I’ve gotten rid of the sub pages for On This Day, Wrestler of the Day and I Want To Talk A Little Bit About.  I haven’t done any of those in years and there’s no real need to keep the pages there taking up space.  You can still find any of them by searching for the titles.

If you’ve followed me over the years, you know I’m not incredibly fond of HHH. He’s done a lot of things over the years that drive both myself and several other fans insane but that’s not all there is to him at all. While also being an infuriating person at times, HHH is also one of the most talented and decorated names in wrestling history. Today we’re going to take a look at his career and the good and bad over the years and look at why people need to calm down about him. Let’s get to it.

HHH has been around the WWE for going on twenty years now and there has definitely been a lot of good and bad. First off let’s take a look at the bad in HHH, which will be the shorter of these lists.

One of the biggest criticism of HHH is a fair one: he’s not as good as he thinks he is. HHH has never been one to shy away from lumping himself in there with Rock and Austin, despite there being no real justification for this. Jim Cornette once called HHH the guy that worked with the guy that drew money. There’s no denying that HHH isn’t great, but he’s at the top of the second tier of wrestlers like Bret, Shawn, Orton and Savage. There’s nothing wrong with being on that level, but there’s a big gap between it and the next level.

Part of the reason why he isn’t on that level is how badly he collapses in attempts to have the big match or big story. Now HHH has had his share of classics which we’ll get to later, but far too often he tries to have THE match and it just doesn’t work. Let’s take a look at his match against Randy Orton from Wrestlemania 25.

The story coming into the match was Orton tormenting HHH and terrorizing his family to get the WWE Title. The match wound up having a stipulation saying that if HHH was disqualified, he lost the title. This went completely against the story they had been telling and took away what the match should have been. On top of that, the match ended with HHH just beating the tar out of Orton, hitting the Pedigree and retaining. He stood over Orton like a beast over its prey and the show ended. The general reaction seemed to be “that’s it?” There was no big comeback, there was no big brutal spot, there was no real conclusion. It was just HHH standing over him in a symbolic ending which just didn’t work.

Speaking of endings, another problem with HHH is his feuds go on WAY too long. We’ll start with Orton again. These two feuded for over a year and the matches just didn’t work. Orton may have been one of HHH’s projects but the whole thing just didn’t work. The matches weren’t very good, the story just kept going and was eventually going in circles. Over the course of the feud, they managed to have three last man standing matches. As you would expect, people got tired of the story just continuing, especially with the same stuff happening over and over again.

Another good example of this and the big epic moment problems came in his feud with Brock Lesnar. The feud started the night after Brock lost in a great match to John Cena at Extreme Rules 2012 in April. The two didn’t fight until Summerslam in August with Brock winning conclusively. How did the show end? With a shot of HHH looking to the crowd and apologizing for not being able to get it done.

The feud would continue at Wrestlemania, where HHH got the win before moving on to Extreme Rules 2013 where Brock won the final match inside of a cage. After three matches, the series felt like a bad movie series: the first match was good but not great, the second match wasn’t necessary but was watchable, and the third match just didn’t need to happen but did anyway. HHH getting the win at Wrestlemania was the only logical way to do the trilogy, but it also drew criticisms that HHH had to get the win on the biggest stage in the match the most people would remember.

This brings us to 2003 and Wrestlemania XIX. HHH came into the match as World Heavyweight Champion and defended against Booker T. The story was that “someone like Booker T” didn’t deserve to be champion. While the storyline explanation was that HHH meant Booker’s criminal past, there were heavy racial overtones to what HHH was saying. What happened at Wrestlemania? HHH won with a Pedigree to retain the title.

That scene is a great representation of the biggest thing holding HHH back: late 2002-2004. This was an AWFUL period for both HHH and the WWE in general with HHH’s title reigns being major factors. Ignoring the creation of the World Heavyweight Championship and the splitting of the titles, HHH had some of the worst matches of his career in this stretch.

His 3 Stages of Hell match with Shawn, the matches with Nash, the Goldberg series, the Scott Steiner feud and some of the Orton matches are just dreadful but HHH just kept the title for months on end with the same matches with the same story (“I’m the best.” “No I’m the best.” Flair interfered, HHH keeps the title) and nothing ever changing despite the talent pool on Raw. HHH would finally break out of this period, but man alive was it hard to sit through.

We’ll wrap it up with something else difficult to sit through: HHH’s promos. There are times when they’re very solid, but some of those things go on long enough to plant a farm and grow your own dinner. He takes about nine breaths between sentences and drones on about THIS BUSINESS, how he is THE GAME and how he’ll prove he’s the best in the world. Long heel promos can work, but you should want to see the villain get beaten up, not change the channel out of boredom.

Now that we’ve gotten all that bad stuff out of the way, let’s take a look at the good side of HHH’s career, because there’s a lot to get to. Since there’ s more good than bad, we’ll be going through it with more of a timeline format.

He arrived as the blue blood (basically the same gimmick he had in WCW when they said he had no future as a singles guy) named Hunter Hearst Helmsley and hooked up with Mr. Perfect before feuding with Marc Mero. The character can best be described as a pompous snob who looked down on everyone for not having as much money or power as he had. He was also obsessed with people’s family history and how much better his was than yours. In other words, he was obsessed with his pedigree. His theme music was Ode to Joy by Beethoven and it was the perfect addition to his character.

The character was absolutely perfect for HHH at that time as he could play a perfect snob. With the curtseying, the huge nose in the air, the classical music and the “I’m better than you” attitude, it was nearly impossible to not punch this guy in the face. He nailed the character and was slowly pushed up the card and won the Intercontinental Title, holding it for about four months.

Next up was DX which is the character that changed everything for HHH. All of a sudden he was being able to act like the sophomoric jerk that he was but on camera and with millions of people watching him. The group turned face after Wrestlemania XIV and was put into a feud with the Nation of Domination, triggering a personal rivalry with the Rock (who happened to be the man that took the Intercontinental Title from him).

HHH’s time as the face leader of DX was some very entertaining stuff and one of the biggest reasons the Attitude Era worked. Instead of just having clean cut faces and heels, all of a sudden the faces were making adult jokes and being over the top funny. Aside from Steve Austin vs. Vince, DX was the biggest deal in the company and HHH was a huge part of that.

By late 1999, DX was all but done and HHH was moving into singles competition. He started talking about it being his time and how he would be the next WWF Champion. While that wasn’t exactly right, he would be take the title from the next WWF Champion, winning the belt the night after Summerslam 1999.

This didn’t quite work as HHH was still viewed as a glorified midcarder. He would be champion a few times around this point, starting his third reign in January 2000 (remember that, as it becomes important later). However, the most important thing for him was his on screen marriage to Stephanie McMahon, who he kidnapped, married and raped before she turned on her father and joined HHH at Armageddon 1999.

The McMahon-Helmsley Faction was born through this union and would dominate the company for the next few months. This would be HHH’s first time as a brutal dictator who ran the company with an iron first. It would also be perfect for him as HHH became one of the best heel characters ever, with the fans absolutely dying to see him get what was coming to him. HHH became the Cerebral Assassin, a man who could fight but would rather out think his opponents to beat hem.

One of the most important moments during this time was his match against Cactus Jack at the 2000 Royal Rumble. We’ll go into that match more later, but the most important thing about the match was HHH’s evolution beyond the Cerebral Assassin. For once in his career he had no way to keep his title other than to stand up and fight, which he did in one of the best matches ever.

This run went on for awhile until HHH was revealed as the man behind Steve Austin being run over by a car. The two feuded for months until they fought in a 3 Stages of Hell match at No Way Out, which happened to be another of the best matches ever. The two would form a questionable bond a few months later until HHH tore his quad in another great match with Austin against Chris Benoit/Chris Jericho.

HHH would be gone for the rest of 2001 (luckily missing the Invasion) and returning in January 2002 with one of the loudest pops ever heard in Madison Square Garden. He later turned heel and attacked Shawn Michaels, leading to a nearly two year on again/off again feud. Not all of the matches were great, but the first one at Summerslam 2002 is as good of a fight as you’ll be able to find for a long time.

We’re going to jump forward to the end of Evolution as Batista wins the 2005 Royal Rumble and chooses to fight HHH at Wrestlemania XXI. After ruining Randy Orton’s face turn (more on that later as well), HHH put Batista over on three straight pay per views, including once inside the Cell. He then took some time off and returned to feud with Ric Flair, culminating in a great old school cage match at Taboo Tuesday 2005.

Next up was a DX reunion with Shawn Michaels and I’m really not sure if I should put it in with the good or the bad. The story dominated 2006 and saw HHH and Shawn torture Vince McMahon who fought back with his handpicked associated. The matches weren’t all that good but it was more harmless than anything else. This was followed by a feud with Rated RKO which was cut short as HHH tore his quad again.

After returning in 2007, HHH would win the WWE Title again that fall and enter a long feud with Randy Orton. Again we’ll skip that and get to Summerslam 2008, where HHH worked what can almost be described as a miracle: he got a good match out of Great Khali. Many have tried but he’s the only person to really pull it off. He followed it up with a very solid feud against Jeff Hardy, eventually being in the match where Hardy FINALLY won the title.

We’ll jump ahead to February of 2011 where HHH challenged Undertaker to a match at Wrestlemania. The match was good but I never bought HHH as a real threat to the Streak. Their rematch a year later inside the Cell was FAR better though and was a contender for match of the year. Soon after HHH started a feud with Brock Lesnar, leading to a match at Summerslam 2011. Again it was good but not all that great.

Our last jump brings us to modern times with HHH and Stephanie as the Authority, the on-screen owners of the company. After months of going back and forth as a face or a heel, HHH would finally establish himself as a heel and set up his match with Daniel Bryan at Wrestlemania XXX, which will take place about three weeks after this is being written. I can’t imagine it not being great though.

Now let’s take a look at the major good themes of HHH’s career.

First of all, HHH can play one heck of a villain. As I said, that run he had in 2000 as the WWF Champion when he feuded with the Rock is right up there with Hollywood Hogan in 1996/1997 and Ted DiBiase in 1988 as the greatest heel runs ever. There’s just something about HHH talking down to people that makes you want to see a hero get his teeth kicked in which is exactly what you want in a heel.

Think about this for a minute. HHH kidnapped a woman, forced her to marry him, then got her on his side and took over the company. If that isn’t evil, I don’t know what more you could be expecting. The key to it though was he got what was coming to him at the hands of both The Rock and Steve Austin who beat his teeth in over the second half of 2000. The same thing is likely to happen when he faces Bryan at Wrestlemania. I can’t imagine the match ending with anything other than Bryan taking HHH’s head off with a running knee or making him tap out.

Speaking of matches, I can barely count how many classics HHH has had. Let’s look at this for a second. There are the two street fights and the Cell match with Cactus Jack, almost any big match he had with Rock with the ladder match in particular, his wars with Steve Austin, the triple threats with Shawn and Benoit, the unsanctioned match with Shawn at Summerslam 2002, the miracle against Great Khali, his three Wrestlemania matches with Undertaker and some very solid stuff with Cena and Flair. I’m sure I’m missing a bunch but the reality is clear: the guy has been having great matches for over 15 years now. That just doesn’t happen in wrestling.

He’s also had a natural evolution to his character. HHH started off as a blue blood who thought he was better than everyone else before switching over to saying screw that, I want to have fun. However he eventually abandoned the goofiness and embraced the core of his character: a man obsessed with power who would do whatever it took to take over the company. Now he’s in charge of the company and is trying to be civilized but occasionally loses control and agrees to do something that gets him in trouble.

Before we wrap this up, let’s bust up a few myths about HHH.

Quite often you’ll hear people say that he became the star that he is because he married the boss’ daughter. Here’s the thing: by the time they started dating, allegedly in early 2000, HHH was a two time WWF Champion (he won his third title on January 3, 2000 so it was three reigns unless they started dating on the first two days of the year), a two time Intercontinental Champion and the King of the Ring. Marry Stephanie was definitely a boost, but HHH was going to be a big star no matter what.

Another story you hear about HHH is that he invented his own world title. I’ve heard multiple versions of this, with the main story being that the Intercontinental Title was to be the top title on Raw with HHH dominating that belt. Think about that for a second and you’ll see that it doesn’t make sense. At the end of the day, Raw is THE show for WWE and having a glorified midcard title as its centerpiece just wasn’t going to work. WWE making another title made sense and HHH just happened to be the guy that got it. To suggest that it was all his idea is illogical.

Next up is the theory that he pushed his buddies (Shawn, Sheamus, Batista etc) to the moon. Does anyone really want to argue that those three weren’t going to get pushed anyway? Sheamus gets some of the loudest pops on the show, Shawn is as talented a guy as you’ll ever hear, and Batista has been a big star every time WWE has used him. Yeah HHH pushed his buddies, and they’ll all turned out fine.

Sticking with the buddy thing for a minute, why is this something that HHH gets bashed for so much? It’s a common practice in wrestling to push your friends and HHH is really one of the weakest offenders. Ole Anderson nearly put WCW under by pushing his buddies in the early 90s. Hulk Hogan had BRUTUS BEEFCAKE in the main event of Starrcade. Back when Vince took over the WWF, how many of the people that got pushed were people who were loyal to him? There are multiple other instances but the point is clear: HHH isn’t the first guy with power to push his friends and he won’t be the last. It happens all the time and it’s been FAR worse over the years.

Let’s look at one last thing: HHH dominated the world title. If HHH gets blasted for this, he’s fourth worst at best. Since the time the titles were split, HHH has won eight world titles. This puts him fourth in that span after Edge with eleven, Randy Orton with twelve and John Cena with fourteen. Edge won eleven world titles in the span of just over five years, or over two titles a year. HHH might have held the belt longer than Orton and Edge, but HHH didn’t win and lose it as often for as many cheap title reigns. While they’re boring, I’d take one of HHH’s long reigns over five of Edge’s month long reigns any day.

Overall, the good outweighs the bad with HHH. There are just so many outstanding matches and segments (I could have gone on for several more pages breaking down his matches and why they’re as awesome as they are) that they overshadow the bad stuff. The problem is the bad stuff is REALLY bad with 2003 being one of the roughest years I can ever remember in wrestling. That run he had in 2000/2001 is as good a stretch as you’ll ever find in wrestling and his period where he was the veteran who was seeing how much he had left is quite a run as well. There’s just so much to rave about there and it’s unfair to criticize him as much as people (including myself) do.

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One of the biggest complaints you’ll see today is that wrestling is booked for kids or that so many fans think the product is stupid. How many times have you heard someone complain about John Cena targeting almost exclusively to children with his promos (ignoring that this isn’t correct)? I’ve tried to explain this over and over again, but if a short version doesn’t work, why not write a lot more about it? Today we’re going to look at how wrestling is marketed to certain audiences and why it’s a bad idea to cater to certain fans. Let’s get to it.

We start in a book instead of the 80s this time. There’s a very interesting (and highly recommended) book called Those Guys Have All The Fun which chronicles the history of ESPN. Back in the early days, ESPN was known for airing almost all college basketball. As in it was aired for over three quarters of the day at times. It was becoming more and more popular, so an executive suggested that ESPN aired nothing but basketball 24/7, but a fellow executive said no way. While it was fine to have a lot of basketball, it would be a much better idea to include stuff like skiing, tennis, running etc.

Now why did the other executive suggest this? His answer was very simple (paraphrased): “If we have 19 hours of basketball instead of 24, we’re not going to lose many basketball fans. But, if we have 24 hours of basketball instead of 5 hours of other stuff, we lose the skiing, tennis and running fans.” As is the case with almost anything else in life, this can be tied into the world of wrestling.

I’ve seen every single episode of Monday Night Raw ever. Whether it was watching live or taping it, I’ve never missed an episode in the twenty plus year history of Raw. In short, I’m a lifer. There is nothing I can imagine WWE doing that is going to make me stop watching the show and they have my full loyalty. I’m sure there are a lot of other fans who are in the same group that I am: loyal fans who are going to watch no matter what is presented.

That last line sums up the entire point of what I’m talking about: a large amount of fans are going to watch wrestling no matter what’s presented on the show. Fans that are intense in their devotion to the product, as in intense enough to go on the internet and check out sites like this one and read other peoples’ opinions on wrestling, aren’t going anywhere anytime son. Therefore, why in the world should WWE waste their time catering to them?

The obsessive fans, often called the IWC, stereotypically love people like CM Punk and Daniel Bryan while thinking guys like Orton and Cena are shoved down our throats. However, when guys like Cena and Orton are on top and guys like Punk and Bryan are clearly steps below those bigger names, the same fans keep coming back over and over again and can snap off histories and results like no one else can. In other words, they claim to hate the show yet they never miss an episode.

That’s why WWE doesn’t cater to the internet fans and why they shouldn’t: those people are going to watch almost every week and it would be a waste of potential revenue to appeal to such people. We may want to see Daniel Bryan vs. CM Punk for the world title at Wrestlemania, but the masses have little interest in seeing such a thing. While the fans that know Bryan and Punk know what they’re capable of, a lot of fans see them as just two small guys who don’t look all that interesting. How likely would you be to spend $50-$60 to see two guys who might be interesting fight?

Here’s the thing that the more obsessive fans can’t accept for whatever reason: most people that watch wrestling don’t care to see wrestling. Yeah it’s a part of the show, but much more of it is about the entertainment aspect. Companies like Ring of Honor talk about being all about the action and jazz like that, but look where Ring of Honor is: on a few television stations in less than major cities with a good PPV meaning the feed only cuts out a few times per match. Most fans likely have no idea what ROH is other than hearing it on a Punk DVD and there’s a reason for it: the masses do not care about all wrestling all the time.

If you want a more historical example, look back at the two most successful eras in modern wrestling history: the Golden Age and the Attitude Era. The Golden Age of the 1980s was all about the over the top and colorful antics of guys like Hulk Hogan. Hulk was never what would be considered a ring general, but he had a formula that worked out as well as anything else ever has. Look at Wrestlemania III. There’s a match with incredible action that changed the way wrestling worked, and on the other hand we have the biggest match ever. Which do you think drew more people to the show?

There’s also the Attitude Era, where wrestling was a rare luxury. I can’t count how many times I’ve watched a Raw from 1999 where a match ran about two minutes before someone came in for a DQ to set up more story elements. Again though, look at how much money the Attitude Era produced by comparison to times like the mid-90s or the Ruthless Aggression Era when wrestling was the focal point of the show. It’s two different worlds and the story driven shows, as in the shows booked for the masses instead of the loyal fans, are far more successful.

Let’s move on now to a more modern idea which continues to make me shake my head: the John Cena issue. One of the most common complaints you hear about Cena is that he’s booked for children and makes really stupid jokes. This is very true and I don’t argue any point of it. I also don’t argue that it’s the smartest thing the WWE can do for a variety of reasons.

First and foremost, there’s the obvious one: merchandising. John Cena appeals to children and every few months he has a new t-shirt out and it’s only $24.99 to make your kid smile because he gets to look like his hero. The NWO did it, Austin did it, Rock did it, but now Cena doing it is stupid because the shirt is red or blue?

Side note about the shirts: look at the lessons/morals the shirts are teaching kids. Austin: “Screw authority and beat up people who disagree with you.” Rock: “Be as big of a jerk as you can and insult anyone you don’t like.” Hogan: “Exercise, pray and believe in yourself.” Cena: “Work hard, be loyal and respect people.” Why do people complain about Hogan and Cena’s catchphrases? Austin, Rock and the NWO basically tell people to cause as much trouble as possible while Cena and Hogan say be good and work hard to get what you want. Those are bad things to teach kids?

Second, yeah Cena caters to kids and the jokes he makes are usually really corny. I hear all of his promos and I don’t get why people complain about them so much. At the end of the day, they’re not made for me and I’d be ridiculous to expect everything was trying to appeal to my demographic. Cena is there for kids (other than that whole year long feud with Rock where the promos were mostly for adults, as was the entire feud. The same was true with Lesnar. Cena only caters to kids though and there’s an army of fans who will tell you so) and guys like Punk, Heyman, Orton, the Wyatts, Shield and Bryan are there for older fans.

Finally, yeah Cena does a lot of the same stuff over and over again. This would be totally different than:

Right hands, middle finger, Thesz Press, Stunner

Samoan drop, spinebuster, Rock Bottom, People’s Elbow

Big boot, chokeslam, Last Ride, Tombston

Knee crusher, knee drop, cannonball down onto the leg, Figure Four

Atomic drop, backbreaker, middle rope elbow, Russian legsweep, Sharpshooter

Hulk Up, right hands, big boot, legdrop

And I could go on and on. EVERYONE has sequences they use and Cena is no different than anyone else. He uses the Five Knuckle Shuffle, but for some reason that’s stupid where as a 20 second build to a standard elbow drop is fine? You can call most of Daniel Bryan’s spots ten seconds before he does most of them. Again, it would be ridiculous to try to mix things up simply because some fans are bored by what they see in Cena’s matches.

Overall, the rabid fans that watch every week have one general problem: they watch every week. If you watch wrestling, or anything for that matter, long enough you’re going to see a few of the same things come up over and over. Here’s the thing though: there are a lot of fans who either A, don’t care that things happen again and again or B, don’t watch every single episode and don’t notice it over and over again. Wresting should never be catered to the people that watch weekly, for that very simple reason: why try to get people to watch when they’re already watching and you could bring in more fans with other stuff?

Over the last few years wrestling television has changed from a show of squashes to what you see today with the stories being advanced every week for two or three hours a night. However there are a few changes in how the shows could be presented from week to week that could help things a lot. Today we’re going to look at how WWE screws up the advertising of their show and how easily this could be fixed. Let’s get to it.

This was originally going to be part of another I Want To Talk A Little Bit About but it evolved into its own. I could get used to this.

The other day I was reading and at the start of the book there was a table of contents. It’s a basic idea and tells you what you’re going to get in the book you’re reading. Last night’s Raw (August 5, 2013) was a pretty stacked show, with John Cena, Randy Orton, Daniel Bryan, CM Punk, Rob Van Dam and Shield in action. Of all those guys, two were announced early in the show. The other six were announced as being in action over an hour into the broadcast.

Now jump with me back to 1987. The main WWF show was Superstars of Wrestling and it always had the same intro: Vince and company telling us the wrestlers we would be seeing on the card. It might not include their opponents (as more often than not they would be in a squash match) but you would see who was wrestling that day and you knew inside the first 40 seconds of the show. In other words, it was like you had a table of contents that was telling you what you were going to see on the show that night.

This brings us to today’s shows where you often hear only one or two matches at the start of the show. You can probably guess that certain people will be on the show, but it’s really a guessing game. In other words, you have to judge the book by its cover instead of actually knowing what you’re going to be getting that night. Now, this is a bad idea and let’s take a look at a few reasons why.

First and foremost, if you know what you’re getting later, there’s a good chance the fans of those people are going to stick around. Suppose you’re a Randy Orton fan. If you’re watching Raw and hear that he’s going to be in a match against anyone that night, odds are you’re going to stick around. Many fans would stick around no matter who it’s against, but on occasion it’s going to be against someone that people aren’t going to be interested in.

This brings us to the second point of advertising the matches: pick what you mention. For instance, last night we had Rob Van Dam facing the World Heavyweight Champion Alberto Del Rio. That’s a very popular former world champion in a rematch with a world champion that people would like to see. In other words, it’s a match worth mentioning at the top of the show. On the other hand, a few weeks back we had CM Punk vs. Darren Young. The way to advertise that: “CM Punk will be in action later tonight.”

Going back to Raw from last night, the main event was a six man tag between Shield and Daniel Bryan/Randy Orton/John Cena. The match was announced at roughly 9:15 and the opening bell was about an hour and forty five minutes later. That’s a big match but it’s only getting 105 minutes of time to build. This move causes another set of problems which can be rectified in just a few easy steps.

We’ll start with the most obvious problem: it’s not enough time to get the word out. If you weren’t watching in a span of less than two hours, you had no idea the match was happening by the end of the show and you’ll miss the match. These are three world champion caliber guys fighting the top three man team in years with potential world title implications. Daniel Bryan also happens to be the hottest act in the world right now and Cena is his opponent at the second biggest show of the year where Orton might cash in his shot at the title. And this gets less than two hours of build.

Here’s the simple solution: announce the match for next week’s show. It’s a simple solution: you give it seven days to build up to the match instead of half a show and people have a chance to hear about it and anticipate it. Think about Wrestlemania 28. The main event had over a year to build up and it made a fortune. It’s a simple principle: give it more time and people will be more interested.

Now what can you do in this week? You can use that social media that WWE is head over heels for to talk about the match. Have Bryan, Cena and Orton cut promos and put them on the App and have Shield respond to give the match another reason (sidebar: why did Shield come down in the first place? It was never explained, likely due to not having enough time) to happen. Have Orton Tweet about possibly cashing in the briefcase on Cena if he’s vulnerable. Which is more interesting? Hearing Orton tease a cash-in or hearing a 15 year old from Ogallala, Nebraska talk about how much he’s looking forward to something.

Think of the whole thing in practical terms. If you go to a restaurant to buy some food for the night, it’s not all in plain brown bags. It’s on a menu which tells you exactly what you’re getting. You don’t buy some mystery bag and hope you get something good in it. You look at what’s presented and pick something if you think it looks good. The same idea is true of wrestling: if you like what’s offered to you that night, you’ll stick around for the show and stay until you get what you agreed to stick around for.

It also solves another problem: what was going to fill in the rest of the card? This is one of those things that gets on my nerves with general manager characters. Suppose Orton, Bryan or Shield hadn’t come out during that segment? What was Maddox supposed to be filling in the rest of his show with? You book that main event in advance and the show is much more logical, as you have a match for the show coming in and aren’t booking things on the fly.

Booking things in advance also keeps the card from changing around all the time. Instead of mentioning something and then never following up on the idea later on because there’s no bridge to the next week, you already have a match set up in advance and can build the show around that. If nothing else it could help prevent continuity errors like something being brought up one week and never mentioned or followed up on the next.

Finally, there’s another out for the WWE by advertising the matches in advance. If a majority of the matches are announced in advance and someone sticks around because they want to see something but doesn’t like it, they only have themselves to blame. You knew what you were offered, you agreed to stick around, potentially for hours on end, and you wanted to see a match. If it turns out the match sucks, you can’t blame WWE for it as it was your idea. It’s better than having someone wait up and then say “I waited two hours for THAT? Screw this company.”

Overall, WWE has a lot of good stuff to offer its fans but it goes about telling them those matches exist very badly. Whether it’s giving them just over an hour and a half’s notice that a match is coming or not letting the match build itself up at all or offering WWE the Mystery Meat of the Day card and hoping you like what you get, there are distinct problems with the way the shows are advertised. Fix these things up and the shows would easily attract a bigger audience.

You’ll often hear about how Bobby Roode is the best thing in TNA right now and has been for the last few years. I see talent in him, but he’s not quite superstar that everyone thinks he is. There’s just something missing about him and today we’re going to look at what that may be, although it’s not as hard to find as you may think. The thing holding him back can be found in two men: Booker T and Bret Hart. Let’s get to it.

Let’s start back in 1991.

The Hart Foundation loses the tag belts at Wrestlemania VII and quietly split so Bret can move on to his long awaited singles push. He wins the Intercontinental Title at Summerslam and moves on to the world title about 15 months later. his first world title reign doesn’t go all that well and he loses the belt about four months later at Wrestlemania IX. he wins the title back at Wrestlemania X and goes on to become the guy in the WWF for the next few years.

Now let’s look at Booker T. Harlem Heat goes on sabbatical in late 1997 due to Stevie Ray’s injury and Booker wins the TV Title the night after Starrcade. Over the next few years he dominates the midcard and wins the world title in the summer of 2000. While WCW would be out of business in less than a year, Booker’s ascension to the main event was handled quite well with Booker going from a solid midcarder to the top star the company had. He transitioned to the WWF main event scene and eventually won a world title there after rising through their ranks.

On the third hand you have Bobby Roode, who also went from a successful tag team to the world title and being one of the top stars in the company. Roode held the world title longer than anyone in company history, yet I don’t think there’s much of a case to be made for his title reign meaning all that much. Bobby turned heel after a match with James Storm and held the title for about nine months, yet he never became all that big a deal. Now why is that the case?

What we have here are three cases of guys going from a successful tag team and becoming the world champion later in their career. Of these three, Booker’s first title win and reign might have made the most sense. Bret’s title win came out of nowhere at a house show in Canada that was released on a Coliseum Video called Smack Em Whack Em (check that tape out. It’s one of the best home videos ever released). Roode’s win came on Impact a few weeks after the biggest show of the year. Booker’s came on PPV (albeit as a substitute for Hogan).

So what was holding Roode back? There are several instances and all can be compared to the other two title reigns.

First of all, there’s the look of change. This one really is simpler than it sounds: when Roode became a singles guy, he looked just like he did when he was in Beer Money. Think back to Booker T winning the world title. He was wearing black trunks and boots in a very simple look, which was different than what he had worn earlier in his career. When he was in Harlem Heat he had worn a singlet and when he had been in the midcard it was a pair of long tights.

It doesn’t sounds like much, but the attire a person wears to the ring can mean a lot. Think back to Hulk Hogan. He’s by far the biggest hero of all time and when he turned heel, the look started to change. He was wearing black, he had a beard, and started wearing sunglasses. Jericho switched to trunks when he turned heel and Undertaker is always altering his look, even a little bit at a time. Bret and Roode had the same look they had had for years before winning the title: a singlet for Bret and trunks for Roode.

Another thing that slows Roode down is his name: Bobby. I know he’s had that name for years, but it sounds like the name of a nine year old paper boy, not the world heavyweight champion. Look at some of the biggest names ever: Hulk, Savage, Stone Cold, Rock. Then we have Bobby, which sounds like it belongs on the Mickey Mouse Club. I know it’s minor but I have no idea why he changed it from Robert, which at least sounds more serious.

Back to the big things, let’s take a look at the finishing move. What is Roode’s finisher? The exact answer doesn’t exist, as Roode has several of them. I’ve seen him get wins with a Crossface, a fisherman’s suplex and the spinebuster. The Crossface doesn’t work for him as a heel due to wrestling law #84: top faces shall not submit. The fisherman’s suplex is ok at best and the spinebuster is so common that it’s barely a finishing move at all.

On the other hand look at someone like Hart. He had one and only one move and it was OVER when he hooked it on someone. Booker started using the Bookend around the time of his main event push as well and there are others who changed finishers upon getting a big push. Roode’s matches always felt like he was looking for a way to get a fast win instead of having some big move to knock someone out cold.

Now we get to the most important thing of all: the way Roode won the title. As I mentioned before, Roode’s title win came a few weeks after the biggest show of the year. The details of his title win make it even less impressive. Over the course of the summer, Roode had competed in and won the Bound For Glory Series, a points based competition to earn himself a world title shot. Roode had literally spent four months building himself up for the title showdown against Kurt Angle.

The match was built up, Roode was ready, it was the main event of the biggest show of the year….and Roode lost. Angle cheated to retain the title, but at the end of the day it was Roode getting pinned in his big moment. Roode would go on to win the title about two and a half weeks later, but his fans didn’t know that at the time. Instead they saw four months of hope and buildup wasted on another Kurt Angle win, because goodness knows he doesn’t have enough of them in his career.

The idea was supposed to be that Roode wouldn’t know when he would get another title shot and would do anything to win in his second try. That’s all well and good, but the same result (Roode using the beer bottle to beat his longtime partner James Storm) could have been accomplished with Roode defending the title instead of capturing it from Storm. Have him say something like “Yeah I hit James Storm with a beer bottle. I’m the World Heavyweight Champion and I’ll do ANYTHING to hold onto my title.” Same result, Roode wins the match at BFG, and there’s no failure.

For comparison’s sake, look at the first title wins of the other two guys I’ve been talking about: Hart and Booker T. Bret won his first major shot at the title in a 30 minute war against Ric Flair by making him give up in the Sharpshooter. Booker T won his first world title match on PPV by pinning Jeff Jarrett with the Book End. Wouldn’t you agree that both of those results sound better than “won the title in his second attempt after botching his big chance?”

Let’s take a quick look at Roode’s title reign with the focus just on the PPV title defenses. We have: a cheating win over an injured AJ Styles, a draw against AJ Styles, a DQ loss to Jeff Hardy, a win after Sting hit Hardy with the title belt, a win over Sting after Sting knocked himself out, a win over Storm when Storm knocked Roode out of the cage, a win in a ladder match, a win after hitting Sting with a beer bottle but Sting winds up standing tall to end the show, and the loss to Austin Aries.

In other words, Roode defended the title nine times on PPV and won a total of one match either on his own or without cheating. I understand the idea of a heel cheating to win, but once in awhile he needs to do more than escape with the title. It made his reign look weak and made him look like a guy who was lucky rather than good. The same thing was said for the Honky Tonk Man during his Intercontinental Title reign and that’s not something you want for the world champion.

So does all that mean that Roode’s career is hopeless and he can never be a top guy? Of course not, as Bret went on to be the top guy in the company for years to come. It was a bad world title win and a pretty bad reign after he got his hands on the belt, but it doesn’t mean he isn’t talented. Roode is comparable to guys like Booker T and Bret Hart and both of them wound up in the Hall of Fame. Roode’s first title reign didn’t work all that well but the potential is there, which is a very important point. You might even call it the “It Factor.”

Anyone that has been following my stuff lately knows that I’m not a fan of where WWE is going right now, with the majority of my problems being with Brock and HHH. While I’ve kind of explained why it doesn’t work, it’s not something that can be properly explained in a paragraph or two. I’ve been wanting to do a piece on something like this for awhile now so this fits perfectly. Today we’re going to be talking about audiences identifying with characters and how badly things things can go when that totally misses the mark. Let’s get to it.

Before I get into this, a disclaimer: there are MANY more ways for a wrestler to get over with a crowd than the ones I’m going to be talking about here. This is NOT saying that a character is a failure if his character doesn’t completely click, as it’s almost impossible to do that for everyone. Therefore, spare me the “I don’t identify with Cena so his character sucks” jazz, because you’re both missing the point and a lunkhead for saying it, not to mention wasting my time.

Since professional wrestling got started, the idea has been to find a way to get people to pay their money to buy a ticket to your shows. This was accomplished by taking two guys, coming up with a reason for them to not like each other, and have a wrestling match for the two guys to fight it out. That’s wrestling booking in a very small nutshell, but for some reason that’s been lost over the years (there’s a LOT to be said about that but we’ll come back to it at a later date).

Anyway, the idea is you establish characters with a conflict between them and have them settle said conflict in a match. A lot of these conflicts can be very basic, ranging from “you’ve got a title and I want it” to “I lost that match because of you” to “you had to cheat to beat me so now we’re going to fight in a cage where no one can help you”. There are dozens of ways to tell a story, but the good stories are the ones that involve both people and can only involve those people. We’ll come back to that idea later on.

There are limitless amounts of characters that you can have in wrestling. Off the top of my head there has been a zombie, a patriot, a viking, desperadoes, a billionaire, a guy that likes birds, a guy that likes snakes, a plumber, a wisecracking jock, a hippie, a lumberjack and a guy from the future. A lot of those are really basic one idea characters, but some of them are well developed ideas who can adapt to any story. The more in depth the character is, the better that character is, as they can be used for more complicated stories while also being able to be placed into whatever story you like. Let’s look at some examples.

We’ll start with the biggest character of all time: Hulk Hogan. When you really think about it, Hulk Hogan in the red and yellow is a really simple character. He’s the quintessential good guy who does the right thing (other than cheating in matches), loves kids, and is an AMERICAN. Think back to the 80s and think about how many times Hulk fought some foreigner and then waved the American flag after winning a match. It was a very basic idea but it always got people excited.

Why did it get people excited? Very simple: people love their country. Seriously that’s all there is to it. Americans, and people of almost any other nationality, have a love for their country and like to see it be on top. Why do you think so many fans like professional or college team sports? It’s because that’s THEIR town or THEIR school. It’s a sense of self pride that almost all Americans share.

Another and probably better example of this kind of character is Jim Duggan. For those of you unfamiliar (how is that possible?), Duggan was an American patriot who wasn’t all that bright, but he carried the American flag in one hand and a big old board in the other. He said all he needed was the Old Glory and these two fists and he’d never stop fighting. Duggan rarely won big matches, but that loveable oaf stayed around forever because it’s almost impossible to now look at a guy carrying the red white and blue and not smile just a little bit.

Now let’s take it one step further and look at a more in depth character who was based around American values and the idea of appealing to the masses: the American Dream Dusty Rhodes. Rhodes was the common man, the son of a plumber, the American Dream. He would say “I have wined and dined with kings and queens, and I’ve slept in alleys eating pork and beans.” The idea was he wasn’t some rich guy who was paid millions of dollars and still loved America. He was like YOU and could relate to what you were going through.

This kind of common man character was the perfect opponent for the reigning NWA World Champion, the Nature Boy Ric Flair. Flair often bragged about having whatever woman he wanted, hung out with professional athletes, rode in limousines, flew in private jets, and wore clothes that most people would only stare at through high priced store windows before walking down to Wal-Mart to buy the things they could afford. Flair at one point said that his shoes were worth more than Dusty’s house.

One day on television, the yet to be named Four Horsemen broke into a steel cage and beat Dusty down, breaking his ankle. A few months later, Dusty returned and talked about how Ric Flair put hard times on Dusty Rhodes and his family. Flair didn’t know what hard times were, but the American people knew what it was. Hard times are when the textile workers are out of work, or when someone has been working thirty years at a job and is given a watch and told a computer is going to do your job. Dusty didn’t look like the modern day athlete, but he loved the people and reached out his hand to them, promising to take the world title.

This promo, called Hard Times, is widely considered the greatest promo of all time because the people could and did identify with it. People got what Dusty was talking about and as they listened, they could see what he was talking about in their own lives. The fans identified with Dusty Rhodes and what he was talking about, making Dusty Rhodes THEIR hero. As luck would have it, this hero would be facing a man who was everything the common man wasn’t at a major wrestling event, and YOU could watch it if you paid your money right now.

That’s the idea that I’ve been talking about. You had two guys with developed characters which could be put together against each other with the fans identifying with one as the good guy and the other as the bad guy. The feud was a massive success and is one of the best of all times, possibly even the best that WCW ever produced. To this day it’s still one of the best ever because it was so basically yet effectively done.

Going with the same idea, another of the biggest feuds of all time was the feud that fueled the Attitude Era: Steve Austin vs. Vince McMahon. Look at the basics of this feud. You have Steve Austin, a beer drinking brawler from Texas, facing off with a billionaire from Connecticut who was borderline psychotic and willing to allow a demon who worshipped him to burn a cross like symbol on his lawn and have his daughter sacrificed in a Satanic wedding, all to get the WWF Title off of Steve Austin using his army of hand picked Corporate Champions.

Now, how in the world can fans relate to something like that? One idea: how many people have ever wanted to beat up their boss? How many people had ever had a boss who said that you weren’t doing things the way he wanted them to or you were punished by some stupid rule? It was YOU who was out there working hard all day and keeping your company running, but your boss is the one making millions of dollars off the hard work you’re putting in. How would you have liked to crack them over the head with a chair, give them a Stunner and have a cold beer?

On top of that, there was something Austin did that Hogan or Sammartino (quick aside: Sammartino was an even more basic ethnic champion than Hogan was. New York City had a lot of Italians and that was all Sammartino was: a strong Italian. That was enough to hold the world title over eleven years and sell out Madison Square Garden about two hundred times. It really is that easy.) or anyone else did: he didn’t always overcome the odds. Think about it.

Austin was a six time WWF Champion. Here’s how he lost the belt each time: first blood match against a guy in a mask, loss in a glorified handicap match to Undertaker and Kane, lost to Undertaker in a match where Vince and Shane McMahon were both guest referees, triple threat match, lost to an American hero in said hero’s hometown four days after September 11, 2001 and finally to Chris Jericho after already facing Kurt Angle and having Angle interfere in the Jericho match.

In short, Austin wasn’t the kind of guy who always overcame impossible odds. When he was against something that no one could overcome, he lost, only to get the title back a few weeks or months later. The key to that is Austin wasn’t Superman, but rather a man like any other. He had limits and weaknesses which could cause him to lose for awhile, but he could always fight another day. That’s something that people have to do all the time, and again it allows people to identify with Austin.

I could go on for pages and pages about various other great characters and how fans can identify with them, but you get the point. Now let’s take a look at the other end of the spectrum and how characters can be very basic characters with either no room to grow or no real target audience whatsoever.

Looking back at the early to mid-90s, a very bad time for the WWF, we see guys like Friar Ferguson (wrestling friar), T. L. Hopper (wrestling plumber), Rad Radford (grunge musician), Duke Droese (wrestling garbageman), Damien Demento (weird guy) and the Goon (wrestling hockey player). All of these guys have one thing in common (well one major thing in common): There’s nothing to them.

Think about it. What is there about any of those guys that makes them good or bad? What is good or evil about a plumber? What kind of storylines can a plumber get into? Why would I cheer or boo a plumber? There’s no thought or depth to this character and he has nowhere to go with anything. It’s a one note character and due to how weak he is, Hopper didn’t last long at all. That could be said with any of these guys, talent levels aside.

Now let’s get to the meat of what I want to talk about with the characters not fitting. There are two primary modern examples of this, one of which is HHH/Lesnar which we’ll get to in a bit. First of all though, let’s jump back to the year 2011 when Dolph Ziggler held the United States Title. At this same point, Zack Ryder was becoming very popular due to his online show, Z! True Long Island Story.

On the show, Ryder began to fall for WWE Diva Eve Torres, while at the same time starting a petition to get himself a US Title shot. The fans got behind Ryder, even to the point of cheering for him while the Rock was standing in the middle of Madison Square Garden after Survivor Series had went off the air. People wanted Zack Ryder and he was all of a sudden the hottest guy in wrestling.

A month later, Ryder got his US Title shot at TLC and won the championship to blow the roof off the building. The fans had gotten what they wanted and their hero had delivered what he promised them he would do if just given the chance. Around the same time, Eve started noticing Zack, meaning that Ryder was getting the cherry on top of the US Title. Life was perfect for Ryder, at least for now.

Soon after this, Kane started targeting Ryder’s friend John Cena. Cena came back at Kane, so Kane went after Ryder and Eve. One night Kane destroyed Ryder and went after Eve, only to have Cena make the save. Eve, in gratitude, kissed Cena as Ryder watched from the side, disgusted with his friend for betraying him like he had. Soon after this, Ryder lost the US Title and Cena didn’t really seem to care. A month or two later, Eve turned on Ryder, costing him his match at Wrestlemania. Ryder has been right back where he was before his web show ever since.

Now let’s break this scenario down. At this point, WWE’s target audience was younger people, ranging from children to teenagers. The two main guys in this story are Zack Ryder and John Cena. Look at those two. Ryder is a glorified geek who was in WAY over his head but got his one shot at glory and won the big one. At the same time, he was head over heels for a woman way out of his league and seemingly got her too. On the other hand you have John Cena. Cena was a mainstream celebrity, looked like he was carved out of stone, handsome, one of the biggest stars ever, and the epitome of the top dog.

Who do you think most people are going to relate to? Back in middle school or high school, how many people saw some guy or girl that they were completely taken by? They would saw off their own leg for a smile from the other person, but the person they wanted had no idea they were alive. The guy or girl you wanted was off with either a gorgeous cheerleader or a starting running back and wouldn’t know your name if their life depended on it. How many of you were like that when you were say, fifteen?

At the end of the day, the vast majority of people are like Ryder: awkward, not popular, a face in the crowd and have no chance to get the one that they want. Yet in this story, it’s Cena who is the hero. Cena, the star football player or head cheerleader, is the one that gets the gorgeous girl and gets to slay the giant, rather than Ryder who looks like the loser he’s always been made out to be. In this story, the dream that the common man has was crushed and given to the one who has it all, and we’re supposed to cheer him for it. I’m sure there are people out there who can more than identify with Cena, but they’re in the minority.

To better illustrate how backwards this was, let’s take a look at my all time favorite moment: Mankind wins his first WWF Championship. It’s the same basic idea: Mankind is the outcast who had few friends and was labeled a freak, while Rock was the star athlete who has been bred for success from the day he was born. Again, how many people were basically outcasts in high school and how many people were the top athlete that wound up playing pro football?

On January 4, 1999, Mankind won the title and Michael Cole sums up the entire feud perfectly: “Mick Foley has achieved his dream and the dream of everyone else who has been told you can’t do it.” That’s the entire story in a nutshell: this was the moment for fans who hadn’t even been the best and on top of the world. They could identify with wanting Foley to achieve his dream and on that night, that’s exactly what they got.

Now for the difference between Ryder and Foley (oddly enough both from Long Island and they both beat guys from south Florida to win their titles): while Foley lost his title less than a month later, Foley never was treated like an underling again. From that moment on, he was a bonafide main event star and had risen up the card after winning a major match. Ryder never ascended at all and was back where he started from a few months later. The fans had put their faith in Foley and he had carried them to a higher level.

This FINALLY brings me back to the HHH vs. Lesnar story. There are two major problems with it, aside from the matches being nowhere near good enough to warrant this kind of a feud. First and foremost, who is this supposed to appeal to? I know HHH was pretty popular, but there isn’t much of a fanbase that fits into the “13 time world champion who married into the family that owns the company by marrying the boss’ gorgeous daughter which has put me in position to run a billion dollar company for the next thirty years while getting to beat up former UFC Heavyweight Champions” category.

That’s my big problem with this. The only person that seems to gain anything from this feud is HHH. This also ties into my second problem: it’s a HHH feud. This story has nothing at all to do with Brock Lesnar, who is a once in a generation talent. Think back with me to Extreme Rules 2012 and Lesnar’s match with John Cena.

Coming into the match, Cena had just gotten done facing The Rock at Wrestlemania 28 in one of the biggest matches of all time. Cena had dominated the company to the point that WWE had to bring the Rock back to give Cena a legitimate challenge. Once that was gone, they had to bring in the former UFC Heavyweight Champion of the World to make Cena break a sweat. Lesnar MAULED Cena on Raw and at the PPV, taking Cena down with ease and laughing about it at the time.

Look back at that match. The fans start cheering for Cena because they know he’s in the fight of his life. It isn’t because they love Cena per se. It’s because they want to see the underdog somehow pull off the miracle and beat someone he’s in WAY over his head against. Compare this to HHH, who has basically only lost to Lesnar because he’s gotten caught in a hold or Lesnar’s manager has cheated, not because Lesnar is a force that can’t be stopped. It’s hard to buy that John Cena gets run over by Lesnar like a train but HHH can stand and fight Brock toe to toe.

Finally, as I said HHH vs. Lesnar is a HHH story and there’s not a huge fanbase that can get into that. Think back to the night that Lesnar destroyed HHH’s office. None of that stuff was personal to HHH. It was furniture and electronics that was paid for by the company. It shows how he isn’t a common man but rather a corporate guy who can fight. For a company that is supposed to be targeting kids, it’s kind of hard to accept them getting upset over a bunch of furniture being destroyed.

On top of THAT, Brock Lesnar is just a warm body in this feud. Think about it like this: you could put ANY monster heel in this feud and it would be the same story. You could have Big Show, Mark Henry, a heel Sheamus, or any other big strong guy you wanted to have in Brock’s role and the story would be the same, because the story is about HHH. When Lesnar fought Cena, ONLY Brock Lesnar could fit in that role because ONLY Brock Lesnar was a force that Cena had never faced before. In short, both characters have to fit the story. Dusty Rhodes’ common man character doesn’t work without a rich man in Flair to play against.

To wrap things up, that’s why I don’t like HHH vs. Lesnar: it’s a Triple H story instead of a Brock story, and it’s really hard to get behind a HHH story as there isn’t a huge fanbase that can identify with him. That would be fine if their matches were blowing the doors off the place, but they’re simply not doing that. They’re good, but not nearly good enough to warrant a year long feud.

In general, that lack of depth can be made up for by having the audience identify with one or both of the characters, such as in all the examples I gave you. Almost no one is going to be rich like Vince, but a lot of people can identify with having a boss they want to beat up. Identifying with the audience is one of the hardest things to do in wrestling, but if you can pull it off you have (in theory) the hardest part done and the booking can take care of the rest.

I mentioned this in another post and I had planned on saying something short about it, but the more I thought about it the more I realized it deserved something big. I mentioned that Stone Cold Steve Austin was a near perfect character and today we’re going to look at why that’s the case. Austin is one of the few if not the only character ever to be both completely over the top while also being one of the most realistic. I’ll explain what I mean by that in a bit so let’s get to it.

First and foremost a clarification: I’m talking about Stone Cold, not Steve Austin in general. I’m talking about roughly the period from the day he started defying authority and ending at Wrestlemania X7 (with a few exceptions past that date). Before then his character barely existed and after that it changed for the worse, although he was always talented enough to get whatever he was doing. Austin is on the list of people you hear about who could read the phone book and entertain an audience for hours.

The easiest way to sum up the Austin character in a nutshell is with a famous movie line. In the movie Network, one of the characters says “I’m as mad and I’m not going to take it anymore.” That is Steve Austin in one sentence. Austin was tired of playing second fiddle to all of these older guys who were given better spots than him because they had been around longer. He felt that the spots should be based on how good you were, not when you started in the company.

This was perfectly illustrated at the 1996 King of the Ring which is commonly considered Austin’s coming out party. In the finals, Austin beat Jake Roberts who was back in the WWF for “one more run” as a nostalgia character. Following the match, Austin cut his legendary Austin 3:16 promo, talking about how Roberts may be a legend, but he just got beat and there was nothing anyone could do to stop Austin’s rise.

What followed was the feud that made Austin, as he fought the ultimate current legend, Bret Hart. While Bret beat Austin at the Survivor Series, Austin continued to torment Bret, cheating him out of the Royal Rumble and costing him the world title a few nights later on Raw. This all lead us to Wrestlemania and the I Quit match between the two of them where we saw some of the best storytelling ever.

The basic idea of the match was simple: Bret was as submission master but Austin would never say he gave up. At the end of the match (one of the best ever and well worth seeing if you somehow haven’t), Austin was bleeding terribly and finally passed out in the Sharpshooter to give the win to Bret. Now notice something very important here: Bret could not stop Austin. All he did was slow down what was coming and hope to survive it.

This brings me to my second point: Austin wasn’t just a character. He was a revolution and a new way of thinking in wrestling. The reason for his mass popularity though was he captured the thoughts of the audience. Austin was the voice of the voiceless, in that people are always tired of being told that they have to wait their turn no matter how good they may be and are tired of putting up with corporate suits telling them to work within a system and other various excuses to avoid answering the complaints people had.

In September of 1997 (don’t worry we’ll come back to the summer months later), Monday Night Raw was broadcast from Madison Square Garden for the first time. Around this time, Austin had been injured in a match with Owen Hart and might not be able to wrestle again because of it. Vince had told Austin to work within the system, to which Austin responded with the first of many Stunners to the boss. In a word, the building erupted. As I said before, it was the audience channeling themselves into Austin and getting to do something they had always wanted to do but never could do in real life.

What followed over the next three and a half years was a path of destruction by the rebel Austin. He did everything from fill Corvettes with cement to blowing up buses to pretending to shoot Vince in the head to spraying down the Corporation with beer and everything in between. The entire time though, Austin was rebelling. This is another of the keys to why Austin was a perfect character: he DID things rather than merely be labeled as something.

In a word, Austin was a rebel. That’s the single word definition of what his character was. Now, can you imagine if he had come in with the name “The Rebel”? Dick Slater had that exact same name back in the late 80s, and remarkably almost no one remembers it. He came out in a Confederate flag vest and that’s about it. We were simply told what his gimmick and character were, as opposed to being SHOWN what the character was.

There’s an old saying which is a cliché, but in this case it’s the absolute truth: actions speak louder than words. That’s one of the reasons Austin’s character worked: we got to see him doing all this stuff. This is true with any wrestling character. Look at the gimmicks like Duke Droese, Henry Godwinn and T.L. Hopper. We were told immediately what these guys were and that was about the extent of their character development.

Now look at someone like Razor Ramon, who debuted with a series of vignettes of him in Miami being a jerk. Those promos told us everything we needed to know about Ramon and all we were told directly was that Ramon was “the bad guy.” Again, it’s about seeing these people do things rather than being told about them. Austin is the epitome of this because the actions he took were huge.

Jumping back to the summer of 1997, we’ll get into another reason why Austin worked so well: he was allowed to be seasoned. Today one of the major problems is pushing people to the main event before they’re ready. A legitimate case could have been made that Austin was ready for the world title after losing to Hart at Wrestlemania, but instead he was given another year of feuding with first the Hart Foundation and then a brief run against the Nation of Domination before entering the world title scene.

Now while Austin won his feud with the Nation, defeating Rock for the Intercontinental Title to end things at D-X In Your House in December, he didn’t have the same kind of luck against the Harts. In his war with the Hart Foundation, Austin regularly lost. He lost to Bret at Survivor Series, he lost to Bret at Final Four, he lost to Bret at Wrestlemania, he beat Bret by DQ at Revenge of the Taker, the Foundation cost Austin the title at Cold Day In Hell, and Austin’s team lost at Canadian Stampede. Austin completely lost the Border War, but he wasn’t on Bret’s level yet.

This is something I can’t emphasize enough: Austin lost. A lot. People often forget that Austin was a SIX TIME WWF Champion. That’s a lot of times to win and lose a world title. When you look back at it, he didn’t hold the belt long other than one reign. His first reign lasted about three months, his second reign lasted one day less than the first, his third and fourth reigns were under two months each, and his sixth reign was less than two months. Only his fifth reign, the one in 2001 when he won the title from the Rock, lasted a good amount of time and it wasn’t even six months long.

Let’s look at how Austin lost the title each time. The first time was a first blood match to a masked man. The question my friends and I asked back then was “how can he make a guy bleed when he can’t get to his face?” Austin couldn’t do it. The second time was in a glorified handicap match against Kane and Undertaker. Again, these odds seemed impossible and Austin failed. The third loss was against Undertaker with both Vince and Shane McMahon as guest referees and Shane fast counted him.

In other words, when the odds were stacked to the roof against Austin, he usually lost. Think about that and think of how rare it is. There was no Superman comeback. Austin didn’t beat four guys on his own. Austin didn’t come up with some cute way to keep the belt. He lost and that was it. Here’s the secret the WWE seems to forget today: you can win a title back. Of the five times Austin regained the title after losing it, three of them were less than six weeks after he lost it in the first place.

This is what I was referring to when I said Austin was both over the top as well as realistic. Rather than making a superhuman comeback, he would lose. At the end of the day, it would have been REALLY hard for fans to buy Austin beating both Kane and Undertaker in the same match. If nothing else, it’s bad for business because why should I believe Kane or Undertaker could beat him one on one if they couldn’t do it together? Also, it doesn’t hurt Austin to lose in a situation like that because it’s not like he missed a layup or something. He lost to the most dominant pairing in company history. It was a much smarter decision to have Austin go down and get the title back later.

This brings us to the final reason why the Stone Cold character worked so well: he was really entertaining. I mentioned this earlier but Austin is one of the few wrestlers where he could make eating a sandwich entertaining. Austin could do anything from drinking beer to singing Jimmy Crack Corn to Stunning people to shouting WHAT over and over again to singing the Rick Roll song (Youtube that one. It’s hysterical.) to telling funny stories and people would be entertained. Look at him now as after his wrestling career is over he’s enjoying a decent career as a B-movie action star.

The other side of Austin’s entertainment value is his ability in the ring. People often forget how excellent of a pure wrestler Austin was. Think about to some of the matches he had with Bret, Rock, Foley, Benoit, Angle, Jericho, HHH and I could go on. With Austin, his work on the microphone is so good that it’s constantly overshadowing his work in the ring. To give you an idea of how good he was, according to Meltzer, Austin has two five star matches, the same total as Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels.

Overall, Stone Cold Steve Austin was one of the best characters of all time because he was both realistic and over the top as well as incredibly entertaining. He connected with an audience that wanted to express themselves but couldn’t as well as never going so far overboard that he was unrealistic in the ring. On top of that, he was an excellent in ring wrestler that had one of the best collections of matches that anyone has ever had. Austin might be as close to a perfect character as there has ever been.

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.

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.