Take up thy wrestling boots and walk - 2006 in retrospect and a glance into the future
Submitted by Pt2 on Monday, January 8, 2007 at 11:34 AM EST





I find I haven’t written about wrestling in some time now, and if I am to shoot straight here, I think it’s more to do with my reaction to the shows than the shows themselves. Granted, the best of the three brands would get an average rating at best right now, and I couldn’t tell you the last thing that I remember happening on Smackdown or ECW, which is sad because I watch both shows every week and I’m the kind of wrestling fan that remembers intricate details of, say, the match between Owen Hart and Rocky Maivia for the Intercontinental title back in April 1997, and can remember with almost perfect clarity Bob Backlund attacking Savio Vega with the cross face chicken wing at the tail of 1995. So it’s not like I have a particularly weak memory when it comes to wrestling, and as James E. Cornette, now of TNA wrestling, once said on Monday Night Raw (referring to Hogan and Piper, if I‘m not mistaken), “it’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad”. No, I doubt it’s the shows, because these shows are certainly no worse than the RAW shows of late 2002, and I sat through that, and although I wasn’t writing then I still spent a hell of a lot of time talking about them, but I can barely bring myself to acknowledge what happens after seeing a WWE show over the past

Now, I know what a lot of you will be thinking here, that I must be tired of wrestling; I’ve obviously been watching wrestling for a long time and one of the words that has been thrown around a lot is “Burnout” on wrestling. Well, you’ll just have to take my word for it, that I may be tired of a lot of things, but wrestling isn’t one of them. I’m going back and watching wrestling dvd’s, going to live events, listening to shoot interviews, and basically doing everything I possibly can to try and get the fix that I would get if ONE of the shows was putting out material of sufficient quality to give it to me. I’m honestly not knocking the efforts of the wrestlers here because I believe that they are trying as hard as they ever have, but I am something of a traditionalist, and there is an old attitude that I think is very true, if people don’t give a shit before you’ve got them into the arena, it’ll take a genius in the ring to make them give a shit once they get there, and you’re lucky if you get that two guys that are that good every ten years. Ric Flair could do it, in his prime. They are before my time, but talk to some older guys and they will tell you that Ray Stevens and Nature Boy Buddy Rogers could do it, too.

But when you look at the top guys from the top promotions, most of the time even they can’t make you care when the back up work isn’t there - Sting couldn’t do it, and he was the biggest babyface WCW had, but when you had weak booking and removed Ric Flair from the picture, it died, and painfully. Although WCW was a sinking ship and un-saveable by the year 2000 anyway, HHH and The Rock pretty much ensured it’s death with one of the finest summers the WWE has ever put on, but both men have been criticised to hell and back (HHH especially) both before and after that feud. The Rock is probably the most charismatic wrestler in history, and HHH was the best all rounder on the WWE roster prior to his quad injury and is still one of the more talented and dependable guys there, but neither of them have been good enough, as good as they are, to completely save face when the booking and backstage decisions, things that aren’t the fault of the Stings or the Rock’s or the Shawn Michaels, go wrong.

Again, this is nothing new though. Whenever I’ve seen the talent going out and doing their best with bad angles, I’ve not gone weeks without writing, I’ve just come out and said that I think they are doing the best they can with bad material. I’m watching older wrestling just to try and fill the void the current product leaves, and the shows are no worse than some of the other stuff we’ve seen in the past.

I think the only thing that is different, is that I never had so much hope before, only to see it trail away into mediocrity.

2004-05 showed an on screen improvement in consistency from the occasional horror shows of 2002-03. Storylines became intriguing in 2004, and that continued right the way through to an excellently executed HHH vs. Batista storyline, which may have dragged a little at the end, but up to the Wrestlemania match and the first rematch, was more than just a little enjoyable. After Wrestlemania in the second half of 2005, storylines perhaps never got quite to that level of excellent execution again, but following what I thought was one of the stronger Wrestlemania’s following the death of WCW (of which the first, X-7, or to those of us who think X-7 sounds stupid, XVII, is still the best) the WWE continued to put out consistency throughout the rest of the summer, combined with an in-ring improvement on 2004, especially on PPV - the top matches were still as good, but throughout the card there was a greater level in consistency.

When you combine that work with some fine back up from the writers then the product cannot help but benefit. In 2005, once Kane was phased out of the story and Matt Hardy was brought in, Edge actually started to look like he might go on to be the guy the WWE were telling us he could be. Despite an absolutely mystifying heel turn, Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio’s feud was executed well enough to not only be a success, but to a major part of the Smackdown brand for 6 months. I have to admit, I was one of those people disappointed that they turned Eddie, one of the more popular babyfaces, and considered it a stupid decision, and as such never really reacted to the angle the way most people did, but I can admit now that in hindsight they did a very good job to make the angle as popular as it was following a bizarre decision. I could name other examples.

So in 2006, I must be honest, my expectations were high - granted, the roster was tragically deprived of Eddie Guerrero, but with the harmony of writing and wrestling looking pretty strong, I believed that the shows would only continue to improve, and though we would probably never reach the dizzying heads of 2000 again (not without competition), the shows could become must watch TV again. Audiences could maybe go up then, who knows? The important thing was to get RAW and Smackdown back to positions where they were not shows that you wanted to see, they were shows that you couldn’t bear to miss.

While I approached it with trepidation, like everybody else, I also only saw the introduction of the ECW brand as a potential bonus - the rosters have always been far too loaded, not a great deal of people watch Velocity or Heat compared with the numbers that would watch an ECW show, and so it would allow more wrestlers more exposure, more storylines, and could potentially give a real shot in the arm to a product that was looking at where it could go for once, as opposed to dwelling on where it has been.

As has often been the case since Paul Heyman stopped booking the Smackdown six, Smackdown was the first to disappoint, and once again I think it is almost certainly through no fault of their own. Rey Mysterio was booked in exactly the same fashion from the Royal Rumble until the day he finally lost the championship, which certainly didn’t help. On the Bret Hart DVD, the comment is made that “The World Champion has to go out and wrestle everyone, he needs to be able to work with Razor, and with Mr. Perfect, and with Bam Bam”, and that’s something I’m not sure someone the size of Rey Mysterio can do for a prolonged period of time. The real smart thing to do with Mysterio would be to use his star power to elevate the Cruiserweight division to a more important position on the card, rather than book him in repetitive fashion... but I digress.

The problem was not restricted to a weak champion. The roster was clearly hit by the loss of such a talented performer as Eddie Guerrero, but giving all credit to the roster, they took the hit and limped on as well as they possibly could. One thing the roster couldn’t take, however, was in late May and Early June, they lost both John Bradshaw Layfield to injury and Kurt Angle to ECW in the space of a week. The three most bankable stars in terms of drawing power on the entire roster have, by one means or another, been taken from them in under a year. Now, if you do that to WCW in 1997, when they are the hottest company in wrestling by SUCH a large margin, WCW lose the ratings war to the WWE a hell of a lot earlier than 2001. If you took Michaels, Austin and Hart from the WWE in 1997, they wouldn’t be in BUSINESS today.

Luckily for them, Smackdown has no competition, so this is a body blow more than a knockout punch, but it did take the wind out of it straight away. King Booker managed to get himself over by being very annoying, Finlay was something of a revelation, and Batista’s popularity never really seemed to dip, but the feud between Batista and Booker was, in my opinion, creatively a washout. I know they have been feuding, but the only thing I can tell you about it is that Batista is now the World Champion, and it reminds me of a comment someone once made about the movie Black Hawk Down: “Maybe you don’t remember anything because there is nothing there to remember”. Now I’m not really interested in whether you agree when it comes to Black Hawk Down, it can be your favourite movie for all I care, but when it comes to wrestling, the very best I could give the Smackdown brand is a Mediocre rating, and I feel like I might be being a bit too generous.

But Hey, what can they do when they lose three of their top guys, and Mysterio is thrown into a feud that many people consider to be in bad taste with Chavo Guerrero? I’m undecided and I know opinions vary, but the amount of people that offended and left feeling cold means that I think it is a bad decision, because people really didn't want to get emotionally involved in that feud, and so they aren’t going to cheer for Rey the way that they usually would.... it was really just another screw up.

Smackdown’s loss was, in the short term, ECW’s gain, as the fledgling company acquired Kurt Angle, which added some star power, and with someone painted with such strong WWE colours as the Big Show thrown onto the belt as a heel champion, things looked good. The champion could have some high profile matches against Smackdown/Raw guys to build it up, then ECW could go their own way and be a brand unto themselves, allowing the ECW originals and under-utilised stars to get some time.

But of course, it went on far too long. ECW was never set aside as it’s own brand, and people lost interest. The Big Show, as champion, won the title in early July. Two months later in September, the ECW main event’s featured D-generation X facing the Big Show in inter promotional matches, after two months of Big Show facing Batista, Undertaker, Kane and Ric Flair. In all that time, the only ECW guys to wrestle Big Show were Rob Van Dam and Sabu, who was built up to win the title - but instead of Sabu winning and the route continuing on it’s logical path, Big Show retained and instead of wrestling Raw and Smackdown guys on ECW, he would spent more time on the other two shows getting involved in other storylines. By this point, I don’t think there was any doubt in anyones’ mind that any early optimism was misplaced, ECW was once again the red-headed stepchild of the wrestling world, and when Paul Heyman was removed yet again, I doubt anyone was surprised. While in the case of Smackdown Mismanagement was only a factor, and there were things that the company could not control that led to a situation of mediocrity, ECW is there through nothing more than a complete inability to take the brand seriously. I’m not a huge ECW fan, but I am aware of the benefits a thriving ECW could offer the people at Titan Towers, but as long as they keep treating it as a throwaway show that doesn’t matter.... well, they might as well call up Todd Pettengill and ask if he wants his old WWF Mania! gig back.

As Smackdown fell from plodding along to virtual obscurity and as ECW disappointed virtually everyone, RAW held the WWE end up for quite some time, and really did carry the banner as far as quality programming goes for the whole company. Not surprising, since it is protected at every turn, but that is a different topic for a different column. The reunion of D-X and the short term amusement that offered really helped give the show a comedic element and a more rounded feel, and also took some of the pressure of what would turn out to be the star turn of the year - the resurrected feud between Cena and Edge. The seeds were sewn in January of the year, but it was in June that the feud restarted, and slowly Edge and Cena started to show that they could carry the ball. With the crowd still split and Cena by no means getting a total babyface reaction, they both grew into this feud and became the hottest thing on any of the 3 shows. Having Edge win at Summerslam only to lose a month later (when conventional logic said he should have lost at the bigger show) turned into something of a master stroke, and when people look back on Edge’s career, I think they will see that 2006 was the year Edge stopped being a “Most likely to succeed” and actually started to prove he could be somebody at the highest level. The feud had it’s low points - at one point I went out on a limb and said that it felt just like they were just going through things we’d all seen thousands of times before - but by the end, it was superb.

And I think that might be why RAW is perhaps the most disappointing of them all at the minute. They didn’t take the same hits Smackdown took, they didn’t have to put up with the shit ECW did, they have two of the most popular stars in the company in HHH and HBK, they had the feud of the year between Edge and Cena (In my opinion, feel free to disagree), they have the majority of the WWE’s favourite young stars, being the home of Randy Orton, Carlito, Chris Masters, Johnny Nitro, and Kenny Dykstra, compared with only Ken Kennedy on Smackdown and Bobby Lashley on ECW, and even managed to score a massive publicity coup by bringing in “America’s Most Hated” Kevin Federline to do some things with them.... and just when it matters, everything goes down the drain.

While the other two shows lost impact and freshness throughout the year, RAW was putting out the most consistent programming they have managed in years throughout the summer and just when they get this massive publicity coup, that could kickstart ratings and get everyone motivated and improve show quality and start the whole thing rolling again, the show quality on RAW drops. Now, it’s still the most entertaining of the three shows they have, but tell me, if you’re not an out and out wrestling fan, and you turn over to see Kevin Federline get his ass kicked, are you going to stay and watch the Ric Flair vs. Kenny Dykstra stuff at the moment, when every time it’s treated as an appetiser to a larger feud, or the stuff between Carlito and Masters that seems to leave you with that confused feeling after they depush two guys simultaneously and have them feud, only further down the card and with less effort put into it? Since RAW got a pretty average rating and people are talking about the K-Fed segments giving the show a hell of a boost, I’m guessing that after seeing Federline people stop hanging around.

This could, and probably should, have been the WWE’s next Mike Tyson. All the variables are there. In 1998, they brought in a controversial star with high stock outside the wrestling world and made him part of a storyline, following a year of creative growth and improvement, and they used it as a major part of the slingshot that propelled them to the top of the Wrestling Mountain. Change 1997 for 2006 and K-Fed for Tyson, and it’s not difficult to see how they could have made a hell of a lot out of this situation, and perhaps used the success of the RAW brand to rejuvenate the other two shows and really start to improve business once again.

But once again, the WWE prove that without competition, without the added pressure that comes from a company like WCW, the WWE really can be something of a big, plodding dinosaur, and I get the sinking feeling that they aren’t going to change a damn thing until they absolutely have to. I hope I’m wrong, because 2007 could be a big year for the company - the Kevin Federline deal could still play out well for them, but they are doing things the hard way right now. K-Fed really is only one of a number of questions that will determine their 2007.

Others include Kenny Dykstra. His positives are obvious. He’s young, fit, keen, a good worker, seems to be learning quickly, and is favoured by the company bosses. If given time to develop and mature properly, then he can be a valued addition to the roster and can really add something. If they go down the Randy Orton/Carlito “Fast production” mode, they can set his career back by about 2 years, and they won’t get the best out of him until around 2009, at the earliest.

Mr. Kennedy is approaching the level where if he is successfully managed he could engage in the kind of program that could give the entire Friday Night brand a lift. Of course, the execution of these final stages is often the hardest part, but in a year that my hopes have generally been left a bit battered, my hopes have always been high for Mr. Kennedy. Although more limited than Kennedy, if properly employed Lashley can reach a similar level.

D-X are still the companies two biggest stars that are working a full schedule. The involvement of Shawn and Hunter will be crucial to the creative success of the company next year, and the manner in which they are employed will dictate ratings and buyrates. I’m not sure what the future holds for these two, but whatever it is, they will do it well - which means that if they are given good material, they will draw money. Triple H has not held a World Championship in almost two years, so that direction is a possibility the company might explore. (NOTE: This column was originally written prior to the New Year’s revolution PPV, where HHH sustained an injury that appeared to be similar to the torn quad that kept him out in 2001. Obviously we hope the injury isn’t as serious this time around and wish him the best, but the possibility is that the WWE may be without him for some time.)

I have said plenty of things about Edge in this column, and he needs to be allowed to continue growing. Stagnation could turn him from a player into an also-ran in a matter of months. His tag partner, Randy Orton, will also be vital to the company. Have you ever noticed how Orton’s best matches are the ones in which he relies on selling and making his opponent look great (see his Wrestlemania match against the Undertaker)? That’s because that is what he is very good at (his offence is a tad bland, apart from the RKO), and to be frank, making your opponent look good is the most important part of wrestling. Ask Jerry Lawler, he made himself a star in Memphis for years doing not much more than that. If Orton fixes his attitude, he can main event, and if he adds a little more variety to his move set to go with that attitude adjustment.... well, he’ll have started to match the potential people used to talk about back in the Evolution days.

To sum up 2006 in a nutshell then, I will go on the record and say that it isn’t a bad year.... but it is ultimately disappointing and if you are someone that wants to talk about the good times and see wrestling do well, it has been a highly frustrating year. The opportunities have been there to really make good on the growth shown in 2004 and 2005, and the company has failed to make the most of them - the chance is not gone, but it will be harder now and while I’ll not rule it out I’m less confident of success.

As for 2007? I get the feeling that when we look back on the year at this time in 2008, the paths taken by the wrestlers I mention to finish this column will dictate the quality of television we get next year.

To end this column I’d like to apologise to people for my prolonged absence from writing, I hope this slightly longer column both helps to clear up the reasons and make up for it somehow, and I’d like to end on a more positive note: The WWE have announced major sell-outs already in 2007 and are talking of a high demand for WWE live events. Long may it continue.

Anyone who wants to talk about what I’ve written, or anyone who thinks they’ve got the skills to hack it with the YBTB Roster, you can contact me at takeupthywrestlingboots@gmail.com

Until next time, Take care.

Pt2









MUST SEE! Hot Pix of WWE's Set of Twins, THE BELLA TWINS! WOW!

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