Falls Count Anywhere

06/30/2010

Being the bane of editors, however, is.

Fatal Fourway, the WWE’s latest PPV, was a pretty serious success for the WWE. Well, maybe not entirely, but there were five important stories that needed to be told and they were, though to varying levels of success.

The first was perhaps the most important- Drew McIntyre and Kofi Kingston. These two are the future of the Upper-Midcard. They’re not going to be Main Eventers, not without another decade or so of build, and we’re going to see them take very different paths.

Unless Kofi is foolishly turned, I’d expect Kingston to be a Bret Hart 1991-level star and Drew McIntyre to be the Cowboy Bob Orton of the next five years. He’s going to be the set-up guy, the dude faces have to run through on their way to a heel champ. He’s a good character to put in that role, but he’s not really the kind of star you’d see being the main event. Kofi, while becoming a decent worker and having a strong connection with the audience, doesn’t have Main Event written all over him either.

The match the two had to open the PPV was really good, and the crowd response was pretty spectacular. Their near-falls were the kind that really bring audiences into the show. They had a nice long match and the crowd reactions were solid and told the story. Drew is being seen as a legitimate heel, which is important. It’s likely that they’ll work him higher up the card, but I don’t expect it to be a long-term deal. Kofi will quite possibly the model Intercontinental Champion when there’s a Heel champion.

They carried the crowd with them, which is so important if you’re going to be in the mid-card. They need to be able to carry the reaction, especially for the guys who are going to be going on higher up the food chain.

Drew worked the match working over Kofi’s arm, which is a great Heel trait. Kofi went with flash offense, which is solid. They reintroduced Matt Hardy, which got a big pop. Of course, it’s more important that Drew and Kofi get over on their own, and the ‘Let’s Go Kofi’ chants were loud.

Are we seeing a Bourne supremacy?

The second and third stories were tied together. It was Chris Jericho’s decline and Evan Bourne’s rise. These are two hugely important stories for a number of reasons. Jericho is the WWE’s MVP, with all due respect to both MVP and John Cena. He’s a star, has great matches, can sell an angle and has all the tools needed to be the guy who carries a promotion. There is also talk that he’s been kinda disgruntled. He had an ABC game show, Downfall, picked up and while the WWE gave permission to him to pursue the gig, when he finally got it, there was unhappiness from Vince McMahon and co. that he’d be leaving to do the show.

That’s a rough one, and in many ways it mirrors Dave Batista, who the Observer reports is unhappy with the way he was handled by Vince and the opportunities he feels he was denied working outside the company, specifically in Hollywood.

Jericho did some great mic-work, selling the idea that he hadn’t been doing much lately, that he was no longer the impact player. It’s a risky move because the audience can buy into it and that’ll hurt him. On the other hand, there’s a great thing that allows him to get people behind him as a sympathetic character. Still, Jericho is best as a heel, even if he’s a heel that people cheer.

Bourne has been given big wins lately, and that’s a great thing. He’s pretty small, but the fans seem to get behind him and buy him against guys like Edge and Jericho. In many ways, he’s the next Mysterio. The push he was getting before his injury has finally been re-started and it’s looking like it might just take. To get him truly over, they have to give him big wins over top guys. Edge was a good start, but Jericho was an even better one.

The thing to this match was Jericho working like a mad man to win, taking everything out on Bourne, while Bourne was selling and working to highspots that made sense. As a result, this well-planned clash was just about as good as you could plan.

The match worked and the crowd was way into it, especially into Jericho. But it wasn’t like they were against Evan. In fact, the crowd popped every time Bourne went to the ropes for a move. Bourne took every moment he was presented and Jericho made him look as good as anyone ever has. I’d say that he’s just two big wins (one of which would need to be over someone like HHH or Shawn Michaels) away from being a top star.

That story they told absolutely right, though in a way it burnt the crowd, which made the next story hard to tell.

The fourth one is the story of the Hart Dynasty and the Usos. The fact is that the Tag Division of late has been a solid one. The Hart Dynasty has brought a lot of life back to it, but more importantly, they now have their British Bulldogs (and yes, I understand the irony in that statement).

They need a team that can feel like their major foes, perhaps for a long-run. There’s no way that it’s not going to be the Usos that are that foil for a team that is probably the best team since the heyday of the World’s Greatest Tag Team. What’s even more interesting is that they can actually talk!

Support the USO.

The match between them had a more subdued crowd, but appreciative and by the end, they had them well-enough. These guys need to be feuding harder, getting more TV time. Their match was David Hart Smith, Tyson Kidd and Natalya vs. The Usos and Tamina.

This match showed, more than any other, that Natalya needs to be in the mix for the Woman’s championship. She looked great against Jimmy Snuka’s daughter Tamina. Kidd always looks great, and while this wasn’t quite the match they needed (they need a match like the famous Harts vs. Bullsdogs match from late 1986 on Saturday Night’s Main Event), it was enough to keep them going.

The final story, and probably the most important in the WWE right now, is the NXT angle. They’ve lost Bryan Daniel (fired because he choked the announcer with his tie, which in new WWE PG-land, is unacceptable) though it may all be an angle. The NXT guys weren’t seen until the middle of the Main Event when they attacked the Hart Dynasty, R-Truth and Evan Bourne and others. It then went to the ring where they wrecked havoc on everyone, especially John Cena, and the funny thing is that Seamus managed to steal a pin on Cena to win the title, and then bolted through the crowd.

That’s a great way to get it over that the NXT guys are trying to be a factor, but it doesn’t really help them too much to seem like a threat, especially with Michael Tarver giving a lunging punch that just looked awful no matter what angle you were at.

What does help them is that they’re obviously building to something Survivor Series-styles. I don’t know if they can sustain it until Survivor Series, but if they book it right, I could see it having a big blow-up at SummerSlam and then a few follow-ups. They seem to have included R-Truth, The Hart Dynasty and Evan Bourne, which should say where they see those guys heading. If it’s Cena and those four vs. 5 of the NXT guys, that could be a good match concept.

Though I have a feeling that instead we’ll get five guys (possibly the backstage four and another) vs. four NXT guys and then Wade Barrett vs. Cena one-on-one. They can do that now that they’ve got the belt off of Cena, and I could see Cena doing a job for him now, too.

The NXT stuff is hugely important is they have to keep them going to give Barrett, Justin Gabriel and Heath Slater a chance at the big time. Of course, they’re hoping they can get Tarver and Otunga over, but they’re fighting a heavy battle on that front.

So, they did a pretty good job with the PPV. It was more than watchable and I’m glad I got to see it. Now we just gotta keep these stories going or there’s gonna be trouble.

Chris Garcia