I’ve never worked in wrestling. I’ve never been in television. I’ve never been a journalist or done anything in the field of creative writing. I don’t even have a college degree. I’m just some lowly insurance agent from Nowhere, California who happened to get lucky enough to write a weekly article for a successful website.
If my simple musings from my desks are actually enough to garner something as lofty as fan mail, I have to ask both the TNA and WWE creative teams in an “Office Space” style drone:
“What is it that you do around here?”
Mark Madden, in my opinion, hit the nail on the head when he compared Triple H’s in ring work to Harley Race, but said that his weakest attribute was his humor. The wrestling fans are drowning in this humor, or lack thereof.
It’s clear with desperation moves like bringing in outside stars like WWE with the Special Guest Hosts, or TNA bringing in Pacman Jones or teasing Sarah Palin, that the networks and the promoters want the changes to happen sooner than later. Additional evidence of that is the lack of long-term storylines.
Essentially what Vince McMahon and Dixie Carter are saying about their audience is that they don’t have enough faith in you to think that you have the capacity to comprehend anything done over the long term. You won’t pay attention to a title reign that lasts any longer than six months. You won’t believe that wrestlers won’t fight each other without some huge personal vendetta to address. You won’t “get it” if they establish a real sports-like competition because you the fan could care less about the in-ring product and would rather see a 23 year veteran like Shawn Michaels kick a child in the face, and see a 12 time World Champion like Triple H mug for a camera while telling dick and fart jokes.
I accepted long ago that wrestling was scripted, but for a long time I would be terrified if I ran into a man like Triple H, or the Big Bossman, or Ken Shamrock and looked at them the wrong way. These men were wrestlers. And watching wrestling is entertaining. Far be it for me to compare myself to Jim Ross, but like the greatest announcer of the era, I like my wrestling shows to be about wrestling.
We often recall the Monday Night War era of being the era that brought us great storylines like the NWO, Degeneration X, Chris Benoit taking Nancy Sullivan, Kane and the Undertaker, the Splitting of the Four Horsemen, Steve Austin versus Vince McMahon, the Ministry, and the MMA crossover. The thing that we often forget is that most of the great characters put on incredible matches filled with not only the great storyline drama but the fierce athletic competition.
Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko would put on “can you top this?” clinics. The Rock and Steve Austin worked so convincingly that you could believe there was a genuine beef behind the scenes. Shawn Michaels and Triple H weren’t just successful because of their push-the-envelope humor, but because they were the present and future of wrestling’s greatest talents. Hollywood Hulk Hogan has often been criticized as being a lazy and unoriginal worker, but look how many times he actually wrestled during that era.
Is it so unbelievable to think that perhaps wrestlers pitted against each other would create drama simply through competition? Of course other stories could build around that, but the basis of a wrestling program, again, should be wrestling.
I explored this concept in my article on the Big Show and Mark Henry. Why not incorporate the Power Rankings on WWE.com into your storyline? Why not actually rank your superstars in accordance to what title they are going for. John Cena, Triple H, and Batista have all been knocked off the top of the ladder numerous times, yet they are perpetual number one contenders. Jack Swagger has just cleanly defeated Evan Bourne for the second week in a row, how is that going to pay off for him?
Whether fighting for a living, or playing squash at your local fitness club, I think a ladder or ranking system would work to clear up a lot of booking issues.
