For some reason wrestling fans expect wrestlers to be able to do everything. I’m not sure where this comes from but I think it has something to do with the theory that wrestling is based around being able to do a lot of moves. This is another of those ideas that needs to be crushed and needs to be crushed quickly. Today I’m going to be talking about wrestlers using the moves that they’re supposed to use and why the amount of moves someone uses is completely irrelevant to their talent level. Let’s get to it.

Back in 1997, Shawn Michaels had a “knee injury” and couldn’t wrestle at Wrestlemania 13, so instead he did commentary on the world title match. That night, Sid defended the world title against the Undertaker. During the match, Sid was in control and Shawn said something like “Sid doesn’t deviate from his game plan that much, because that power takes him everywhere he needs to go.”

That right there is a lesson that a large amount of wrestling fans need to learn. Today, you hear people talking about guys like Punk and Bryan and using the words Best in the World to describe them. Their justification for this seems to be that Punk and Bryan put on long and entertaining matches with a wide variety of moves. These same fans tend to criticize guys like Hogan and Cena for using a much smaller moveset.

Think about it: how many times have you heard someone criticize Cena because “he only knows five moves”? If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it way too many times. This is a stupid thing to say for a number of reasons which we’ll cover today. Not only is this stupid to say about Cena, but it’s a stupid thing to say about anyone.

Let’s take a look at the greatest wrestler of all time: Hulk Hogan. Love him, hate him, whatever you think about him, there is zero denying that since 1980, no one has had a bigger influence on professional wrestling. No one has been a bigger star than Hogan and few have become a bigger household name (which is another article for another time as well). In short, he’s the biggest star ever in wrestling and there isn’t much to argue about that.

Now that being said, I don’t think anyone would call Hogan a ring general, in the sense that he wrestled a lot of matches the exact same way. Hogan had a formula to his matches and he rarely shifted from that formula. There isn’t much denying of that, nor is there really any denying that Hogan used probably less than ten different moves (punch, big boot, legdrop, high knee, choke, back rake, suplex, ax bomber and that’s about all that jumps to mind) in his entire career.

Here’s the big secret though: there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Hogan wrestled a very basic style and found something that worked (aside: how many botches can you think of from Hogan when he was in the red and yellow? I’d be impressed if you could come up with more than five. The guy was a very safe worker which he never gets credit for) so he never really shifted from it.

Why did Hogan never change or mix it up? Well why should he have done so? Hogan got some of the biggest reactions for well over 20 years doing the exact same stuff, and it never stopped working. Hogan got to the top of the wrestling world using the same formula and it never stopped at all. Somehow being the biggest star ever made him into the worst wrestler ever.

Another subject that often gets the same reaction is the current biggest star in the world, John Cena. I’ve never been what you would call a Cena hater. I’ve never come close to one and I likely never will be one. I’m not a huge Cena fan either, but I respect the guy. One of the biggest knocks on Cena is that he doesn’t have as wide ranging of a moveset as Bryan or Punk. This is another criticism that has a true premise (Bryan and Punk likely do have more variety in their offense) but an untrue conclusion (this makes them better wrestlers).

Cena’s offense (which has more than five moves: shoulder block, AA, STF, Shuffle, top rope legdrop, spinout slam. There, idea proven wrong) is one based around firing up the crowd at the right times. Look at his matches with Punk. I don’t think anyone would suggest that they’re boring and I don’t think anyone would suggest they’re bad. Cena and Hogan both are masters at making comebacks and working a crowd, just like guys like Bret and Shawn were.

This is what makes Hogan and Cena great: they know how to work a crowd. Look at the biggest names in the history of wrestling (in no order): Hogan, Cena, Rock, Austin. What do these four have in common? Among many other things, they play to the crowd. That’s what makes them great. They get the fans to care about them and get the crowd to care about them. The true test of the greatness of a wrestler is the amount of a reaction they can draw from an audience.

Think of it like this: when is the last time you remember Cena coming out to no reaction? Ask the same question about Rock, Austin or Hogan. The people respond to them and care about them. How many wrestlers have you seen come out and no one moves? How many times have you seen a tag match with the hot tag without a reaction from the crowd? The match may be fine from a technical standpoint, but no one cares at all. I can’t count how many indy matches I’ve watched with a lot of flips and high flying moves and ten minutes after the match I can’t remember the people in it. That’s not a good sign.

Let’s take a look at another side of this. Another criticism of guys like Cena or Hogan is that they don’t know how to perform moves like Punk and Bryan do. Is this honestly believed? Do you think Cena couldn’t do a hurricanrana if he tried to and practiced it? Let’s take a look at this from the other perspective: what do you think would happen if Punk tried to AA the Big Show? Even with months if not years of physical training, do you think he could pull it off on that frame? Cena uses his physical abilities in the right way. Here’s another example of that which might make a little more sense.

When the names of worst wrestlers in the world are brought up, one that is often mentioned is The Great Khali. Usually when people say this, I roll my eyes because it’s clear these people have little idea what they’re talking about. Khali is legitimately over 7’0 and weighs probably 400lbs or so. He has physical attributes that only a handful of people on the planet have. In other words, almost no one in the wrestling world are built like Khali.

SO WHY WOULD PEOPLE WANT HIM TO WRESTLE LIKE EVERYONE ELSE??? Khali doesn’t run the ropes or use armbars and wristlocks because it would be REALLY stupid for him to do so. He’s a freaking giant, meaning that everything he does is enhanced. Khali using a simple move like a chop isn’t the same as say Michael McGillicutty using a chop. You’re talking about a guy’s arm probably being ten feet off the ground and coming down with 400lbs of weight powering it. His size alone makes it look painful.

No, Khali can’t get down on the mat like a Bret Hart or fly through the air like a Kofi Kingston, but Bret Hart can’t make power moves look as devastating as Khali and Kofi can’t realistically use a chokebomb as a finisher. It would make no sense for them to try because that’s not their natural strength. Complaining because Khali can’t perform basic wrestling moves is ridiculous because he doesn’t need to perform them to be effective.

In short, the idea that a wrestler’s ability is tied to the amount of moves that he uses is ridiculous. To say that for example Daniel Bryan is a better wrestler than Cena because he uses a ton of submissions makes no sense. If that’s what determined who the best wrestlers in the world were, William Regal vs. Dean Malenko would have headlined about seven Wrestlemanias in a row. Wrestling is a performance first, not an athletic event first. It’s about using what works, not using everything there is.

This is one of the things that fans always say needs to happen. I mean you hear it CONSTANTLY, and now it seems like this is actually happening. What I don’t really understand is why this is something that so many people want. When you think back, there haven’t been very many times when there was a strong tag team division. There’s a strong case to be made that it’s only happened once in WWF history. Today we’re going to take a look at the tag team division and why people want it back so much. Let’s get to it.

There’s no argument to be made that the pinnacle of tag team wrestling in the WWF is the late 80s. In that time you had teams like the Hart Foundation, Demolition, the British Bulldogs, the Dream Team, the Killer Bees, the Powers of Pain, Strike Force, the Brainbusters, and I could probably come up with at least half a dozen more. There were TONS of teams that could win the titles at any given moment.

Then around 1991, things changed and they changed in a hurry. There were four men that caused these changes and basically killed tag team wrestling in the company forever. We’ll start with the obvious two: Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels. After Wrestlemania 7, the Hart Foundation (as well as Demolition) split up. Neidhart (we’ll get back to him later in a tangent) would go on to do nothing of note while Bret would get a push that would last for the next six years.

In the fall of that year, another team was starting to have some issues. This team was known as the Rockers and was comprised of Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty. They were hitting their peak as a team, showing continuity the likes of which were rarely seen in the WWF, before Shawn started having a big head. It seemed that the team was on the verge of splitting when they met face to face on the set of the talk show The Barber Shop in December of 1991.

On that show, in probably the most famous tag team split ever, Shawn Michaels superkicked Marty and rammed him face first through a window, completely splitting the team and establishing himself as the a fast rising heel. Shawn would also go on to greatness, feuding with Bret on and off for five years while putting together one of the greatest in ring careers of all time.

This is where the whole division started to fall apart. Instead of building teams for the sake of having teams, it was about putting two guys together to recreate the kind of breakup that Shawn and Marty had, or splitting them off like the Harts and finding the new Bret Hart. What the company didn’t get was that it wasn’t the split that made the new guys big stars, but rather the fact that Bret and Shawn are two of the most talented wrestlers of all time.

Look to modern tag team wrestling for proof of this. Well by modern I mean about three years ago but you get the idea. When Miz and Morrison split up, the crux of their feud was over which one of them would be the Jannetty. Just the idea of which would be a success (and dang were most people, myself included, wrong on which one would be the star of the team) was enough to warrant a feud.

This brings me back to Neidhart and that tangent I mentioned earlier: why is the weak member of a team called the Jannetty? I’ve touched on this before, but Jim Neidhart is WAY more of a dud than Marty Jannetty was after his team split. Once the Rockers split, Marty won a tag team title of his own with the 1-2-3 Kid and he won it seven months before Shawn did. Jannetty also won an Intercontinental Title, beating Shawn in a match that won Match of the Year from PWI.

Now by comparison, what in the world did Jim Neidhart ever do without Bret as his partner? He never won a title, he never had a memorable match, he never had any notable success AT ALL in the WWF without Bret. None. He was Owen’s lackey in 1994 and was part of the Hart Foundation in 1997, but other than that, Neidhart did NOTHING. If you want to talk about a team with two guys having completely opposite careers after the split, it’s Bret and Neidhart, not Michaels and Jannetty.

Back to the subject of what killed the tag division, there are two other men that had a big role in this: Hawk and Animal, the Legion of Doom. Now before I get into this, I want to make it clear that I was a HUGE LOD fan. I had an LOD hat, I had an LOD shirt, I ate Legion of Doom cereal, and yes that really existed. However, there came a point where there was no one that was going to be able to beat the LOD and everyone knew it.

Think about it: what tag team could give a legitimate challenge to the Legion of Doom? This was a team that had gone toe to toe with the Horsemen in the NWA and now were here, beating up everyone in sight, including the formerly dominant team of Demolition (how those two never had a big PPV match is one of the great wrestling mysteries of our time). As cool as the LOD was, there are only so many places you can go with them as champions.

At the same time the LOD was on top, the competition REALLY dried up as well. You only had a handful of other teams, with names like the Beverly Brothers, the Natural Disasters, and the team that took the titles from the LOD (in a match that was specifically never filmed), Money Inc. That’s kind of a far cry from Demolition, the British Bulldogs and the Brainbusters.

After that, the tag division went into a total funk in the 90s, with teams like the Smoking Guns and Owen/Yokozuna and a bunch of other pairings that most people don’t remember dominating things. Then we reached the more modern version of tag team wrestling in late 1997 when on Shotgun Saturday Night (a show that deserves to be looked up by you Attitude Era fans), two guys said they were tired of fighting each other and decided to team up.

These two were former multiple time tag team champion Billy Gunn and the Road Dogg Jesse James, who formed the team known as the New Age Outlaws. The Outlaws would dominate tag team wrestling for the next two years, winning five tag titles, a record at the time. To give you an idea of how dominant the Outlaws were by comparison, other than them, no team from May of 1997 to June of 2003 held the titles for longer than three months. La Resistance, the team that broke that streak, won them after the brand split when there were two sets of titles.

The Outlaws lost their final title in February of 2000 to a new team called the Dudley Boyz, kicking off what is incorrectly considered a renaissance of the tag team division. Over the fourteen months, the Hardy Boys, Edge and Christian, and the Dudleys won a combined thirteen tag titles, with the final change between the teams coming at Wrestlemania X7. Between February of 2000 and April of 2001 (X7), three teams (Right to Censor, Too Cool and Rock/Undertaker) combined to hold the titles for 62 days. Other than that, it was all Dudleys/Hardys/Edge and Christian.

So what does this tell us about this period? It tells us that this was not a renaissance or a rebirth of the division. It was a three way feud that was incredibly popular for how action packed the matches were. This was a fresh idea because the Outlaws followed the Nash/Hall formula of being tag team champions: they rarely defended the titles.

Now the Outlaws defended them a lot more often, but how many times do you distinctly remember them defending the belts? How many of those defenses do you remember lasting five minutes? In the Attitude Era, you very rarely got a long match, so seeing Edge/Christian, the Hardys and the Dudleys going out and having fifteen minute matches that were pretty awesome was a new thing for the division and it made the titles look greater than they were.

As always with a great feud, at some point it becomes stale, which is what happened once Edge and Christian broke up. You can only run the Hardys vs. the Dudleys so many times before no one cares anymore, and by the end of 2001, not many people did. After that, the tag titles fell through the floor with no one caring about them on Raw or their counterparts on Smackdown (other than the end of 2002 and early 2003 on the blue show) for the better part of the decade.

This brings us to now, with a bunch of new teams being brought together to feud for the one set of titles. As of this writing (September 26, 2012), there are currently at least eight teams that are established and could be champions. Bryan and Kane are hilarious as champions, but the question becomes what happens once their hot streak ends, will anyone care about the titles anymore? History would say no, but if the teams are given a chance to get out there and show off a bit, maybe it could last for awhile. It’s too early to say but it’s the best chance in awhile.

In short, the division has only really worked once and that was back in the 80s when there was a ton of talent to be put throughout the division. Since then, there never has been an extended period of time where tag team wrestling in the company has worked. In the early 2000s, there were three teams who dominated everything and that is not a division no matter how you look at it. Today, there seems to be a chance of a division coming together a little bit, but it still certainly isn’t for sure. It hasn’t worked in over 20 years, so odds are it won’t work now.

Back in 1908, the Ford Motor Company began manufacturing a car called the Model T. The idea behind it was simple: use the same format on an assembly line to mass produce affordable automobiles. It was a smash hit and became the standard method used for designing cars that is still used today. All of a sudden everyone had the same kind of car, but a lot more people could get their hands on one. The idea was that if you take away the uniqueness of cars, you could get then out faster, cheaper, and sell a lot more.

Now the problem with this method is just as I said: it takes away the uniqueness of the cars being released. Basically the Model T was one size fits all and everyone got basically the same thing. This brings us to the modern WWE and one of the many (among other) problems the company is facing at the moment: a large portion of the roster could be interchangeable with anyone else on the roster and it would make almost no difference. Let’s take a look at a few examples.

Before I get into this: note that I am talking about characters only. Their in ring work isn’t being considered a factor here.

Let’s take a look at Randy Orton. Orton’s character is that he snaps quickly and has anger issues. Here’s where we get to the problem: practically anyone on the roster is perfectly capable of handling that part. Orton is someone that is going to be over no matter what he does because of his reputation and the RKO. However, his character has nothing unique about it and there’s almost no depth to it.

As for someone who doesn’t have a big finishing move to fall back on, let’s look at say Heath Slater. Slater is a guy who came out week after week and got beaten up by various legends. He ran his mouth and talked about being a one man band, but there’s nothing to him. Slater has won some matches and even a few titles, but at the end of the day he hasn’t done anything of note in years and almost anyone could play his part. The titles that he won don’t mean anything for the most part as so many people have won championships, but that’s a discussion for another time.

I could go on and on with names like that, but there’s a name in particular that explains things far better than anyone else I could talk about: Cody Rhodes. Cody has had an evolution to his character over the last few years. In June of 2010, Rhodes won a poll of the WWE Divas, naming him the best looking male wrestler in the company. This led to him becoming Dashing Cody Rhodes, a man obsessed with his looks and grooming.

Up to this point, almost anyone could have portrayed the character. However, all of that was groundwork for his next feud. After about six months of this gimmick, Rhodes faced Rey Mysterio where Mysterio’s knee brace smashed into Rhodes’ face. For the next few weeks, Rhodes refused to let his face be seen as he required facial reconstruction surgery to repair the damages.

After staying off of TV for about six weeks, Rhodes returned while wearing a mask. He claimed to be scarred under the mask, but due to it being clear, we could see that no scars were there and the damage was all in his mind. He basically turned into Dr. Doom from Marvel Comics, as he hid his face as much as he could due to the fear of what people would think of him. This is where things get important.

After spending months caring only about his looks, Rhodes was now ashamed of them due to the severe damage he had suffered. The six months beforehand had laid the groundwork for the character that he had become, and the new character only would have this kind of impact with Cody portraying it. In short, it was a unique character that we had watched evolve over the previous few months into the person that we saw before us. These things combined to make Cody a successful and interesting character, as opposed to just being the son of Dusty Rhodes.

Then it stopped. Rhodes still wore the mask but wasn’t as insane as he had been before. Rhodes did little of note before winning the Intercontinental Title in August of 2011. A few months later, Rhodes began feuding with Randy Orton, eventually resulting in him losing his mask and having it broken.

Since then, Cody Rhodes has been Cody Rhodes. He’s a guy in trunks that comes out, has the occasional match, and then goes to the back again. Nothing of note happens, his matches are about the same every week, and he only occasionally has a feud. At the moment, he’s feuding with Sin Cara because he wants to take Cara’s mask. Why does he want to do that? No apparent reason. No mention of Cody’s time in a mask. No mention of anything unique at all.

Today, Rhodes is lucky to get on Smackdown for two straight weeks most of the time. He’s lost most of the intriguing characteristics and traits that he had going for him before and is now little more than a cocky heel who says he’s better than everyone else. That would be basically the same exact gimmick as Miz and Ziggler, as well as the same as guys like Del Rio and Mahal, although minus the ability to be able to say it in other languages. It’s hardly a gimmick at all other than someone being cocky.

For a contrast, let’s take a look at a few of the people who are freshly coming up on the roster. Instead of talking about various people and listing their personality traits, we’ll focus on one: Damien Sandow. Yes he says that he’s better than you, but he has a unique spin on it. Instead of just saying how great he is, Sandow says that he’s smarter than you. He talks about how bad society is with the obsession with celebrities and pushes the idea of intellectualism.

If that doesn’t work for you, let’s take a look at David Otunga. Again just looking at his character, there is no one else on the roster that could play his character of a smug lawyer as well as he could. This is the case for one simple reason: Otunga IS a smug lawyer. He doesn’t have to try to figure out what a Harvard educated lawyer would say because he just has to say what comes naturally to him. This is where you can solve a lot of the issues I’m mentioning here.

It makes little sense to take the gimmicks of people that aren’t right for a part and trying to make them into that. The most successful wrestlers of all time are the ones who live the gimmick they have and see it as an extension of their own personalities. People like Undertaker, Savage, Flair, Austin and Rock all have been described as portraying themselves with more intensity than they would have in real life. It makes for a more believable performance and the characters are more successful.

If this doesn’t make sense, think back to the Attitude Era. Just a quick look at the roster shows the following gimmicks: a redneck, a jock, an outcast who hangs out in boiler rooms and is craving acceptance while suffering from multiple personalities, a burn victim, a man who may or may not be dead, a pimp, a group of degenerates, a group of oddities, a group of vampires, a guy who looks like an Academy Award, a mixed martial artist, a superhero, an outdoorsman, a sex obsessed powerlifter and a security guard. For the most part, there is almost no overlap to any of those things and they’re all unique characters. You could say the same thing about a lot of people in the 80s as well.

In short, the problem that I see with a lot of the gimmicks in modern WWE is that there’s nothing really specific about a lot of the characters. You could easily replace almost anyone with anyone else and you would have the same thing all over again. That doesn’t make for interesting television and you have to rely on in ring talent to make up the difference. When you have almost everyone trained by the same training staff, you’re not likely to see anyone break out in the ring with a different style that is going to set the world on fire. Mix it up and things will improve a lot.

This seems like an appropriate topic with Wrestlemania being about two weeks away. This is something that is very important and can really make or break a company if not done right. Yet for some reason over the years, it’s very rarely been done right. On Rise and Fall of ECW, Heyman talked about Terry Funk wanting to get the next generation ready so that there was a business to pass on to them. That’s what we’re getting at today so let’s get to it.

Now first and foremost, there’s a BIG difference between giving someone a rub and passing the torch to someone else. Back in the 80s, Hogan tagged with a bunch of guys that were known names but didn’t become anything important until they were his best friend for a few months of house show tag matches. Then they’d be Hogan’s partner for awhile and they’d be bigger stars than ever before. That’s giving someone a rub.

Passing the torch means that you make someone the new big name in the company. We’ll get to examples of that later on, but the main idea is that someone is either leaving, is dropping down the card after being on top for a long while, or that the other person is going to be taking their place. To use the example from earlier, Hogan wasn’t going anywhere and wasn’t moving down the card. He was still top dog but the others were up higher than they were before. That’s an important difference.

On second thought, this was going to just be about passing the torch but I might as well cover rubs in here too. We’ll get to passing the torch first.

Let’s go back to the past as I’m known to do. The better example is probably King Jackie Fargo passing the torch to King Jerry Lawler but we’ll go with something actually in the last thirty years with Harley Race and Ric Flair. Now let’s take a good look at what put this together and why it was a true passing of the torch. There were a lot of factors that came together to make it work.

First of all, Flair was already a big name. He was a two time NWA World Champion and was well established as a top guy. This is important to passing the torch because if you want someone like Race to go out, this is how you do it: to a guy that has proven he can do something already. Otherwise you might need to go to someone else which makes the moment weaker.

Second, this was built up. It had a long and personal angle to it which resulted in real emotion. Race had put a $25,000 bounty on Flair’s head and it was cashed in, resulting in Flair being put out of action for months. He took care of the attackers and then came after Race to take the championship and get his revenge. It was an angle that people wanted to see get paid off which makes the match that much more interesting.

Third, the match was great. It’s a classic old school cage match with Race working him over and Flair making the comeback for the pin and the big moment. It was also in the main event of the first Starrcade, which at the time was the biggest card ever put together. Look at Cena vs. Rock this year: they’re having this match in the main event of Wrestlemania after a year of these two arguing and bickering. In short: take your time and make the match feel important.

Most importantly though, RACE LEFT. After this happened, Race was gone from the NWA spotlight. There was a three day title change in New Zealand but other than that, Race went back to the smaller territories and eventually on to the WWF. Now, that’s not to say that Race couldn’t have come back in a smaller role. If Race had come back in say a year or even six months it would have been fine, as long as he didn’t challenge for the title or feud with Flair. That’s one of the main things: Race didn’t try to come back against Flair. He had been defeated and was done.

There really aren’t that many of these moments to talk about in history, and since most of them have been done well there isn’t really a point to going through them one by one because they would all mostly say the same thing. The other few of note are the Fargo/Lawler one that I mentioned earlier, Austin vs. Michaels in 1998, HHH vs. Batista in 2005, and really those are all of the major ones.

Now let’s get to the problems that can come up when these rules are broken. This can also be called The Hogan Section.

Hogan has had a few chances to pass the torch onto someone else and both times he’s broken one of the aforementioned rules and caused the next person to not be able to do as well on top. We’ll start in 1990 at Wrestlemania 6. You could argue the first time was at #4 with Savage but the end result of that was ALWAYS Hogan vs. Savage for the title the next year so I can’t fault Hogan for that as it was part of a major angle instead of Hogan not going away. Anyone on to #6.

I don’t think anyone would argue that the main event of that show was designed to be a moment where Warrior became the top guy. However in short, Hogan didn’t leave. He stuck around in 1990 and feuded with Earthquake, taking all of the spotlight (as well as the top and most obvious feud for Warrior) from the new champion. The right thing would have been for Hogan to take AT LEAST a few months off and made a movie or whatever.

Instead he stuck around and therefore made Warrior look like a second rate guy, which made the main event of Wrestlemania completely pointless. Warrior was a failure as the top guy but there was never a real chance for him to be the top guy. Everyone thought that Hogan was still top dog and him simply not having the title wasn’t going to prove that wrong. Considering Warrior barely beat him, it didn’t really prove that Warrior was the top guy. Instead of passing the torch, Hogan basically gave Warrior the title for about 7 months and then got it back later. Good for him, bad for Warrior.

Jumping to WCW, we have the moment that was a big bullet to WCW in the Monday Night Wars. Sting FINALLY stopped Hogan and won the (nearly) year and a half long title reign and it should have been the end of an era in WCW. This is probably the biggest botch of one of these things ever. First of all, the match sucked for reasons that you can read elsewhere. Second, Sting didn’t get to even hold the physical title for two months, so how much do you think the fans cared by that point? Third, Sting officially won the title in February and Hogan had it back by mid-April. Sting is defeated, Hogan is champion AGAIN, and the fans are screwed over.

The third example of Hogan doing this would be in 1998 with Goldberg. Now to be fair this was probably much more about WCW than Hogan, but depending on what you believe about Hogan having creative control in the back, that could be a matter of debate. Also to Hogan’s credit, he lost the match clean (mostly) and never got his win back against Goldberg, which is a big help. However that being said, he got the title back in just a few months. There was WAY more to it than that, but at the end of the day, the problem was that Hogan had the title back about half a year later, Goldberg was defeated, and the fans were screwed over AGAIN. Sound familiar?

There are probably other example that I’m overlooking, but I think by now you more than get the idea. The WWF in 1990/1991 was in real business trouble and was even on the verge of going under for awhile. The WCW instances are times where the company took big hits because either they wouldn’t let people have the title or they wouldn’t let anyone get thrown out of the main event. The moral: bad things happen when you don’t change things when you need to.

Now onto the other topic that I wasn’t going to talk about here but it fits as well: rubs. As we’ve established, a rub is where someone is going to be sticking around but is going to bring someone else up the card by giving them some of their star power and making them look like a bigger deal. We’ll begin in the 80s, as I am known to do.

The perfect example of this is usually Flair and Sting from March 27, 1988 and there’s a good reason for that. Sting wasn’t a big time name like he is today. He was a guy that had been brought over from a regional company and was looking for his first big break in the national scene. The company knew he had talent but they needed a way to let the masses know that.

Enter Ric Flair, who in the words of Jim Cornette, made a career out of making other people look way better than they ever could have done on their own. So at the first Clash of the Champions, Sting fought Flair for the NWA Title and had him in the Scorpion when the bell rang and the time was up. Flair made Sting look AWESOME that night and Sting became a huge star because of it. Flair kept the title and would for a good while, but Sting was a major player all of a sudden. I think you get the idea.

There are dozens of other examples from history that I could go into, such as the tag teams that Hogan had which I mentioned earlier and Bret vs. Austin in 96/97, but you more than get the point by now. On the other hand, there are examples of times where bigger names lose matches, but the win doesn’t do a thing for the smaller name guy. Let’s take a look at a quick example.

I hate to do this again, but the best example is Hulk Hogan. In the year 2000, Hogan lost to Billy Kidman. What’s forgotten about this is that Hogan DOMINATED Kidman and Kidman won after Bischoff hit Hogan with a chair. The win didn’t do anything for Kidman because it didn’t look like he had a chance to beat Hogan in a fair fight. The same thing is true of instances like jobbers pinning big names, such as Brooklyn Brawler pinning HHH in the year 2000. Rock had a bit of a hand in that loss, but HHH still gets made fun of for it on occasion. Again, I think you get the idea.

So anyway, in short there are good ways and bad ways of passing the torch, and hopefully Rock does it with Cena at Wrestlemania. Rock is a guy who a victory over would still mean a lot and I just hope they don’t screw it up somehow. Rubs and passing the torch are very important things in wrestling, and if you don’t do them right they can turn out very badly indeed.

This is going to be shorter than most of the entries in this series I think. I’m watching Backlash 2004 and it has a Jericho vs. Christian/Trish Stratus match on it. This was part of the storyline the three had which turned Jericho face as he was in love with Trish but Trish turned on him for Christian, setting up a kind of a revenge feud. This is a good example of a well made storyline and I wanted to break it down to give you all an idea of how a good storyline is built.

Now to begin with, we’ll start with how this story got going. As you may or may not remember, Christian and Jericho started hitting on Lita and Trish Stratus respectively. This went on for a few weeks and was almost instantly intriguing. Now why was this intriguing? In short, because it was something different. By that I don’t mean something we had never seen before, but because it was something out of nature by Jericho and Christian. There’s an expression in journalism that says “Dog bites man, not news. Man bites dog, news.” In other words, we pay attention to stuff that is different.

Jericho and Christian had been jerks for months but now all of a sudden they were being nice. It got people’s attention and you started wondering if it was because of feelings for the girls or because of some other reasons they had. The idea is that it made us want to keep watching because we had interesting people in these stories. That’s a very necessary key. People like Jericho and Christian could read a phone book and somehow make it interesting. Throw in a couple of hot women and it’s hard not to be interested.

Then we got the next step of the story, as Trish said that she was starting to fall for Jericho. For a few weeks there was a relationship developing while Lita kind of faded away. The twist came soon after this, as Trish overheard Jericho and Christian talking about how this was all because of a bet between the two of them over who could get their respective lady in bed first. This makes sense as it’s something evil that the two of them would do.

However, something very important is that we weren’t told of it right up front. We had to wait awhile, which is something that makes a reveal all the better. We saw Jericho and Christian doing things and only after awhile did we find out that there was an ulterior motive to it. That’s how you do a twist: not all at once before filling in the pieces later. You can do it that way, but it can cause more holes in a story. When you build up to it, the writers have had a better chance to fill in plot holes along the way.

Now once Trish was upset, Jericho revealed that he wasn’t lying and actually did care for Trish. Trish of course didn’t believe him, but Jericho kept at it. Through good storytelling, it became clear that Jericho really did have feelings for Trish and that he was sorry for his actions. Now THIS is where things get important: people can identify with that. Almost everyone has had their heart broken at some point and knows what it’s like to want someone that you can’t have for one reason or another. It builds sympathy for Jericho who is trying to change and is telling the truth after all his lies but it’s not working.

Finally Trish seemed to come around but Christian wasn’t happy. On Raw he hit Jericho in the head with a chair, saying that it was tough love. Trish was blamed for breaking up their friendship and changing Jericho, with Christian wanting the old Chris back. It’s a natural story progression with the actions of each person connecting with other people and more actions spawning off that. That is what you call a story.

This leads us to Wrestlemania and a match between Chris Jericho and Christian. There was one very important thing about this match above all other things: it was good. You can have the best story in the world, the best promos in the world, the best build in the world and all that, but if your match sucks it brings things WAY down. See Dusty vs. Flair in 1985 if you want more details on that.

So anyway, the match at Wrestlemania was good and after Trish accidentally cost Jericho the match, Trish turned on Jericho after showing feelings for him in the previous weeks. This was a possibly nonsensical twist, but at the end of the day it extended the storyline and gave us another reason to side with Jericho. The idea here was that while Jericho wanted Trish, at the end of the day she wasn’t someone worth wanting because she was actually evil.

We now had another reason to side with Jericho, because how many of you have had a crush on someone but they were a jerk and treated you like dirt? My guess would be more than one of you. Now how many people would love to have seen that person get what they had coming to them? This is a key part, as if you can’t related to a story, it’s hard to get into it. So anyway, they had their rematch at Backlash, which was a handicap match involving Trish as well. Jericho won to even up the score, so we had a blowoff match inside a cage (note that the gimmicks built up over time: non-gimmick, handicap, cage).

Now the problem was that Christian got hurt in the cage and was out for months. They had a ladder match at Unforgiven for the vacant Intercontinental title which could have come earlier, but it was a good cap of to the feud, even though it was late. So at the end of everything, it was Jericho that came out with revenge as well as a championship, giving him something to be happy with.

Let’s take a quick look at a few other reasons why this story worked.

Most importantly: IT HAD TIME TO BUILD. This wasn’t a feud that was settled in about five weeks. It had several months to get things set up and for the characters in it to develop. That’s one of the big problems in a lot of modern wrestling angles: everything moves so fast that there isn’t time for something to develop. This story started in late 2003 and wrapped up in May. It had some twists and turns in it, but for the most part they mad sense and followed a coherent path.

Second, it had a good conclusion. Jericho winning wasn’t required, but it was definitive and there was no doubt as to who won. In other words, we didn’t feel like we wasted our time with the story. It had romance, intrigue, twists and a conclusion, all tied together with good wrestling matches. Those are all parts of a good storyline. That leads me to the final part of this.

The feud was ENTERTAINING. Like I said, Christian and Jericho could do almost anything and it would be entertaining. Trish was great in the evil chick role and looked great in the part too. There was nothing in this angle that wasn’t at least passable, which helped even more. The matches worked well too, meaning that in total there was nothing wrong with this storyline.

All of the parts worked and had the right people in the roles, which is what makes a great story.

So lately I’ve been reviewing a lot of Invasion era stuff and some people have wanted to know how I would have booked it. I’ve got a little free time now so I figured I’d throw out my thoughts on it. I’m horrible at/don’t like fantasy booking but I’ll give it a shot here. First of all a few precursors.

1. I’m no professional. I’m a fan of over 20 years and I’ve watched a lot, but it’s like watching football and thinking you could coach the Rams: it sounds good on paper but by no means does it make it successful in real life.
2. I’m not going to go week by week and PPV by PPV. This is going to be more of a general overview and I’ll hit the high spots.
3. I’m going off the roster that was available based on the times they debuted. I’m going to assume that since they debuted, WWF could afford them. There’s no point in going into an “if you had anyone available” scenario because that wasn’t possible and such things get on my nerves.
4. I’m probably going to do this in one sitting and it’s almost 3am so if it’s a bit out there, let it go.
5. I probably won’t redo this unless I like it.
6. This is mostly going to be about WWF vs. WCW, because outside of RVD and maybe Rhyno, who in ECW was going to be a real threat to the WWF?
7. Let’s get to it.

Let’s begin with what was bad about the Invasion. In the order they come to me.

1. It Was Too Short.

This is a big one. We’re talking about the WWF vs. WCW. This is the debate that went on amongst almost all wrestling fans in the 80s and 90s. Which company is better? Which belt means more? Who would win in a fight between this guy and this guy? This is an argument that went on for almost twenty years….and the feud runs 5 months. In the words of a cartoon or movie that I can’t remember: Are you high or just really stupid? Think about this for a minute.

You’re the WWF and you have officially beaten your competition. As far as wrestling goes, you are the world. Nothing is going to touch you for a long time (11 years running) and you own all of the names, trademarks, footage and all that of your greatest competition. You have a fantasy booker’s dream at your fingertips, and you give it five months. This is a story that could have gone on for YEARS, but the WWF decided that it needed to end after less than a football season.

2. The Alliance Roster Was Treated Like Idiots.

I’ve been watching the Raws from this era and one thing becomes clear very fast: other than Booker T, no one on the WCW roster got an ounce of respect. I totally get the idea that the WWF should look dominant. It’s their company, they won the Monday Night Wars, they’re the ones that WCW is coming to. I get all that. What I DON’T get is why these guys were treated like clowns. Let’s flash back for a bit.

(Dang it I’m going to do this full on aren’t I?)

When the Invasion started, it was Lance Storm that was the first guy to run in. The second was I believe Hugh Morrus. Now I love Lance Storm, but he was in WCW for like 9 months. He came in June of 2000 so the company was dead by then. Morrus is famous for losing to Goldberg and being named Hugh G. Rection. These are the guys that start the Invasion? I know Booker came in at King of the Ring, but by that point things had already started slow.

On the other end of the time frame, let’s look at the end of the Invasion: Survivor Series 2001. For Team Alliance, we have Shane McMahon (heir to the WWF throne at the time), Kurt Angle (never set foot in WCW or wrestled in ECW), Steve Austin (the biggest star WWF ever produced (Hulkamania was made in Rocky III and the AWA)), Booker T (I know he was a career WCW guy and was their top star at the end, but in reality he was just the top guy because everyone else left) and Rob Van Dam (great choice, but the guy never even won their world title. That’s fine inside ECW, but to other fans who weren’t familiar, he’d sound like a midcarder).

So in other words, we have three WWF guys, a guy that got titles because he was all that was left, and a legit big time ECW star (although Taz would have been better). Why in the world would I think this was about WWF vs. WCW/ECW? It sounds like a regular heel faction. Ok so any team with that talent isn’t regular but you get the idea. It doesn’t sound like a merger of those two at all. Austin got fired by WCW for crying out loud. Do you think he’d just go back to them and everything would be cool?

3. The People They Could Have Had

This ties into it was too short. Let’s take a look at who came in after the Invasion. Keep in mind that for the sake of this, I’m assuming these people debuted at the earliest possible date to avoid contract/major money issues, meaning they couldn’t have arrived any earlier. We have:

Ric Flair: comes in THE NIGHT AFTER THE INVASION ENDS. Do I have to draw you people a picture? Who embodies WCW and their history more than Ric Flair? The answer doesn’t exist because no one does. Flair WAS WCW, and he comes in afterwards and has zero connection to them at all? If nothing else, have him be a representative and bring in friends to fight with him. They ran the exact same story they should have run with Flair owning Raw. But hey, it got Shane on TV all the time right?

The NWO: they arrived in February, about three months after the Invasion ended. These three were the original invaders and could have been great as a third party or part of the WCW team. Hogan could have been the ultimate free agent as he had great success in both companies. As an aside, why did Hogan vs. Austin never happen? If it’s money, you pay them whatever they want as you’ll make more than enough back in PPV buys and ad money for it. Anyway, these three could have been great, just as figureheads.

Eric Bischoff: HELLO! Do I even need to explain this one? The real boss of WCW comes in July of 2002 and is put in charge of one of the shows for over three years. Think he might have made a good WCW boss? I don’t think this one needs an explanation.

Scott Steiner: Now to be fair, he was injured for a long time which is why his debut was delayed. As another aside, who thought making Big Poppa Pump into a face was a good idea? The guy is as natural of a heel as there has ever been.

Goldberg: Here’s your explanation: Austin vs. Goldberg. Think that might sell a few tickets?

In other words, if you let the Invasion go on, you could have had a GREAT sequence of guys popping in and being the big boost to re-energize things. But hey, we needed Shane and Stephanie to get more TV time right? That leads up to another problem.

4. The McMahons

See, there’s this misconception out there that the Invasion was about two organizations teaming up to face off against the WWF. In reality, WCW, ECW, all their wrestlers and all their titles were pawns in the chess match of Vince vs. his children. Think about it: who was the focus of these angles? Vince, Shane and Stephanie. Why were they named the owners of the companies? For Shane, it was to one-up Vince during their feud around Wrestlemania. Stephanie, I’m still waiting on an answer. Was there ANY reason to not have Heyman be ECW’s owner? No? I didn’t think so.

5. This Was An Unnecessary Sequel

This is an easy one. The problem with the Invasion was that there was no need to see who was better between ECW and WCW. The fact that this was all happening on Raw and that they all worked for Vince was enough proof of that. Why do we need to do this again? The fans never really bought it I don’t think, which is where you lose fans in wrestling. If they don’t buy it, they’re not going to watch.

That sums up my issues with the Invasion. Now let’s get to how I would have gone about it.

First and foremost, things went too fast as I said. There are multiple reasons for this, but first and foremost it was due to HHH’s injury. From what I’ve found, HHH was supposed to do a slow face turn on Austin and face him at Summerslam in a blowoff match and probably win the title. Well obviously that didn’t happen and he was out for 9 months so they needed a new plan.

What I don’t get is why did they have to blow the Invasion off then? I mean, was there NOTHING else they could have run over the summer? What about that Jericho guy that was feuding with them and wasn’t hurt? I guess he couldn’t be champion or have 25 minute classics with Austin right? Angle was around and could have been a good rival to Austin. There were a lot of options but for some reason they went with potentially the biggest angle in history instead. Funny thing this WWF.

Now aside from that, we’re going to ignore the idea of WCW being its own show. This was the plan I believe but no network wanted it because WCW was such a damaged name and the reaction to Booker vs. Bagwell was so bad that it was clear that the WCW name wasn’t going to work anymore. That’s out.

So what would I have done?

Well to begin with, don’t have them be a unit at first. Just have them be like any other wrestlers that are coming in and integrate them into the show. You know, that old fashioned kayfabe non-sense that Vince Russo shot more bullet holes into than Bonnie and Clyde. Space out the debuts until the big named guys were already there.

See, where I think WWF really messed up was treating these guys like some big family in WCW that always got along. It’s the problem I have with Dreamer and Raven being such great friends in the Alliance. It makes the whole thing seem fake. Instead, have people come in one at a time and build their characters in WWF. This again ties into the It Was Too Short thing. Why did it feel like they were up against a clock here? There’s no time limit in wrestling.

I would have had guys slowly appear on Raw and Smackdown. Use the old system of having guys appear once in awhile then not appear then pop in and out and such like that. This way you can figure out which people the fans respond to, which work well with who, you have a short history to work with, all that good stuff. In other words, make these guys people the fans are all familiar with rather than just throwing out a bunch of guys you hope the fans care about.

The big criticism of the NWO was there were too many people and they were nothing without an NWO shirt on them. The same thing happened here. Why should I as a a WWF fan be worried about Hugh Morrus or Chuck Palumbo or Sean Stasiak? These guys haven’t accomplished anything here. More importantly, hardly anyone was watching WCW in its final year and ECW was only on nationally for a year, so how are most people going to be familiar with them?

So anyway, have guys come in one at a time and go from there. Don’t treat it as an invasion right off the bat. Instead have them be people and tag teams that are new around here. Then, after these people have been built up as threats with titles or whatever, then have them form into WCW. Let’s say that starts the night after Mania 18. The company is still a name, the bad taste it left is at least somewhat gone, and you have Flair and the NWO.

After that, you let things go as they did but with Flair/someone not named Shane as the WCW boss. Bring in ECW if you want and do what you want with them, but preferably don’t have them merge with WCW. That was so against Heyman’s character and history it’s unreal. Anyway, have the war go from let’s say 2002-2003 and culminate at Mania 19 with the main event being the WCW Champion (whomever that is) vs. the WWF Champion in a unification match and winner take all in the war.

Small aside: WHO IN THE WORLD DECIDED TO PUT THE UNIFICATION MATCH AT FREAKING VENGEANCE??? It’s the WWF Title unifying with the WCW Title to establish one champion of all and it’s at VENGEANCE??? Does the word WRESTLEMANIA mean nothing to anyone anymore? That’s still one of the biggest headscratchers I can ever think of in wrestling.

That’s about it really. Have it run about twice as long, build up the characters, and end it at Wrestlemania with Hogan vs. Austin for the Undisputed Title. Oh and don’t have Shane or Stephanie in it. They sucked in the entire thing.

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