That Was Then 1.12.07: You’ve Got It All Wrong

Victim #1: WWE Creative

A major complaint about WWE Creative is that rather than write compelling TV which would appeal to what we want to see, they instead let Vince McMahon tell them what he wants them to do, and instead of standing up to Vince they just keep their mouth shut and do what he tells them to do. Could somebody please explain to me what’s wrong with this scenario? It seems like the members of the creative team are doing the smart thing to me. I mean, if I’m at my regular, non-411 job as a professional dick sucker and my boss said to me “Stuart, I want you to go suck this person’s dick”, I’m not going to respond with “No, I don’t want to do that, I’m going to suck this guy’s dick instead”, I’d probably wind up out of a job pretty quickly because my boss wanted me to suck the first guy’s dick. One of the things I think we tend to forget when criticizing the job performance of WWE Creative team members is that they’re paid to do a job, and a very large part of doing that job is doing what your boss tells you and getting fired if you don’t. That’s just the way corporate life works.

Vince McMahon has a clear vision of where he wants to take his company creatively. It may not be the best vision, often not one that experts such as myself would agree with, but it’s his company and it’s his vision nonetheless. If he tells Creative that he wants Gene Snitsky pushed to a WWE Title match with John Cena at Wrestlemania, and the creative team refuses and says that instead, they want to headline Wrestlemania with Val Venis vs Shelton Benjamin, they’re going to wind up out of a job pretty quickly and be replaced by someone else who will do what Vince tells them. That might seem like a terrible way for things to work, but is it really any different at any other job in the world? Unless you’re related to the owner, odds are that very few people have the freedom to defy their boss and do things their way. I know that if I told my boss that I didn’t want to suck dick anymore, I’d wind up out on the street where I’d be sucking dick for beer instead of money. It’s the same thing in WWE, Vince McMahon tells Creative to suck John Cena and DX’s dicks, and so they do. All the “good” wrestlers like Chris Benoit, Shelton Benjamin, CM Punk, and others don’t have big enough dicks that Vince feels they’d be worth sucking, certainly not as big as Shawn Michaels and Triple H’s dicks, so Vince says that Benoit and Punk and Benjamin can just sit around and jerk off while his chosen few get taken care of.

Now, put yourself in the shoes of a member of WWE Creative. First of all, if you’re a writer for a living and are working for WWE, I’d be willing to bet you don’t have a whole lot of other options open to you at the moment. That alone would be motivation to do what you had to do to keep the one writing job that you’ve been able to find, crappy as it may be. Now consider that you’ve probably got rent to pay and a family to feed, and suddenly that lack of other options makes the WWE Creative gig seem a whole lot more important. Are you going to put your ass on the line for the sake of a couple of lower-midcarders that the boss isn’t really high on at the moment to begin with? You’re probably not going to say to Vince McMahon “No, Vinnie, we’d do a lot better if we headlined Wrestlemania with Chris Benoit vs Finlay. DX can work fourth from the top because they’re old and broken down.” That doesn’t sound like a real smart thing to do, does it?

So while it may be a bummer that they can’t give Shelton Benjamin more TV time to get him over with, I really don’t think we can fault Creative because their boss doesn’t think he’s blowjob-worthy. If Vince decides that he wants Creative to sit around sucking his dick and DX’s and John Cena’s, who are they to argue?

Victim #2: Hulk Hogan

While there’s a lot that can be said about Hulk Hogan, I’m mostly going to be talking about the Randy Orton thing last year. The big complaint I heard coming out of this one is that Hogan should have done the job so Orton could get over and use it to get a main event push. This one is really fucking stupid. How long have people been saying that Orton is getting shoved down our throats, how much we hate Orton, how Orton isn’t developing as a worker, how Orton can’t cut a promo, how Orton’s got backstage issues…and now we’re going to throw a fit because Hogan won’t put him over?

Look, say what you will about Hogan, but the guy was a VERY large part of wrestling becoming what it’s become over the last 23 years. Regardless of what he turned into later in his career, the guy was the face of wrestling and worked his ass off to get where he’s gotten. He was the busiest man in wrestling in the 80s and he made Vince McMahon, himself, and everybody else in the WWF (and wrestling) a lot of money through his visibility. He’s earned the right to make a few demands instead of being a slave who gets told “JOB TO THIS GUY!” I don’t blame him one bit for not wanting to job to a guy who hasn’t ever gotten over, is a marginal worker at best, and whose history of injuries and backstage issues has him in a precarious at best relationship with the company. Vince obviously sees something in Orton because they have tried over and over and over to push him, but it’s always failed. Orton just never caught on in the way WWE expected them to, and I highly doubt that going over Hogan was really going to change all that.

But even putting Orton aside for the moment, it seems that every time we find out Hogan’s going to be wrestling, people always want him to do the job, regardless of who it’s against, whether or not it makes sense, and people are lining up to burn the motherfucker alive when he doesn’t. Take Muhammad Hassan, remember him? I heard people who wanted Hogan to do the job to him back when Hassan was getting his push. Am I the only one who realizes what a stupid move that would have been in retrospect given how quickly he fizzled out? And it happens every time out, no matter what two bit scrub he was thrown in the ring with. At this point, he’s one of the select few, maybe only including guys like Austin and the Undertaker, who really have any right to have input into who they’re going to put over.

You know who Hulk Hogan would be if he did as many jobs as people expect him to do? He’d be Ric Flair. I freely and willingly admit that Ric Flair is (or was, he’s an old man now) miles ahead of Hogan as a worker, but he has done job after job, including repeatedly putting over Orton, and where has it gotten him? It got him all the way to the bottom of the card, that’s where. He jobs in nearly every match he’s been in over the last few years, and now it’s at the point where a victory over him means nothing. Nowadays, Ric Flair means nothing. Seriously, five years ago he was the celebrated 16-time World Champion, the catch of the year when the WWF brought him on in 2001. But now? Now he’s just an old man who can’t get it done anymore, who jobs to Kenny, who jobs to Rico, who jobs to Shelton, who jobs to Carlito, who jobs to every schmuck who walks through that door. Now his legacy is destroyed after an entire generation of fans has watched him get is ass kicked week in and week out, so what value is he to anybody?

Furthermore, what did it accomplish by having him put over Orton so many times? Shouldn’t logic dictate that by going over such a huge name as Ric Flair so many times mean that Orton is taken seriously as a main event wrestler who can step in and main event Wrestlemania on a moment’s notice? That’s the logic being applied to the Hogan situation, but it never really worked out that way with Flair. Sure, they’re different wrestlers, but the fact is that you can’t expect a win over Hulk Hogan to be the magical fix that will forever gain him fan acceptance and a main event spot. If that was true, Wrestlemania would be headlined by Mike Awesome vs Billy Kidman. At this point, you’d be out of your mind to buy a PPV headlined by a Flair match because he’s been broken down so badly that nobody takes him seriously anymore. He’s also way overexposed. Hogan, on the other hand, has been picking his spots instead of showing up every week like Flair, and also is very selective about who he’s willing to put over. What’s that? He doesn’t put anybody over? Oh sorry, I guess I imagined those jobs to Rock, Angle, Lesnar, Undertaker, and Big Show.

But the point is that nowadays, while Flair is a glorified jobber, Hogan can still headline a PPV and draw decent numbers. The crowds still pop for his appearances. Regardless of whether that match with Austin happens at Wrestlemania, how many people do you think would take him or the match seriously if he did a job to Randy Orton six months before?

This Week In Wrestling History

On January 7, 2001, ECW held its final PPV ever, Guilty As Charged, at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City. The scheduled main event saw the Sandman reclaim the ECW World Title in a three way Tables, Ladders, Chairs, and Canes match against Justin Credible and defending ECW Champion Steve Corino. As Sandman was handed the belt, TV Champion Rhino dragged Sandman’s wife and son out to the entranceway and threatened to hurt them if Sandman didn’t give him a title shot on the spot. Sandman agreed, and Rhino quickly squashed him to win the ECW World Title. A challenge was immediately laid down for any challenger who wished to get a shot at the title, which was answered by Rob Van Dam, who returned to the company after being out to do a conflict with management. Rhino bailed out of the ring and instead Van Dam wound up in a match with Jerry Lynn. Van Dam won the match, but never got his ECW Title match because the promotion closed a few weeks later.

Also This Week…

January 6, 2003: William Regal & Lance Storm defeat Booker T & Goldust to win the World Tag Team Title in Phoenix, Arizona.
January 7, 1966: Gene Kiniski defeated Lou Thesz to win the NWA World Title in St Louis, Missouri. This was the end of Thesz’s last ever World Title reign.
January 7, 1991: Arn Anderson defeated Tom Zend to win the WCW TV Title in Perry Georgia.
January 7, 2002: Tazz & Spike Dudley defeated Bubba Ray & D-Von Dudley to win the WWF Tag Team Title in New York City.
January 8, 1995: Arn Anderson defeated Johnny B Badd to win the WCW TV Title in Atlanta, Georgia.
January 8, 1998: Juventud Guerrera defeated Ultimo Dragon to win the WCW Cruiserweight Title in Daytona Beach, Florida.
January 8, 2003: America’s Most Wanted defeated Brian Lee & Slash to win the NWA World Tag Team Title in Nashville, Tennessee.
January 9, 1959: Pat O’Connor defeated Dick Hutton to win the NWA World Title in St Louis, Missouri.
Janaury 9, 2000: ECW held Guilty As Charged 2000 in Birmingham, Alabama.
January 10, 1994: Marty Jannetty & 123 Kid defeated the Quebecers to win the WWF Tag Team Title in Richmond, Virginia.
January 10, 1999: ECW held the first Guilty As Charged PPV in Kissimmee, Florida. The show was headlined by Taz defeating Shane Douglas for the ECW World Title.
January 11, 1991: Ric Flair defeated Sting to regain the NWA/WCW World Title in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The match was seen by almost nobody because a severe snowstorm blanketed the area and a lot of fans couldn’t make it to the show as a result.
January 11, 1993: Dustin Rhodes defeated Ricky Steamboat by countout in the finals of a tournament to crown a new WCW United States Champion in Atlanta, Georgia.
January 12, 1998: Scott Hall & Kevin Nash defeated Rick & Scott Steiner to win the WCW World Tag Team Title in Jacksonville, Florida.

Ten Years Ago On Raw…

-Mankind defeated Owen Hart
-Doug Furnas & Phil Lafon defeated the Fake Diesel & Razor Ramon
-Vader defeated Bret Hart

Ten Years Ago On Nitro…

-Glacier defeated Bobby Eaton
-Konnan defeated Big Bubba Rogers in a strap match
-Jeff Jarrett defeated Arn Anderson to earn a spot in the Four Horsemen
-TV Champion Steven Regal went to a time limit draw with Jim Duggan
-Hugh Morrus defeated Jim Powers
-Rey Mysterio, Jr defeated Psicosis
-Kevin Sullivan defeated Chavo Guerrero, Jr
-US Champion Eddy Guerrero defeated Alex Wright
-Harlem Heat defeated the Amazing French Canadians
-Lex Luger defeated Meng

Banging Out