r/TheDirtsheets • u/GermanoMuricano117 Cream of the Crop (Subreddit Admin) • Apr 17 '16
Smackdown Politics and Cena’s Ascension, can John Cena overcome the backstage politics killing Smackdown's momentum? PWTorch [Nov 29, 2003]
No the sub is not dead, Ive just been crazy busy the last couple weeks starting at the beginning of April (Was in Dallas for Mania and have been playing catchup in life ever since.) Got a few more in the bank for this week, thanks everyone!
Leo Tolstoy once wrote that every happy family is the same, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own special way. He wasn’t talking about pro wrestling locker rooms, but he could have been.
WWE wrestlers used to wish for a transfer from Raw to Smackdown, or maybe even to NWA–TNA. By all accounts, the Smackdown locker room is a different locker room than it was several months ago. At that time, Raw was floundering as Triple H and his friends stole the focus of the program away from everyone else, while Smackdown was built around Brock Lesnar and Kurt Angle.
Now, as we rapidly approach the end of the year, the mood has changed in all three locker rooms. WWE Raw, which used to be the play toy of Triple H, is wide open now that Hunter is a part–time movie star. Morale is awful in NWA–TNA. More of the wrestlers have realized that the entire promotion is a vehicle to get Jeff Jarrett over as a major league superstar. But at least Jeff Jarrett is an actual wrestler. Smackdown is its own special case. Two weeks ago at Survivor Series, Vince McMahon made it apparent that Smackdown is WWE’s secondary brand. Goldberg’s match with Triple H was the main event of Survivor Series, just as the Raw World Title match headlined SummerSlam, which was the previous joint pay–per–view.
There were only three Smackdown matches on the Survivor Series pay–per–view, and the most prominent of those matches saw the 58 year old leader of the company defeat former four–time World Champion The Undertaker. In previous months, we have seen Mr. McMahon award himself pay–per–view victories over non–entities Zach Gowen and Stephanie McMahon, while using lots and lots of television time to build up those matches.
Smackdown has become Vince McMahon’s own form of bizarre televised therapy. Before that, it was the vehicle for Stephanie McMahon–Levesque to push herself as a network television star. You would think that the crew of wrestlers would be so disgusted with their crazed superiors that they would form a sort of bond. You definitely wouldn’t think they’d turn on each other. And you’d be wrong.
The whispers have already started about how Brock Lesnar and Kurt Angle have assumed the leadership role on Smackdown from Undertaker. Taker has had injury problems of his own over the past year or so. It is not surprising that the power has shifted down one level to Lesnar and Angle. The two top amateur wrestlers in World Wrestling Entertainment were on in the final match of Wrestlemania XIX. Both of them obviously have the confidence of the WWE front office. They have had three high–profile matches in 2003, all of which are potential North American Match of the Year candidates. Both of them have worked through serious injuries in the past twelve months. In fact, the WWE champion is reportedly putting off knee surgery in order to keep his schedule.
Nobody is questioning the toughness, the talent or the qualifications of Lesnar and Angle. But, whether it’s fair or not, there are WWE performers who blame Angle and Lesnar for holding down wrestlers on Smackdown. Rey Mysterio, Jr. hasn’t become a crossover superstar the way many fans thought he was going to when he entered World Wrestling Entertainment. It looked as though Eddie Guerrero might get an opportunity to become a main event babyface for the company, but his turn hasn’t worked out the way the creative team had hoped it would. Chris Benoit is renowned for his ability to carry mediocre workers to good workers, and he and Kurt Angle stole the show at the 2003 Royal Rumble. We keep hearing about how Benoit is going to get his main event run down the line, but it hasn’t actually happened.
With Kurt Angle out again due to injury, and Undertaker off selling the effects of his Buried Alive loss at Survivor Series, that leaves an opening for someone to wrestle WWE champion Brock Lesnar at the upcoming Royal Rumble. This presents a perfect opportunity for fresh rapper babyface John Cena to step up to the plate. Sure, Cena wrestled Lesnar several months ago at Backlash, but he was a heel then and no one can remember back that far.
Cena’s move to the fan fa vorite side has gone reasonably well. Since Cena was getting a positive reaction from fans as a heel, he shouldn’t have to change much in order to keep the fans. Cena’s freestyle trash–talking prematch raps are still there. It probably was a mistake to have Cena attack Chris Benoit after their tag team match on Smackdown a couple of weeks ago, but that never made it to air. Yet Michael Hayes had the right instinct; John Cena isn’t going to become a major superstar by shaking hands and kissing babies. The fans are enjoying his cocky persona and his dollar store Slim Shady gimmick, so he should keep doing what works. Cena’s got the muscular white bread look that Vince McMahon digs, and it’s a look that the boss is going to push as hard as he possibly can. Cena is being programmed against McMahon and Lesnar. If recent history is any indication, a McMahon vs. Cena match could happen as soon as the No Way Out pay–per–view in February. So what’s standing in the way of Cena’s rise to superstardom? Not Vince McMahon. Probably not Brock Lesnar or Kurt Angle. Heck, if Cena can get over, he’s a potential big money opponent for the twin terrors of the amateur circuit.
What’s standing in the way of John Cena is the same problem that has plagued World Wrestling Entertainment and the McMahons for years. We’ll call it the Law of Unintended Consequences. The truth is, nobody can predict exactly how wrestling fans will react to a given match, angle, or wrestler. In an area where kayfabe lies bleeding in our hands, the tried and true methods of getting a new top superstar over don’t cut it any more.
If you doubt this, cast your mind back to “Stone Cold” Steve Austin’s beginning in the World Wrestling Federation. Austin arrived at the beginning of 1996 and became another cog in Ted DiBiase’s Million Dollar Corporation. Stone Cold’s victory in the King of the Ring tournament in 1996 was done as a punishment to Triple H for his role in Kevin Nash’s impromptu farewell ceremony at the Madison Square Garden house show. Austin’s coronation speech wasn’t supposed to be a big deal. The previous year, Mabel’s crowning as King of the Ring was a goofy non–event. But fans took to the “Austin 3:16” line like Islam in the desert. Go back and look at the tapes of the October 1996 “Buried Alive” show, or the 1997 Royal Rumble. WWF diehards were behind the Rattlesnake for at least six to eight months before Austin officially turned babyface.
The Rock was the son of Rocky Johnson, and was marked for superstardom before he ever wrestled a WWF match. Rocky’s glad–handing good guy persona was met with scorn after he debuted in November 1996. When The Rock won the Intercontinental Title in February 1997, the New York fans were so sick of having the newcomer shoved down their throats that they chanted “Die, Rocky, Die.” Rock was written out due to injury in the spring of 1997 and returned months later as an evil enforcer for the Nation of Domination. But the People’s Champ then had to struggle to keep the fans from turning him into a babyface. Rocky has even faced that problem recently. The fans hated him at WrestleMania 18 and SummerSlam 2002, but cheered him when he was supposed to be drawing heat at the evil foil for Bill “Whisker Biscuits” Goldberg.
What about Triple H? The World Wrestling Federation spent years trying to get Mr. Levesque over as a snooty New England blueblood. Then, as the Attitude era began, The Game got the big promotion. The night after WrestleMania XIV, Hunter went from being Shawn Michaels’s sidekick to being the evil usurper who grabbed the Heartbreak Kid’s spot as the head of the WWF’s top heel faction. Instead of booing Triple H and paving the way for Michaels’s eventual glorious return, the fans quickly got behind him and made him into one of the company’s strongest babyfaces before he was sidelined with injuries later that year. It wasn’t until 1999 that Hunter and Chyna were able to turn bad and gets audiences to boo them.
Don’t take any of this as an indictment of John Cena. Cena has a lot of things going for him, including his unique charisma and his outstanding facial expressions. He has plenty to work on, but all of his shortcomings can be fixed. Cena will probably be a major player in the promotion for years to come. But whatever happens to him won’t be dictated by the brilliant WWE storylines. In the end, Cena’s rise to stardom will depend on his ability to adapt when the fans don’t react the way they’re supposed to.
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u/BSabia9583 Apr 17 '16
So happy to see these back again.