[Apologies for the delay. Between Hurricane Irene and then getting called in for jury duty, any momentum I had in regards to this blog was thoroughly destroyed.]
I didn’t need CM Punk to help turn everything in the WWE upside down in order to blog about the company. But it certainly hasn’t hurt. If anything, it’s allowed for me to be fairly positive in regards to wrestling. WWE had been maintaining a status quo for far too long, but as that gets shaken up, they seem to be improving.
As of late, Raw has been entertaining. However, the biggest problem for the company - which I’ve mentioned numerous times - has been that Smackdown hasn’t measured up in quite some time. That all changed as Triple H announced the end of the roster split. And it’s about damn time.
Oh, sure, I’ve read in an interview or two that this Supershow thing is only temporary. But let’s be real: barring some kind of ratings or attendance disaster, WWE will not go back to a split roster. It’s a concept that has run its course, which is why no one has really complained since the announcement.
There can be little question that the roster split WAS a good thing. At the tail end of the Attitude Era, the company was ready to burst at the seams with talent, many of who were getting less than they deserved. Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit (who?), Rey Mysterio, and at least a few others would have had a much harder time getting the World Title runs that they clearly deserved had there only been one major strap.
But that laundry list of guys who deserved the belt is basically gone. Christian was the last major holdout as far as people who needed a title run on their resume’. In my book, the moment they threw the belt on Jack Swagger on a whim was the moment it was clear that the roster split needed to end as soon as possible, and that one of each title would do just fine.
I suppose that’s the growing elephant in the room, really – Orton and Del Rio are running around on both shows, each with his own World Title. To the average mark, it’s clear that the toughest guy in the WWE right now has to be Punk, Cena, or Orton. So, theoretically, one of them should be an Undisputed Champion. The problem is, Orton has clearly been “the OTHER champion” for his entire run on Smackdown, only holding the strap because someone has to do it, and they don’t want anybody else to do so right now. Eventually, Orton is going to have to face other big babyfaces like Punk and Cena and WWE will have to decide the pecking order.
What I’m getting at is that, if there were one major title, it would go to Del Rio. I addressed a few weeks ago why that’s a little bothersome to me, but, hey, WWE has wanted him to be champion for a while, so at least it feels like there’s a purpose to having him wear the belt. The big problem with that, though – and I’ll have to get to this at another time – is that Del Rio and his feud with Cena isn’t the most interesting thing going on right now, and WWE knows it.
If one of the goals of ending the split is to make the titles more meaningful, then the belt has to go on the most credible, or at least the most interesting, Superstar. To have it on anyone else implies that being Champion isn’t meaningful and that the belts are, in fact, just props. Our attention should not be drawn to that fact. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – the World Title shouldn’t be a revolving door where everyone gets his turn. It should go to the biggest name for the purpose of being a draw, which is why I can practically guarantee you that Cena will be Champion going into Wrestlemania to fight The Rock (I would actually very much like to be wrong about this, because that match is already huge enough as it is).
Meanwhile, the Tag and Diva’s Titles are already shared between shows, and neither Cody Rhodes nor Dolph Ziggler needs the mid-card title that they possess.
But let’s move past the importance of the titles for a moment. The biggest concern with the roster split seems to be that a lot of the mid-card talent is going to get the proverbial shaft in regard to TV time. That’s a valid concern, but I think that 1.) Survival of the fittest mostly reigns true in the WWE. If a Superstar is worth putting in the spotlight, he’ll probably get there and 2.) The powers that be in the WWE aren’t as dumb as they sometimes appear to be. They wouldn’t jump into something like without having some sense of how to utilize everyone. Just because Superstars can be used on either show doesn’t mean that they MUST appear on both. If anything, I think mid-carders have more of an opportunity to appear since they can now be on either show.
The main event of this week’s Raw was the first obvious example of what we’re going to be getting with the roster split abolished. I love the concept of elimination tag matches, but I have to take the time to state that I have always despised WWE’s way of booking them. Go back and watch some old Survivor Series pay per views and you’ll see how frustrating and redundant these things have always been.
First, let’s look at the participants. The match essentially consisted of John Cena, Sheamus, Christian, and five other guys who the WWE doesn’t currently deem relevant (bogus thinking, by the way, but I’ll get to that at another time). Right away, this is a recipe for disaster, as it means that the booking team will do anything to those five guys in order to setup whatever scenario they want for the match, regardless of how badly any of them needs to be buried or portrayed inconsistently. It doesn’t matter that both Swagger and Ziggler have failed to pick up a big win in quite some time – they’re going to wrack up eliminations so that they seem to pose a big threat to Cena in the end, dammit!
Lesson #1 in elimination tag matches is that you don’t want to be a mid-card babyface. You’re going to end up looking bad. Morrison and Riley were treated like absolute fodder because WWE absolutely can’t resist having their big faces being forced to come from behind. One particularly painful example of this was at a Survivor Series few years ago when Triple H and Jeff Hardy buried an entire team full of upper mid-card heels who had eliminated the rest of their team, but there are plenty of other examples of this over the years (Angle, Edge, and Christian vs. Booker T and the Dudleyz in a tables match during the Invasion is another one I, unfortunately, remember well). Why Barrett couldn’t get an elimination, though, is beyond me.
The only real mystery to this match was how they were going to spare Sheamus and Christian from looking too bad. Once they were eliminated, there was no question as to what was going to happen. I don’t have a problem with Cena winning – after all, Swagger basically screwed Ziggler over along the way - aside from the predictability of it all. Why not have Del Rio cost him the match? It seemed that the ultimate point of the match was to develop individual feuds, and, in all fairness, it did just that. But on its own terms, it was frustrating, and really made some people look bad without reason.
That seems to be reflective of a general problem WWE has always had when it comes to mixing main eventers with mid-card talent. Look at the Royal Rumble every year. WWE will toss out the credibility of any number of mid-card talents in order to make one main eventer look marginally better. And it’s always been that way. Case in point: the handicapped match.
With all that said, though, the bigger picture is that pretty much everyone who WWE has any desire to utilize at the moment got used. That could change – we’ll have to wait and see, but it’s hardly impossible to give everyone TV time. Hell, they did it this week, even with an entire match devoted to Heath Slater.
But things generally looking good in the WWE only invites more scrutiny toward that which is being done wrong. And there’s still quite a bit of that. It’ll just have to wait until next week…
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