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Submitted by Pt2 on Tuesday, December 7, 2004 at 10:06 AM EST
RAWThinking about RAW has been a pleasure for a long time now. For quite some time I’ve found it much easier than talking about Smackdown, because the quality of the product has been higher, and through the quality of writing, there has been so much more to talk about on RAW than on Smackdown. While I don’t think that’s necessarily true anymore and that the Smackdown guys have pulled the quality of their show right up, I still feel that Monday night has the superior show. The writing has been of a pretty high quality, and we’ve had a new way of holding the title up recently by having the “crossface-pin” ending instead of the old fashioned double pin. Not that I’m against the double pin ending, in fact if it’s only done every so often I’m a fan of it as it’s perfectly conceivable that it could happen. But it’s always nice to see new ideas. But there is one thing I think that really sets out RAW as the better show. One definable characteristic. The star power. OK, Smackdown has the Undertaker and Kurt Angle, and RAW doesn’t exactly have any Hogan’s or The Rock or anyone like that, but while there is no superstars on RAW beside Triple H, they have managed to do something that Smackdown seems to have more problems with, and that is to make stars. Randy Orton has been made a bona fide star. Chris Benoit carries a certain amount of star power with him, as does Chris Jericho. No one would moan about Kane, or Shelton Benjamin, or Ric Flair, or Batista, or Shawn Michaels, or Eugene in the main event. They even managed to get Maven into the main event recently, and no-one raised an eyebrow. Following that match, Maven’s stock will naturally have risen, and if they to build him up, which they might, one day he could also be in that list. The fact is simple, though their roster has no out and out superstars on it, they do make it feel like you are watching this amazing array of them when your watching it. You really have to stop and think that these guys don’t have the star history of say, Steve Austin. And there is a simple reason for that. The entire concept of wrestling is based on creating a fiction. As you are creating the fiction, you make the rules. However, while you can speak of the implausible, there is a certain paradox that in order for people to “suspend their disbelief”, what you say has to have a believable core. In more simple language, while everything is made up, and you get to choose what gets made up and who is a star etc., people won’t buy it if it comes out of nowhere. If you don’t give them a reason to believe someone is a star, then they won’t. Write for someone as if they are a star, and they win. All the top faces on the RAW roster get treated as if they can beat Triple H, which benefits them no end, because it makes them look like a big star. However, they don’t always. HHH sometimes beats them clean, or looks in control, which is also great because a strong champion is great, and makes moments like RAW when he lost his title so much more special. So, HHH and his fellow writers on RAW are doing a fine job. I’ve no idea who writes what segment, so I’ll say that collectively, they put out a fine show. SmackdownSmackdown! is not a completely different kettle of fish. They’ve improved the show recently, as I said at the start of the RAW section. But unlike RAW, while the show is good, it’s not solid. You feel there could be a bad week any week, and instead of their being a general plan and a way forward that’s well thought out, they only have a vague sense of the show. RAW seems to have a good plan behind it, and everything works together to make the show greater than the sum parts. Smackdown in contrast, seems that it is watch-able based more on the fact they have lots of little things right. It’s really a demonstration of how important a sense of the “flow” of the show is. You have to know what should follow what, what works, who works well with who, and how everyone can add to the show as a whole. When you stop watching a show, if everything has added to your enjoyment and it has been designed to give the show its maximum effect, you remember the show as better than one where the good bits, the stronger bits, haven’t been used as effectively as a whole, and if the weaker aspects of the show are used on their own without adding anything. You’ll know these shows, they are the ones you are left feeling “That was… OK” after. There’s actually a lot of good stuff on Smackdown. JBL has proved, much to my surprise that he is actually a better champion than Eddie Guerrero was. He is a good champion, with a good character. However, he’s a contrast to the major heel on RAW, Triple H, in that Triple H is seen as a strong champion with a series of strong challengers. On Smackdown, with JBL, they seem to have gone the other route. JBL is a much weaker champion, and while he comfortably handles mid-carders, he seems to luckily escape with his title every time it’s on the line. In this respect, it’s very similar to Shawn Michaels first Intercontinental title run. It’s a pretty old idea, but its not one you can question the effectiveness of. While the Undertaker isn’t a perfect example because we’ve seen him miss plenty of title opportunities before, every time JBL got in the ring to defend that title against a credible opponent, you thought he was going to lose it. So every time you watched. JBL may be a poor man’s Ted DiBiase, as I’ve heard a lot of people say, but remember this: Ted DiBiase was awesome as the million dollar man, and just because something isn’t *THAT* good, doesn’t mean that it’s bad. John Cena is once again the United States Champion, and that’s a good thing. However, if they want to continue his push, his reign will have to be a lot more effective than his last one. His last reign didn’t do a great deal for bringing him any closer to the main event than he already was. Beating the Big Show did wonders for him, and he’d been over enough to hold the belt for months before that, but he seemed to stagnate once he won the title, not really having much to remember before his injury. However, winning the title again is a great way to gain interest and he has another chance. We all know that the WWE thinks Cena is going to be one of it’s biggest future stars, and with his charisma, you would have to agree: but his first title reign didn’t promise much, and you have to hope that he gets better material this time out. In that sense, unlike Orton on RAW, his development has been slow and it’s not surprising that Orton has been world champ and Cena doesn’t have that on his CV yet. Carlito Caribbean Cool could be a future star, and all things considered, I think he probably will be. However, I think the US title reign could be a double edged sword. On the one hand it did get him attention, but I think on the other, that he was pushed too far too soon. He should have been built up to a US title reign, even if it’s only a couple of big wins. What’s a few weeks to wait for a title reign? At his age to throw him onto a title before he learnt the ropes might not have been the best move, especially when people weren’t really used to him. Now he’s off the belt, he can have some time to develop. Obviously, I can’t tell the future, but I wouldn’t be too surprised to see this guy as a major player at some point. Another US title reign somewhere down the line certainly isn’t off the cards. Suzuki and Dupree are the latest example of the odd couple tag team, and they seem to get less and less impressive with every instalment. Booker T and Goldust have never been matched for my money, and it’s ironic that they were the team that the WWE were least willing to have on the tag belts. Since then, they have tried to replicate that success with Kane and RVD, Hurri-Kane, and now Suzuki and Dupree. It’s kind of ironic to me, that the WWE haven’t worked out what was so popular about Booker T and Goldust. It seems blatantly obvious to me, and it’s not just that they were a clash of personalities. It was the segments, and the fact that you had two charismatic as hell guys doing them. It’s not a model that’s guaranteed to work. The WWE took two charismatic guys and made some great TV out of them, and by trying the same with guys they aren’t using for anything in particular hasn’t really worked yet because these other guys don’t have what it takes. It’s actually a more complicated idea than setting up a standard, traditional tag team. It’s easy to get them over, but it takes clever ideas and scenarios for people to care about the odd couple idea. Throw into that the prolific nature that these teams have taken on really, and the idea is a little old. Well…. More than a little. To improve the Smackdown tag division, they need some actual tag teams, cut in the old fashioned model of the LOD and Money Inc, the Steiners and the Quebecers… guys with a team name, with a team look, and with something linking them. It’s the simple rule, if you can’t do anything fresh, go with the tried and proven. MoraleIt’s not been a good time in the locker-rooms apparently, especially that of Smackdown. Apparently, for a long spell of time the wrestlers morale has been down. Smaller workers haven’t felt particularly comfortable in the WWE with their big men history and preference. The recent lay offs haven’t helped matters either. We haven’t had any reports of morale generally improving in the WWE camp even since the product has gone up, and this will be quite surprising to WWE officials it will be my guess. What they need to know is that the only way your going to improve the morale backstage is by securing job prospects and by giving everyone an equal chance. The problem is spread by the fact that about a third of the WWE roster are cruisers or smaller wrestlers, and while these guys didn’t get the chances in WCW that some of their larger wrestlers like the Giant, Kevin Nash and Hollywood Hogan got, WCW did give them a decent share of TV time on a regular basis, which is something that they haven’t been getting in the WWE. It seems that unless your name is Rey Mysterio, you appear then disappear every few months. Guys are used to getting at least a fair chance regardless of size, and they aren’t always getting that in the WWE. It’s also a fact that the less you are on TV the more likely you are to lose your job. So, when you think that half the smack down roster is cruisers, that’s half a disgruntled roster. Throw into that the heavyweights who aren’t on TV in a high profile angle, who are also worried about their jobs…. And you’ve got a pretty unhealthy atmosphere there. Until the WWE convinces their workers that jobs are safe, then the morale isn’t going to be amazing, because there is only so much TV time to go around, and not everyone can be on TV. It’s one of the perils of working on an over-stacked roster. Representation of titlesOh boy, this is one hell of a topic. Especially to try and condense it down, because I think this one has gone on long enough already. But I’ll give it a go. I think the way the WWE handles its singles titles is improving. It has always handled it’s world title at least respectably, although the RAW world title SHOULD have changed hands on free TV more often. That mistake seems to have been rectified a little by the recent holding up of the RAW belt. It showed that big things can happen to the belt off PPV. Smackdown seemed to have a better attitude with it occasionally changing hands on free TV, what with the Iron man match between Brock and Kurt for example. They however seem to have fallen into the same trap that RAW has fallen into, and I think that unless they plan to have JBL go to Wrestlemania they should have him drop the belt on free TV. I believe it would help the show out tremendously. Hell, even is he is going to Wrestlemania, and have him win it back a week later. Wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened. The midcard titles is really where the WWE has improved though. Midcard titles were originally designed to elevate wrestlers. If they could handle the midcard title then they had a pretty decent shot at carrying the company and holding the world title. Through the late eighties and early nineties, the midcard titles were only given to people reasonably proven at mid-card level, as a way of not only endorsing them as potentially ready for the main event, but a beta test, gauging the fans reaction to the worker as a champion. However, the WWE decided to turn them into more like “plot tools” and while they co-existed with their previous roles for some time, by the late nineties they weren’t really good for their past job as everyone and anyone had held them, and they lacked credibility - so no one cared who held the title, so the effectiveness of using them to judge was seriously lessened. Just as an example, in 1991, the Intercontinental title changed hands once. Mr Perfect held it going into the year, held it until August, when he dropped it to Bret Hart, who held it to January of the following year where he lost his title to the Mountie. In 1999, ELEVEN people held the Intercontinental title. I don’t care who you are, that’s a major fucking step up from 2. Especially when you don’t have discarders like Perfect and Hart on the title, guys who could possibly main event. OK, in 1999 we had credible IC champs like Jeff Jarrett and Chris Jericho, but we also had the Roaddogg and the Godfather. Plus the title changed hands so many times that it lost it’s affect, The title changed hands the same amount of times in 2000, and 12 times in 2001. It seemed like the numbers had been changed. However since the return of the IC title following it’s merger with the world title, and the re-instatement of the former WCW/NWA US title on Smackdown, they have become a lot more like they once were. In 2003 Randy Orton won the title, and didn’t lose it until seven months into 2004 - a month before winning the world title. In this instance its obvious that the title was used more as a tool of elevation than as a plot device. What is more his reign gave the title some credibility. That helps when your watching the show, to know that the things they wear around their waist aren’t just pretty things that keep your tights up, they are coveted straps. Unfortunately, they’ve never really managed the same thing with the tag straps; but that’s a completely different issue and it’s one that I’ve lost all patience with. It’ll take something big before my interest in WWE tag wrestling is revitalised. There is a lot of stuff covered in here, and if you have any opinions on anything mentioned please feel free to get in touch. Also if you have any questions about “You be the Booker” or would like to submit a scenario, then feel free to do so at takeupthywrestlingboots@gmail.com Naturally, all credit will be given to anyone offering scenario’s in the next contest. I’ll reply to all mail received. Until next time, take care Pt2 The YBTB Royal Rumble, for a shot at the YBTB Champion. Are you man enough? *NEW GALLERY* Vince & Stephanie McMahon Playing with the NEW BABY!!
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