Wrestling in a Bottle: Looking Back at the Smackdown! Six
Submitted by Snapple on Saturday, May 31, 2003 at 10:49 PM EST



Hey there, wrestling enthusiasts, and welcome to another action-packed edition of Wrestling in a Bottle, the column with more crap than your neighbor's garage sale. I'm your ringmaster, Snapple.

Before I dive into the creamy goodness of wrestling this week, I want to direct my readers to a little side-project of mine this week. I had the opportunity to collaborate with two of my fellow LOPers, Da Ref and Mr. Tito, on the latest edition of Fact or Fiction, hosted right here on LordsofPain. I would consider it a pleasure to actually be able to work with the guy who to some extent influenced most of the columnists here when they were starting out. Anyway, I'll just whore out the link before I give Tito a big head, so you can read the latest Fact or Fiction by CLICKING HERE.

I also want to say I'm pleasantly surprised by all the very positive feedback I got from my last column featuring Triple-H. I'm glad that most people took the column for what it was, which was a big fat joke. One or two Triple-H fans didn't have a sense of humor, but that's their perogative. Anyway, several people even showed interest in me perhaps doing another column of the same nature except featuring someone different such as Kevin Nash or Vince McMahon. At the moment I'm strongly considering it, but I haven't made any definite plans.

For some reason, I haven't felt really inspired to write about wrestling the past couple of weeks with the exception of the Fact or Fiction thing. I guess the current storylines haven't really caught my eye, or there's nothing really to complain about that hasn't been complained about already. Either that or I'm just suffering from a major case of burnout. That being the case, I think I'm going to forego storyline discussion, and this week I'm going to dedicate myself to a simple rant on the Smackdown! Six. I'm keeping it simple this week because... well, because I am. Hopefully I'll feel more into the swing of things next week.

What's Your Story: The Smackdown! Six

The general consensus among the internet population was abuzz last fall. In a time when the Undertaker and the Big Show were hogging the Smackdown! main event, and Triple-H was squashing faces on RAW, there was one thing that kept many people watching. Rather, perhaps I should say six things. Six wrestlers took hold of a crappy product and helped to generate the public's interest. Edge, Rey Mysterio, Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Chavo Guerrero. These are the people that have become known behind the scenes as the Smackdown! Six.

For those of you unfamiliar with the name, I will shed some light. I cannot say who coined the term, as I do not know. It's probably some columnist. But just who are these guys? What made them the Smackdown! Six? Why am I talking in questions? Well... nevermind. I guess I'll just start from the start.

At the beginning of the infamous draft split, the tag champs were Billy and Chuck. Eager to get as much of the championship gold on his show as possible, Vince McMahon signed them to the Smackdown! brand, leaving RAW without a tag division at all. The decision seemed questionable, as Billy and Chuck were the only real tag team on Smackdown!, while RAW had the Hardy Boyz, Spike and Bubba Dudley, and the newly formed Booker T and Goldust getting praise. Eventually, Eric Bischoff was able to steal the tag champs, then the Un-Americans, over to RAW, leaving now Smackdown! without a tag team division. Of course, with Billy Gunn out of action, there weren't exactly a lot of credible tag teams on Smackdown! anyway.

Still, there was a demand for a tag team division on Smackdown! Perhaps burned at mistake of handing over a title belt to Triple-H without any credibility, Stephanie McMahon declared that there would be a tournament to decide the first Smackdown! Tag Team Champions. This is where our story begins.

Of course when the call was made, a lot of tag teams were very much thrown together. Who can forget the classic teams of Rikishi and Mark Henry, Billy Kidman and John Cena, and of course Brock Lesnar and Tajiri. However, there were some gems in the bunch. Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit had been feuding going into Unforgiven, providing probably the only decent match on that card. Much to Benoit and Angle's surprise, Stephanie forced them to team up for the tournament, adding an excellent twist to their storyline. Eddie Guerrero had been teaming up with his nephew Chavo quite a bit in the time leading up to the tournament. They were the only team with a real tag team look of the whole bunch, so I think everyone saw Los Guerreros as champions in waiting. Despite that, an upset victory occured when Angle and Benoit were able to put their differences aside and defeat Los Guerreros in the semi-finals. The result of all this was a match at No Mercy between Angle & Benoit versus the unlikely team of Edge and Rey Mysterio.

The first championship match was one like no other. To say it was a Match of the Year candidate for 2002 is almost a certainty. The two enemies Angle and Benoit won the gold, and the team of Edge and Rey helped cement their own worth as a tag team, even through a losing effort. Perhaps the success of the tournament took the WWE off guard, but whatever it was, Paul Heyman and the WWE writers saw the interest the tag division was making and ran with it.

From then on out, every single week involved multiple matches involving the Smackdown! Six. Not just any matches though. Very long matches. Instead of three minute filler matches the fans had become accustomed to, we got ten or twenty minute displays of athleticism whored out at us, and these wrestlers without a doubt became the focus of Smackdown! While many praised these efforts and ate it up like candy, I actually found it questionable, but I'll get to that later. The height of the tag team wars came with two matches. First was the best two of three falls match between Edge/Rey and Angle/Benoit two weeks before Survivor Series. Finally was the big three-way tag team match between all six men, where Los Guerreros finally got the gold.

After the the big Survivor Series matchup, the Six continued to battle one another every week. This eventually led up to the big four-way elimination match between Edge, Angle, Benoit, and Eddie to determine the number one contender for the WWE Championship, a fitting reward for the hard work of the tag division founders. I would say the end of the era of the Smackdown! Six came officially at Armageddon. There, Benoit was blowing off his mini-feud with Eddie Guerrero, and Kurt won the World Title. Couple that with the fact that Rey was already out on injury, and it's easy to see how the group fell apart.

Now, I bet you're thinking to yourself, "I don't need a history lesson. I watched Smackdown! last year." Well, I just needed to put the background of my commentary into perspective by laying out the rise and fall of the mighty Six. Plus, there's bonus trivia for those of you who don't watch Smackdown! for whatever reason.

Since this supposed "golden era" of wrestling is now over, a lot of people are already reminiscing about the good old days. People are crying that ever since Paul Heyman was removed as the head writer for Smackdown! that the show quality has gone downhill. But has it? Yes and no. I admit I received a lot of enjoyment out of certain matches from last fall, but I don't think it's everything people crack it up to be.

First of all, I thought a lot of the wrestling was rather meaningless and gratuitous. It's not like there were any real feuds going on except for the Angle-Benoit debacle. The Brock-Undertaker feud was boring. Where was the drama? I can sit in front of a television screen and watch Chris Benoit wrestle Chavo Guerrero ten times, and sure, it's going to be a technically sound match, but in the end they were all pointless matches, really. All except for the payoff, the tag matches. The title matches were important, but everything else was just to remind us that all these guys wanted the gold.

Another thing the Heyman era gave birth to that really annoys me are matches with commercial breaks. The first time it happened was during the Eddie-Edge ladder match, and understandably so. It was something like 17 minutes long. There's no way they could fit it in one TV segment, except now they're doing it all the time. Even matches that are only like eight minutes long are getting commercial breaks, which is stupid. If anything you totally screw up the story and pace of a match, I think about five commercials could do it.

One of my peeves about the Heyman era is the toll it took on the health of these gentlemen. Now, it's not to say that these guys haven't been slowly wearing down their own bodies over the years, but don't doubt that all the high-end matches these guys worked week after week accelerated the process. Almost at once, four of the Smackdown! Six have already been injured. First was Rey Mysterio, who had to leave for surgery two weeks after Survivor Series. Next was Edge, who didn't even make it to No Way Out before it was discovered that he had a serious neck injury due to wear and tear. Then of course the most serious of all, as Kurt Angle received the same neck injury as Edge, and almost pulled out of the main event at Wrestlemania. More recently, Chavo Guerrero suffered I think it was a bicep tear, and will be out six months. Yes, sure I realize that injuries happen all the time, but this is too much, too soon to be a coincidence. There has already been much complaint that the WWE works their wrestlers too hard, and that's what's lead to all these many injuries. Too many houseshows, matches that are too risky, a ring with about as much "give" as a brick wall. The hard schedule these men work was already taking its toll, so if I have to wait until the PPV to see the high-end matches, so be it.

Speaking of which, it does diminish the purpose of a PPV if you give away too much on free TV. I know people everywhere aren't going to agree with me on that, as we all like seeing PPV-length matches on free television. However, that's just bad business. There's little incentive to fritter away $35 on a show if you can watch a twenty minute Edge-Angle match for free.

On the plus side, there were some pretty spiffy matches that we got to see. Still, I feel that 'Sports Entertainment' to an extent is indeed necessary for a product to work right. At the same time, sports entertainment with no wrestling is even worse. It's all about a balance between the two. You can generate interest without twenty minute matches simply by keeping a feud hot. Just look at the HBK-Jericho feud from December through March. It's one of the few things that RAW has done *right* lately. It had a good build-up, a fantastic payoff, and nobody broke their neck in the process. In fact, I can't remember a time when Jericho has had to go on the injured list at all in the last three years at least... I could be wrong. Anyway, I hope my point is clear.

I know I've sounded negative, but I'm really a very big fan of all six of these men. Sometimes I feel they're underrated, because they always give 110% in all their matches. Not many wrestlers I can say that about.

Final Thought

Hopefully I wasn't incoherent at all this week. Perhaps I'm under the weather or something. I'm not sure. Anyway, the clock is ticking until Bad Blood, which is actually turning out to be a better card than I had originally thought it would be. Oh, and if you haven't seen the Matrix: Reloaded yet, go see it! That movie is freaking great, possibly better than the first one. I may go see it again this week. As for wrasslin', Kurt Angle is coming back on Smackdown!, so I'll may be inspired to rant about Kurt next week. Until then, take care of each other.

-Snapple

Holla if ya hear me. happydude5000@msn.com








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