STEP UP: Jack Swagger
I’m giving Jack Swagger a step up on his own this week, because the former World Champion has picked up some great, clean singles victorious on multiple shows. He’s looking solid in the ring, as he always has, and the crowd is really started to get behind him. It seems like Alberto del Rio’s strange babyface turn on Main Event last week hasn’t hurt the Real Americans too bad, as Swagger and Colter got a decent reaction from the Portland crowd this Monday.
Rusev doesn’t get a step up. It’s not that he’s bad, or doing anything wrong here. The story is extremely simple – thing Hulk Hogan vs. Iron Sheik – and Rusev and Lana are playing their parts perfectly. I just don’t see anything from them that we haven’t seen for the past several months. It’s the same promo week after week. Maybe the controversy at the last PPV that made mainstream media attention caused them to clean up the act a bit – I don’t know, but it’s just not gripping me anymore.
At this point, I think Rusev needs to get his first major loss at SummerSlam. Swagger has been built up to get the big win over the hated foreign villain, and especially in something as patriotic as a Flag Match, I think it’d be a disservice to his character to lose here. Swagger is, at least in the short-term, a much bigger commodity to the WWE product. He can be put in a mid-card title program at any moment. If he loses this match, as the babyface he has no solid way to rebound. Rusev can lose, then come out on Raw and destroy Sin Cara for five minutes, and be right back at the same level he was prior to SummerSlam.
