So I did indeed watch WrestleMania, which mostly sucked. Some people are touting Undertaker/HHH and Cena/Rock as being good matches, but I thought both were lousy – the first was a couple of old limping guys trying to make Jim Ross’ dramatic announcing meaningful, and the second was just sloppy wrestling. Jericho/CM Punk was not bad, but also not a show-saving match (it had a slow start and a stupid bit about Jericho trying for the intentional DQ). Honestly, in retrospect the highlight of the show may end up being Daniel Bryan losing to Sheamus in 18 seconds, not because that was a good thing (it wasn’t), but because the fans reacted so extremely negatively to not getting to see Daniel Bryan actually wrestle that the WWE may be forced to recognize that he is actually very over (as opposed to acting embarrassed that they have hired and pushed him).
But WrestleMania mostly blew for two reasons.
1.) The WWE is either unable or unwilling to work at grooming new stars. WrestleMania’s two most important matches were A) between two guys who are inches away from retirement and B) featured someone who hasn’t wrestled regularly since 2003. Their big returns on the following RAW were Matt “Albert/Lord Tensai” Bloom (last seen in the WWE in 2004) and Brock Lesnar (ditto). I loved 2000-2004 WWE as much as anybody (indeed, I think it was probably the company’s creative and performance peak), but this is a well that has diminishing returns to say the least.
It used to be more straightforward: you had your A-level stars, your B-level stars, your C-level stars and your jobbers. When you wanted to “promote” a B-level star to A-level, it was simple: they beat an A-level star fairly and presto, they were in the club. Back in 2001, Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho were both mired in the midcard until they beat HHH and Steve Austin in a hot match. (Beating heels when heel tactics backfire on the heels is “fair.” Don’t look at me, I didn’t make the rules of wrestling storytelling.) This method works. Kurt Angle beats the Rock, Eddie Guerrero beats Brock Lesnar – presto, instantly credible World champions.
But nowadays, there are problems with this approach. Firstly, there aren’t many A-level stars (right now it’s probably CM Punk, John Cena, Chris Jericho, the Undertaker, HHH and Brock Lesnar now that he’s back – and Daniel Bryan is probably on the cusp) and the company is extremely careful to protect them. Secondly, there aren’t really a whole lot of well-defined B-level stars any more (right now I’d say the only real candidates are Kane, Mark Henry, the Miz, and Dolph Ziggler).1 Everybody else just sort of floats around in this morass of boredom and nobody really cares about them – call it the Kofi Kingston Zone. They’re just sort of there. Maybe they have a gimmick, but nobody cares about the gimmick. Heath Slater is the One Man Rock Band, but who gives a damn about that when Heath Slater matters less to the stories than Barry Horowitz ever did?
2.) The WWE has gradually stopped writing long-term plotlines. Partly this is because the WWE’s writers got tired of having to change their stories on the fly when a wrestler got injured, but that doesn’t really change the fact that going into WrestleMania, there was not one match that had a storyline that effectively went back more than a month. Rock/Cena doesn’t count, because that wasn’t an ongoing year of buildup to that match: Cena was doing other things (like feuding with Vince and/or CM Punk) for most of the year, and then Rock shows up for this one tag match, and then Cena fights Kane for two months just because, and… okay, Rock time now!
Or another example: another match on the card was Kane versus Randy Orton. Why were these two fighting? “Because.” That is literally the only reason – three weeks before WrestleMania Kane decided he hated Randy Orton. This is stupid. Never mind that there was a golden opportunity for the WWE to conclude or at least develop a longer storyline by having Kane fight Zack Ryder – you know, the guy Kane repeatedly brutalized during that feud with Cena I just mentioned. Plus, if they let Ryder go over Kane (and they should, because Kane is 44 and doesn’t have much gas left in him), they would elevate Ryder.
Really, long-term wrestling plotlines aren’t hard to write. You’ve got your classics (“escalating match stakes until things get insane,” “baddie runs away/cheats for seventeen thousand matches until good guy finally beats him,” et cetera), you can switch guys in and out, it’s not that hard. But the WWE has lost the knack for it.
- The Big Show is sort of a special case because he is a giant, and giants play by slightly different rules because they can be instantly credible A-level stars whenever the company decides to have everybody suddenly realize “wait, this guy is seven feet tall.” Unless they are terrible like the Great Khali is. [↩]
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Wholeheartedly agree and I think one of the problems you touched on briefly, is outside of a select few guys (which you mentioned) none of the B or C guys, and even a few of the A guys, really have gimmicks.
I mean, what is the difference between Randy Orton, Dolph Ziggler, Jack Swagger, John Cena, Cody Rhodes, Ted DiBiase, and Wade Barrett? Sure, each plays up different aspects of a personality from “ice cold assassin” to ummm, whatever Wade Barrett is. But, gone are the days when every B and C guy had a completely different character. Hell, even Brock Lesnar is ‘big white guy who is mean and strong’. I stopped watching regularly years ago, but caught Wrestlemania and was shocked by how bland everything was. No face/heel turns, no stunts, no surprises.
I’ve heard that part of the problem with long-term wrestling storytelling and plots in general is internet leaks. Message boards and blogs regularly just leak the hell out of backstage stuff and plot matter and it’s made it quite difficult to surprise the audience.
Not that that excuses sloppy storytelling and dull stars.
Maybe — just maybe — the crowd chanting “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Monday at Raw will get WWE creative to realize Bryan needs to be in main events, not curtain-jerking. It was a great crowd at Raw, to be sure.
The Jericho/C.M. Drunk angle could be feud of the year if they commit to it, make it a several-months long thing, and pay it off in a satisfying fashion. I can see it now: Jericho, with Laurinaitis’s help, constantly harasses Punk, pushing the “It’s your destiny to be an alcoholic” message. Punk loses the title to some up-and-comer he “should” be able to beat handily. This leads Punk to seriously consider picking up a bottle, maybe after having him play the part of Job a while longer. Ultimately, Punk rejects alcohol as a solution before triumphantly defeating Jericho in a steel cage match or something, maybe as late as Survivor Series. Also, the up-and-comer who took Punk’s title has a good title reign lasting several months, during which he cleanly defeats multiple A and B+ challengers.
It makes so much sense. That’s why it won’t happen.
First, that show was balls awesome. Sheamus squashing Bryan in 18 seconds pissed me off, but only until I witnessed the backlash on Raw the following night. I doubt anyone planned for it to happen, but they’ve created something magic here and I’m entertained whether it was an accident or not.
The WWE is either unable or unwilling to work at grooming new stars.
If the Internet Wrestling Community had a coat of arms, this sentence would be written on it in Latin. And it’s bullshit.
I find it hilarious that you cite 2000-2004 as some idyllic time when new stars had an easy path to the top, because during that period, the fans thought WWE had its head up its corporate ass. Remember 2001, when WWE bought WCW and buried its entire roster? Everyone whined and moaned that Booker T and Dallas Page weren’t getting a fair shake because they used to work for the competition. You talk about Chris Jericho becoming a tippy-top guy when he beat Austin and the Rock to unify the world titles, but at the time no one appreciated it because he was jobbed out to Triple H at WrestleMania 18. The fact that he was defending the WWF title in the main event of the biggest show of the year was completely lost on everyone.
Triple H himself is another prime example. They pushed him to the moon in 1999, and all I used to hear was how “he wasn’t ready”, until suddenly he became “overexposed”, and he was the guy everyone blamed for holding the new stars down. The fact that he passed the torch to Chris Benoit, Batista and John Cena is ignored. And now John Cena is the new Triple H, the face of everything that’s wrong with the company.
I’m not saying WWE is perfect by any means, but while fans have been lambasting them for the last decade about their failure to create new stars, they’ve quietly been creating new stars. Randy Orton’s only 32 years old, and he won his first world title at 24. At the time, the fans didn’t appreciate him because they were too focused on Benoit and Eddie, but all three of them got made in 2005, during the WWE’s supposed dark age. Alberto Del Rio got railroaded in 2011, but they also spent that year making CM Punk the biggest name in the company.
So it may be hit or miss, but the fans always seem to focus on the misses and forget the hits. Yeah, Daniel Bryan lost the World Heavyweight Title in an embarassing squash, but everyone forgets that it made Sheamus look like a million bucks. Now Sheamus is the champion and the fans are rallying behind D-Bry like never before, so if WWE plays their cards right, they’ll both be made men. And then in 2015, someone will complain that they never create new stars, and Shemus and Bryan need to step aside and put the younger guys over.
It is and it isn’t. I said “unable or unwilling” for a reason. I go more with “unable” than “unwilling,” because when the WWE finds they have lightning in a bottle they’re sometimes willing to use it/see it exists. Hopefully with Bryan they will. They certainly didn’t when Matt Hardy was getting the same crowd heat, though, so god only knows if it’ll work this time around. (As for Sheamus, who spent his promo time last night getting DANIEL BRYANed and booed, I’m not sure if he got the rub you think he got – but time will tell. I like Sheamus, mind you.)
As for Orton – look, the kid won his first World title in two years. He got put over Shawn Michaels and Mick Foley. He was a perfect example of how you get a new kid over. Which is fine! He’s in his prime and that is great. But now he’s at the stage where he should, on occasion, put someone new over – the Randy Orton of 2012, if you will.
And I don’t have the hate-on for Cena that most people do. I think he’s perfectly adequate as a wrestler, does a decent promo, and he’s artfully trolling the hardcores by playing “decent at all costs,” which is brilliant and subversive on multiple levels. But a shitty match is a shitty match, and Rock/Cena was a shitty match (which ironically made it the perfect comparison point to Andre/Hogan at WM3).
I will always love the Big Show, no matter how much Andre the Giant coattail-riding he did at first.
They should just go back to the days of “evil” managers that cheat at a moment’s notice and themed tag-teams.
I miss Demolition.
@Mike Smith
It would be nice if they took a look at just how hard the Miami crowd was behind Bryan and shoot him to the moon. Amusingly, that 18 second squash could have accomplished the same thing the Austin / Hart legendary match did… turn both guys.
But let’s remember, Zack Ryder got over basically with *no* support from WWE at all, to the point where he was so popular they basically *had* to do something with him.
And that something was get him beat up by Kane, manipulated by Eve, kicked in the nuts by Eve and squashed by the Miz on Monday. Yeah he had a sniff of a title in there, and got to be John Cena’s pitiful little buddy… but Ryder is still popular *despite* what the WWE is doing with him, not because of it, and Bryan could end up the same way.
While you’re right the HHH did eventually put folks over, it took him quite a while to get to that point. I’d almost say it took until it was clear he was going to be marrying into the family, when he started to make decisions that were better for the company than for his legacy. For awhile there, all he did with his influence is keep himself on top.
And yes, there were imperfections in that 2000 – 2004 era, and yes a lot of WCW guys got buried… but there really is only so much room at the top of the promotion, and some of those guys were *not* going to be happy working the WWE schedule.
I think the problem isn’t so much with the stars. I’m fine with having a John Cena-like guy who is, essentially, Superman (in some ways he fills that Undertaker spot). Orton, Orton, Punk, Rock, Lesnar, and one or two others, have a standout personality and a niche that’s pretty clearly defined. Those stars are also going to be over win or lose.
The problem is almost everyone else on the roster is essentially the same guy with different tights. MGK described it best when he said they’re in the Kofi zone. On Monday A beats B, on Friday, B beats C, next Monday C beats A. They all blend together, and none of them seems any bigger of a star than any other. Are victories the most important thing? Not really, but they’re a way to make people bigger stars (see Joe, Samoa and Goldberg, Bill). So these guys don’t distinguish themselves by seeming to be any better than any other.
Now let’s look at promos. 98% of these guys are one script nowadays… and they sound like it. Maybe none of these guys is going to be the Rock… but who knew that he would be early on? In part thanks to the lack of promos and completely random match pairings, you don’t get the kind of interwoven backstory that was possible in the 2000 – 2004 range. Remember when Eddie put some fire into Benoit before his triple threat match? Remember when he came out into the ring to celebrate with him (an image that’s chilling now)? None of that is possible today because of the blender of back stories.
It used to be that you could give guys a rub by giving them a run with a secondary title as a means of elevating them, but those titles are almost meaningless now. It also used to be you could get a guy over (and get him some seasoning) by putting him into a tag team and giving him some heat… well the tag division is basically dead.
And that old progression of guys from tag ranks, to secondary titles, to main titles? Can’t happen anymore, because they don’t have any long term plot lines / goals they can script towards. It’s part of the reason all the guys in the Kofi zone trade wins… so that they’re all ‘protected’ in case they’re the next ones to get marked as a challenger.
The largest indicator of just how badly most of the federation is booked? Is how over Santino is compared to everyone else in the Kofi zone. He’s a comedy routine, with a silly finisher, but he sells it 100% and the crowd is into it. Plus since he *is* a comedy guy, losses don’t hurt him at all and they love his wins. The fed positions him well in big matches like the rumble and the elimination chamber… and whoever eliminates him gets tremendous heel heat. Santino might be their #1 mid-level face… which is the equivalent of Doink the clown being the #1 mid level face. (Nothing against Santino, I love the character). But since everyone else in the mid to lower tiers is so forgettable, Santino is a star.
And that is a problem.
I miss Demolition.
I miss tag teams, at all. The tag division is anemically sad now. There are what, three tag teams in the fed now? Who wrestled a dark match for the title that didn’t even make it on the show?
(On another note… I just saw the post-RAW segment with Daniel Bryan and the Miami crowd? And that boy might be more over in Miami than everyone not named Dwayne).
I kind of wish you did more on wrestling now. I really agree with a lot of your opinions (though I am an admitted “Cena-Hater”… well, more like “disliker”).
The best thing that came out of Mania was th enext night during the Punk/Henry match. Easily the WWE MOTY so far, just really good chemistry and storytelling. It was like watching Vader/Sting!
beating heels with heel tactics isn’t just wrestling storytelling. Haven’t you ever heard the phrase turnabout is fair play?
I’m glad I’m not the only commenter who puts some of it on the fans. I feel like many fans want realistic, subtle real life personality traits spelled out as blatently as over the top gimmicks were in the 80’s and 90s. I also feel that considering how often many modern fans got to the net they want things constantly spelled out. Like since Kofi hasn’t snapped on someone like he did Orton for a while it’s no longer part of his character.
I enjoyed Rock/Cena as much as I enjoy any Rock match
And the problem with letting Zack Ryder beat Kane is it’s not believable. And it’s not just about booking. In the late 80’s Mr. Perfect was a fairly good heel wrestler. But he was also a guy who would use his finisher the Perfectplex, which was a suplex into a bridging pin, during post match beatdowns. Whatever his talent he had nothing that could hurt a guy like Hogan or the Ultimate Warrior. In the 90’s Razor Ramon could be brutal as aheel. But put him against the Undertaker and nothing in his moeveset was going to hurt the guy. That’s he way it was with Ryder and Kane.
That Wrestlemania performance you did with Flo Rida was kind of a waste of time.
This is why I pretty much stick to watching ROH and other indies lately. What they lack in pyro and giant crowds, they make up for in good booking and good matches.
It’s also where all of the talent is; it’s where Daniel Bryan and CM Punk came from, after all.
T.Shock’s comment made me laugh because I was watching Wrestlemania with someone who is not at all a wrestling fan and, while she mostly had some kind of reaction to all the characters and matches (“That guy looks scary… and pale” and “Why is he wearing two masks?” type of things), her reaction to Randy Orton was priceless.
“This guy looks like what you get on a character creation screen for a video game before you push any buttons.”
I know Austin got over huge by (mostly) rejecting the idea of classic wrestling gimmicks but Austin was operating in an environment where he could honestly stand out by doing that and he had a huge personality and acres of charisma to boot. I’m not saying we need to see a return to Mantaur and Sparky Plugg but give these guys something to work with beyond vague personality fragments.
Another reason Austin got over was because he had input into his character. He had the freedom to ad-lib when he cut a promo. Guys in WWE today do not have that freedom.
I was listening to Colt Cabana interviewing MVP recently on his “Art of Wrestling” podcast, and MVP told a story of him and Ric Flair. What happened was that one of the writers walked up to the two of them backstage just before they were supposed to go out and confront one another in the ring to build up their feud. The guy gave them a paper with a list of the things they were supposed to say. He handed it to them and left. After he was gone, MVP says, Flair said something like “Kid, you don’t need this, do you?” MVP said no, and Flair was happy to hear him say that; he tore up the paper. He was gonna take responsibility if anybody was unhappy with them not sticking to the script, since he could get away with that kind of thing because, you know, Ric Flair. So the two of them went out there and they just improvised, and this was the result.
What happens when they don’t have that freedom? You end up with, say, John Morrison saying moronic things like “Maryse here just said that everybody here in this arena has hippopotamus breath”.
@Rob Brown
MVP is exactly the type of guy I think MGK, myself, and others are talking about.
He’s talented on the mic, in the ring, he’s got a good lock and a fantastic gimmick. There was no reason, none at all, he shouldn’t have been on the Tag Team/US Champ/World Champ career path. Instead, he starts down that path, isn’t put over, has a good feud with Matt Hardy, and then is turned face for some reason. Then, released.
The guy had one of the few interesting characters the WWE created in years and they couldn’t make it work.
I’ve been a long time wrestling fan, pretty much since Wrestlemania 2. I dropped out around 2005 because of bland characterization and, honestly, the shock of losing both Benoit and Eddie in the same year (Randy Orton’s push also had something to do with it, as I find him incapable of wrestling, speaking, or holding my interest). Got nabbed back in by CM Punk earlier this summer and ordered ‘Mania on the promise of Punk/Jericho and Daniels/Seamus.
To say I was not pleased with the latter match would be an understatement.
The characters are mostly interchangeable, and not really characters at all. There’s no sense of upset, no sense that anything can happen at any time. It’s a giant series of “let’s you and him fight,” seemingly for no reason at all. Without build or character it’s impossible to get invested in anything happening on screen.
Wrestling storytelling should not be a difficult thing. You have titles, and people want those titles. They can acquire those titles by fighting. There are certain people that do good things and certain people that do bad things and they may or may not like one another but every story should end in a fight. It’s effectively a live action comic book and when it’s done well (Benoit-HBK-HHH from Wrestlemania XX, for example), it’s gold. When it’s not… well… Wrestlemania XXVIII happens.
I bought the PPV for four matches. Two of them had halfway decent stories, those being the title matches. Four good workers who know how to tell a story with a context of a fight, are interesting to watch, and have well-established characters (though I think Seamus needs to stop smiling all the time).
I’m a sucker for the Undertaker and always have been, but at this point you can have him fight anyone at ‘Mania, bring up the Streak, and you have instant drama. The match itself is almost secondary. He’s a special attraction. He’s Truckasaurus.
As for Rock/Cena… I like Cena. I like the subtleties of his character, I like that he tries to be the good guy and do the right thing, and I like that he effectively lost because he showed a bit of heelishness in the final moments of his match. I also like the Rock, generally speaking, and it was nice to see him take a break from making movies to come back and say hello. Dude’s in great shape and entertaining most of the time.
This does not mean their match was not sloppy. Offense from nowhere that builds to nothing does not make a good match. It felt like spot, spot, punch, punch, spot, false finish, punch. There was no flow to it, no story. It was kind of boring.
Planning on sticking around a couple of months just to see what happens with Punk, Seamus, Jericho, Daniels, and some of the younger talent. I’m hoping the bookers can figure this out and do something compelling.
Right now this is feeling an awful lot like the nDCU.
@T.Shock: Had to check Wikipedia to be certain of this, but it turns out the MVP asked for his release. Not that you can really blame the guy, though, because of the reasons you mentioned. He was pretty much in booking limbo. The only reason he had to stick around was the money, and with WWE’s 300-show-a-year schedule that only goes so far if you’re not happy with what you do.
He’s currently working for New Japan Pro Wrestling. Here you can watch a match featuring him, current ROH World Champion Davey Richards, former ECW World Champion Masato Tanaka, and a guy by the name of Rocky Romero known for his work in ROH, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, and elsewhere. I haven’t watched the entire event, but the match with those guys begins at the 1:52 mark or so, and it’s worth a look.
Also, anybody dissatisfied with WWE might want to check out chikarapro.com For the price of one WrestleMania, you can buy two or three CHIKARA DVDs (or pay to download the shows as MP4s), and if you don’t feel like paying you can see highlights each week on the company’s YouTube channel. Sometimes you’ll even get an entire match, like this one.
(I did give TNA a try, for anybody wondering, but finally stopped watching because even though I think they have talent up the wazoo, their booking was terrible. With Vince Russo gone from the company that may have changed, and it doesn’t take much persuasion to get me to watch guys like Austin Aries and Christopher Daniels wrestle…however, given the finish in Sting’s PPV match against Bobby Roode, I’m a little skeptical.)
Anyway, back to WWE. Mike Smith isn’t entirely wrong, because WWE has made some new stars, where “star” = “main eventer”. Since 2009 the following people have won world titles for the first time: Miz, Mark Henry, Swagger, Del Rio, Sheamus, Christian, and of course Daniel Bryan. (I’m not counting Ziggler, because I believe he was just given the title and then promptly had to defend it against Edge and lost it, making him look nothing at all like a world champion.)
Here’s the thing, though: they cut several of those guys off at the knees without really giving them a chance. (T.Shock, I’m sure that you know about the stuff I’m about to write here, so I’m mainly writing it for the benefit of Mike and for other people who don’t know what happened.)
The most glaring example of that is Christian. He was a last minute replacement for Edge in a match against Alberto Del Rio, when the storyline called for Edge to win. When Christian won, it was a great, emotional moment that made everybody happy. The fans were completely behind Christian as world champion.
What did WWE do? They moved Orton to Smackdown and then had Christian drop the belt to him, ignoring the crowd reactions, because in their minds Christian could never be a real main eventer. As for what they did to Christian afterwards, I don’t want to talk about it. Just thinking about it puts me in a bad mood.
Jack Swagger is another guy who went from holding the world title to being kicked down to the midcard, where he remains to this day. WWE might say that they did that because nobody took Swagger seriously as a champion. Well, of COURSE nobody took him seriously as a champion, because before WWE put the belt on him they had the poor guy jobbing to everybody and their second cousin! If they bothered, you know, building him up for a while, then maybe he’d have been more over.
(The same thing very easily could have happened to Sheamus for most of the same reasons, if not for the fact that Sheamus is friends with Triple H. It took a while for people to accept Sheamus as a world champion, but eventually they did. I doubt they’d have kept the belt on him long enough for that to happen if Hunter hadn’t been in his corner.)
There there is The Miz. WWE made him look better than Swagger, since he went from being a tag team champion back when those belts mattered to becoming the United States Champion for a while, to being tag champs again with The Big Show, and then finally a world champion. They even gave him wins over Cena and Orton. I’ve seen people say that since he almost lost his title to a sixty-something-year-old Lawler and since he wasn’t made out to be a guy who could beat Cena and Orton on his own that it made him look like a weak champion, but IMHO that shouldn’t have made a huge difference, since there are other guys who’ve played the same kind of character and still got lots of heat. The last time I watched a segment involving him, Miz still had plenty of heat. But for some reason they took him out of the world title picture and sent him on a jobbing spree. Whatever WWE did to make him into one of their stars in 2010, they undid over the course of 2011.
Know what really didn’t help? His match against Cena at “Over The Limit”, in which he spent the whole thing beating Cena practically to death with every single implement he could get his hands on and with another guy helping him, only for Cena to withstand 20 minutes of this and then hop back up, fresh as a daisy, and make Miz tap out like a bitch. This is one reason people hate Cena, for anybody who was wondering.
Kofi Kingston was mentioned above, and they very easily could have made him into a main eventer if they wanted to. He wasn’t always just sorta there without anything to do. In 2009, they’d established him as a tough opponent by giving him a long U.S. title reign, and then they put him in a feud with Randy Orton. In that feud, I think Kofi proved to everybody that he could not only put on amazing matches in the ring, but that he could cut a pretty good promo as well. WWE even let him pin both Orton and CM Punk at that year’s Survivor Series.
What happened? It’s anybody’s guess, but from the looks of things Orton threw a hissy fit and decided he didn’t want to put Kofi over. So he didn’t have to. Even though fans were behind Kofi and absolutely would have cheered for him if he’d been given a world title run, they did what Orton wanted: made him job to Orton a few times to make Orton look good, and then dumped him back in the midcard.
It’s frustrating to see such a talented guy wasted like that.
Crap, I just noticed the above comment is missing something. Here’s the link to that match involving MVP, Richards, Romero, and Tanaka:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcFoJssW8hI
How can you complain about a lack of long-term plot lines in the same article as you bash Triple H/Undertaker, a match that concluded a six year long storyline dating back to HBK/Flair at Wrestlemania 24?
The guy had one of the few interesting characters the WWE created in years and they couldn’t make it work.
Actually, MVP created the character. It’s why he got to keep the name – he’s got documented proof that he owns the IP. He brings this up on the previously mentioned podcast.
How can you complain about a lack of long-term plot lines in the same article as you bash Triple H/Undertaker, a match that concluded a six year long storyline dating back to HBK/Flair at Wrestlemania 24?
Because ONE example of long-term booking doesn’t disprove that virtually everything else is booked totally on the fly (and it’s not like there was a plan at Mania 24 to end up with the HIAC we just saw – just that they kept building on what had come before, and they only got away with that because it involved the people it did who can tell creative to piss off and leave them alone).
I’ll admit I’m happy that Matt “Prince Albert” Bloom is back. Always liked the guy for no good reason.
Jack Swagger is another guy who went from holding the world title to being kicked down to the midcard, where he remains to this day. WWE might say that they did that because nobody took Swagger seriously as a champion. Well, of COURSE nobody took him seriously as a champion, because before WWE put the belt on him they had the poor guy jobbing to everybody and their second cousin! If they bothered, you know, building him up for a while, then maybe he’d have been more over.
Swagger’s an interesting case because he shot up the ladder under the gimmick “The All-American American” which is appropriately ridiculous and awesome at the same time (necessary for any pro wrestling gimmick), and then promptly descended into midcard mediocrity as a faceless white guy.
Don’t believe me, look at Swagger’s matches at WWE pay-per-views starting at Extreme Rules 2010 where he beat Randy Orton to defend the World Heavyweight Championship to Wrestlemania 28 where he was part of “Team Johnny” and faced off against Santino, Zack Ryder, The Great Khali, and R-Truth among others. It’s a steady decline from going against Rey Mysterio, Edge, and CM Punk to battling Santino. They actually had to give him to Vickie Guerrero so he could be involved in storylines.
And Swagger is one of a dozen guys they dropped the ball with. It seems the problem is creative can’t decide which guys are future World Champions and which guys aren’t. Everybody gets pushed briefly to see if they have “it”, then gets knocked back down to the midcard if they don’t get an immediate reaction.
I haven’t read the other comments yet. I just wanted to ask if this Undertaker is the same guy who wrestled back when WWE was still called WWF? I haven’t been keeping up with wrestling since then.
If that’s the same guy, he’s been going on for a long time…
So, er, who won Cena/Rock? (I didn’t watch and this is my only source of WWE news)
@ Carlos Futino: Yeah, it’s still the same guy. And, yeah, he’s been at it a while. “This year is his last Mania” has been the standard rumour for over a decade now.
@ Gravy: Rock – Cena tried for a People’s Elbow and Rock popped up and Rock Bottomed him for the pin. And then the next day, Brock Lesnar came back and hit Cena with an F5. Not Cena’s best week ever…
Needs more Hacksaw Jim Duggan.
I think both of your points are very valid and extremely critical to the long-term future of WWE and its ability to deliver quality products. That said, I try not to use those points as criteria to judge an individual show. The fact that WWE should not be using Undertaker and Triple H as tentpole stars in 2012 is technically irrelevant to whether their match was any good (it was). I’m mindful of the fact that their short-sightedness is going to bite them in ass someday, but it didn’t bite them on April 1–at least, not so much that it hurt the show for me.
I’ll certainly acknowledge WWE could do a lot better and be a lot more forward-looking. But being a WWE fan in the 21st century has come to mean taking what you can get, and I was just glad I got a lot more from Mania 28 than the shitburger that was Mania 27.
On a related note, I’ve heard great things about the Ring of Honor “Showdown in the Sun” event from over the weekend, so if you’re a wrestling fan who thought Wrestlemania didn’t get it done, I recommend checking it out.
Ordering the replay of Ring Of Honor’s “Showdown In The Sun” is definitely worth the money. (Just twenty bucks for 15 matches, most of them very good, one of them rated five stars by “The Wrestling Observer”.) Here’s the link:
http://www.gfl.tv/Events/Fight/Wrestling/Ring_of_Honor__Showdown_in_the_Sun_BOTH_DAYS/1333
There was a power outage on the second day which resulted in two matches not making the live broadcast. You won’t see those particular ones on the replay either, but ROH has posted them on YouTube.
I would disagree on HHH/Undertaker and Rock/Cena. The former was elevated a bit over being a rehash of last year’s encounter due to Shawn Michaels’ wonderfully intense acting as “referee”, begging the two guys to stop killing each other mid-ring. He added some good story to it, and I think both performers, here as last year, managed to play to what strengths they have remaining as opposed to trying to look like they’re in their prime.
Rock/Cena wasn’t great but it was well-paced and again played to their strengths- Cena does good in fast-paced matches, not so much in grueling marathons like that atrocity he was in with Kane in February.
Having said that, I do think there’s a problem with pushing new talent, but this seems to be the case most of the time with the wrestling industry. They find someone who draws and squeeze them for years until they don’t draw no more, and are left groping for someone else. The main difference is now WWE has no major competition pushing them to get their act together. The writing is sort of dysfunctional too- apparently the networks feel the show should have writers, Vince and co. resent having to have them, so it’s a sort of half-assed thing where trying to seriously structure and plot out an arc gets you called a nerd and laughed out of the building.
Then again, they’re in transition- McMahon is slowly ceding active duty to his son-in-law and so things are kind of in flux. I dunno, I think the Raw after WM was really surprisingly good programming, so maybe there’s a chance here.
I think one problem they have (and really, it’s a problem they’ve had to varying degrees since some time in 1999 when they went public) is their increasing sensitivity to outside influence.
When they were just TitanSports (which somehow managed to survive a young Rick Santorum’s argument that pro wrestling wasn’t a sport*), they could do whatever they wanted and nobody could do much about it except maybe watch WCW (granted, there was a point in time when people did precisely that, but still). Now that they have shareholders to consider, they can’t really do too much that won’t have an immediate, or at least short-term, payoff.
Another issue–a more recent one–is Linda McMahon’s political ambitions. WWE was used to great effect against her in 2010, even with their current “PG” direction. That’s why we don’t see anything that even looks like it could cause a concussion–given the known impact of repeated concussions, it would be in poor taste.
As to why the Rock went over, I guess Vince thought it would be more entertaining. He is, after all, in the entertainment business**.
* This isn’t a joke; a young Rick Santorum did in fact lobby that professional wrestling wasn’t a sport, and should therefore be exempted from federal regulations regarding steroids.
** Or so he told Ted Turner.
I guess that’d be one of the reasons why Vince donated money to Santorum’s 2006 campaign.
This is why I haven’t paid WWE a dime since 2002, btw.
I think truth be told, WWE has a lot of wrestlers in FCW who will get over much quicker than many on the roster already.
This man alone breaks the mold.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyGlsm7u8rQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnjcG8gNAm4
And these guys are the future of wwe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELKaAnJGUZw&feature
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRm-2loMupM&feature
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMUF0YcmWIU
As well, Randy Orton has been putting over new talent. He had outstanding matches over the last year with Dolph Ziggler and Wade Barrett who looked good as they won.
[…] to create the next generation’s icons are few and far between. A while back, MGK posted about how hard it was for the WWE to write good stories when they aren’t working to groom their minor characters into fan favorites, and the same can […]