Take up thy wrestling boots and walk - Where do we go from here, Paul?
Submitted by Pt2 on Thursday, January 11, 2007 at 8:06 PM EST





Welcome once again to the column that breaks into a sweat at the mere mention of King Kong Bundy, Take up Thy Wrestling Boots and Walk. I’m the columnist that will never be described as a walking condominium, Pt2, back once again from the anonymity of real life to talk about the issues inherent in pro wrestling.

I’m watching the Dusty Rhodes DVD set while I write this column, so if I happen to start branching off and throwing in lots of things mentioned on those discs, then that’s the reason why. I think it’s a great set, and it helps those of us who are too young to have seen Dusty in his prime understand the amazing contribution he made to the wrestling business, and why he’s still considered a legend to this day. The extras are pretty great too; I’d go as far as to say along with Flair and Hart’s, it’s one of the better sets out there. If you’ve got some cash spare and you like the old NWA days, check it out, you won’t regret it.

But that’s not what I want to talk about right now. As good a set as it is, it looks at the past. What I want to look to now, is the future.

The injury to HHH could not really have come at a worse time for the WWE. Wrestlemania is right around the corner, and there is little doubt in my mind that HHH would have played a big part in it. There are big questions floating around now, about what this means for Paul Levesque, the plans for Wrestlemania, and as I addressed in my last column, the plans for the rest of the year in the WWE.

With HHH out of the picture, I think the D-X run has to come to an end. Shawn Michaels on his own is not Degeneration X, and I don’t think bringing back any other former member of D-X would really help to fill the gap. Kip and BG James (or the New Age Outlaws for those people who don’t follow wrestling south of the Mason Dixon) really don’t carry the star power and would suffer tremendously from the fact that this isn’t 1998. X-Pac would have a novelty of about half a show, but the moment he stepped back into the ring to wrestle on RAW, the chants of “X-Pac sucks” would begin again, and that leaves us with Chyna, who we know doesn’t have the best of relationships with the WWE right now. After that, you’re kind of struggling to find an answer. To be honest, it leaves you with two options: You can try and tempt Tori out of her Yoga career, or you can dabble with necromancy and attempt to resurrect Rick Rude.

I don’t think any of these are particularly great ideas, and unless you are a fan of the New Age Outlaws and think that they have enough juice left in the machine for one last WWE run, you probably agree with me. I’m also against trying to ram anyone else into D-X to try and fill the hole that Triple H has left. If they were a new faction, six months or a year into the run, then perhaps it could be done, but D-X, like the nWo, the Four Horsemen, the Legion of Doom and others, have become something of an institution, and trying to slam people that don’t fit into the mould just doesn’t work. People always say that the first incarnation of the Four Horsemen was the best and are particularly vocal on the subject of Paul Roma or Mongo McMichael. Legion of Doom went from one of the biggest tag teams in history to boredom personified with the addition of a wrestler that was never terrible, Droz. These teams and groups become more than just part of a show, after a while they become iconic, symbolic of the industry as much as they are a part of it. D-X has reached that point, and I honestly don’t think that anyone in the WWE could step into HHH’s shoes right now and do a job that the audience wouldn’t shit on.

Kind of leaves them with three options for one of the biggest storylines going into the next few months. Option number one, is to drop the D-X aspect, but to find a new tag partner for Shawn and continue it as a tag angle. This will take a lot of reshaping, and frankly a bit of creative booking, to pull off, but I think that it might be possible. The feud between Edge/Orton and D-X has been about D-X being on top of Raw for so long, and the younger guys needing to clear them out of the way so that they can take their “rightful place” at the top of RAW. If the focus is shifted from D-X to all people that may have gone on too long in the eyes of Edge and Orton, then Ric Flair could be slid into the feud to carry it on until Wrestlemania. This is where the part about the D-X having to be dropped comes into it. From a storyline sense, about Edge and Orton needing to rise to the top, Ric Flair is the man on RAW whose inclusion makes the most sense, and yet he would not fit into D-generation X because he just isn’t D-X material. He’s made from different stock. On Smackdown! Only the Undertaker could do the same job, and frankly that would be even stranger than bringing Ric Flair across. Jim Duggan and Tatanka on both brands possess the experience, but don’t have the star power.

Obviously, for the situation to work the feud between Ric Flair and Kenny Dykstra would have to be blown off quickly, but I’m sure the WWE would consider that a worthwhile casualty to save a more high profile feud. Sure, this isn’t the perfect solution and it’s probably not the one I would go for, but if you want to keep this as a tag team feud then it is the situation that I think does the job best. Throwing the green and black on Val Venis or Eugene and expecting them to step up and be part of D-X just doesn’t seem to work too well when I play it out in my head, and even though we all know Ric Flair doesn’t hold people down, he loses to them instead, he is of such an age that for storyline purposes people saying he should have moved on and given his spot to someone else isn’t inconceivable. Also, with all the recent attacks, it’s not inconceivable that he’d want to help out “close personal friend” Shawn Michaels.

Option number is probably my favourite one. Have Shawn Michaels continue the feud with either Orton or Edge, and have the other one go onto another feud. This will give you potentially two high profile matches going into Wrestlemania time and will ensure that all the build up that has been put into the feud already doesn’t go to waste. Personally, I think my choice to continue on with Shawn Michaels would be Randy Orton, for the simple fact that I think losing to Shawn (and I do think with the way the build up has gone that the babyface should come out on top at the end) would hurt Orton less than it would Edge. Orton is younger and slightly lower down in terms of perception, and both lead to him being able to bounce back more quickly from a loss to Shawn Michaels. A loss for Edge wouldn’t be particularly damaging, but he was WWE champion a few months back, embroiled in a feud with John Cena, and is considered one of the very top guys on RAW. Why squander that by inflicting defeat on him now?

If Michaels were to challenge Edge, the match would probably be better than a Michaels – Orton match, but the possibilities for Edge are much more open if he’s left out of that one. There is a match with Jeff Hardy, if they want to test Jeff further up the card, or possibly a match with someone high profile that we haven’t seen for a while – I’m sure the ideal man would be The Rock, but since that is unlikely, there are options with a Chris Jericho, a Hulk Hogan, or someone of that ilk. Alternatively, and this is an idea that I really like, you could have him win the Royal Rumble. OK, he’s been phased out of it a bit and on RAW the emphasis seems to be on Umaga right now, but lets face it, a John Cena vs. Umaga main event at Wrestlemania pails in comparison with the match that Cena and Edge could give us, and it would not take too much booking talent to link what happened less than six months ago back in to do it. It would allow Edge to continue gaining momentum as opposed to stagnating, and by throwing it up again, would make the feud seem all the more important for it – it could be hyped up as one of the “great battles in WWE history” like they did for HHH and Shawn Michaels, when they compared their rivalry to that of Bret and Owen, and HHH and The Rock, amongst others. It would introduce an element of unpredictability into the Rumble which has been sadly lacking, for the most part, in recent years (I think since 1998 the only time anyone has been in any doubt was the year Batista won it, when a few people thought they were going with Cena) and would lead to a pretty good match. Remember their Unforgiven bout, and think about how much better they’ll perform since it’d be Wrestlemania. For anyone that thinks Edge can’t sell himself as a main event star, I have only one retort:

In the build up to Wrestlemania, I wrote a piece on Edge that got a lot of mail, arguing in favour of Edge. My comment was “I doubt Edge could get over if he was to beat Steve Austin, The Rock, Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant and Yokozuna in a “Kill the Edge with the Briefcase” match”, and after all this time, I’ve come to agree with those people that mailed in and fought the corner for Adam Copeland. Even as one of his biggest detractors less than a year ago he has won me over, and when you get good enough to start winning over some of your detractors, you are ready for the top spots.

OK, despite my protestations they are probably not going to go this route, but don’t be terribly surprised to see Edge go a long way in the Rumble. Even if they don’t have him win it, they’d be foolish not to play up the history between him and Cena and tease him winning it, just to add some tension to the match.

Those are two of the three options regarding the current situation, and incidentally the only two I like. The third is simply to forget about it altogether. Have Shawn Michaels get his ass kicked Monday night and disappear until HHH is fit, have Team Rated-RKO move on to some nothing feud with Cryme Tyme or the Highlanders over the tag titles, and resume the feud when everyone is fit, further down the line. It’s not a solution I’m fond of, because it removes HBK from the picture just as they have lost HHH and wastes all the time that has been spent building up the match, and I’m sure unless they are stupid they won’t go this route. But it is an option, so I thought I’d better mention it.

That pretty much sums up the options, as far as I see them, for the current storyline dilemma. It does still leave questions about the rest of the year, and HHH himself.

I don’t think anyone in the world expects HHH to retire now. The injury is nowhere near as bad as the 2001 injury apparently, and being one of the only genuine stars the company has means he won’t want to leave the in-laws in the lurch unless he absolutely has to. But don’t be surprised that if he comes back with a slightly modified style, in an attempt to protect those legs, because I think it may be a case of three strikes and you’re out. You can justify coming back from different injuries all the time, but the same injury three times is more than a gentle warning. It isn’t as if HHH has something to prove, as a ten time world champion. Approaching forty years of age, with a glittering career and two quad surgeries behind him, I think even someone that personifies wrestling work ethic the way HHH does would consider leaving the full-time schedule days behind, and protecting his ability to move freely, especially with a young daughter growing up, and since his wife is still only 30 (even though it feels like she’s been around for ever), the possibility of his family expanding.

So yes, expect to see him back, but don’t be surprised if caution is one of his bywords when he returns. I’m sure that HHH doesn’t want his legs to end up like Terry Funk’s.

What they will do when he returns does become a big issue – obviously they will make a big deal of his return, and I think he will be given a hero’s welcome when he does appear on RAW again, but much of how he is used will depend on how they finish the angle with Edge and Orton. I don’t think there would be much interest in another HHH vs. Shawn Michaels match, so having him return as a heel is something of a no-go – perhaps the only way to generate interest in that match would be to reverse the roles and allow Michaels to go into it as a heel for once. I’m also not sure how you could turn Hunter heel without having him turn on Michaels unless you also turn Michaels. Since they have been together in such high profile fashion only six months earlier, dropping it without mentioning it would be a terrible idea, and since Michaels last run as a heel last all of a few weeks, I don’t think either he or the company are keen on him in that role anymore. That was for 1997, this is a decade later.

As a Babyface, Hunter will be limited to very few desirable options. The logical way to go about it is to begin something with Orton and/or Edge since it was in their match that the injury occurred, and then take advantage of his newfound popularity that his absence will have created by throwing him into the world title picture, in much the same fashion they did last time. They should probably work on making sure they don’t bury the Champ the way they did Jericho, and it’d be great. If things go well and he is back in 4 months, as is being predicted, HHH could return and ride the wave of popular support into a massive face vs. face match at Summerslam against John Cena, in a rematch from Wrestlemania 22 that would probably attract many more viewers than the original contest. Face vs. Face matches can be hard to pull off, but Cena has started to acquire the necessary star power, and Hunter is one of the biggest names the company has – I think they could pull it off. If they were considered good enough to headline Wrestlemania last year, then they can definitely headline Summerslam this year, now Cena has improved, in a match that will carry genuine feeling due to Hunter’s injury… when I think about it now, I really like the idea.

But this is all just speculation. I like speculating from time to time, and the removal of such a high profile part really does allow the creative part of your mind to just go nuts, throwing up new ideas, solutions to problems, and scenario’s to work through. If you haven’t worked it out already I’m something of a wrestling nerd, but I hope you’ve got some amusement out of this column one way or another. If you’d like to comment, you can reach me at takeupthywrestlingboots@gmail.com. The invitation is still open for people wishing to take part in YBTB, just get in touch and we’ll show you the ropes.

Until next time, Take care.

Pt2









*NEW GALLERY* Must See! Lots of Rare and Hot Photos of Randy Orton's New Wife Samantha!

• Quick Links -
  [Back to LOP] [News Archives] [Results] [Columns] [Forums]