Bret Hart. All Bret needed to know was the opponent, the result and how much time he had. He’d make it work.

Do we trust Braun Strowman on that level?

Absolutely not. As much as people like to knock Bret as a draw, he had god-like status in certain markets. Canada & Germany adored him like no other. As a young American wrestling fan I bought into the idea that Bret was the best there is, was & ever will be. As an older man I haven’t seen many people since step up to his level. I like Braun, but he’s nowhere near Bret Hart status with me.

Here’s the thing. If you’re a young up & comer trying to make your mark, you can’t give people reason to doubt. This is when you need to work the hardest you’ve ever worked. Once you make it, and make it for years, then you can show up late & make people work on your time. If you haven’t earned it, people will resent you. They’ll still resent you if you’ve earned it, but they can’t do anything about it then. If you haven’t earned it, they can screw you over, and you have no real response to it because they’re right.

Braun Strowman hasn’t earned it. He might someday. Until then, he needs to show up on time, mind his P’s & Q’s, and leave after the show ends. You do that long enough & over-perform, then you can start being weird. Braun needs to be normal for now.