The Issue #18
By: Bryon Frazier
December 1, 2004
It’s official: no amount of effort on the part of the WWE is going to make me think differently about Randy Orton. On the one hand, he’s a young guy who’s still relatively new to the main event scene so I’d like to see him succeed, but until something about him changes I’m never going to be a fan. He’s not very good on the microphone, he’s a professed female, and he does the world’s worst Diamond Cutter/Ace Crusher/Whatever you want to call it besides RKO. That’s three strikes against him so he’s out. I like my wrestlers to cut good promos, be male (or at least look like a girl if not), and use a finishing move that is aesthetically pleasing. Over-the-top booking never makes someone more than they are, just ask A-Train or Triple H. In fact, all it does is cause hardworking, nonpaying customers like me to resent those privileged souls. We like our up-and-comers to be regularly castrated through inconsistent booking, like winning a belt one week and jobbing it to backstage interviewer Maria the next. When they actually push a particular wrestler non-stop, it does much more harm than good. The WWE should know better, damn it.
My point? The WWE doesn’t know what the hell to do with its wrestlers because we as an audience don’t know what we want from them. We like to think we do, but when they actually give it to us, we bitch and moan. Granted, it’s a different portion of the fan base that does the bitching and the moaning, but it’s there every time. That’s why I, just like any person that reads this, am saying to myself that I know exactly what I want to see, but there might be a million other WWE fans out there that hate what I like. For example, I actually like to see wrestlers do clean jobs, but that applies to everyone. Since today’s wrestling climate requires every worker to occasionally take the fall for a colleague, the WWE devised a way to protect its marquee names by using screw jobs. The problem is that it completely destroys the purpose of jobbing, which in turn makes it not seem like such a big deal to the company to book them. Now it feels as if everyone has gone over everyone else, and no one with initials that aren’t the same consonant repeated three times has any victories to hang their hat on. On the other hand, when they do decide to give a guy a real push, like Mr. Orton for example, they choose someone who really doesn’t have the tools to make it succeed, like Mr. Orton for example.
Why can’t that be Christian? So what if he’s about six inches too short and fifty pounds too light, he’s due. Screw that, he’s overdue. For the life of me, I can’t recall a real push in this man’s career with the WWE, or during that stint when he worked for that cutting edge promotion, the WWF. How can two different companies not recognize that this man has the goods? He has the charisma, including the mic skills. He can wrestle a good match, even against the big guys when they’re willing to sell (which is rare). Plus, he has a muscle-bound bodyguard. That has to count for something, right? He even got Trish over as a heel, and getting a woman over as anything other than eye candy is a hell of an accomplishment. Then again, they’ve had Edge knocking on the door of the main event scene for about four years now, so I imagine I’ll be holding out for a long time when it comes to Christian.
Okay then, why not Shelton Benjamin? Well, besides the obvious skin color problem. Hey, let’s not kid ourselves here, he isn’t the Rock and the WWE isn’t being attacked for being racist, so they won’t be putting the belt on any non-whites any time soon. Nevertheless, he’s another wrestler that I could get behind, and he’s at least within the height and weight minimums that the WWE imposes for its main event scene. I’d be willing to go so far as to say he’s a great wrestler, and he at least has bragging rights for his wins over Triple H. Of course, that would be his downfall if they did try to push him. Everyone and their mother knows that Trips would come to cash in those chips at the right times. In fact, my mom even said as much in her column 2 weeks ago, but I’ve never been too ashamed to steal from family -- just ask my brother. Anyway, the only way Shelton could possibly make the leap without Hunter Helmsley sabotaging his career like this is Spy vs. Spy is if Trips was out for the long-term with an injury. We were all praying that he’d go away for a while to film his Blade III, but the Cerebral Assassin was able to assassinate those hopes by keeping his belt during his hiatus, so it has to be a serious injury to make this happen. Maybe when his ego leaves to shoot Conan, the rest of him will go with it to play an extra during the orgy scene.
I know the net marks want me to pontificate the virtues of Ben Wah and Chris Jericho, but quite frankly I don’t like either one of them. Jericho has been worthless for years and one of Ben Wah’s arms is shorter than the other. Jericho is the definition of "repetitive" in his promos and a synonym for "I’ve seen this before" in his matches. He seems to be completely uninspired at this point: almost like a Canadian Rob Van Dam. As for Ben Wah, Good Ol’ JR keeps reminding us that he has been in the wrestling business for 18 years now . JR also occasionally mentions that Mr. Wah’s had neck surgery done. I honestly can’t pull for a guy that’s old, broken down, and misshapen.
Speaking of old, broken down, and misshapen, the match between Ric Flair and Jerry Lawler wasn’t quite as bad as it could’ve been, thanks to some decent work on each man’s part. However, all that flabby skin was too disturbing for me to actually enjoy the contest. Conversely, the skin was picture-perfect in the T ‘n’ A skit, but the action was lacking, so I still didn’t enjoy it. What the WWE needs to realize is that when it comes to sex, we can see more and better here on the internet. Unless they’re going to really push that envelope, then it’s time to stick it back in the folder and forget it ever existed. I say try to teach those chicks how to wrestle and make them useful. Besides, the women’s division is so sparse that they could use the extra bodies just so they’d have someone else to face for a change. As someone more famous than I said this week, I knew exactly who the heel team was in the women’s tag match before they made their entrance because there really wasn’t anyone else to choose. Sure, some might argue that the lingerie models would most likely give us quite a few Gayda-like moments in the ring, but that’s still entertainment to me so I don‘t see the problem.
Well, I worked in my trademark discussion of the women’s division, so now I can continue with my original line of thought. Actually, I even came up with someone that would satisfy the WWE quota of being tall, roided, and white, while still being the kind of guy that I can root for: Gene Snitsky. No surprises there, since I’ve been singing his praises in every column since I realized that he wasn’t a one-time jobber. As I mentioned, he meets the main event criteria but he’s also entertaining. Some weeks he’s a legitimate ass-kicking monster, the next he’s complimenting John Heidenreich’s poetry. If he’s not destroying some babyface then he‘s destroying some baby. What’s not to like there? He hasn’t yet let me down during an appearance. There’s no reason why he can’t be in the main event as early as the upcoming WrestleMania . . . Except of course the fact that it’s already been set in stone for months.
Do you want to know what’s really sad? No, it’s not the fact that none of the guys I favor, not even Snitsky, will be given a real shot until next April at the earliest. It’s that I watched Smackdown on Thursday and I barely remember any of it. I vaguely recall a bimbo setting up a Thanksgiving dinner for Big Show that brought out Luther Reigns, A.K.A. Brock Goldberg, who then proceeded to let us know that he never got to celebrate Thanksgiving because he was always on the run or in jail. Just to prove that he’s such a tough guy, he threw a pie into the face of the bimbo which resulted in the traditional food fight with hilarious results. I also remember Hiroko attacking Torrie Wilson followed by Kenzo Suzuki supplying the highpoint of the show: a fantastic Rick Rude dance which was unjustly interrupted by RVD. That all may sound like a lot of action, but I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t add up to even 10 minutes of air time. For instance, I can’t tell you who won that Suzuki/RVD match, or who else was at the Thanksgiving dinner. I have no idea who main-evented the show, or who curtain-jerked it for that matter.
I guess this means that the brand extension has been a rousing success. They have been able to create two clearly different identities for their prime-time shows. The only problem is that it’s a battle between WWE Raw and WCW Saturday Night.