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Submitted by Xan on Monday, December 5, 2005 at 1:36 AM EST
 "Ne'er look for the birds of this year in the nests of the last."--Miguel de Cervantes You know, there's a lot of things that I'd like to be able to do again, or do differently. I wouldn't have devoted so much of my young life to going to church and worshipping God or thrown that little Hot Wheels boat across the room that ended up partially blinding my brother for life. I would have tried pot, I would have asked Beth Lucachick out at least one time, and if I knew poker was going to be the next big money-making job in this country, I would have hung out in college a few more years instead of going out in the real world. So, there are a few things out there I'd like back or to relive, say true. Probably more than I've listed, though these are the things that come to mind at the moment. But, you know what, I have absolutely no interest in another series of seven matches between Booker T and Chris Benoit. While I remember enjoying the over-rated original, I've not been longing for a remake. Watching the finale of their series on the Benoit DVD reminded me just how bad that match was as a closer and how far both men have come since. The truth is that there's absolutely no point to this series, and I have little tolerance for matches/angles that accomplish nothing. Chris Benoit is the best wrestler in the world, and during a time where Smackdown is having a fierce struggle to have an interesting World Title picture, he's stuck in a feud with a guy that constantly gets more praise than he deserves. Personally, I don't think Booker T should hold the United States Title right now. I was pretty high on him being the guy to take the WWF Title away from JBL a little less than a year ago, but that was when everything was in flux and he went from losing the U.S. Title--in another ill-advised best of 7 series--to John Cena to turning face just to feud with JBL. It was weird, it was intense, and it really could have gotten Booker over in a big way had he gotten the strap. But, as is usually the case with a good idea that has solid momentum behind it, the WWF fucked it up. However, their current plan is not a good idea, there is no momentum behind it; mostly because the idea to take the United States Title off of Chris Benoit was horrible. It may have been a good idea to put the WWF Title on Booker T last December, or at WrestleMania XIX, or for WCW to try and make him their savior--after all, what did they have left to lose? But, to take a guy that has been floundering just about since the day he got to Smackdown and have him go over Chris Benoit for a midcard title that the Wolverine was finally starting to make seem important for the first time ever? That, my friends, was simply a bad, bad call. The next United States Champion should have been Ken Kennedy and not until the Rumble or just before. In other words, not until the title was sufficiently elevated and the to-be champion was ready for the pressure. Instead, the belt is going to stagnate again because of the amazing lack of creativity on the WWF's "creative" team. You might be thinking, "But, Xan, won't a dramatic best of 7 series help raise the U.S. Title to prominence?" Quite simply, the answer is no. Did the Cena/Booker T series from last year elevate the strap? If you said, "Yes", please poke yourself in the eye. "We must look for the opportunity in every difficulty instead of being paralyzed at the thought of the difficulty in every opportunity."--Walter E. Cole As bad as this idea is, however, the truth is that I could live with this series if the WWF had gone the right way with it; if they had done something--anything--to make me believe that they truly understand how dire the situation now is on the blue brand. Just in case you've forgotten, they've got a World Champion that's working through an injury that his doctors apparently told him required surgery to correct. Now, granted, Batista is 40 years old and is not exactly the perfect candidate to be one of their huge superstars in the future, so maybe in the short run it's worth the risk until someone else is sufficiently built up and ready to be the World Heavyweight Champion. Of course, the apparent planned filling for this gaping whole at the top of the show goes by the name of Randy Orton. Now, Orton's definitely an option--after all, the WWF still believes him to be a large part of their future--but, he's more of a duct-taped pipe than a permanent fixture. His staying power is far from great. Let me dwell just a moment on this point, I don't hate Randy Orton, but I do not share the WWF's enthusiasm for his ability to be one of their future mega-stars. In fact, I find it hard to believe that had his father been anyone other than Bob Orton that Randy would ever have gotten a chance in the WWF. The one thing he has going for him is athleticism. Everything else is either at or below average. His mic skills? They aren't good. The look? He doesn't have it. Ring ability? While he has improved his pacing and added a couple moves to his repetoire, he's still nothing special in that regard, either, and despite his time at or near the main event he still doesn't know how to get the best reaction to his actions. And, on top of all these deficiencies, he's had 3 major injuries in the last two years. So, he can't talk well, he has no look, can't really wrestle--though I have to admit he's trying--and is injured somewhere around 1/3 of the time. Sorry, folks, I just can't see where this guy's got the goods. As far as I'm concerned, though, that's okay because the WWF has two great options to go with for the World Title staring them right in the face. The first is Rey Mysterio. Rey doesn't have the size the WWF likes, and certainly doesn't wrestle the "WWF Style", but he's got an incredible popularity that just can't be held down. He may have been brought in as a special attraction to the cruiserweight division, but he's proved his abilities go beyond that many times and he deserves a shot at holding the strap. Maybe he'd just be a transitional champ, and he certainly couldn't be a dominant one, but what a nice change it would make to have a champion that doesn't seem superhuman. Remember the days of Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels being the fighting champions, willing to take all comers? No? Okay, then, how about you think back to a little over a year ago when Chris Benoit was doing the same thing. Mysterio could really help Smackdown by being a champ that takes on anyone and everyone that steps up to challenge him, regardless of size. The other great option is Bobby Lashley. Yes, he has question marks, but he's also got an excellent size and look, a tremendous ability in the ring, and a certain charisma you can see even without him uttering a word. Maybe he can talk, and maybe he can't, but here's the thing: He doesn't need to do anything more than pick who he's going to run over next. It worked for Goldberg, and it worked for Lesnar(though he did have Heyman speaking on his behalf for several months), so I don't see any reason it wouldn't work for Lashley. Am I jumping the gun here? Absolutely. But I think it's a mistake for Batista to be postponing his surgery when there are people that can step in right now, and I think Lashley would benefit from this kind of trial by fire. Have you ever heard of a guy called Carlito? I don't like the motherfucker, but everyone else praises him, and do you know what the WWF did his first night on Smackdown and his first night on RAW? Awarded him the United States and Intercontinental Titles respectively because they expected great things from him. Well, I expect better things from Lashley and believe he's capable of growing, improving, adapting, and succeeding all with the World Title. "The will to conquer is the first condition of victory."--Marshal Ferdinand Foch Now, because these are the two best options the WWF has right now for World Heavyweight Champions, there's no doubt that they'll be avoided at all costs. But, there are still two options that are good options. Not bad(such as giving the strap to Orton or keeping it on Batista) or great(Mysterio, Lashley), but somewhere in the middle. Either of them will keep the show afloat and the title credible, but won't be anything super major in the end. The first one of these, of course, would be to have JBL get the title back. I know that there are still a lot of detractors out there, but for my money, JBL has proved that he belongs among the current elite in the business. You don't have to be an outstanding technical wrestler, or a gigantic hoss to make an impact in this business, and Layfield's a perfect example. Is he big? Yeah, but there's some bigger. He's a wonderful brawler that's great on the mic, the way Austin was, and I don't remember too many people complaining about Austin being World's Champion. No, Bradshaw won't carry a lot of people to a great match, but he won't bring it down, either. He's just a solid, steady performer that brought something special to his championship reign the way all the greats have. However, it's hard to envision a situation where Bradshaw can quickly get back to the title. After all, he was dominated by both Cena and Batista in their feuds, and has basically been battling with Rey Mysterio and the RAW brand for 3 months now. The best way to get the strap on him believably would be with a tournament, and I think a tourney's a great idea, but the WWF has seemed reluctant for years now to do another World Title tournament. Hell, they didn't even do one when the very strap I'm yakking about was brought back. So, I think the most legitimate choice to be the next World Heavyweight Champion is Chris Benoit--and it would still be easy to set it up even at this point. Ideally, I would have had him destroy Booker T in this series the way he did Orlando Jordan and then demand a World Title shot because of how dominant he was. However, that ship has sailed due to the aforementioned incredibly poor booking by the WWF Creative Team. So, how do you overcome this setback? Simple. This week on Smackdown Chris Benoit and Booker T are scheduled to have their 3rd match of the best of 7 series. So, what about this scenario: with Booker T incapacitated momentarily, Benoit German suplexes Sharmell through the announce table. He comes in, hits three more Germans on Booker and locks in the Crossface dead-center of the ring. Booker is about to tap out, when Benoit lets go, gets up, and walks out--losing the match by count-out. The announcers are stunned, the ref is stunned, and so is the crowd. Later, Big Show and Kane are destroying Batista after JBL has fought with Rey Rey to the back. Benoit comes out with a chair to tons of applause, as Kane and Big Show high-tail it. As Batista gets up, Benoit drills him with the chair in the ribs. Then he does it again and again. Finally, he locks on the sharpshooter until Batista passes out from pain. The next week, he announces that he doesn't care about the U.S. Title anymore--that it's worthless--and he instead wants Batista. He then goes on to defeat Batista at Armageddon for the World Title. What this angle does is simple--it ends the horrible idea that is the new best of 7 feud, it gets the World Title on the best wrestler in the world for the first time in over a year, and it allows Batista to get some time off without the strap going to the undeserving Randy Orton. Of course, this also would hurt the credibility of the U.S. Title, but sometimes sacrifices must be made, and it isn't like putting the belt on Booker T didn't already do that anyway. First of all, I want to apologize to all those that have written in response to my last three columns and have yet to get a response. I will get back to you soon, I promise. I just haven't felt very enthusiastic about anything in regards to wrestling lately. Now for a couple of feedbackers to "What now?" Chris writes: Hello Xan, well first of all i have say that you have been doing a great job with this article, i've been reading urs since i was first introduced to Lords of Pain few months back! I know that you really feel down now, because of the untimely passing of Eddie Gurrero, we all love and miss him. I understand that at the time you probably wrote this article you would have been going through a very emotionally hard time as i know that you really liked Eddie alot, you had mentioned him before in your articles of how Eddie and Batista feud had really got you back into smackdown. I’m really sorry about Eddie. The best as fans we could do is to respect the lives of the people who were close to Eddie; and there comes his family and friends! What iam trying to get at here is that you had totally ignored the friendship that Edge and Eddie had, infact what you wrote in your article was really insensitive, esp. for the fact that Edge considered Eddie to one amongst his three really close friends! this is a really difficult time for Edge and you shouldn’t have written that. You wrote: Edge has proven he's an asshole, and if he can be blasé about ending Hardy's career, than what's to stop him from doing the same about Eddie's death? Now personally as a fan of Edge, i could have argued about the Matt's angle that you rubbed in, as Matt Hardy himself jeopardized his career by going public! But again did he jeopardize his career? i certain think otherwise he gained hell lot of popularity with his stunts and by totally destroying Edge's and Lita's personal life. He ruined it for them while he himself is enjoying the popularity and his newly found interest Ashley!!! Now i know that you are a Matt fan! so i won’t argue, but i would say that just look at this from Edge's angle! Esp. the part where you wrote what you wrote about Edge on Eddie! not for Edge, but for his friend Eddie! I do hope that people can see things differently, but even if they don’t I’ll always respect their emotions and feelings! I do hope that you continue writing, i really like your section. Best of luck. Chris. Well, Chris, as you can see, I've now written another column. This was actually an extremely difficult column to write, despite my two weeks off. It's just tough to get back in the swing of things when the WWF is doing so little to truly interest me. I can't believe someone's asking me to respect the feelings Edge had towards one of his friends. Edge! Remember, this is the guy that fucked his supposed best friend's girlfriend, destroyed their relationship, and got the guy fired. Did it all work out decently for Hardy? Well, he's got his job back, and he gets to toil away at the bottom of Smackdown now instead of the bottom of RAW, but he still doesn't have the woman he thought of as his soul-mate, so I'd have to say "no." Either way, I don't think the word "friend" means anything when it comes to Edge, so there's no way in hell I'll apologize for what I said in regards to him. Ten-ma has this to say: Xan, To be perfectly honest with you, your ideas for generating spin on the subject of Eddie's death really sickened me. If the WWE were to do such a thing I don't think I could stand to watch their programming anymore. The death of a wrestler is something that should be completely immune to storyline involvement; such an action would go way beyond disrespect. I'm surprised you would even suggest something like that. I love Eddie and I miss him terribly. And at times, I too think the WWE has been struck the deathblow by this immense loss. But like many have remarked, Eddie would want the show to go on. What doesn't need to go on right now is the kayfabe. When Tazz and Michael Cole lapsed into the make-believe reality on Smackdown from time to time, it angered me. Right now it's about Eddie and about the people who loved him, not about who happens to be a heel or a face at the moment. The rivalry storyline between Raw and Smackdown right now is completely down the drain. Eddie's passing has brought the organization together as strongly as it has ever been -- in the middle of a PPV being sold as a divisive war. That idea is worthless now. In my opinion, the only way to go is to make the PPV a solid, cross-promotional wrestling event with minimal kayfabe where the superstars put on a great show in honor of a great showman. But to shitcan the whole WWE right now I feel would be a step too far. We have lost Eddie, and that has crippled us. But we can't forget about all the other talented, passionate people that make this business what it is. They deserve the chance to go on doing what they love to do, and it will help us as fans to continue watching them. We will miss Eddie, but let's not forget what brought him into our lives in the first place. Thanks for reading. Of course the talented, passionate people in this business deserve to keep on doing what they love to do. Could you do me a favor and talk Vince into letting them do just that? In case you haven't noticed he has been letting the least talented people rule things for quite a while now. Your point about not forgetting what brought him to us in the first place is a good one, but I can't help comparing today's WWF to those I've watched in the past and seeing something that isn't half as good, because the ones that are making the decisions won't do what will make the company great again. As for my ideas of putting "spin" on Eddie's death, can you really tell me that you wouldn't like to see Eddie vs. Chavo or Orton actually earning his spot at the top by drawing legitimate heat than the crap we are "privileged" to watch right now. I hope there really is a new GM tomorrow night and that it's someone interesting--I'm hoping that it truly is Shane McMahon--because RAW needs a big shake-up, and I can't believe more people don't realize that. Please e-mail any feedback to me at XanManX@hotmail.com, with the words "Northern Star" or "feedback" in the subject line. The Northern Star will rise again.Until then, I bid you... Long days, pleasant nights
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