Posted in: Doctor's Orders
Doctor's Orders: WrestleMania 31 - Where It All Begins Again...Again
By The Doc
Mar 24, 2015 - 12:31:54 PM


Image by Trey Cox

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WrestleMania XX featured a promotional tag line meant to accentuate a mindset – that the return of “The Granddaddy of ‘em All” to Madison Square Garden in 2004 would mark the beginning of the next 10 years of WWE history. However, “Where it All Begins…Again” much better fit the mentality behind the quote one year later. WrestleMania XX had its watershed moments, such as John Cena, Randy Orton, and Batista making their “Show of Shows” debuts and the climactic embrace between Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit that exemplified the rewards of hard work. WrestleMania 21 in Los Angeles, though, was truly the dawn of a new era. Cena and Batista won the WWE and World Heavyweight Championships, respectively. Orton started the storyline trend of trying to end The Undertaker’s “Streak.” Edge won the inaugural Money in the Bank Ladder match. Rey Mysterio began his climb to consistent headlining status with a win in the opener over Guerrero. They were cornerstones of the WWE product for the better part of the decade that followed.

Fast forward to the present and we sit on the precipice of another WrestleMania that feels very much like starting anew. What takes place at Levi’s Stadium could well determine the fate of the next ten years in WWE. As much as WrestleMania XXX, like WrestleMania XX, accentuated the organic emotion that stems from an underdog scratching and clawing his way to the top after a dramatic and lengthy climb, it was an event that seemed like an end instead of a beginning. “The Streak” was finally broken. Steve Austin and Hulk Hogan hugged in the middle of a wrestling ring; and then each hugged The Rock. T’was more an epilogue than a prologue. John Cena won, as usual, but the man he beat made the headlines for his actions in defeat. Even Daniel Bryan, who it could be argued started a trend with the Yes! Movement, culminating in the triumphant pair of victories that should endure as the event’s most memorable, could as easily be argued to have forced the end of WWE’s reluctance to fully embrace a forward-focused direction rather than one that constantly kept checking its rearview.

WrestleMania 31 will undoubtedly supply its fair share of nostalgic resonance to capture the imaginations of fans that thrive on yesterday’s memories. Matches like Sting vs. Triple H are part of a formula for the modern Mania that uses the top stars of eras gone by as de facto celebrities in a manner similar to how Floyd Mayweather, Donald Trump, and Mike Tyson were once used. They are an integral part of what separates WrestleMania from all the other special events of the year. Unlike more recent WrestleManias, though, the remainder of the card this year will not be largely built with pairings from a group of superstars that made their names last decade or prior. Sure, Cena, Orton, Taker, and Brock Lesnar will be heavily factored into the top matches, but the talents in the opposite corners will be a pack of hungry young stars. There is no hesitation on WWE’s part anymore. The Reality Era will have irrevocably arrived by March 30th.

It has been a fascinating journey to get here. The origin story of the next generation of WWE headliners actually dates back to the failures of so many classes that came before. Allow your mind to travel back to 2001, for a moment. 15 years of at least two mainstream wrestling companies came to an end. WWE had, at that point, absorbed every bit of the territory system in place for a hundred years. An issue brought to the forefront when WWE bought WCW was where the fresh talent was going to be cultivated. In the 1980s and 1990s, NWA/WCW acted as the primary feeder to WWE, but there were also other established secondary and tertiary grooming areas. Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, Austin, Triple H, Mick Foley, Taker, etc. all came from somewhere else. WWE may have built itself into the biggest league, but it was not the only big league. Wrestlers learned from being in those other systems.

When WCW officially shut down in 2001, the pro wrestling industry was forever changed. It took several years to understand how far reaching an impact that losing the second mainstream promotion in the world would have. One of the pitfalls was that the cycle of main-event caliber wrestlers would have to be sustained in a completely different way. Whereas, in the past, a top star could be creatively exhausted in one place and simply switch companies to find a fresh crop of opponents (at least in theory), the post-WCW reality was that “survival of the fittest” would become the universal law of sports entertainment. Competition, always a theme of any healthy locker room, was no longer a battle fought on multiple fronts – one against your peers and the other against another company. From March 2001 onward, all competitive fire was directed at the guy across from you in catering.

The famed Ohio Valley Wrestling Class of 2002 represented one of the very first rookie classes entirely comprised from WWE’s Developmental framework. Unlike the classes that followed them two, three, or more years later, the OVW ’02 class benefited from joining WWE when so many legendary figures, who had been through the previously standard grinder of bouncing around the world before ultimately getting their dream shot, were still active.

Perhaps WWE got lucky. Cena, Orton, Batista, and Lesnar were groomed by Rock, Taker, Triple H, Flair, and others. When it got interesting was after all of them had been confirmed as cornerstones of WWE’s present and future. Each developmental class that followed struggled mightily to climb even halfway up the ladder. The competition within WWE was too much for many of them to handle. So few emerged as potential top stars. Those that did slammed into the proverbial glass ceiling with such a reverberating thud that its ripple extended into many years that followed. Carlito was too small and entitled. Nick Dinsmore got over a gimmick, Eugene, that probably had no business being put on TV in the first place, but it also destroyed any chance of upward mobility. Chris Masters enjoyed the juice too much. Mr. Kennedy was promising, but he was not durable and he overstepped his bounds in interviews before he ever earned the protection from management that comes with elite status. Bobby Lashley got a rub from Donald Trump at what was, at that time, the top drawing WrestleMania ever, but his skin was too thin to fight his way through reported prejudice and be a catalyst for change. He bolted during an injury hiatus. Umaga received a similar rub at Mania 23, but strange Wellness Policy violations undid his WWE run before he met a tragic end. Don’t get me started on Great Khali. MVP was apparently too old? The list goes on and on.

Austin once described WWE as a machine with gears that wear out and get replaced. By the time that the decades changed, the cycle had stalled. The gears in the WWE machine had not been replaced in years. When Cena and Orton were the two OVW classmates left standing in 2010 and WWE was put in a position within the next year to find new stars to replace the likes of Michaels (retired), Batista (mostly retired), Edge (retired), Taker (part-time), HHH (part-time), and Chris Jericho (hiatus and sporadic appearances), the generational disease of the classes that failed to produce top-tier wrestlers became readily diagnosable. In human genetics, a defect usually takes a generation to manifest to the point where it becomes clearly identifiable. Many fans despise the push-now, hope-they-get-over-later approach seen in 2010 and 2011 with several budding headliners, but it was a by-product of a problem started all the way back in 2001 when WCW crashed and burned. Call it the modern wrestling condition, if you will. While WWE was struggling to find out what it wanted to be in the post-Attitude Era, post-Monday Night War, ten years worth of potential main-event stars imploded. Not a single wrestler that debuted between 2003 and mid-2010 ever main-evented a WrestleMania during that period. If you extend that thought-process to 2013 (a full decade), then the only star that debuted from 2003-2013 that main-evented WrestleMania was The Miz…and look how the rest of his career has turned out. The bottom line is that WWE eventually had to push somebody, even if those somebodies were not ready.

Jack Swagger had the pedigree, but it has frequently come across over the years like WWE pushed him because they’re supposed to push guys with his size and background. “Going through the motions” you might call the way that they have booked him. Sheamus and Wade Barrett had an international appeal that reflected WWE’s growth outside of North America. The Celtic Warrior, along with Alberto Del Rio, received the most consistent pushes of their 2009-2010 class of WWE newbies, but both of them always felt like placeholders. WWE never seemed fully dedicated to either. Their legacies were shaped by very good matches without overly memorable feuds. They served their purpose, but they were not game changers. The Miz, as previously mentioned, got as far as the WrestleMania XXVII main-event, but 2011 proved to be an aberration in his career.

During the lengthy period from 2003-2013, WWE tried to figure out what it wanted to be. The aftermath of Attitude left them with a product predicated on twists and turns to drive television ratings and a crash TV style that, on their programming, far outlived its shelf life throughout the rest of the entertainment industry. Their inconsistency on television seemed to reflect that they were torn between who they wanted their product to attract. Did they want to cater to the Attitude Era fans that won them the Monday Night War? Or did they, instead, want to return the product to more family-friendly programming seen during the Rock ‘n Wrestling Era? Vince McMahon had reluctantly made WWE risque theater to defeat WCW. It seemed, at times, quite odd how long he held onto that booking philosophy even when it produced maddeningly poor television.

The audience changed, as well. WWE’s decision to treat WCW like a piece of garbage instead of the entity that nearly put it out of business was, on one hand, understandable, but assuredly turned away many a WCW fan that tried to follow their favorites to a new program. Teenage viewers of the Attitude Era’s surge in wrestling popularity grew up and moved on. Yet, with two massive boom periods to cultivate a core fan base, WWE still maintained a sizeable viewership. The distinct differences between WWE peaks created a situation in which there are fans of their product with distinctly opposing preferences, as well as a vast mixture of people that fall somewhere in between. Today, you have fans that have been through every mainstream era in modern wrestling lore. From Hulkamania to the New Generation to Attitude to the Brand Extension; from Hogan and Savage to Hart and Michaels to Austin and Rock to Triple H, Taker, and Kurt Angle to Cena, Batista, and Orton. Wrestling fans are more a melting pot, now, than ever before.

John Cena arose from the ashes of Attitude and personifies the changes in the industry over the last 14 years. Though he will likely go down in history as the champion of a decidedly tame period in wrestling lore, he certainly did not start out that way. Cena, an otherwise cookie cutter gym rat, had a talent that appealed to the young adult male demographic that had catapulted such talents as Stone Cold and DX to incredible prominence. His freestyle rapping gimmick took him all the way from obscurity to the face of the company. It gave him mainstream media credibility with a top 15 Billboard album. Only later, when he showed how savvy and well-spoken a personality he could be in a more clean cut sense, did WWE decide to build around him as the captain of the PG vessel that returned the company to its family-friendly roots. In his decade in the main-event, he has been everything from similar to The Rock to reminiscent of Hogan. Interestingly, those two legendary figures appealed to very different sects of the audience: young adults and children.

Cena, again, personifies a change. He got to the top by appealing to the target audience of one boom period and he stayed at the top by appealing to the target audience of the other. As much as Austin tore down the barrier of the traditional face-heel dynamic, allowing the rebellious anti-hero to thrive as the protagonist while men who abided by the rules were chastised as antagonists, Cena has knocked down the traditional model of the face-heel dynamic altogether. WWE has, basically, said to its fans, in regards to Cena, “Do whatever you want.” Hence, “The Man” gets admonished by as many fans as those that love him. An entire generation of new wrestling fans have grown up thinking nothing of it, while purists have had to come to terms with it. Cena, then, best represents his era in many ways, not the least of which is how he has become a microcosm of the fact that WWE no longer specifically targets one demographic. That is very “realistic,” borrowing from the name applied to the era being transitioned into as you read.

After Cena’s class flourished, WWE and fans alike waited for the next breakout star. They waited and they waited. The game changer turned out to be CM Punk. Debuting in 2005, Punk represented the kind of talent that could be produced by the independent promotions which overtook WCWs and ECWs places in the pro wrestling hierarchy in a monopolized sports entertainment world. “The King of the Indies” he was reportedly referred to backstage in a mocking gesture. He was the head of the class of so-called “internet darlings” that, perhaps, took the ideals taught by the most famous of ECW’s alumni to heart that anybody could become a wrestling star. It took Punk six years to do something that got him noticed by the mainstream. By 2009, Punk had proven that he was an outstanding pro wrestler, but “The Pipe Bomb” dropped in June 2011 was the necessary something that he needed to break the glass ceiling and, truly, become the first new star not bred from the 2002 OVW class to earn a place at the WWE roundtable.

Punk’s goal was explicit: he wanted change (and a different kind of change than the one represented by Cena). He may not have gotten the change that he wanted, but he provided the change that WWE needed. Soon after Punk’s promo made a splash throughout mainstream media, Daniel Bryan started his rise to the top that culminated in last year’s WrestleMania main-event. WWE brought back Brock, The Rock, and Batista in 2011-2014, yet the wrestlers with the most vocal support from the WWE Universe as of 2013 were Punk and Bryan. What WWE management needed to see from the independents to take them seriously as a viable source to acquire future top stars was two fold. First, they needed to see that they could not just manufacture any old bodybuilder into a top guy. Nearly a decade of failures confirmed that. Second, they needed wrestlers that made their names, initially, on the indies in the 2000s to prove that they could adapt to their style and get over huge. Punk proved it first. Bryan proved it again. Since then, the bulk of WWE’s most promising prospects have come from the indies, with Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose topping the list. You have your typical hungry legacy stars like Roman Reigns and Bray Wyatt, but they are flanked by Cesaro, Luke Harper, Kevin Owens, Adrian Neville, Finn Balor, Sami Zayn, and Hideo Itami.

2011 was also the year that saw WWE unleash a full on assault of social media platforms. As annoying as it was at the time to see them constantly bombard viewers with this, that, and the other from social media, it paid dividends. On Facebook and Twitter, WWE often trends as much as anything else in sports or entertainment. And as much as we may have griped about it then, we now have to admit that social media is a very important cog in expanding the Reality Era scope. Online media is everywhere and social media is the driving force behind it. WWE’s leap into the future peaked with their adoption of a new business model that fully embraced the internet. The Network is the biggest risk, arguably, since betting the farm on the original WrestleMania.

There is a constant undercurrent in the wrestling world. The on-screen product and the wrestlers that it features usually reflect that undercurrent. In the 1980s, there was a sense of wonderment that shines through when you listen to the stars that lived through the paradigm shift to sports entertainment and the altered landscape that saw the dissolution of so many territories. In the 1990s, there was a palpable competition across the board. Younger, smaller athletes ascended to the top and the Monday Night Wars started and escalated. It was the most competitive period in modern wrestling lore. In the 2000s, the underlying theme is more difficult to pinpoint. It’s been five years since that decade ended and there does not seem to be a single, defining trait from it. If we were to choose a single word to stand for the idea of “figuring out what you want to be,” perhaps it would be “exploration.” When you go exploring with a purpose, you usually find what you were looking for.

March 29, 2015 is the culmination of a long and winding road. WWE reached the fork in that road a year ago and started its voyage that will run through San Francisco, onward to Dallas, and potentially much further. What seems to differentiate the recent classes from their 2003-2010 predecessors is that they have come in with an attitude that suggests that they could not care less about the way things have been and seem set on establishing a new protocol. They do not want to conform to the system, but redefine it. On Jericho and Austin’s podcasts, respectively, the three former Shield members and Bray Wyatt have explicitly stated that they have been ultra aggressive in their desire to reach the top, pushing to the front of the line to get in McMahon and Triple H’s ear like all the great ones to have come before them. Meanwhile, Dolph Ziggler stated on Y2J’s podcast that his relationship with Vince is “getting better.” Hell, he debuted in WWE back in 2005! These young guys are pushing right by him and those like him.

Its easy to sit here and make comparisons. Reigns will begin to take over John Cena’s role in appealing to the younger audience and females while antagonizing the teenagers and adult males in the process. Rollins could well become a hybrid of Triple H and Punk – a scary combo if there ever was one, from a talent perspective. Ambrose could be anything from a Jake Roberts-Roddy Piper blend to the second coming of Stone Cold. Whatever he becomes, it seems likely that it will help define the next era. Wyatt is a unique entity that draws parallels to Taker as a Phenom-like attraction/persona. When you consider his fast track on the main roster that has included matches against Cena, Bryan, Jericho, and soon-to-be Taker at the biggest shows of recent years, it certainly is reminiscent of the Deadman. Rusev is rising the ranks fast and is eclipsing his international cohorts in the process. Could the Bulgarian Brute become as synonymous with the Reality Era and beyond as the Big Red Machine has been to the Attitude Era and beyond?

Who knows what the future holds? The fun part about all of this is knowing that WWE has gone through so many trials and tribulations over the last 15 years that they seem to have finally decided what they want to be. Reigns, love him or hate him, is likely going to beat Brock Lesnar and be confirmed as a superstar for the rest of his career within the next 30 days. Even if someone overtakes his spot, Reigns will be there to combat him with a ton of credibility earned from Mania 31. His work ethic is obvious, so the odds are favorable that he is going to become foundational to this generation. If he follows down Cena’s path, then other demographics will have Rollins, Ambrose, Bryan, and others to choose from as their preferred top star. Rollins is on a collision course with Cena’s OVW foil, Orton. He could cash in his Money in the Bank contract and leave Mania 31 with as much confirmation in his future as Reigns would get from beating Lesnar. How awesome would it be if he went around gloating that he was the “one who beat the one who beat the 1 in 21-1”? What if Wyatt were to beat the Undertaker and/or combine with him for a classic match on the grandest stage? Think of the kind of impact that it would have on his career trajectory. Complimenting the headlining matches could be a reversion to the traditional stylings of yesteryear if Ambrose were to win the Intercontinental Championship.

Only time can tell if WrestleMania 31 will hold a place in history similar to WrestleMania 21 for, at this point, all that we know is that the stars on the brink of grabbing the brass ring are being given an opportunity. Yet, the theme of this decade, thus far, has been “Reality.” The reality is that change has already been happening; and more change is upon us. This generation is not taking “No” for an answer. They are the agents of change. It’s all beginning again…again.

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