WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
By Doug Brown on 3/19/2008 2:21 PM
I wrote a column a few weeks back detailing how this is the time of year where the creative team at WWE needed to step up and do its best work. After all, it's Wrestlemania, a wrestling fan's Super Bowl, World Series, and NBA Finals all rolled into one. Instead of touchdowns, home runs, and three pointers, we are getting fumbles, strikeouts, and bricks. While I have no doubt the matches themselves will be good, the build has been more head scratching than head turning.
The main event on Raw this past week was a good example of what is wrong with WWE. The match itself was fun to watch, but you have to force yourself to forget several things in order to truly enjoy it. One of those things is that Randy Orton is supposed to be the heel, and Triple H is supposed to be one of the babyfaces. The scenario of stacking the deck against opponents is something a heel would do. The logical storyline is then to have the babyfaces do their best to overcome the odds against them. To me, it would have made more sense for Orton to put Cena and Triple H in this type of match. Instead, Orton and Cena came off as the babyfaces. The crowd was definitely into them laying out the undercard, and that fall-away slam into the RKO, was a very cool spot. Even though the crowd response did not indicate it, to me the home viewer, Triple H came off looking like a heel for cowardly waiting until all the damage was done, and then attacking his opponents while they were already down. Once again, the son-in-law is the only one getting put over. As a matter of fact, it seems like in this whole three way feud that Triple H is the only one getting put over. In listening to the promos, Cena and Orton put over Triple H, as well as each other, but Triple H only puts himself over. It must be nice to have your wife running the creative team. This also does damage to the guys that are on the undercard, because they come off looking weak for losing to just two guys. If I were in that mix, I would be begging for a transfer come draft time.
The Big Show vs. Floyd Mayweather match is another scenario in which they are just not paying attention, or are just choosing to ignore the obvious. It is pretty blatant from the crowd response that WWE fans do not want to cheer for Mayweather. If you watch boxing on a regular basis like I do, you would know that most boxing fans do not like him either. Mayweather comes across as an arrogant jerk, who has no respect for anybody. The fans want to root for the Big Show, but WWE keeps trying to make him the bad guy. It seemed like they got the message when Show press slammed Mayweather to the floor on Raw, but the next night at the Smackdown tapings, Show was back to being a heel again. He then followed that up by wrestling the popular Chris Jericho on Raw this week. They then aired a vignette on this week's ECW that made Show come across more like a babyface. I don't know where they are going with this, but if they are expecting me to fork out $54.95 plus tax to find out, I think somebody's going to be disappointed.
As usual, WWE is in overhype mode over Maria getting naked in Playboy. I know some women claim they do it for artistic purposes. My response is that when the bulk of the people that purchase the magazine use it for masturbatory purposes, it's not art. What's even worse is that women that actually can wrestle like Mickie James, Beth Phoenix, Melina, Jillian Hall, and Victoria, have to take a backseat to the covergirls that stink up the ring everytime they are in it. I had to laugh at how pathetic Jerry Lawler came across Monday night talking about Candice's in-ring skills, after she botched three spots in a row. Come on King, there had to be a least two feet of air on that first clothesline off of the hot tag. I know they have never said it, but I think real reason that Trish Stratus and Lita both retired was that they knew this was the direction the company was heading. The women that can wrestle are getting phased out in favor of the Playboy playmates. We see this every year with the Diva Search. Last year, they kept the competition mainly to the internet, because the contestants were getting showered with boos, and chants of "We Want Wrestling." It is a shame, because they could have chosen to have a really competitive women's division, which right now is one of the few things TNA is doing right, but they chose not to go that route. Now they are even doing a competition with the Smackdown Divas that is pretty much the same thing as the Diva Search. Leave it to WWE to make looking at hot women become boring.
I am surprised that the Money-in-the-Bank match is not getting more of a focus. With Jeff Hardy's recent suspension, that leaves the possibilities wide open as to who might win. It also balances the scales a little better between the three brands. Last year's match had four guys from Smackdown, three from Raw, and only one from ECW. This year would have been four from Raw, but with the suspension, there are now only three. The surprise has been that there are three ECW guys in the match now, and only one Smackdown star. However, if they are smart (and these days that is a big if), they'll put Matt Hardy in the match to round out the field. The only thing I don't get is why two of the three ECW competitors won their qualifying matches on Smackdown, instead of you know, ECW?
Speaking of ECW, I'm wondering if Dusty Rhodes has already been removed as lead booker, and Dave Lagana was re-hired. For the first couple of shows under Dusty's leadership, we saw something we had not seen before, and that's progress. Those two weeks, included C.M. Punk disguising himself as a Mariachi band leader, and clobbering Chavo Guerrero with a guitar, which lead to the following week's Gulf-of-Mexico match. We also had the formation of the Dreamer-Delaney partnership, and Stevie Richards returning as a sympathetic babyface. All three of those storylines were getting over with the fans, but were killed off in the last few weeks. It speaks volumes about the company's direction when a talented guy like Punk, who is over with the crowd in spite of how he is booked, loses cleanly to a career low to mid carder like Chavo Guerrero. That's not to take anything away from Chavo, because he does have talent, but when you consider all of the things in his past like Pepe, the salesman gimmick, Lt. Loco, and Kerwin White, how are we supposed to take him seriously as the champion of an entire brand?
From the looks of Raw and ECW over the past couple of nights, it appears as if the push is over for the Tommy Dreamer and Colin Delaney tag team. For weeks Colin was getting routinely mauled by all of the big men in the company. Finally, Dreamer takes pity, and comes to save him. Dreamer starts to mentor him, and they even upset the tag team champions, John Morrison and the Miz, in a non-title match. Delaney starts showing more offense each week, and starts actually getting people to cheer for him. How about that response they got last week in Chicago? They would have blown the roof of the place had they pulled the trigger on the title switch. The two teams had a great brawl, and the fans were begging for Dreamer and Delaney to win. They even showed someone in the crowd with a sign that said, "COLIN DELANEY'S FIRST SIGN EVER." Then on Raw, they put Delaney back to square one by having JBL destroy him. That was followed up on ECW, with what was a glorified squash victory for Chavo Guerrero. Delaney got very little offense, but did have the crowd chanting, "Co-lin, Co-lin," during the match. I can see why they want to hold off that first win. They want to build anticipation for when it does happen. I caution the writers not to wait too long, because if he starts getting squashed every week again, the fans will stop caring.
They really had a chance to do something special with Stevie Richards. Here is a guy that is coming back from what should have been a series of career ending neck surgeries, because he loves to compete. His first match back occurred at the Toyota Center in Houston, which is a city not known for being an original ECW stronghold (I think they ran in Houston only once or twice). During the previous week, Stevie did a sitdown interview with Joey Styles explaining why he wants to continue to wrestle. When Stevie came out through the curtain, there was a loud "Ste-vie, Ste-vie" chant from the crowd. Dusty did something in two episodes that Vince could not do in eight or nine years, he got Stevie over. Fans were rallying behind Stevie, and then all of a sudden, he jobs to Shelton Benjamin, and gets crushed by the Great Khali. This week, he wasn't even on the show. And so endeth the push.
Next, we move to Smackdown, the Edge-Vickie Guerrero relationship has split the audience. There are some that enjoy it, and there are others, like me, that absolutely hate it. It reminds me too much of the McMahon-Helmsley regime, which is a storyline that I also loathed. I know Vickie has three kids at home to support, but from a business standpoint, I would rather they have put someone with more experience in front the camera in the role. I know this will probably hit a few nerves, because she is the widow of Eddie Guerrero, but I just don't think Vickie is very good. To me, her delivery comes across as wooden, and there have been different times where I've noticed that she will take a pregnant pause before delivering her lines. I also don't see any chemistry between her and Edge at all. I would rather someone like Victoria or Melina get that spot.
I used to praise the decision to get rid of the cruiserweight title, because the competitors were doing better without it. Jimmy Wang Yang and Shannon Moore formed a great tag team, and were having a classic series of matches with John Morrison and the Miz over the WWE Tag Team Championship, and Jamie Noble was involved in a heated feud against Chuck Palumbo. Yang and Moore fought Morrison and Miz to a draw in a "15 Minutes of Fame" match on ECW, and instead of that leading to a longer TV match, or even putting the bout on a pay-per-view, the feud just got dropped with no reason given. Now they are back to being part of the Friday night J.O.B. Squad. I was enjoying the Palumbo-Noble feud that featured a rare double turn situation. Chuck was frustrated that Noble beat him four straight times. He then goes nuts, smacks Michelle McCool. Noble comes to her rescue becoming the beloved babyface, and Palumbo became a bullying heel. Noble fights back to defend her honor, gets beat clean twice, the feud ends, Noble breaks up with McCool, and is now back to being a jobber again.
All of these are examples of WWE not listening to their fans. With their three brands combined, they have arguably the best roster in the business. From what I understand whenever something does not go right, the wrestlers get the first blame, but it is the creative team that should start looking in the mirror. I would suggest listening to how the crowds respond. The Raw crowd last week in Milwaukee booed John Cena when he was wrestling Shawn Michaels, but then most of them started cheering him when he started fighting with Randy Orton. I went to a house show last summer, and the only time the audience was quiet enough to hear the crickets chirping was when Snitsky was on offense. If I were them, I would also monitor the quarter hour Nielsen's much closer. After JBL's beatdown of Hornswoggle, a large portion of the audience changed the channel. In each of these cases, there is a message being sent, and in order for the product to improve, WWE Creative needs to start getting it. There is so much potential in WWE, and it boggles my mind as to why they can't see it.
