Welcome, finally, to the 200th instalment of the column tells old Honky what you need tonight; Take Up Thy Wrestling Boots and Walk. I’m the man currently wondering whether Vince really thought it through before he had Rhythm and Blues perform a song called ‘Honky Love’, Prime Time, back for the first time in a while in order to celebrate this anniversary of sorts with you all today.
I’ve called this column ‘Finally…’ not just as a nod to The Rock, or to the fact that it’s taken thirteen years to knock out 200 of these columns. That length of time doesn’t seem so strange until you factor in that I wrote more than 70 in the first year, so it’s fair to say my output has dropped in recent times. But the title is a nod to three guys in particular, who’ve probably forgotten all about their contribution to this column. The truth is I’ve been sitting on this for about a year now.
I had it all worked out in my head. I’d ask some of the people that had been key players in my time here to join me for a bit of a shindig and celebrate the 200th edition, and then I’d launch back into it in a big way – posting a number of instalments of the Complete History of the Monday Night War series and several other columns all in a great long run. It was conceived of as a triumphant return, but to be honest it was mainly conceived just to annoy ‘Plan. If I happened to win a Column of the Month or three along the way, then so much the better. Being fairly predictable in this regard, I knew he’d feel obliged to try and better me, and getting him to do this while he knew that was what I was doing, but couldn’t help himself, was one of the most fun aspects of the community for me after my return to column writing in 2011.
OK, so that idea that it was designed to annoy 'Plan isn't QUITE true. That isn't a reason for doing something - but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't an added bonus.
Regardless, as Robert Burns said, ‘The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley’, which translated into English means that you can pretty much guarantee that if you think ahead in that way, life is going to shit in your teapot. Real life has pretty consistently got in the way, and I’ve never been able to get ahead of the series in such a way that it wouldn’t be constantly stop start, with disappearances for months on end, and consequently I’ve never felt able to really begin that big comeback. That’s still the case. In fact, I’m posting this now because having asked these guys for their contributions, I still really want to share them with you, and I don’t think it’s fair to let them moulder in my inbox any longer. Hell, there’s even a chance that since I asked them a year ago, they might well have changed their minds.
In the end, I asked them all for an example of what they thought was a particularly good ‘sliding doors’ moment: by that I mean a moment where a company botched the result of a match, missed an opportunity to improve the product. What I wanted was an exploration of how another result would have subsequently affected that company for the better. It’s a fairly simple concept, but it’s one I’ve been stuck on for years. I could have picked plenty of them just by myself, but it seemed more interesting to get different takes on it, to see what options jumped to other people’s minds.
I’ve known plenty of great people over the years on this forum, and I could have asked hundreds to join in were they all still around, and if people’s patience would extend to a column totalling 500,000 words. In the end, when I did start to cut the list down, a few names really made themselves stand out pretty obviously. After years and years it’s inevitable that this might get a bit sentimental, so if you don’t want to visit a mutual admiration club, you can stop reading here and click on the back button.
Still with me? Good.
The first of the three is YourAyatollah, one of the few people to have been a fixture in the Columns Forum before I’d written so much as word one. Not only did his writing have a huge bearing on what I did and what I thought good column writing was when I was trying to find my own voice, but there have been few people who’ve made such a positive contribution to this place over the years, in so many different roles. A first ballot hall of famer in anyone’s book and a famously good guy, Steve’s been kind enough to compare his work and mine in the past, which I’ve always taken as a huge compliment. And he’s come up with a pretty interesting scenario…
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Originally Posted by YourAyatollah
First and foremost, let me just say what an absolute pleasure it is to have been invited to participate in this. Prime Time is a personal favorite writer of mine, not just as it pertains to wrestling columns but in general. Furthermore, his work has served as something of an inspiration to me over the years. Virtually everything I've written since 2004 has been impacted by him and my desire to meet the level of seemingly effortless quality that he puts forth on a regular basis. To have seen such a remarkable amount of praise and accolades come his way in the second half of his LOP career has been one of my personal favorite things to witness in my almost 13 years as a part of this family.
Moving on, though, I selected a match that probably won't get any attention from anyone else but whose changed result would make for some potentially very interesting changes in WWF/E history. WrestleMania 5, as we all know, saw the explosion of the Mega Powers and the end of "Macho Man" Randy Savage's year long reign as WWF Champion at the hands of his former best mate, Hulk Hogan. Hogan would go on to have a year-long reign of his own before dropping the title to the Ultimate Warrior in a somewhat ill fated "passing of the torch" moment that didn't so much work out in the long term while Savage would remain near the top of the card as the dastardly heel Macho King.
What if Savage had won that Mania 5 bout, though? Sure, he was a high profile and very noteworthy heel in the aftermath of the event but honestly, can you imagine how much more noteworthy his run as Macho King would've been if he had the WWF World Championship around his waist at the same time? Furthermore, can you imagine how much more noteworthy his run as Macho King would've been if he had been the one heel to actually get a major win over Hulk Hogan in his heyday?
The Federation roster back then was stacked with now legendary talent. When you look back, though, who was the most dominant heel of the era? Piper is in consideration but his run atop the card only really lasted a couple of years. The Million Dollar Man was also rather noteworthy but he never even legitimately held the Championship. Andre the Giant was on the dark side of the biggest match of the era but was honestly little more than a pawn of Bobby Heenan who, as a manager, is probably about as close as you could get to a dominant heel during that era.
Randy Savage winning the match at Mania 5, even if it was due to chicanery, would have set him up to be in a position that nobody else ever really earned. That position? THE heel of the era. A rock solid two year run with the title in the midst of Hulkamania would not only have made Randy Savage an even more indispensable part of the era and its hands down most dominant bad guy but would also have helped potentially ease the pain of the eventual backlash against Hogan but giving him a year to take care of other business and not be so blatantly overexposed, similar to what the 'E did with Cena for the year after his loss to The Rock. Also, as much as I love Hogan vs Warrior at Mania 6, we could have avoided the relative flop that was Warrior's arguable too soon title reign if we had the Hogan/Savage rematch at Mania 6 and, if he were still over and proven capable of handling it by that point, Hogan vs Warrior at Mania 7. Or hell, we could keep Warrior's title reign but instead of having it come in a very fan dividing victory over the Hulkster have it come against the dominant, two year title reign strong heel "Macho King" Randy Savage. And good lord, could you imagine what it would have done for Hogan to have him return to the top of the card after a couple of years of serving mainly a "special attraction" type role?
I'm loathe to really mess around with much from that era, as all those Mania main events from back then were watershed, incredibly memorable and important moments in their own respect. I can't help but wonder, though, what the landscape would look like, how much juice Hulkamania may have reimbued with, if there had been that epic heel Macho run in the midst of the era. The impact, while subtle, would have been potentially transformative for the era.
Another person I had to approach was Mazza, my sometime-collaborator on various writing projects pertaining to both wrestling and the world of Association Football, which seems to frustrate the pair of us as much as it pleases us. The thing I’ve always enjoyed about the dynamic between Maz and myself is that we actually agree on the vast majority of things, but that has a really perverse way of making us dig in on the one issue that we don’t agree on. Consequently, it was always fun to write columns together that basically consisted of us sniping at each other, with one column famously casting me as an intellectual Gorilla Monsoon versus his sharp-but-flippant Bobby Heenan.....
That would be enough in itself for inclusion, but the fact that it was Maz who encouraged me to come back to writing here when I made a few tentative noises about it in 2010, a step that eventually led to the full time comeback and my second wave – when I really wrote far better things than I did between 2004-2007, just guarantees his position. There are 5 COTM awards that wouldn’t have happened without Maz’s intervention, not to mention a CSI win and COTY award.
Then again, I also wouldn’t have a monstrously large unfinished series hanging over my head, so I guess he has to answer for that too…..
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mazza
When Prime put this column idea forward, I had an immediate reaction. As time went on, I had a lot of other matches come to mind, but my initial thought was so strong, I couldn’t possibly go with any other. If I had the chance to change the result of one match in wrestling history, it would be the main event of SummerSlam 2010 as the Nexus took on John Cena and his band of merry (and interchangeable) men.
I was a huge fan of NXT season 1. Sure there was a lot of ridiculousness involved that had no bearing on anything but I found watching the growth of development’s finest playing out on TV fascinating. I followed the show through to the end and that day where they debuted on Raw as the Nexus is hands down one of the greatest WWE moments of the last decade. Their attacks on WWE superstars over the next few weeks made for some absolutely compelling television. The audience was gripped. The IWC was gripped. We were heading for the ultimate showdown at 2010’s biggest party of the summer. The Nexus was still going strong, albeit with one less member who had been fired for choking Justin Roberts with his own tie in their initial attack on the WWE and buried by leader Wade Barrett afterwards. Barrett along with David Otunga, Justin Gabriel, Heath Slater, Skip “Ryback” Sheffield, Darren Young and Michael Tarver went into the match on equal footing to the WWE’s allstar (well, majority star) resistance. John Cena would have back up in the form of legend Bret Hart, heels defending the company in the shape of Chris Jericho and Edge, as well as John Morrison and R-Truth. With the Great Khali being injured, a spot opened just before the PPV. The Miz was hesitant over taking the spot and in a tremendous bit of booking would be passed over at the very last minute for the man who had not only been fired, but was also Miz’s rookie during NXT - Daniel Bryan.
The match itself was great. It had all the ingredients of a classic. There were storylines all over it. We had the Team WWE heels failing to play ball with the good guys. We had Bryan look like a superstar only for his feud with Miz to reignite on the big stage. We had a bunch of rookies look very much in their element in the main event of the second biggest PPV of the year. We had the John Cena Superman against the odds comeback. And there is the problem. After some really fun eliminations, it came down to Barrett and Gabriel against Cena. Within the space of about 30 seconds, superman eliminated them both and emerged, as always, the conquering hero. Edge recently joined Chris Jericho on his podcast and when discussing the match they say that they were dead against Cena winning it and even told him. They were further concerned about the way he was booked to win too. Apparently John even admitted that they were probably right in the aftermath but the damage had been done, and it wouldn’t stop there either.
But how would have a Nexus win have changed the course of history in the WWE? First let’s take a look at just what has happened to the Nexus team from that night. Six of the seven are still employed. That is pretty damn impressive as we approach five years since their main roster debut but a few of them seem to be hanging on by the skin of their teeth. One way to look at it is they are lucky to still be employed. Another way is that perhaps WWE see their worth and are just struggling to make use of them. Let’s start with my favourite from the group, David Otunga. The guy hasn’t been seen on TV for quite some time now. Well that’s not strictly true. He’s been on TV quite a bit, just not on WWE TV. Whilst not a very good wrestler, he was turning into a great character as Big Johnny’s legal counsel. I’m actually surprised the company haven’t milked it more. He does have a lot of attributes the company love which is why I assume they keep him around. A very good public speaker for the media, a Harvard educated lawyer, a reality show celeb and, of course, he has a famous wife. I don’t think that the result at SummerSlam would have had a huge impact either way on the A-List’s career but he might have been used more in the last couple of years with higher profile exposure in the second half of 2010. Darren Young is a different case. He wasn’t very interesting during NXT. He wasn’t a particularly good fit in the Nexus and was one of the first dumped by the group. I think that would have happened regardless. He has slowly improved since then but I think that he is the exception to the rule here in that I don’t think that the booking of the group post-SummerSlam had a big effect on his career.
Skip Sheffield is an interesting one. He is arguably the guy that has been closest to breaking Team Nexus world championship duck. This, of course, came after some pretty drastic repackaging. He got white hot as the Ryback gimmick took off but a series of absolutely disastrous booking decisions saw him free fall down the card as he went on an incomprehensible PPV losing streak. The handling of The Big Guy might have been WWE’s worst booking nightmare since The Nexus. Ironically, Skip missed the worst of it post-SummerSlam. The Cornfed Meathead was probably the member of the group who had improved the most after NXT and was relishing his role as the muscle of the group. An untimely (or actually probably timely) injury saw him miss the nosedive of the story. A fit Sheffield however paired with a win that gave the Nexus momentum would have surely resulted in a big showdown with Wade Barrett eventually which could have made the guy a top star well before he was asking to be fed more.
Heath Slater and Justin Gabriel are in a similar boat to each other. This may sound like sacrilege now, but these guys were pretty much Ambrose and Rollins a couple of years earlier than the Shield members. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think they are quite in the league of the Architect and the Lunatic Fringe but the gulf between them shouldn’t be anywhere near as wide as it is. I initially wasn’t a fan of either man but both have won me over during their time on the main roster. The South African’s high flying offence and the Ginger’s selling ability may well be the reason they are still employed, but they really have the talent to at least have an established spot in the midcard right now. Slater eliminated Edge and Chris Jericho at SummerSlam whilst Gabriel was still in the match seconds from the end. How would they have come out of a better booked Nexus story though? I think their path would have been similar. They worked brilliantly as a tag team and they probably should have stayed in that capacity once the group collapsed. In fact I’d argue perhaps they still should be today. What I am sure of though is a higher profile for the group would have given them a stronger standing in the midcard and I reckon both would have tasted IC or US gold by this point in addition to numerous tag title runs.
And of course, that leaves one man. Michael Tarver. Actually fuck that guy, he was going nowhere. Of course I am talking about Wade Barrett. The win at SummerSlam would have probably made Barrett there and then. The continued botching of booking the storyline meant that Wade didn’t get a title run. He still may not have held the gold even if they had won at the biggest party of the summer but he certainly would have been better placed to take that next step. There could be arguments over whether he was ready at the time, but I think in this instance it wouldn’t have mattered. He had, and still has all the attributes needed, some just needed some more fine tuning. I have no doubt that he would have settled into that upper midcard role for life had the storyline not flopped and would have a few title reigns on his CV, certainly when there were two belts doing the rounds.
Essentially, what I have mapped out here points to the storyline as a whole being poorly handled but when you look back at the Nexus, SummerSlam was a huge turning point. From their debut until the last two minutes of the match, everything they had done was brilliant and working towards making them all stars. From the moment Cena eliminated Gabriel and Barrett in quick succession, it all went south. With each opportunity the WWE created to redeem things, they ended up making them even worse. Cena’s no-selling of joining the group, the new recruits, the mutiny and split into two groups were all moments that had me sighing in disbelief and wondering what might have been. Of course, history tells us that WWE could have made all those mistakes even if Nexus did pick up the victory at SummerSlam, but it would have been a lot less likely. I guess if we have to try and take a positive for it however it is that they seemingly learnt from their mistakes when the Shield debuted. There were plenty of similarities between the two groups and had the Nexus’ booking remained as strong as the Hounds of Justice’s was, then maybe, just maybe we’d be looking at the members of the group all being bigger stars today. More importantly perhaps (the fan comes first after all), we’d probably be looking at one of the greatest story arcs of all time.
Last but not least, I had to ask ‘Plan to be involved in this. Since my return, I think ‘Plan is probably the writer I’ve been connected with most – we both had ridiculously long series going on though he finished his), we both won multiple COTM’s, and we seemed to come head-to-head more often than not in 2012. I’ve also taken great delight in winding him up, mainly as a motivational tool. In truth, though I’ve never taken the rivalry quite so seriously as he has there is no doubt that it brought out some of my best ideas and really raised my game in a number of ways. In that sense, I think we’ve both developed as writers because of the fact that we had the other one to work off. Now that he’s written a book based on his 101 matches to see before you die, and I still write a lot as part of my work, I think it’s been great for us both on the forum, and in wider life. Never mind the fact that he’s turned into one of the best writers the site has ever seen; for all those times that ‘Plan has storked me on Twitter or tried to one-up me, and for every little jab I’ve thrown his way, he absolutely had to be part of this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 'Plan
As a historian, talking about what might have been is of limited use and of limited interest to me. Where is the use in conjecture, outside of simply cementing the known effects of a known event? Yet the allure of possibility is one many writers find themselves unable to resist. When it comes to professional wrestling amateur critics, the possibilities of a different ending to Montreal are perennially seductive.
As an event, and as a match, I have analysed Montreal to a great extent. I shan’t go into that here again; I have only a limited amount of space and am but a humble contributor! But it is worth taking a moment to speculate on what might have happened had Montreal occurred differently, not just to WWE, WCW and the individuals involved directly, but to all of professional wrestling.
Labelled by many as a moment of birth for the Attitude Era, and for the Mr McMahon character as well, many would be tempted to say that, had Montreal happened differently, the entire landscape of wrestling history would have been altered inexorably. In order to know how viable a claim this is, we must ask ourselves one important question: just how might Montreal have happened differently? Unlike many other matches, simply entertaining the idea of a direct switch of events is ignorant. Instead, there are three distinct possibilities worth looking at. 1: What if Shawn Michaels had been the one to get screwed at Montreal? 2: What if Bret Hart had not been screwed at Montreal and the planned finish as he knew it went ahead? 3: What if Bret Hart had still left for WCW but agreed nonetheless to lose cleanly to Shawn Michaels?
In the first instance, it becomes quickly apparent just how convoluted an issue this was. Presuming the circumstances leading into Montreal remain unchanged – that Hart and Michaels had been at loggerheads for the better part of eighteen months, with their personal relationship no longer existent and their working one increasingly strained, and with Hart going in to Montreal with the title despite leaving for a competing company – then it is difficult to even come up with a sensible reason as to why Vince McMahon would want to screw Shawn Michaels at all, especially given the planned finish would have actually seen the match thrown out, rather than Hart win outright. It would be ludicrous to switch the events of the preceding eighteen months on their head – pretending it was Michaels leaving and not Hart – because the talking point then becomes about a lot more than simply an alteration of a single bout’s outcome (the purpose, I do believe, of this column). Asking this first question achieves little, but does throw up some interesting possibilities about Vince’s motivations. Given it seems like such an unlikely event, could we assume he was driven exclusively by business, with personal animosity a non-factor? Does it throw light upon his relationship to Shawn Michaels, personally and professionally, that it seems so ludicrous to imagine the shoe being on the other foot? Does it evidence a complete disregard for the personal emotional turmoil Hart was going through at the time, thus throwing light upon Vince’s regard for his body of work up to that point? These are all questions without clear answers, but interesting questions all the same.
Are our next two scenarios any different then? Yes, and more useful, but they really can only be discussed effectively in conjunction with one another. Both, after all, lead to the same conclusion: that the conflict at the heart of the issue had been effectively resolved prior to Survivor Series; that Hart and Michaels had been able to come to an agreement on how the match would end and who would be champion the following night. Hart has claimed on numerous occasions he was willing to forfeit the championship the following night, or to even have Survivor Series his final night and have the title forfeited off screen prior to appearing on WCW television; following Alundra’s previous actions, Vince was unwilling, apparently, to take the risk coming with the situation he himself had been the architect of however. An agreement from Hart to lose to Michaels is an impossible assumption to make without possibly looking at an alternative 1997, so fierce had the animosity between both men grown to be. Regardless, assuming that either Hart had agreed to lose to Michaels that night, or Vince (interestingly and importantly not Michaels) had agreed to the finish Hart is heard suggesting on microphone in Wrestling With Shadows, there would be, we can believe, a lack of ill-will between the parting entities of Hart and WWE in our alternate universe.
What does this result in? Well, it means Hart’s legacy in the company he considered home would be intact, considerably lessening the hostility between Hart and WWE. Whether that may have altered his working relationship with whatever powers constituted the powers-that-be in WCW at the time is impossible for me to know, as a man uneducated about his stint in Atlanta. It does mean that British Bulldog, and several others, would not have immediately sought a release from their contracts in WWE. It does mean, presumably, Bret would have remained in contact on an easier, more frequent basis with his younger brother Owen, and how that might have affected the events leading to Owen’s untimely death is harrowing to even begin pondering. It does mean that the ending to a certain Sting/Hogan match would have needed to be completely different to what it was, which in turn may have created a ripple effect in WCW given how big a happening that match was at the time. It may have even meant a change to the end of Hart’s career. If his mentality in WCW was altered because of his relationship with WWE having been different, how might that have effected what he did in his WCW career? Once WWE were soundly winning the ratings war, might Bret have sought a return home, perhaps? Might the fateful Goldberg match have been entirely avoided? And how might the Invasion angle of 2001 have changed?
Perhaps more intriguing is how a change to the outcome of Montreal may affect WWE as a business. The fundamental switch in the Montreal situation we are entertaining here is that Hart and WWE part on good terms, and the most infamous breaking of kayfabe in WWE history never took place. On a menial note, how many feuds and specific matches would have had different endings because of this? Without a Montreal to riff, CM Punk and The Undertaker would have had a much different feud in 2009, The Rock’s corporate turn would have needed to be different, the ending of the title match at Money in the Bank 2011 would have forced WWE’s hand in a different direction…it’s amazing how many times WWE and other companies have fallen back on parodying that moment. What about the direction of the Attitude Era and the birth of Mr McMahon though?
Frankly, an adequate historical analysis makes clear that not much would have changed at all. The Attitude Era was largely the brain-child of a combined McMahon/Russo creative drive, inspired albeit perhaps indirectly, by the work of Heyman. Naturally, Heyman had nothing to do with Montreal and Russo had become head writer much earlier on in that year. WWE had been steadily introducing edgier, more violent elements to their product over a course of years, step-by-step, in a natural evolution of professional wrestling’s sophistication. Vince himself had been becoming more of a notable on-screen character presence over the preceding months too. Hart had numerous kayfabe interactions with McMahon on-screen that confirmed Vince’s status to be more than that of a commentator, falling short only of stating the fact overtly. Austin, who would go on to have the legendary feud with the Mr McMahon character, delivered his first Stunner to Vince in September, more than a month prior to Survivor Series, essentially laying the first foundation for that intrinsic element of the Attitude Era to come. Works had been a frequent occurrence since as early as January following Hart’s loss to Austin in the Rumble that year, and more violent match types – such as Hell in a Cell in October – and controversial feuds – such as the Border Wars angle – were becoming the norm. Essentially, 1997 was a year of change in WWE; Montreal was the crowning jewel, not the crown.
Montreal was not an exclusive genesis point of, well, anything. It had its role to play – the most significant being perhaps the complete destruction of Hart’s relationship with the company and the speeding up of the Mr McMahon character’s maturation - but removing the Screwjob from history doesn’t do quite as much as what some of the more romantic wrestling fans like to imagine. It certainly would have had negligible impact on the ratings war. Do not forget that it was not Montreal that turned the tide in that war; that moment came over a year later when WCW were foolish enough to spoil the fact Mankind would defeat The Rock for the WWF title later that same night. It was a turning point that WCW could not recover from. Similarly, the downfall of WCW had little to do with the presence of Hart specifically; that is, in itself, a very convoluted issue, of which Hart was only a simple addition to, that happened in direct parallel with the WWE’s ratings recovery and which contributed as much to WCW’s death as Attitude did to WWE’s success. Had WCW opted to capitalise on the Montreal controversy immediately on the Nitro following Survivor Series, we may be talking a different story.
Historical alternatives are merely conjecture, but they do help clarify the specific importance specific events played in the unfolding of, in this case, professional wrestling’s overall narrative. Montreal was a turning point for the industry, there is no denying that. A watershed, also. But it wasn’t quite the beast many think of it as; myth, in that sense, may have gone some way to replacing history. It was an important happening, but many of its exclusive consequences came about on a personal level, not a business level. While it may have sped up a process that had been a long time growing, it did not create that process. The Attitude Era, WWE’s victory in the Monday Night War and the birth of Mr McMahon as a character would, truth be told, probably have all happened in a very similar way had Bret Hart and Vince McMahon reached amicable terms regarding the creative direction of Hart’s departure. They simply would have happened slower.
My original idea at this point was to add my own thoughts on an example, but I’m going to have to cut this short, given that ‘Plan’s piece is longer than a lot of his own columns. Montreal hangs heavy over a lot of my thoughts about wrestling and is a fascinating one to pick and one I’d often thought of myself, but ‘Plan is right to point out that you have to change a lot more than the result of one match. You can do justice to that far more by tinkering with the whole set-up to that point. Maz’s choice makes perfect sense to me – I hated the ending of the match at the time for all kinds of reasons, and I think the impact of a big win for new stars has been made all the more clear by Kevin Owens emergence and the effect of his win over Cena. What would this have done for Wade Barrett, presumably the man to get the final fall?
But I’ve got to give a bit of a nod to Steve, because that’s not a scenario I’d ever really considered. We’re all so used to thinking of the late-Eighties in terms of Hogan, or of muscle-bound babyfaces more generally, that he more radical act of a heel champion who could be chased by a series of babyfaces might have been the thing needed to freshen up a product that was already starting to stagnate by the time that Wrestlemania 5 rolled around.
For my part, I’ll be brief. I was going to return to the first match that ever inspired me to write a column. Nice symmetry, eh? In the first edition of Take Up Thy Wrestling Boots and Walk, I’d spoken about the match between Raven and Jeff Jarrett for the NWA World title, which Jarrett won and the fans in the TNA Asylum responded to by throwing trash into the ring. 199 columns and twelve years later, and I'm still thinking about that match.
Jarrett was, by that point, a spent force as a babyface. In 2003, Raven was seen by many as a victim of WWE policy, never allowed to reach the heights that he had in ECW and WCW by an idiotic corporation who were making misstep after misstep at the time. He was also one of the better talkers of the Monday Night War era, and the feeling was definitely there before the match that Raven was better placed to take TNA to another level than the stale Double J.
Of course, that didn’t happen – and when this was conceived a year or so ago, my argument was going to run something along the lines of this being the first, and ultimately most costly, missed opportunity for TNA. The following years were marked by these kind of missteps, all of which meant that when TNA did finally put on consistently great programming for about 2 years, dominating the WWE in the opinion of most people I know who watched both products with an open mind for most of 2011, 2012 and the first few months of 2013, the damage was done. When you saw perfectly intelligent wrestling fans pulling the equivalent of a 'lalala can't hear you' to dismiss the era of the Roode title reign you knew that the brand was never going to break through, short of WWE driving itself off a cliff.
A year later, and the consequences of that seem all the more apparent. I can barely sit through an episode of TNA anymore, and most of the reports I see talk about the company having a limited amount of time to live. It’s all the more poignant, given the supposedly imminent death of the company, to think of where they could have got to - if only Jeff had dropped the belt to someone that the WCW and ECW fans both saw as one of their own, at a time when such a thing still seemed to count for something.
But as someone who thinks wrestling is at its best when the workers have other places to go, it’s a more painful subject, and not one to dwell on. So it seems that my big celebration of my place to speak has to end with a sour note.
I guess given everything else, there’s something kind of appropriate about that. The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley’.