When it comes to behind-the-scenes wrestling documentaries, many would argue that 1998’s Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows is the gold standard.
But 2020’s Liv Forever has a lot more in common with Wrestling With Shadows than one might think.
Both see a camera crew follow a wrestler around for over a year. Both portray a dysfunctional wrestling promotion. And both expose the unbelievable betrayal of a loyal worker.
I suppose the main difference is that, unlike Paul Jay’s Wrestling With Shadows, Liv Forever was produced, shot, edited, and released by WWE itself—and on purpose, even!
Also, nothing happens in it.
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When Liv Morgan heard WWE was going to have a camera crew film her for 18 months, she must have had high hopes. After all, no company with a lick of sense would invest that kind of time and effort into someone if it didn’t have big plans for her.
Instead, WWE filmed itself jerking Liv around for a year and a half.
The doc begins with Liv telling the story of her troubled childhood. For our purposes, all you need to know is that her birth name is Gionna Daddio. Daddio!
True, Liv’s not the first wrestler to squander an awesome name:
There was Richard Blood, but that was no name for a babyface.
And there was Barbie Blank, but try selling Barbie Blank toys without butting heads with Mattel.
But for Ms. Daddio, WWE must have felt “Liv Morgan” had greater potential for puns. (See the title of this documentary)
Next, Liv tells the story of the Riott Squad, who raised all kinds of heck in WWE.
For years, fans assumed the three NXT call-ups had been put together arbitrarily on the spur of the moment…
…and Liv basically confirms this. One day, WWE brought in the women and told them they would be in a new heel faction.
The random trio of the tough brunette, the alt girl leader, and the pretty blonde would debut on Raw as…
…Absolution.
Oh, and as for Liv, Sarah, and Ruby, they’d be The Riott Squad on that week’s Smackdown (and later, Raw)
Though they had nothing in common initially, they grew close behind the scenes and became the best of friends.
Flash forward to April 2019, and the Riott Squad finds out they’ve been split up in the Superstar Shakeup. It’s a cruel business sometimes, but WWE wouldn’t separate Liv from her best friends and move her to Smackdown without big plans for her.
House shows, for example.
After thirteen weeks of this, Liv Morgan finally returns to TV. Making sure her mom watches the show…
…Liv challenges Charlotte Flair, loses handily…
…and vows to “be real” and come back once she finds herself.
Instead, she finds herself having to fly out to Smackdown every week (presumably on her own dime) only to be told Creative has nothing for her.
And through it all, she keeps pitching characters for herself (which she has plenty of time to think up, now that WWE took her off the house show circuit, too). Meanwhile, WWE tells her they’re going to overhaul her character, giving her only the vaguest idea of what she’s supposed to be.
Eventually, they bring her to a TV taping to wrestle Ember Moon in a dark match.
Then they cancel the match on less than one minute’s notice.
WWE’s reasoning? They don’t want fans to see Liv Morgan’s new character until it’s been fully fleshed out and ready for TV. I mean, can you imagine what fans would think if they saw Liv with blonde hair without proper explanation?
The documentary spins this crushing disappointment as a positive, though. Liv, reacting like a cult member, decides the ban means they must really care about her!
Sure enough, six weeks later, Liv gets drafted back to Raw, having appeared exactly once on Smackdown since her trade six months ago. So basically, they broke up the Riott Squad for no reason.
Two more months pass before Liv Morgan actually returns. In the meantime, she films some cryptic vignettes in a bathtub and catches the eye of Paul Heyman.
It’s Heyman who gives Liv the clearest direction for her character yet: She can’t be defined. And while that sounds an awful lot like Paul having no idea either, he’s so damn enthusiastic about it.
It takes until the very last Raw of 2019 for WWE to actually figure out what it wants from Liv. Paul Heyman’s big payoff for Liv’s eight-month hiatus is…
…a cheap pop for a lesbian plot twist. Crashing Lana and Bobby Lashley’s terrible, terrible wedding, Liv reveals herself as Lana’s ex-lover, then gets into a cake fight. The girl-girl fling is never mentioned again.
Hey, remember when Liv vowed to “be real”?
Skipping to Wrestlemania, the documentary treats Liv’s match with Natalya as a major career milestone. At the first-ever two-night Wrestlemania, they wrestle on the Night Two pre-show…
…to warm up the crowd of zero screaming fans.
In the end, Liv Morgan ends up exactly where she started, in the Riott Squad. The only thing missing is Sarah Logan who, reading between the lines, got fired in the Pandemic Purge.
And while most people would be disheartened after enduring over a year of rug-pulls and thoughtless life changes, only to start back at square one…
…Liv wants us to know that that’s not a bad thing…
…that’s a good thing!
In its quest for Network content, WWE made the perfect pseudo-inspirational farce. At best, Liv Forever plays like the “rags” portion of a longer rags-to-riches film.
At worst, it’s an accidental exposé of WWE’s Kafkaesque talent relations.
In the words of Queen, who wants to Liv* Forever?
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*”Liv” and “live” are homophones