by Scott McLeod @scottmcleod1996The main purpose of a gimmick match is to add to the intensity of a feud or to provide an exciting payoff. Despite being a PG show, WWE has seemingly doubled the number of gimmick matches, keen to cash in on past stipulations that worked in a different time. Unfortunately, this has led to matches like Hell in a Cell and Ladder matches losing a lot of their appeal. Especially since WWE have started giving certain matches their own PPV.
There are some exceptions of course, like this year's Hell in a Cell PPV featuring two feuds that felt like they deserved to be inside Hell in a Cell, but most of the time it feels like a stipulation is added for no real reason. It rarely seems to add anything, and here are 10 matches that I think completely prove my point: by Scott McLeod @scottmcleod1996Think back to the golden era of wrestling. One thing that's prominent - along with the over the top characters and the steroids (allegedly) - Managers. Booby Heenan, Mr Fuji, Jimmy Hart, Paul Bearer and Freddie Blassie to name but a few. Back in the day, it seemed like every major villain had someone in their corner. They helped their charges win matches allowing them to gain as much heat as possible. This in turn made it even more special when the villains finally got their comeuppance. Heenan in particular was great at this. However, despite playing a major role in one of the biggest eras of the company, Vince apparently doesn't like managers. For what reason we don't know. The one exception is Paul Heyman - who will tell you at every possible opportunity that he's an advocate not a manager. I guarantee you if Brock was even a little competent on the mic Heyman wouldn't be around. There are a lot of advantages to having managers in today's WWE: It allows them to help build someone who is really good in the ring but not as good on the mic and can give an extra dimension to an otherwise stale character. Also, a manager helping the heel win gives the faces something to overcome, helping the face appeal more to an increasingly ‘smarky’ Wrestling Audience. Given the state of faces in WWE today, that last one seems more important than ever. An example of how managers can work in today's WWE is Andrade Cien Almas. When he debuted, he was a bland face before becoming a sublar heel, then came Zelina Vega. He went on to get a big win at Takeover Brooklyn and is now building towards a NXT championship match at Takeover WarGames. That is all down to Vega. She told him to quit his laid back approach and get serious. He got serious which lead to him actually winning matches. A storyline that continues in today’s NXT product. Andrade is one of the only true heels in WWE. He isn't like a Kevin Owens who gets booed but the smart fans cheer him, he gets legitimate hate from the audience; a lot of credit must go to his manager who acts as his mouthpiece, adding an intensity to his character.
One superstar that could have benefited from having a manager is Big Cass after his ill-received heel turn. He's not the best on the mic, which was made painfully obvious when Enzo schooled him repeatedly, especially at Great Balls of Fire! Instead of splitting them up, make Enzo his manager. He can be the mouthpiece and push Cass as the 7ft monster similar to the Lesnar/Heyman relationship. It's a win-win because Enzo is way better on the mic than in the ring, a fact that is drummed into us on every episode of 205 Live. The pairing worked from the getgo and splitting them up so early was met with confusion from the wrestling public. Keep the team dynamic but push the wrestler and keep the promo guy as his mouthpiece, it seems dangerously logical. Obviously, the answer to helping any character is not to just give them a manager, but it can help. That is as long as you pair the right manager with the right wrestler which has often not been the case. Look at when Paul Heyman was paired with Curtis Axel, or even Ryback, no amount of managing prowess could have aided their pushes. It is certainly not an exact science, but if you weigh up the amount of wrestlers who have been aided greatly by their managers; Brock Lesnar, The Undertaker, The Legion of Doom, Macho Man Randy Savage and anyone managed by the late, great Bobby Heenan, it would certainly seem that managers still have a large role to play in the WWE. by Rob Goodwin @REALRobGoodwinJuly 16th 2016. A monumental day in WWE’s calendar as it was announced that the WWE would be subject to a brand extension for the first time since August 2011. The news was met with joy from most, as an influx of talent in NXT had led to a deeper well of talent for the WWE to utilise, and a brand split would allow more of this talent a time to shine.
Come the Royal Rumble the following January, many would argue that the Brand Extension had indeed benefitted the company massively; SmackDown was seen on a level playing field with RAW for the first time in a decade, AJ Styles, Finn Balor and Kevin Owens had all been champions of their respective brands, talent such as Braun Strowman and Alexa Bliss were being pushed in a way they simply wouldn’t have been were it not for the split and Bray Wyatt was in an engaging storyline for the first time since the Daniel Bryan storyline of 2014! Things were rosy in Vince McMahon’s garden make no mistake. Even at this point though, there were still a few worrying signs: RAW’s worryingly disappointing reviews, lack of roster depth, especially spread across paper-thin Tag Team and Women’s rosters and the dead end booking of proven stars such as Sami Zayn and Rusev. For the most part, storylines, especially on SmackDown, and the Owens and Jericho team made up for this. Fast forward now to April 11th. WrestleMania 33, one of the better WrestleMania’s in modern memory in this writer’s humble opinion, is in the books, and the much ballyhooed Superstar Shakeup has been completed. The entirety of SmackDown’s mid-card is shipped to RAW, including The Miz, Dean Ambrose and Bray Wyatt (who would thusly never receive his rematch for the WWE Championship.) Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, Rusev, The New Day and Charlotte were taken to SmackDown SmackDown in return, along with serial jobber, Jinder Mahal. Rumours are rife that RAW is the main priority amidst floundering ratings and uninspired storylines. The result SmackDown will suffer! Sure enough... We reach the present day. Kane and AJ Styles have just taken part in the TLC 2017 PPV (despite both being SmackDown superstars,) John Cena is a free agent so as to boost RAWs ratings, and the Shield, a group that have only been apart for 3 years have been hastily thrown together in a thinly veiled attempt to finally get Roman Reigns over. We have endured some awful PPVs since WrestleMania, namely Money In The Bank and Battleground, as well as Mania worthy main events; Braun Strowman vs. Brock Lesnar, Roman Reigns vs. John Cena and Finn Balor vs. AJ Styles have been given away on B-Level PPVs in an attempt to boost ratings. SmackDown’s overall show has only been saved in recent weeks by the Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens storyline, coupled with the outstanding work that The Usos and The New Day have produced to try and make the SmackDown Tag Team Titles relevant again. At the moment, the blue brand seems directionless, which is baffling when you consider how it came out of the gates back in July. All of this alongside the fact that... Jinder Mahal’s WWE Championship reign, at the time of writing, stands at 155 charisma free days; longer than any reign of Ric Flair, Roman Reigns, Eddie Guerrero and The Rock. Let that sink in for a moment... As consumers we are over-saturated with PPVs, two paper-thin Tag Divisions and Women’s rosters as well as uninspired booking decisions and non sensical title reigns and title changes. When the original brand split idea was put forward, I was as excited as any other Wrestling fan, and I am by no means saying that the Brand Extension should be scrapped, it just needs to be rejigged to solve the problems a brand split inevitably throws up. Rather than having two of each of the tag and women’s divisions, why not unify them and have 1 on RAW and 1 on SmackDown? Build feuds and storylines properly rather than meaningless tag match after meaningless tag match? Strip Jinder of the title and place it on someone who can take the company forward, someone like AJ Styles or even Sami Zayn to tie in with his current storyline? Finally, cut down on the number of PPVs. Bi-monthly is killing the modern WWE fan, and is making them numb to what is happening in them, especially when you consider that a lot of what we have watched since WrestleMania, hasn’t been that great... In conclusion, yes the brand split has indeed had its ups and downs, but what doesn’t? It’s worked wonders for the careers of people like Braun Strowman and The Miz, The Usos and Jinder Mahal. But to keep plodding along pretending there is no problem at all, that’s when real problems begin to set in... by Anarchy ‘The Enforcer’ AndersonIt was a cold November evening and my mother returned from work with a VHS tape, battered and written all over were various hastily scored out names like “Coronation Street”, “London’s Burning” and something about a hostage crisis. The last name written on in Black ink would change my life forever. In the days before the internet, when the U.K. had only four stations and almost no one had Sky, access to the wonders other countries were producing was very limited, as I was only 7 I had never seen any wrestling, my mum likely wouldn’t have let me watch if she had known what it was. The cassette was, like most, old and worn, firing it up opened static and brief clips of the start of countless shows recorded over the years and then after the person recording it missed the beginning of the show it started. The first wrestler I ever saw was Ted Dibiase, followed by some men that would go on to be my all-time favourite wrestlers, Roddy Piper and Bret Hart. 7-year old Anarchy Anderson was hooked by the time Dibiase was even in the ring. Viewed as one of the weaker Survivor Series Pay-per-views, it was and will forever be the one that started it all for me and made me eternally afraid of “that dead guy beating up the old guy”, Mother Anderson would go on to hear this and countless other things about this crazy show. The following week the tape was returned and I thought that was it, but then another showed up, with 4 weeks of the WWF shows directly from Sky, with Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Big Bossman and countless others. It wasn’t just a one-off show, this happened every damn week, I can’t put into words how exciting this was for little Anarchy Anderson.
On we move to the present day, Anarchy Anderson is married and has a little one on the way. The world is vastly different, how we access our media has changed drastically and we now have hundreds of options for our viewing time. Wrestling has changed drastically, with the advent of the superfast internet we now have access at the touch of a button to hundreds of hours of content on the WWE network, countless shoot interviews and hundreds of promotions uploading videos ranging from high school shows shot with an audience of 30, to Japanese companies instantly beaming images of shows from the other side of the world. All the new content, all the new production techniques and money in the business and I find myself asking one question: What will my new little anarchist think of the wrestling thing daddy loves so much? Will the music, characters, colour’s and action mesmerise his little eyes, just like my young eyes hungrily swallowed up Survivor Series 1991, or will the fact that he can view almost anything he wants at the touch of a button make him forget all about dad and his hobby? Little Anarchy isn’t even here yet and a custom wrestling belt is already purchased and waiting for his first Christmas, at the very least I am going to try and get him watching. The question is though, can children ever be as excited as we were as children? As a child I believed! When Yokozuna beat Bret Hart at Wrestlemania IX I cried, even the following year Owen won and I couldn’t take it, I cared because I thought it was real. Now we are in age where everyone is in on it, everyone knows it isn’t real, has the loss of kayfabe made it more difficult for new generations of fans to get intothe business in the same way older fans did? When was the last time you saw a granny hitting a wrestler with her handbag because he was beating her favourite wrestler? Has the removal of kayfabe spoilt the fun? In the words of a great man “it’s still real to me” |