John's Head

April 2, 2006

WrestleMania 22

There Is Something Very Wrong With This Company

In his daily update on the Wrestling Observer website, Dave Meltzer wrote the following:

“--As far as what is going to happen at Mania, just yesterday alone, they changed major match results and finishes five times. It was crazy as Vince just kept changing his mind and the indecisiveness has made any post-Mania planning almost impossible. People involved are "losing their minds" as stressful as it has become.”

If this is accurate, and I get the impression there's a lot of truth there, this isn't surprising in the least. WrestleMania is traditionally the annual focal point for WWE's storylines. It's Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve rolled into one. A year's worth of major storylines are supposed to culminate this year and the new year begins tomorrow night on RAW. New storylines, new directions, with the annual draft lottery in June cementing what the next year of WWE action will be about.

If Vince McMahon is having a difficult time making up his mind as to who wins what and who comes out of WrestleMania 22 as the flag bearers of the company (temporary or otherwise), he really has no one to blame but himself. Of course, he can blame Stephanie and Creative. I know I do. They deserve a lot of blame. A lot. If one thing should become clear to Vince this weekend, it's that he's lead his company into a serious creative hole this past year and his daughter and her writers drove the tractors and brought the shovels.

The World Championship situations on both brands are a sorry mess. On Smackdown, it was the company's bad luck Batista fell to injury a few months ago. Batista was all-in-all a success story. Well-liked by the majority of the audience, Batista grew into his role as World Champion with the audience's blessing, something John Cena never got. Kurt Angle was a fine replacement for Batista as World Champion. Should he lose the title tonight? If either of his two challengers in tonight's Triple Threat were booked well leading to tonight, the answer should be yes. Unfortunately, the sentimental favorite, Rey Mysterio was shown tapping out to Angle's finisher just two nights ago. The outside possibility, Randy Orton, still has not fully recovered from the severe damage done to him by failing to turn him babyface in 2004.

In Rey's case, the stomach-turning invoking of the late, great Eddie Guerrero did him fewer favors than it helped. However, he's still the only man in either World Title match who has never held the big belt. There is a novelty to making him a giant-killer World Champion, able to overcome the odds to win. The audience is ready to accept Rey as World Champion, as a spiritual successor to Eddie Guerrero, though they don't enjoy being beaten over the head with it. But if Vince is worried whether Rey can do the job, some of trepidation must spring from the fact that his Creative team has made Rey to look as ineffectual as possible. Coming off his miraculous performance at the Royal Rumble, which should have ended the show and torn down the house despite the fireworks display planned for Undertaker, Rey has been booked to be a superstitious dope who believes in ghosts and spirits, was dumb enough to put his guaranteed WrestleMania main event on the line, and then lost that very match to a cheap roll up with Orton's hand on the ropes in front of his late mentor's family. Then he receives charity, as Orton (accurately) described it, by being reinserted into WrestleMania. Rather than building momentum week by week, creating a wave of energy leading him to the biggest match of his life, Rey has been booked to look stupid and weak, costing his team their match at Saturday Night's Main Event, and then submitting to Kurt Angle on the last show before WrestleMania. Does Rey Mysterio at the moment seem like he should be carrying Smackdown as World Champion? Not according to how he's been written. And whose fault is that? It isn't Rey's, it's Creative's. Randy Orton is creatively in better shape, positioned as the clever, crafty one pitting the two babyfaces against each other so he can slide in and RKO his way to the title with little effort. He has “destiny” on his side. But with Triple H looking like a lock to beat John Cena, is the company prepared to walk out of the biggest show of the year with two heel World Champions?

The choice is between giving the fans an unhappy ending with Orton, going with a tried and true Kurt Angle, or putting the belt on Rey, which would be both the best choice because it's the one that creates something new and exciting and the most difficult choice for Creative because it means they have to get off their asses, get behind Rey, and book him to be as miraculous as he was at the Royal Rumble every night.

The RAW side of things is an even bigger mess. John Cena as WWE Champion has been a disaster. Children love him, women love him, the men, not so much. Even more perplexing for the company is that house shows crowds of all sexes and ages seem to receive Cena well, but the moment a TV camera is turned on, those cheers turn to venomous boos. For the male fans, Triple H will be the biggest babyface since Hulk Hogan took on Andre back in '87. The crowd will pop huge if Cena eats a Pedigree and stays down for a three count. And that pop will last exactly as long as the duration of the WrestleMania broadcast. The next night and thereafter, once the thrill of seeing Cena lose is gone, the majority of the fans will realize that Triple H is WWE Champion again and they were sick of that two years ago. An even worse decision would be John Cena getting killed for the whole match, catching Triple H with the FU, and pinning him to retain. The company is screwed either way with the RAW World Title match. Yet, they stubbornly marched down this road with blinders on. It's easy to understand Vince McMahon's trepidation at the outcome: does the company want to promote more of the same or… more of an older same? That's some good booking there, Creative. There must be a golden road to money and ratings beyond either door that I can't see but they do.

The rest of the show is generally as troubling as the main events. The match no one really wanted to see: Vince McMahon vs. Shawn Michaels, ought to be entertaining and has a clear-cut ending that is obvious. What is less obvious is what the point will be when it's over. Vince eats a superkick tonight and loses. The Devil loses, God prevails, or something like that. So what? Shawn still works for Vince. He gains nothing except a small measure of revenge for the last several months of Hell he's been put through. What could make the crowd pop would be an appearance by Bret Hart, which he has publicly stated repeatedly he is against. (Doesn't mean it won't happen. It just means Bret is a liar if it does, which is no skin off of Vince's nose.)

The Undertaker has a casket match he's virtually guaranteed to win unless Creative has absolutely lost their minds. Unfortunately, we'll have to endure several minutes of Undertaker trying to create something entertaining out of Mark Henry before Kong gets stuffed in his casket.

Poor Edge. For three glorious weeks, he was a minor phenomenon as WWE Champion, then got cut off at the knees and shoehorned into a feud with a retired author over nothing much at all, just an imaginary circumstance that Mick Foley cost Edge his rematch for the title, which he didn't even do. If Edge can beat Mick Foley, it means he did what he's logically expected to do. If he loses, then he's that much further from the WWE Title than he is now and he lost to a man who wrestles once a year at most. The answer to the RAW World Title problem was as simple as Edge retaining the belt to face Cena at WrestleMania, but Creative threw that all out in favor of Triple H. And unless Cena does the improbable and beats Triple H, Edge's might as well settle in his spot on the midcard because he won't see a title match again for a long, long time. Well done, Creative. Well done.

Trish Stratus and Mickie James have the benefit of perhaps the best storyline going into WrestleMania. It dragged on too long but it's still interesting and a good match is expected out of both of them. Unfortunately, from a creative standpoint, we have a situation where the babyface looking for revenge is also the Champion who is well past the point where she should lose her title. The outcome that makes the most sense would be Mickie beating Trish for the title, but that actually should have happened a few months ago, with Trish regaining it and exacting revenge here at WrestleMania. At the end of the day, Trish could stand to be without the Women's Title for a while, but with the dearth of other competent women who could challenge for the belt, all this means is we can look forward to several more months of Trish vs. Mickie.

The only Tag Team Title match on the card is a joke. Big Show and Kane have lorded over a non-existent tag team division on RAW for almost six months and their number one contenders at the biggest show of the year are a mismatched couple of midcarders who have been booked to be argumentative incompetent clowns. Regardless of what outcome they choose, it hardly matters because there is no one for either team to face beyond this. Meanwhile, MNM and Melina are not on the show at all! Good going, Creative!

What else is on this show? Candice vs. Torrie? Seen ‘em both naked already, thanks. Chris Benoit vs. JBL? Who cares. Benoit retains, JBL wins, it hardly matters. What's sad is both of these guys were dominant World Champions two years ago and now they're likely to open the show.

Perhaps the biggest tell-tale sign of the lack of direction Creative has is in Money in the Bank. We've now established from Edge's example that the winner of this match could be and ought to be the heir to the crown for either show's World Title. (We've also established that Creative can fuck that guy over without much thought.) So one of these six men is going to get a World Title shot and has a great chance of breaking through that main event glass ceiling. And the contenders are: Shelton Benjamin, coming of a reasonably successful angle where his fat, heart-attack prone momma turned him into a winner who still gets little heat. Rob Van Dam, fresh of a year on the DL and right back on the midcard dead zone. Matt Hardy, Creative's favorite whipping boy who Will Not Die! Bobby Lashley, the cross between Brock Lesnar and Goldberg who is months away from a watchable ten minute match, much less anything close to a World Championship. Finlay, an entertaining anomaly who would be the old man in this match if it weren't for… Ric Flair, the sentimental favorite who really, really needs another World Championship to prove that 60 year old men should still be on top of the wrestling world. It'd give all the kids in the locker room something to hope for in 30 years.

Which one of those men should be on top of RAW or Smackdown?

Someone who deserves that shot is Booker T, who has been tear-down-the-house entertaining over the past several months. Booker might be hotter as a comedy act now than he'd ever been as a serious angry wrestler, but he and his almost-as-entertaining wife are booked in a comedy match against the least talented circus act WWE has seen in years. Booker will survive rolling around in worms, but he'll get nothing out of beating the Boogeyman if he wins.

And that's what the biggest show of the year is looking like. If Vince McMahon has a splitting migrane, he has good reason. What he has no reason to be is surprised at where the company finds itself. This is where the last several months of Creative's “creativity” has gotten WWE and us, their fans.

I expect to enjoy WrestleMania 22. I'm not looking forward to anything but I ought to have a good enough time. The fact is, this card and this company are comprised of dozens of immensely talented and passionate performers who will do everything they can to entertain the fans on the biggest show of the year. The endings and outcomes will not be their fault. To quote the returning Jim Ross, “The effort will be there, I can assure you.”

But an event more relevant paraphrase can come from a certain masked terrorist in a popular movie in theatres now:

“There is something very wrong with this company.”

There is more than a year's worth of evidence (at least) that something is very, very wrong with the company and drastic measures need to be taken. I don't believe the answer would be a fan rebellion that leads to blowing up Titan Tower in Stamford, but it's clear something needs to be done about the Creative people who write for this company. They're fuck ups, they don't understand wrestling and perhaps the most tragic realization of all is that their leader, Vince McMahon, is likely the heart of the problem. The good news is, Vince has shown the capacity to change with the times. He has in the past and he could again. The bad news is, there still seems to be no one with any new ideas, no one who has a new vision for what WWE, sports entertainment, and professional wrestling could be. I know it's not me. It's a good bet, no offense, it's not any of you readers either. Then who?

More of the same it is, then. So be it.

Everyone, have a great WrestleMania.