Monday, July 25, 2011

Pay-per-view of the year, but where do we go from here?

There's nothing quite like watching wrestling on TV. Especially when you watch the best pay-per-view event of the year, with all the right booking decisions and the first five-star match in a long, long time (it's not just me, Dave Meltzer agrees).

My only worry is that creating the hype around the finish to the John Cena v. CM Punk match involved keeping so many things absolutely secret that it could've starved WWE Creative of booking information which may mean that they have less to work with going forward. It looks like The Miz will win the WWE Championship on Monday week, which means that, unless that match ends in a controversial finish, we're setting up for The Miz v. John Cena for the belt at Summerslam (surely no one can question the latter's right to be in the main event after the magnificent storytelling we saw him contribute to at MitB), which feels like a spent rivalry.

The only possible swerve I can see as of this moment is an immediate cash-in on the winner of Miz v. Mysterio by Alberto Del Rio, which would give us Del Rio v. Cena or, at a stretch, Del Rio v. Cena v. Miz/Mysterio (whoever drops the belt to Del Rio). There could be layers of complexity added to this as well - a gimmick match or outside interference. The latter would only work if it's by Punk himself (which would eat into the credibility of his contractual deadlock-driven departure) or The Rock (which is plain unlikely). Coming off the high of MitB, my heart isn't exactly singing at these prospects.  

Looking slightly more long-term, I'm really unsure about this Triple H-taking-over angle as well. He's done nothing to prove that he's got it in him to be lead booker - indeed, his only aggressively groomed acquisition speaks no English, was drafted to the main roster too soon, forces his opponents to work with him under dangerously difficult lighting, has created zero emotional investment from fans in four months since his debut and is now under suspension for failing a drug test.

Moreover, lest people forget, Hunter was part of The Kliq, alongside Shawn Michaels and Kevin Nash, both of whom have more than a working relationship with WWE currently and could easily lobby for more face time on WWE programming (Nash already has), very possibly at the expense of up-and-comers. To be blunt, Hunter has rub a lot of people the wrong way in the past and, now that he's ostensibly in control of booking, it isn't difficult to imagine a scenario where the only way to get noticed is to rub him a certain way. For all his dislike of John Laurinaitis (who has more in common with Michael Cole than you might think, in that he's intensely disliked and is a poor man's J.R.), Hunter has neither found a replacement for Laurinaitis or proved that he is, in any way, better in convincing talent to sign their deals.

The other note of caution is sounded by economics. Despite the Punk angle over the last month, TV numbers haven't picked up at all - the 6/27 Punk promo drew a peak rating of 3.16 (symbolic, if something ever was, of the Stone Cold T-shirt Punk wore that night) and the highest rated Raw since then hasn't topped 3.2 (I stand to be corrected by the MitB PPV figures as and when they come in, but I will be surprised in the extreme if they top Wrestlemania 27, even though MitB was a far superior show in terms of content). Quixotically, it appears as if the Punk factor has had no effect on the bottom line (apologies for another not-so-subtle Stone Cold pun). I don't know why.

It's got people talking, though, and that's usually a good thing. Post-MitB, though, given the amount of expectation that now rests on the shoulders of the WWE and Hunter in particular, I'm not so sure.    

(c) PWI, 2011

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I've been wilfully caught up in the self-defeating quest to get to know myself for years. I've never expected anything beneficial to result from such a quest. I tend to evoke extremely polarised reactions from people I get to know in passing. Consequently, only those people who know me inside-out would honestly claim that I'm a person who's just "alright." It's not a coincidence that the description I've laid out above has no fewer than, title included, eleven references to me (make that twelve). I'm affectionately referred to as "Ego." I think that last statement might have given away a tad too much. Welcome Aboard.

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