Given the recent storyline of Brad Maddox, this got me to thinking.  Do you like the use a referee in a storyline?To me, it’s hard because other than a crooked one, there isn’t much of a storyline you can use for them.  They tend to be best kept in the background, as they’re supposed to be impartial instead of interfering in an angle.  A crooked referee can work, but as with anything else they need to be used sparingly.  I wasn’t a fan of Maddox, as most of the story is based around him going into business for himself, and his mere existence in the match is a plot hole.

Thoughts?

No this isn’t about Vince McMahon’s sexual abilities in case you were thinking about it for some reason.  If you were, I beg of you to seek help.Why has no one used the Jackhammer as a finisher since Goldberg?  It’s a good power move but you only occasionally see it used in the middle of a match.  Goldberg hasn’t wrestled in eight and a half years, so why not use it?  It would be a good power move for someone instead of all of the neckbreakers and face first slams we get anymore.

This is one of those feuds that people always mention among the best ever, but every time I watch some of the matches from it, I’m blown away all over again by how freaking AWESOME they are. These guys had some of the best chemistry you’ll ever see in wrestling and I don’t recall them ever having a bad match against each other. I don’t really have a point to this other than I love this feud and I felt like talking about it and why it’s awesome. Let’s get to it.

Before we get to the reasons this was awesome, let’s get through the basic story of it. Vader had been around WCW for a year or two but didn’t do much. Then he was paired up with Harley Race and got a world title match against the resident superhero and WCW World Champion Sting. They fought in the Omni in WCW’s home city of Atlanta and in very basic terms, Sting got massacred. Vader beat him from one side of the arena to the other with Sting not getting in much offense at all. The beating became so bad that Vader was disqualified and Sting literally escaped with the title.

They had a rematch a few months later (to sell Sting’s injuries from the match. That’s very important as it made Vader look like even more of a monster) at the Great American Bash and things got interesting. Sting did WAY better this time, hitting Vader with almost everything he had and literally throwing him around the ring (Remember that Vader is roughly 450lbs and a MONSTER) for over fifteen minutes…..and then got powerbombed to death and Vader won the title.

Between July and December, Vader lost the title to Ron Simmons, but both he and Sting were entered into the King of Cable (This wasn’t about cable TV. This was about the ropes being made of cable. WCW was actually confused as to why most people didn’t get this) Tournament. The finals were at Starrcade 1992 and Sting had been talking about a new strategy against Vader. Watching the match, you can see Sting’s basic pattern: when he goes all insane and aggressive, Vader destroys him. When Sting takes his time and makes Vader miss, Sting takes over. Midway through the match, Vader starts beating on Sting again, but Sting tells him to bring it on, resulting in Vader being spent and allowing Sting to FINALLY catch Vader in a powerslam to win the tournament.

At SuperBrawl III there was a strap match where Sting agreed to fight Vader in a match based on power. Sting may be a lot of things, but smart has never been one of them. To the shock of almost no one, Vader completely overpowered Sting and won the match by hogtying Sting and touching all four corners. They then feuded over Vader’s WCW World Title in Europe and traded the title back and forth in a week.

Over the summer and into late 1993, they feuded with each other in a variety of tag matches with various partners. In the spring of 1994, the main event of a PPV was going to be Vader vs. Rick Rude for the WCW International Title, but since Rude had a career ending injury, the title was returned to the former champion Sting (WCW made little sense at times if that wasn’t already clear) but Sting wanted a match to earn the title. The natural opponent to pick: the #1 contender, Vader (Someone has to explain this logic to me. Shouldn’t it have been Vader being handed the title and then him having to earn it?). Anyway the match wasn’t great but it was still one of the best matches of the night.

The final match was actually a threeway involving the Big Boss Man who was eliminated early, leaving Sting vs. Vader. To give you an idea of how good Vader and Sting were, the match (through MORE WCW idiocy) wound up being about who could knock the other off their feet first (Vader won due to cheating), and it was STILL arguably the best match of the night. You could watch these two fight over a game of Chinese checkers and it would be interesting.

Now the interesting question is WHY these matches and the feud were so great. There are a few different reasons here and we’ll start with the most important one: the results weren’t obvious. Look back at the matches in the feud that I listed. A quick count shows that the results are 4-3 in favor of Vader. The key idea to this is that it’s not clear who is going to win. By comparison, John Cena and Chris Jericho have fought on PPV in singles matches or triple threats five times. Cena is undefeated. To the best of my knowledge, Chris Jericho has a total of one televised one on one win against John Cena, which was in their first match when Cena was a rookie.

Having the winner of a match being pretty obvious doesn’t make things interesting. It takes something special to overcome an obvious ending to a match. Look at Undertaker’s Wrestlemania matches for an example where this can work. It took people like HHH and HBK to make those matches interesting, because there was no way someone like Mark Henry was going to end the Streak. That’s the main reason a feud like Vader and Sting worked: it was a legitimate rivalry instead of Sting beating Vader every time, giving you an uncertainty of who is going to win. Think of it like this: it’s rare that a movie or book is as good if you’ve heard the ending, because the payoff isn’t there.

A second reason these matches worked is the formula. It’s a classic story of a hero against a monster. Sting was the undisputed top man in the company and by 1992, it was a pretty safe bet to say that he was the most popular wrestler in the world, given that Hogan was on an indefinite hiatus. Vader was an unstoppable monster that only Sting could stop and you can connect the dots yourself here. The idea of a classic story is one that you can run at any time and get a reaction. Hero vs. monster is one of the most classic stories of all time and it’s never not going to work.

Third, and arguably the most important depending on how you look at it, the matches were really good. I know that sounds simple, but that’s a very important point that a lot of feuds don’t have. Look at Flair vs. Rhodes. It’s another classic story (wealth/elite status vs. the common man) where the promos were great and the fans were into the feud, but the matches SUCKED.

Sting is one of those wrestlers that gravitates to the kind of wrestler he’s facing. If his opponent is good, he’ll have a good match. If his opponent is bad though, the match is going to suck. Vader happens to be one of the best big men workers of all time, and Sting had the power and speed combination that works perfectly against him. You had Sting selling like a madman out there for Vader, causing the crowd to erupt whenever Sting would make a comeback. Vader would then kill Sting dead with a few HARD shots and the sequence would start all over again.

Finally, the matches were mixed up. Look at the list of matches I gave you. We had title matches, tournament finals, gimmick matches, tag matches and multiple man matches. It wasn’t the same stuff every single time and you had to wait between each match to get another one on one encounter, even if it was just a little time. This is the way to keep the feud fresh, which is something that so often misses anymore. Look at the recent snoozefest known as Alberto Del Rio vs. Sheamus. There were three PPV matches and two of them ended with Sheamus Brogue Kicking Del Rio for the pin. Mix it up a little. Throw out the Cloverleaf for one of them. You know, the move that Sheamus had built up for weeks.

Overall, Sting vs. Vader is one of the best feuds ever for a lot of reasons, ranging from how back and forth it was, to how high quality the story was, to how the feud was kept fresh. You don’t get stories like this too often anymore, mainly due to how fast the turnover is in them, but when you do you’ll often hear them compared to this one. Sting vs. Vader is one of those matches that I throw on every now and then when I just want to see a fun match. Check them out, especially the Starrcade one as I can almost guarantee you’ll be impressed by something in it.

Is the instant rematch clause.  Here’s why.It’s pure laziness.  After a title change, the bookers get to take a month off from booking and give the champion the same opponent he just faced.  This causes lazy booking, bad promos, uninteresting matches, and a loss of momentum because the new champion hardly ever loses, and if they do there’s ANOTHER match in a month.  Have the challenger earn the match.  Yeah, have them WRESTLE to get the show.  Imagine that: wrestling might draw on a wrestling show.

Watching Survivor Series 2001’s battle royal and this came to me:In the NWA/WCW, if you threw someone over the top rope it was an automatic DQ.  In a battle royal, you had to throw someone over the top and out to the floor to eliminate them.  What would happen in a battle royal where you could only be eliminated by throwing someone over the top rope for a DQ?

It could never happen you say?  Well Russo came up with a battle royal where the idea was to get into the ring instead of staying out.  Is this that much of a stretch?

It’s one of my thoughts, so you know it’s going to be based in old school stuff.Anymore WWE seems to be afraid to change anything about a character.  Look at Del Rio, Brodus, Ryder, Mahal and a large group of others.  They’re pretty much the exact same character that they were a year ago, if not even less developed.  Let’s take a look at the three biggest stars ever:

Hulk Hogan – Brought in as a generic big heel.  he had Freddie Blassie as a manager, was at the semi-main event level, and probably would have won the world title one day.  Then he went to the AWA, made Rocky III, left the AWA because Gagne wouldn’t wake up and realize what he had, came back to the WWF as the REAL AMERICAN and became the biggest good guy of all time, completely revolutionizing wrestling.

Steve Austin – Originally Stunning Steve who wore flowery tights, then a Hollywood Blonde who made camera motions, then a tradition hating guy who cursed a lot, then Superstar Steve in ECW, then the Ringmaster…..whatever that was supposed to be, then himself because Ted DiBiase left and they had no idea what to do but let him drink beer, flip people off, curse a lot and be a rebel, relaunching WWF to the top of the business and winning the Monday Night Wars.

The Rock – Brought in as a plucky young guy who was just so happy to be there, gets told to die by most of the fans, comes back as a cocky black power guy in the Nation of Domination, becomes a cocky jock heel, becomes a cocky jock face, becomes the greatest promo man of all time with at least a dozen catchphrases.

Of the three biggest guys, none of these guys were anywhere close to being the guy that they were brought in to be.  Rocky at least was supposed to be a guy who was going to be a big deal.  Hogan was never going to be the number one guy in the company in his original form.  Austin….not as the Ringmaster he wasn’t going to be.  Rocky got over huge, but as the polar opposite of what he was brought in as.

Sometimes you have to try a bunch of stuff until you find something that worked.  Look at Undertaker and Kane: Undertaker was  a natural, Kane took a bunch of tries to get what worked.  Try some effort WWE.  It’ll do you good.

This is something I’ve said for years but it was very true last night:Sometimes the solution to all of the problems with your stories and your angles and everything else that is going wrong is to just have a good wrestling match.  Last night everything was going bad, the stories weren’t clicking and I was just not caring at all about the show.  Then Bryan vs. Ziggler happened and I had a new spirit for the show.  Granted after that it was quickly crushed again, but it helped a lot for awhile and it can help almost every time.

When all else fails, have a good wrestling match.  It’ll help.

In wrestling, the stories are moved forward by whatever the writers come up with for that particular feud. The stories are enhanced by the matches and it’s a combination of the two that form what is called a program. However, it’s becoming more and more common in wrestling to see the same stories over and over again. This is something that causes wrestling to be dull and therefore needs to be changed. Today we’ll look at how easily this can be done. Let’s get to it.

A few months ago, the main feud over on Smackdown was for the world title between Sheamus and Del Rio. During the course of this insufferable three month feud, one of the plot points was that Sheamus stole Del Rio’s car and drove around San Antonio with it. Del Rio pressed charges against him for it. Now that’s one way to push a storyline forward and is perfectly fine. Then a few weeks later, more legal charges were brought against Sheamus because of him using the Brogue Kick.

Think about that for a minute: in the span of the same story that stretched over three months, the same plot advancement device was used twice. Is WWE really that creatively bankrupt that they can’t come up with something new or at least something they haven’t done in awhile every few months? Let’s think about this concept a little bit more but on a wider scale.

The majority (note that I said majority so don’t mention ones I didn’t bring up) of storylines in the company are as follows: corrupt authority figure/GM under review, legal issues, a romance, someone wanting respect, or someone winning a #1 contenders match to earn a shot at the title. How many storylines can you come up with that aren’t either those or something incredibly similar to those?

This brings me to the title of this piece. Back in 2002, Booker T started talking about being up for a starring role in a (fictitious) Japanese shampoo commercial. After taking too long to seal the deal on it, Edge wound up getting the job instead. This led to a match at Wrestlemania between the two of them.

Now the match was nothing special, but this story is remembered because of how unusual it was. That’s the key change that I think needs to be done today in wrestling. Well one of them anyway. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel with these things, but you need to come up with a fresh way of looking at things. Just off the top of my head, here are some stories that haven’t been done in years that have been used to set up a match or a feud. These are all real stories that have been used before in major(ish) companies:

Attempted vehicular manslaughter

Blinding another man using hair cream (or cologne)

The crushing of a snake (tell me Santino couldn’t have a feud over this)

Racism (Direct quote: “That man isn’t a caucasian!”)

Using voodoo to harm an opponent

Fear of an object or creature (snakes and coffins have been used)

The theft and cooking of a pet

Refusing to accept help from someone

A bet

Attacking a family member

Breaking an action figure

Stalking

Taking someone else’s property

I could go on and on but I think you get the point. In short, you can make a story out of anything. It’s so easy to throw out something that hasn’t been done in a good while and make a story out of it. From the list, look at the Freebirds vs. Von Erichs feud. The feud started on Christmas Day in 1982 when Kerry Von Erich was facing Ric Flair in a cage for the world title in Dallas. Michael PS Hayes was refereeing and tried to help his friend Kerry win the title. Kerry didn’t want it that way, so Hayes’ stablemate in the Freebirds Terry Gordy slammed the cage door on Von Erich’s head. Kerry’s brothers evened the odds against the Freebirds and the groups feuded for most of the 1980s.

I could give you examples of others, but it would just be overkill. It’s so easy to make a feud happen over something that hasn’t been done in awhile but it never happens anymore. As Jim Cornette said, you can redo anything seven years later and it’ll seem fresh. That makes perfect sense, as a lot of the audience isn’t going to be the same as it was seven years earlier.

For example, back in 1992 Undertaker feuded with Kamala, who was managed by Harvey Whippleman. Undertaker destroyed Kamala and Whippleman vowed revenge. Harvey brought in the 7’7 Giant Gonzalez to avenge Kamala. The point of the feud was that Gonzalez towered above Undertaker and Undertaker couldn’t use his normal offense against him. Undertaker eventually won the final match of the feud in a gimmick match.

In 2005, Undertaker feuded with Muhammad Hassan, who was managed by Daivari. Undertaker destroyed Hassan and Daivari vowed revenge. Daivari brought in Mark Henry to avenge Hassan. Undertaker destroyed Henry and Daivari vowed revenge. Daivari brought in 7’5 Great Khali to avenge Henry and Hassan. The point of the feud was that Khali towered above Undertaker and Undertaker couldn’t use his normal offense against him. Undertaker eventually won the final match of the feud in a gimmick match.

Obvious it’s the same story, but they’re about thirteen years apart. There will be some fans that are going to notice the story being repeated and complain about it, but how many fans do you think have no idea of the Gonzalez match or more importantly, how many do you think care thirteen years later? Repeating a storyline a long time apart is fine, but doing it multiple times every year doesn’t keep it interesting. It waters the story down and makes it less effective. You can only have a GM brought before the Board of Directors so many times before it gets predictable.

Quick sidebar: GM’s need to be eliminated, or at least cut WAY down. By having general managers around to make matches all the time, it takes away a lot of the ability for feuds to form naturally. If you want to have some invisible matchmaker then fine, but you don’t have to go to the back, have AJ on the phone, have one of the participants come into her office, and have her explain the match to him. For one thing, it’s a waste of time. I know 90 seconds doesn’t sound like long, but when you do that three times a show, you’re looking at almost five minutes wasted. How many matches can you think of that don’t last five minutes? I’ll give you a hint: most TV matches would fall into this category. End sidebar.

In short, WWE needs to mix up the ways they set up and advance feuds. There are A TON of possible ways to do it without using one of the same stories over and over again. Let the guys in the feud have some input once in awhile. Let them play to their strengths. Not everyone can be placed into the same stories and get the same results out of them. Mix things up a bit and the badly stale product can be made very fresh all over again. Who knows, you might even be able to find something that people care about and want to pay to see. I know it’s a stretch but it could happen.

It’s the night of Bound For Glory 2012 and Jeff Hardy won the world title from Austin Aries. That’s not really news, nor is it really surprising based on the way the show has been built. However, in a comment about the show, someone said that Aries should have been able to continue with his reign and been given that defining win that his reign needed. This got me to thinking about another growing trend in wrestling which is going on a lot more in the WWE at this point, and it’s not really work. Let’s get to it.

At the moment, the top story in WWE is CM Punk vs. John Cena over the WWE Title. Going into Night of Champions, Cena said Punk needed to defend the title against him in Cena’s hometown of Boston to define his legacy and cement himself as the top guy. The match wound up in a draw, and now the line is that Punk needs to beat Cena in the Cell to define his legacy and cement himself as the top guy.

Now that story makes sense: Punk didn’t beat Cena (that time at least) and now he needs to do something else to end the feud with Cena. That’s basic storytelling and makes perfect sense. HIAC is in I think two weeks and there’s a good chance Punk is going to walk out of the Cell having pinned Cena (again). Let’s say that happens and Punk wins as clean as you can in the WWE: so what?

That doesn’t define Punk’s reign. Punk’s reign isn’t over yet and we have no idea when it’s going to end. It doesn’t cement Punk as the top guy. Cena has lost to Punk already at three different PPVs in the last year and a half and Punk has never been the top guy over Cena. Punk can beat the entire roster in a single match while wearing roller skates and writing the great American novel, but it’s not going to define his legacy.

Let’s take a look back at history. The most famous reign of the last thirty years is Hogan’s four year reign from 84 to 88. What is the defining moment of that reign? If there is one, it would be beating Andre, but there’s a catch to that: Hogan already was the top guy and had been for years. However, we didn’t know that was what was going to define it because no one knew what Hogan’s reign was going to end.

At the end of the day, what defines Hogan’s reign is what happened during his reign, which would be the rise of wrestling to the mainstream and the wrestling boom of the 80s. Those things happened when Hogan was on top of the company and was unquestionably the top star in the world. Let’s look at the progression of Hogan’s title reign with regards to major shows.

Hogan won the title in January of 1984. A little over a year later, there was The War To Settle The Score, which was a huge house show that celebrities attended and had a huge main event of Hogan vs. Piper. It was a HUGE show and one of the biggest moments in WWF history. Then about six weeks later, there was another show called Wrestlemania. This was even bigger and had even more celebrities and a bigger audience. Then two years after that, there was Wrestlemania III, which had over four times the audience of Wrestlemania I.

I could go on and on with countless examples of the same thing happening, but you get the point. Even after Wrestlemania III, there was no way to tell what else was coming for Hogan during his reign. The match against Andre wound up being the biggest single moment of his first title reign, but there was no way to know that until after he lost the belt. There’s no way you can define a reign while it’s still going on, as the stuff that happens one day might mean far less by comparison. At the end of the day, the War To Settle The Score was huge at the time, but the stuff it set up blow it away by comparison.

Going back to Punk and his reign now, there’s another issue with his reign: no matter how many times he beats Cena, or how many times he beats anyone else, Punk simply is not a bigger star than John Cena. Cena has been the main star in the company for at least six years now (and again, the wins over HHH and Shawn at Wrestlemania didn’t define a single thing about him or his reign. They were big wins over big opponents and that’s it) and has been pushed like a major star.

On the other hand, Punk has been pushed as a big deal for roughly sixteen months with the majority of his push being based around the idea of him saying that he’s better than Cena. Simply saying that he’s better than Cena and giving him the title doesn’t make him better. Punk’s latest thing is talking about how many days he’s been champion, but not only has Cena had more reigns, he held the title longer over a single reign. At the end of the day, Cena is a bigger deal that CM Punk.

Again let’s look back at Hogan in the 80s. This is basically a carbon copy of the Mega Powers from the late 80s, with Cena and Punk originally being friends (by WWE’s standards) in the early days of Punk being champion. Then Punk kept winning and holding onto the title, but no matter what he did or who he beat, he simply wasn’t overtaking Cena in the eyes of the fans. Back in the 80s, Hogan was always a bigger star than Savage, Savage eventually went insane, and eventually Hogan and Savage had to have a match over it.

Did Savage’s match with Hogan define his reign? Of course not. It ended the reign and Hogan was champion again for another year. Savage’s reign is now defined as being important because it happened during Hulkamania. That’s another quick thing: not every title reign has a defining moment. Often times the definition of the reign is determined as a whole instead of a single moment or match.

In short, this concept of saying a moment defines someone or a title reign or anything like that is nonsense. Simply saying that a match or a moment defines the champion’s reign doesn’t make it so. We have no idea of when the reign is going to end and it could be years to figure out what the reign means. We probably won’t know what defines Punk’s reign until after Punk’s career is over, because we don’t know how this reign will stack up to future reigns. He might have another reign that blows this out of the water in terms of length or quality, which is why you can’t say that it defines anything about him.

The other thing to remember is that Punk flat out is not a bigger star than Cena and a single win over Cena isn’t going to make him a bigger star. Like I said earlier, even if Punk wins over Cena, so what? He’s done it before and it didn’t make him a bigger star, so why would this make him a bigger star now? I get that it’s storytelling, but it’s a stupid thing to say because it doesn’t make sense when you think about it. Punk isn’t going to be the biggest star on the show, at least not while Cena is around, and that’s all there is to it.

This is another internet wrestling/wrestling in general obsession that I don’t get.Goldberg debuted in 1997, won the US Title in spring of 1998, won the world title in July of 98, lost it in December, feuded with Hall and Nash until the summer, left for a month or two, came back and feuded with Sting, feuded with Russo and hurt his arm attacking the limo, missed four more months, came back, turned heel, turned face, restarted the Streak, and got hurt again in January and was never seen in WCW again.

Then he debuted in WWE in March of 2003, feuded with and beat Rock, feuded with HHH over the summer and won the world title, lost the title in December, feuded with Lesnar and had a horrible match with him at Wrestlemania 20.

That is Bill Goldberg’s American wrestling career, with every major moment listed in two paragraphs.  Goldberg last appeared in a WWE ring over eight and a half years ago, or longer than Austin and Rock’s WWF careers.

So why is the audience still obsessed with the guy?  You hear his name chanted anytime someone goes on a winning streak, people seemingly drool over the idea of him coming back, and people keep wanting him to come back for one more run.  Why?  What is this obsession with Goldberg?  I don’t get it at all.  He’s going to be 46 in December so it’s not like he’d have a long run in him.  His entire career ran for about five years yet people STILL want him back.

Someone explain this to me.