Scripted Through Sin 8.26.08: Hit Repeating Loop, Then Play

Much like there’s a grace to a pitcher’s form of delivery there is a kind of grace found in the squared circle. From the simplest of maneuvers that are performed universally the world over to the more complex gymnastic displays or displays of strength and balance. There needs to be a certain form behind each motion whether it be keeping your front foot balanced when striding towards the plate or knowing exactly when to snap and tuck your head forward for that forward bump. It’s a sequence that has to come together at all times to do its job, be it to deliver a picture perfect strike on the black or to grab the audience by the throat and leave them gasping for more as a match just continues to escalate.

But with all of this grace comes the necessity for repetition. It’s one thing to do it right once, it’s a whole other beast to get it down to the point it becomes instinct much like breathing. When your job requires you to do something over and over again you’d better have a system down to make it simple and easy, but when you’re job requires your body to repeat a series of motions over and over again, especially for years on the road, then it becomes an entirely different process as sometimes your body can’t be nearly as reliable as you’d like it to be especially when hurt. Through it all, though, in wrestling, a pseudo sport that has no off season and sees its workers traveling the roads and performing live shows almost on a nightly basis, the repetitious nature of the industry has left a sour taste in some fans mouths.

Today’s environment in the wrestling world, where most of today’s fans have grown up with the televised products for nearly 2 decades, has grown to be a recycling plant that many have been growing sick of. For the instance of the WWE, many fans feel that the company should always be coming up with new and creative ideas rather than playing off of the formula’s that have worked in the past for them. To a degree the fans are right and this was evidenced in the early and mid 90’s when the fans wanted to break away from the Hulkamania formula that saw big babyfaces battle giant monster heels while still catering to the rules. Being that beacon of righteousness that stands up for the crowd, to be their hero: that was a character fans were growing tired of when given the sights of such leaner, smaller fighters that looked more appealing in the ring because they could do things that the bigger men couldn’t.

That’s not to say that companies are justified in rehashing older ideas for the sake of making a quick buck. For example the Sonjay Dutt, Jay Lethal and SoCal Val storyline is one of those storylines that rehashes an old classic storyline with its own twists, but fails to truly tell the story in a manner that gets the fans to truly care about why these men are fighting one another. Instead, the fans only care about what their matches can look like in a TNA six-sided ring, which in and of itself goes against what wrestling was meant to be about.

But that’s only looking at the issue from a far back view rather than taking a closer inspection upon the fans that hold issues of repetition within this industry. Today’s fan has grown cynical and overbearingly pompous with people citing that their opinions are factual or in certain instances that their opinion can’t be wrong despite it being based off of misinformation. Today’s generation of fan has grown extremely vocal, and in their rush to use this voice to point out all that they don’t like while timidly celebrating their new love interests in this hobby, has grown to be overly critical of aspects that contradict their very nature.

Our community has grown foggy of their recollections that this industry is built upon repetition, from the company’s stance of reusing formula’s that worked in the past to maintain current day success to the in-ring talents that follow a tried and true formula dating all the way to the days of Bruno Sammartino, if not longer back still.

In the haste to condemn some wrestlers as being boring and tired in the ring, the same vocal complaint also stems from their repetitive nature. Many decry that Nigel McGuinness utilizes the same maneuvers over and over again, but never cry the same hatred at someone such as Bryan Danielson or Austin Aries. That John Cena only knows five moves despite Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker having worked the same styles of matches repeatedly throughout their tenure in the WWE much to pleasure of the crowds.

When Ric Flair built a career out of knee drops, chops and taking huge foward bumps off of simple back body drops it seemed the fans, then, never once complained about his matches all having the same maneuvers involved.

When Bret Hart was busy living up to the moniker of “the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be,” I doubt fans cared enough to think twice about his infamous 5 moves of doom sequence to finish out most of his bouts.

When Steve Austin was busy outshining the Hulkamania era I don’t recall a sea of fans ranting and spewing all sorts of venomous complaints against his over usage of the Lou Thesz press, his trademark haymakers, his patented stomping a mudhole corner stomps, or above all of that his over usage of the Stone Cold stunner.

Through it all, it seems today’s fans of yesteryear has grown up to be more overly critical than they’d like to believe themselves as being. They flock, like mindless lambs, to the nearest daft reason to bemoan against the new star attraction that is aimed at a generation younger than them, or simply doesn’t fit their mold of what a champion should be.

There was a point in time when these kinds of fans were in the right and that the companies needed to learn how to break away from a failing and floundering formula to adapt a new system that kept their fans satisfied. That point in time is no longer running in their favor, and for every cry that John Cena shouldn’t be champion these people bemoan they never seem to hold issue with a rehashed champion such as Triple H, or The Undertaker taking up the mantle once more. It’s a puzzling conundrum that our community finds itself in, because for every cry that people make about Cena only being a draw to the female populace, they leave a blind eye to the majority of Jeff Hardy and Randy Orton’s fan base. For every cry that people like Cena only cater to children there’s an equated claim against Triple H and The Undertaker given their face personas and the marketing around them.

This industry has lived by repetition for many generations, it’s not like this is a new thing to come out of it. Wrestling cannot completely change all of its formulas and strategies just because a few older fans have grown tired of its nature, especially if they’re only cherry picking against those they feel are iterative. Thankfully you don’t hear this kind of “deductive reasoning’s” against why John Smoltz is still a tremendous pitcher after all of these years.

Buyrate Assassin – A Disconnect of Generations

What would follow Breakdown:In Your House would be the absence of Triple H due to the first serious knee injury of his WWF career. Though he would only be out of action for the next 4 months it would be in this time that plans around his character would begin to pick up steam as a new direction was already being mapped out for his future. These plans would lead to the very character that would legitimize his future roles as champion of the WWF for years to come, strengthening his presence of the next decade to come.

Almost exactly 9 years later, however, Triple H is set to defend his WWE Championship at Unforgiven in a bout that will probably be looked upon as the more athletically inclined of the two main events of the event if only for the fact that it houses younger and more agile participants within it.

The oddity around this card’s line-up would be the fact that on RAW, last week, Mike Adamle had announced the line-up for RAW‘s main event for the pay-per-view, Unforgiven, as being a match housed under special stipulations that sounds much like the Hardcore battle royal from Wrestlemania 2000. Stranger still would be that SmackDown! would then follow in the same suit by announcing their WWE Championship bout would be placed on the line in a Championship Scramble match, itself.

Perhaps it isn’t the concept of the match that is odd so much as it is the participants involved in each match. While RAW features a cast of superstars that have all been champion at one point in their careers, SmackDown! features only a single World Champion in its lineup and that being the current reigning Champion, Triple H. Further breaking down SmackDown!‘s participants you can see that while they’re lined up with gold in their own rights, most of that gold happens to be Tag Team Championship gold; Shelton with Charlie Haas, M.V.P. and Jeff Hardy with Matt Hardy, and The Brian Kendrick with Paul London. Or maybe still the oddity of this is that we’ve seen this done before earlier this year, where both RAW and SmackDown! featured the same stipulation match as their main event attractions to a pay-per-view. Obviously, that event being No Way Out which housed two Elimination Chamber matches to determine the number one contenders to their respective brands championships for Wrestlemania XIV.

It was an obvious attempt, then, to boost up the weak buy numbers surrounding the No Way Out pay-per-view brand, but why it worked for that event and potentially won’t work for this [Unforgiven] is the simple fact that it was fresh and new at that point in time. The concept of having two Elimination Chamber matches was the appealing draw there, not the fact that both brands ran the same stipulation for their main events of the card. Plus, it was a move that needed to be done, or something of radical value, to help draw for No Way Out as it has the unfortunate fate of being stuck between two of the biggest pay-per-views out of the WWE calendar. It’s always had and will continue to hold such miserable fortune as to fill an empty month between the Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania.

What worked then was the fact that fans had wanted to see another Elimination Chamber match and for the price of one pay-per-view they got two. Here, the concept of a multiple person match isn’t new, though the rules give it a unique feel that is unlike any other match of its nature, but isn’t the kind of match that fans have been vocally demanding they see more of. As it stands, this could potentially hurt the appeal of the pay-per-view if only for the fact that it isn’t, exactly, a unique lineup. If anything, the only intriguing attraction here could be that the SmackDown! Championship Scramble bout features younger and newer talents to the main event scene that may pique the fans interests. Potential future main eventers line up the opposing end to Triple H’s reign, and though their victories in the span of the match will only be viewed as interim championships never documented in the WWE archives, it could also be feathers in their caps for future endeavors.

As it stands the glaring anomaly of the WWE Championship Scramble match who has the most to gain and the most to lose from this venture is The Brian Kendrick. A cruiserweight worker who is generally viewed by the industry and its fans as being too small to ever be a credible World Champion, Kendrick really does have a lot to prove here to those around him who feel he doesn’t belong in the same echelon as such workers as Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart or Eddie Guerrero.

There are certainly some outs for Kendrick here as it could pan that he gets replaced by The Big Show at one point or another, but should he remain in the bout it’s likely that he’ll eat most of the pinfall decisions in this bout to protect certain individuals having to lose to a particular individual. His stance here could be the pawn utilized to help evolve storylines that currently involve Shelton Benjamin, M.V.P. and Jeff Hardy. The only means to which Kendrick can walk away from this match looking stronger is if in the course of the bout he actually looks like he belongs in the same ring as some of these men, that he hold his own and get the crowd to react to him in the manner you’d expect them to. That means drawing in the kind of heat that any other main event heel is capable of drawing.

But he like the rest of his fellow challengers to Triple H’s title has one glaring commonality between them all: they’re all young guys, relatively speaking. All of them don’t have much exposure to the main event scene and are still under the age of 35 (M.V.P. turns 35 this upcoming October).

This all rounds out to some comments made by Triple H to the Ottawa Sun, something that could sum up just how well he may plan to work with some of these individuals come September 7th, on the topic of young wrestlers.

Triple H believes there’s a disconnect between him and the younger wrestlers, saying that a number of them are more concerned with their iPods or playing Guitar Hero than getting better in wrestling. “When I got into the business, you couldn’t get me out of the building. I had a burning desire to get better. Now, the young guys seem more interested in their iPods or playing Guitar Hero,” Triple H told the Ottawa Sun. “I see guys complaining: ‘I’ve been here for five years and they’re not doing anything with me.’ I say to the guy: ‘Dude, you’ve been doing the same thing now that you were five years ago. What do you expect?'”

To an extent he’s not wrong. Some of today’s younger workers are self absorbed and believe they’re owed something after serving a few years on the circuits scrapping for everything they have now much like Teddy Hart, but not all of them. What I do have to gripe with is that while Triple H, himself, has grown from his early beginnings as the young, beach blonde body builder that tried so hard to emulate everything that Ric Flair had done with his career, he’s still doing the same thing he’s done 5 years ago to no complaints.

He’s right in the respect that if what you’re doing isn’t working you should change, adapt to your surroundings and better your craft, while at the polar opposite if what you’ve done has been working there’s no need to change. The idea here is that you certainly have to take pride in what you’re doing and for some it’s kind of hard to hold that kind of pride if creative keeps telling you they have nothing for you this week for months on end.

Take in account Frankie Kazarian during his short lived run in the WWE back in 2005. His build on Velocity was slow boiling and understandable as he was a relative unknown to the larger audience market that the WWE caters to. A role on SmackDown! would eventually have opened up to him but at some point creative didn’t even realize that he was a contracted worker. Slowly Kaz was slipping through the cracks of a system that probably could’ve fine tuned him to be a bigger star than he currently is, but rather than wait and find out how much lower the bottom of the barrel can get he opted out of his contract to return to the fine pastures of the independent scene which had been good to him both financially and work wise.

At some point one has to expect their hard work, especially if it’s been working out to the standards of their employers and to the standards of the crowd they’ve been pleasing, to actually begin paying off.

In the end it’s all about repetition, and some just have a bad motion of delivery that they do very well that will not allow them to progress up the ladder. Some are in need of a lesson that they have to change up their bad habit else they continue to flounder and fail which leads them to grow bitter at their failed potential success like Shane Douglas, or adapt and become the star they’re trying to become.