The Issue #12
By: Bryon Frazier
September 20, 2003
The Issue
It seems that the Hurricane picked a fight with Rodney Mack backstage at a recent house show. Rumor has it that fisticuffs ensued after Rodney Mack tried to be the one to lay out the plans for their tag match. By my translation of the news updates, Shane Helms found this to be an insult as he is the more experienced grappler. Everyone knows how it goes: a disagreement becomes an argument, then an argument degenerates into combat, and finally combat results in a trip to the hospital for the smaller man. We’ve all seen it a thousand times; it’s really heartbreaking. Anyway, “If you can’t play nicely then we’ll just have to separate you two” seems to be the mantra of the WWE management as the two have been booked in separate matches since the incident. This has been your weekly news update. We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.
. . . So then I got up, wiped my mouth, and the next thing I knew Ashish was giving me a wrestling columnist job. It feels really good to be receiving such an opportunity to reach thousands of wrestling fanatics. The expected hate mail alone makes this whole situation worthwhile. However, I will still be posting all my work at the Shooting Star Press (Thumbs up, cheap pop!).
Now on to wrestling-related matters. On Smackdown! last week Rey Mysterio, Kidman, Tajiri, and Nunzio wrestled in a five minute tag match. Matt Hardy and Shannon Moore took part in a tag bout of their own against the APA, which took about three minutes. Eddie Guerrero wrestled John Cena for eight minutes, give or take. On Raw this week Spike Dudley lost to Rob Conway in about four seconds. I could be wrong, but if you add up the time of those matches it comes to less than the length of Triple H’s microphone check during his big, huge, special promo. Well, maybe not, but the point I’m getting at is still sound. The four aforementioned contests constitute the entire in-ring time of the company’s lightweight wrestlers on its two primary TV shows for that span of time. That all adds up to approximately sixteen minutes. I did some research and some mathematics, and I concluded that with 240 minutes between Raw and Smackdown! (including the commercials obviously), the lightweights should get 39 minutes with ad breaks devoted to them, just from the perspective that they make up 16.25% of the current active roster. I hope you’ve been taking notes because there will be a quiz later.
According to these unofficial stats, the cruiserweight wrestlers of the WWE are getting less than half of the TV time that they deserve. The lesson? Is it A) if you manipulate the numbers just right, conveniently ignoring certain aspects, you can make statistics say anything you want? Or is it B) the cruiserweights in the WWE don't get enough on-screen time? The answer is quite obviously C, "all of the above." If it were truly A then I would've added that there were no lightweight wrestlers involved in the entire second hour of Smackdown! this week. So you see, I'm a pretty fair guy in my assessments.
Let’s take off our thinking caps and get serious for a moment. It’s no secret that the WWE has always crapped on the little guys, but that doesn’t make it okay to accept it. With this outrage already on my mind last week, I decided to join the other freeloading wrestling fans who watched NWA: TNA for the first time at the almost unbeatable price of $.01, except it slipped my mind and I joined in at the halfway point. As it turned out, I missed all the actual matches and instead was bludgeoned with a glorified clip show. I admit that I liked what I saw, but it still doesn’t justify paying ten bucks a week to watch wrestling when I get the WWE for free. I may complain about their product but at the end of the day it’s the only wrestling I can afford to watch, so it’s not like I’m going anywhere.
The smaller promotions have always put cruiserweights to good use because there’s such an abundance of them in the wrestling business. The problem is that the WWE has some of the best on their payroll, but then sits on them for reasons beyond my comprehension. I suppose Vince has always seen the smaller guys as a novelty, and that the big behemoths are the reason why the wrestling fans are there. Maybe as a high school student, he used to get picked on by little guys who would snap off hurricanranas and planchas. Regardless of the reasons though, I think it's the responsibility of the fans to make it known who they like the most. Eddie Guerrero wouldn't be holding two belts right now if it weren't for the fan response that he's been getting, so it's clear that they are listening. The key is to ignore the hype of the guys you don't actually like. Don't let the WWE marketing machine corrupt your judgment.
Just be like me, buy the t-shirts of the real superstars like Goldberg, Kane, Undertaker, and the Big Show. They're the ones that make WWE programming worthwhile.
A Reason Why I Miss WCW
How can I lament over the treatment of the cruiserweights in the WWE without bringing on fond memories of WCW? Admittedly, the Atlanta-based brass never put the World Title on their smaller wrestlers either. They did however give them plenty of time to establish themselves. Does anyone think Billy Kidman will make it to the same heights of popularity any time soon? How about the Ultimo Dragon? Chavo Guerrero? Well, to be fair to Chavo, if things continue on the same course established from the past two episodes of Smackdown!, then he may yet achieve his same success as when he was riding Pepe to the ring and trying to catch Eddie in a little box.
The beauty of WCW's Cruiserweight division was the endless parade of luchadores. "Luchadores" loosely translates to mean "cruiserweight jobbers." Then again, I only took four years of high school Spanish so I may be a bit off. Anyway, with lucha libre (word for word, means "job for free") in full effect in Turnerland, the company never had to sacrifice any of its established competitors in order to put someone over in a match. This also allowed for guys like Kidman and Juventud Guerrera to get tons of clean wins under their belts, which in turn allowed them to firmly establish their finishers. Watching Silver King take a Shooting Star Press made you look out for it when a guy like Rey Mysterio was in prime position, and if El Dandy could fall prey to a Juvi Driver then surely Eddie Guerrero should beware.
I know what you're saying: "There are lots of cruiserweight jobber matches on Velocity and Heat," which means that they might as well be wrestling at house shows in Kosovo because the same number of people will see them in either case. We need the returns of Ciclope, Hector Garza, and the immortal La Parka to primetime on Monday nights. I won't be satisfied until the Chairman of WCW becomes the Chairman of WWE. So be on the lookout Mr. McMahon, the powers of Skeletor are comin'!
I think this means that los luchadores are razon numero catorce for why I miss WCW.