Falls Count Anywhere

07-05-07

Still pretty stunned.

And boy are they depressing.

The best source is the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. The issue that came out last week covers the murder/suicide so thoroughly. It’s a magnificent piece of journalism. I wrote a letter to Dave Meltzer about it that he posted to the site. I think it’s still in the archives about Benoit and the Hall of Fame. The issue was passed around the Fanzine Lounge at Westercon and read by some fans and non-fans alike. If you want the straight dope, you must subscribe to the Observer.

And then there’s the recent set of pushes. The big deal right now is the arrest of Dr. Astin for prescribing huge amounts of steroids to Chris Benoit, something like a 10 month supply to Chris every few weeks. The Feds seized Astin’s records and discovered a number of other wrestlers who got roids from him.

This is a bad thing and a certainly huge black eye for wrestling. I’m more certain now that business is about to drift downward, and possibly quite heavily. Meltzer apparently feels the same way. There’s been a bracing for impact that’s been going around the WWE offices. Almost everyone can see that there’s going to be a big dip and that things are going to have to tighten and be reworked.

And whenever Vince McMahon feels like business is threatened, he goes to the big men.

Vince is heavily putting Batista and Bobby Lashley over as the biggest stars, along with John Cena. This is a terrible idea. Both guys have obviously used steroids in the past. They have both lost a fair bit of muscle mass since the regular testing, but both are still big, muscular guys who have physical statures that can’t be denied. There is a lot of talk about Lashley still being on some level of the Juice, but that’s not really the point. The point is, Vince is going back to the typical pattern. Vince is going back to the big muscleheads.

Now, I think Lashley is a talent. The guy can work a little bit and has a decent charisma. He’s not Hulk Hogan charismatic and he’s not a Shawn Michaels level worker, but he’s good enough on both fronts to make himself a decent star. But he’s big. He’s muscular. I’m not saying that in these days there’s no place for a giant muscular guy, but it’s certainly not the time to start pushing them when the steroid arrest of the decade just happened.

They will go with the philosophy that the audience wants big guys and since the business is in danger, they have to go with Lashley and Batista (they’d probably go with Undertaker if he were around) to keep as much business as possible from drifting away. There is some truth to that, but I point to Matt Hardy.

You can say what you want about Hardy, but he’s over. The crowd pops for him even though he’s often devalued and used as a sort of pushed jobber. He’ll win against all but the top of the card guys. He’s been talked about for big pushes, but something always happens and he gets pushed back down in favor of bigger guys.

Is this right? Maybe, maybe not. He gets good pops and has good matches, but he seldom moves ratings too much. Sometimes he has done really well in that area, and sometimes not. He was at least as valuable as RVD. Lashley, with all the push in the world, usually gets a good reaction coming out, but his matches sometimes fall completely flat when it comes to heat. He has a charisma in the ring problem, which haunts some wrestlers.

The big problem is that Vince is scared. It’s obvious. Vince needs to make big changes, toughen up the steroid policy and make even the prescription ones completely off-limits. I’m not saying they need to go to the Olympic model (because that’s ridiculous, in all honesty), but something tougher that takes steroids out of the equation.

That also means that Vince is going to have to understand that his business is going to go down. Next most important is rethinking his booking practices. Giving smaller guys pushes is what needs to happen, and that’s not because big guys have no talent, but because in this ages of scrutiny there needs to be a redefinition. They need people they can point to and say ‘these guys are clean and exciting’.

John Cena is a great star and he’s the best thing they’ve got. He’s drawing like Shawn Michaels in 1996 in a way. He’s not a big draw on PPV yet, but he’s decent in almost everything he does. He’s not nearly as talented as Michaels, but he’s got a great look (not as buff as he was in the early days, but he started getting less muscular and lost a fair amount of mass even before Guerrero’s death) and he can talk.

And maybe that’s the key. They need guys who can talk and build around that. Memphis did that for years. Why else would Jerry Lawler be able to star well into his 50s? If they work a slightly lighter schedule, they push guys who can talk, and get everyone clean, they might make it out of this with their core audience intact. If not, we’re headed for very rough waters.

There’s a lot more to say about the Benoit Problem. They’re trying to wipe his existence off the face of the Earth by taking his matches off of WWE 24/7 and the website. They’re taking away any signs mentioning Benoit at the shows. There was a report that they asked people wearing Benoit shirts to take them off and offering other WWE wrestler shirts in exchange (word I got was 2 shirts for 1 Benoit), but that’s not been confirmed by any of the big sources.

I’m worried that going to such lengths to get rid of Benoit’s existence might be the most damaging thing they could ever do. He meant a lot to the sport, but more importantly, he represented the little guy who could work and go on to be champ. That might get lost in all of this. We’ll talk more about that later.

That’s all for today. Regular stuff on Monday!

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Chris Garcia