Hello and welcome to what appears to be the final edition of The Trademark Rants for the year 2004. Now, because this is the final column of the year, and because I really have nothing else to talk about, I guess I’m forced into one of these lame-ass year-end retrospectives where I talk about the year in wrestling or whatever. Now you’re probably thinking, “Mike, if you think retrospectives are so lame, then why are you writing one?” Well, it’s because wrestling commentary is actually a very limited subject field (in other words, there are only so many subjects pertaining to pro wrestling that one can write about before he becomes repetitive and lame) and I’m really running out of options for new columns. Of course, this wouldn’t be nearly as much of a problem if the wrestling world had somehow PROGRESSED over the past three years I’ve been writing this column, but obviously no one gives a rat’s ass about progress these days, do they? So, I guess I’m going to have to do the lame-ass year-end retrospective now, aren’t I? God dammit…
Well, in case you’ve been living under a rock (or deployed in Iraq) for the past year, in 2004, the wrestling world absolutely SUCKED!!! I know it, you know it, your grandma knows it, and HOPEFULLY Vince McMahon knows it. If he doesn’t, the man needs to check his ass into therapy because he has got to be in some serious denial to NOT know that 2004 was a pretty sh*tty year in pro wrestling. The WWE had an atrocious year both creatively and financially. Major Leauge Wrestling ran out of money and was forced to shut down, while Rob Feinstein threw away his career and nearly ruined Ring of Honor’s good name by soliciting sex from underage boys in chat rooms. AJ Styles, by far TNA’s most popular superstar, is in the midcard for reasons that boggle the mind and baffle the imagination. Ron Killings still can’t seem to get over with fans outside of the TNA Core in an age where hip-hop rules the media and John Cena is likely the biggest legitimate star in the WWE right now. Triple H is STILL hovering around in the World Title picture, literally choking the life out of RAW while burying Randy Orton, Triple H Protégé and one of RAW’s most promising talents, two weeks after he finally got his shot at the Main Event. Bob Holly’s rookie-induced “Road Rage” damn near killed someone AGAIN this year (Rene Dupree, for the four people who will care). Then there was Brock Lesnar, who quit WWE to pursue a career in the NFL, just to end up begging at WWE’s door for a paycheck when he couldn’t make the cut. But none of this compared to the sheer suck-titude (Hey, I got to use an old E&C catch phrase! Woo Hoo!) of one individual. One individual who sucked harder and longer than anything that has ever sucked before… and his name is John Bradshaw Layfield.
Recently, Time Magazine named George W. Bush their Person of the Year. Basically, that just means he was the guy who was in damn near every headline and conversation over the past year. Unfortunately, for wrestling fans, the Person of the Year in the Wrestling World is, in fact, John Bradshaw Layfield, which should go to show right there just how bad the past year was in this business. He was a champion with no heat that literally sucked the life out of not only his own Brand of World Wrestling Entertainment, but the entertainment value of wrestling as a whole. JBL, if anything, served as a black hole, sucking in everything that might have been of some value in the wrestling world, and cheapened it simply by his presence at the Main Event level of the biggest company in the wrestling world. Not since Triple H’s humping of a dead carcass has something in wrestling sucked so much that it harmed the entire wrestling world, but then again, no one ever expected JBL to become the WWE Champion… So, in honor of this accomplishment, we at The Trademark Rants would like to declare John Bradshaw Layfield The Trademark Rants’ Dumbass Of The Year!
For those of you fortunate enough to not know who John Bradshaw Layfield is, he is a wrestler who gimmick is basically to act just like George W. Bush and he plays a heel for WWE’s SmackDown Brand. He is the current WWE Champion and his signature moves are the fall-away slam, the powerbomb, and the “Clothesline From Hell”. Now, in an election year, with the country deeply divided in support and/or hatred of the sitting President of the United States, it only makes sense that the WWE, ever looking to somehow integrate politics and pop culture into their programming, would take advantage of this trend. So, WWE decides that former APA Member Bradshaw, the most obvious Conservative Republican in the wrestling world today, would be the perfect candidate to play a Bush-esque heel to take advantage of the popularity of the Anti-Bush sentiments going into the November Election, and renamed him John Bradshaw Layfield. Now, the idea, while it does make some sense, is highly flawed. The wrestling demographic is heavily dependent on Middle American Males, most of which are both heavily Conservative politically, and strong supporters of the sitting President, George W. Bush. In other words, JBL as a character is actually quite similar to the WWE’s core audience of Middle American Males and shares many of their views. The idea that a wrestler with this kind of a gimmick could actually get over as a heel when the majority of the wrestling audience is not only Conservative and Republican, but downright in love with Good Ol’ Dubya, is just ludicrous. So, WWE tired to rectify this by making JBL into a rich elitist who was obsessed with his manicures and his day-spas and his New York lifestyle, a stereotype which haunts Liberals, in an attempt to make JBL look hypocritical. That, though, has not worked nearly as well as WWE would like to believe. To this day, JBL struggles to get over with fans, mostly because his gimmick is contradictory and his ability to play this character is non-existent. John Layfield maybe be stubborn as all hell, but he’s not a coward nor a metro-sexual “nancy-boy”. He’s a Texas Redneck whose seemingly mastered the Stock Market. If anything, JBL is, in reality, a guy wrestling fans ought to like very much. But then again, SmackDown was in desperate need of heels, and JBL was all they really had to go with, so they pushed him. The rest is wrestling history…
JBL’s biggest failure is not his ring-work, although others on the ‘Net will insist otherwise. JBL, in the ring, actually does very well based on his size, style, and training. Wrestling Fans on the Internet especially need to get over the idea that wrestling talent is only derived by how many cool highspots someone can do at any given time. Wrestling is actually more a game of mental subtleties than it is a Shock and Awe campaign. It always has been, and it always will be. The idea that only small men can work a good match with rich storytelling which captures the audience’s attention works to limit, not expand, the creative possibilities within the wrestling world. Bigger men, while they may be slower, are a necessary part of the wrestling business, and the sooner people on the Internet realize that, the better off you all will be. Don’t get me wrong… Samoa Joe could work circles around JBL, but JBL is a lot better than most people give him credit for. He’s working with mostly the wrong people based on his style (JBL is much more suited to the Japanese Style than the American Style), but JBL is NOT a horrible wrestler. In fact, JBL isn’t even close to being the worst in-ring worker WWE has. That title belongs to Mark Henry, with Tyson Tomko coming in a close second.
Actually, JBL’s biggest problem is his inability to draw heat with the JBL persona. In fact, just about the only place JBL gets any real heat at all is on the Internet. The truth is that JBL only draws heat form Internet Fans, which is why JBL has been so critical of the Internet. He does it because it’s the only place he can actually get heat, and the WWE has been rather desperate in their attempts to get JBL over as a heel, so they encourage it. And JBL only gets heat from the Internet Fans because JBL can only get heat from the Internet Fans. Confused? Let me explain this very clearly – you are NOT a Smart Fan. You are a Mark. You are being played by WWE CONSTANTLY, and JBL is only one example of that. The Internet Wrestling Community is, by far, the easiest audience to work in the wrestling world today. Triple H worked it, Chris Jericho worked it, JBL has worked it, and each time, they’re attempts to get heat from us has worked in spades. If a wrestler is desperate for heat, all he has to do is attack the Internet, and boom, instant heat. That’s it. And if you really think about it, that’s why JBL pisses you off so much, because he just came out and admitted it on the WWE website and told you exactly what he was doing. He was working the ‘Net, and the ‘Net got worked.
Outside of the IWC, though, JBL struggles to get heat. Just as an example of how desperate WWE is to try and get JBL over as a heel, at the Christmas in Iraq show, JBL didn’t get a single boo from the military crowd until Big Show came out and called JBL a “deserter”. If you watched the show at all, the various members of the military even explained at one point why JBL struggles to get heat… they LIKE Bradshaw. They think Bradshaw is really cool. They never mention him as JBL, though, nor mention the JBL gimmick. In fact, if you watch closely, many of the military personnel sitting at ringside were confused, and likely, wondering what the hell Bradshaw was doing in a biohazard suit. Now, take into consideration that the military audience is, in fact, makes up one of the biggest audience demographics WWE targets with their programming every week. The military is made of largely of young, Middle American Men and Women, after all, so of course a military audience could represent the core audience of professional wrestling. Now, if the wrestling fans in the military are confused by JBL’s gimmick and unwilling to boo JBL until Big Show is forced to make them boo by calling JBL a deserter (a cheap and desperate way to get heat with a military crowd, to say the least), then why would a domestic audience, made up of the same demographic, boo JBL? The answer – they won’t boo JBL at all, and that’s JBL’s biggest problem.
If you watch a regular SmackDown episode closely, you’ll notice that the boos you hear when JBL talks on TV are not real. That’s right, folks, they’re canned boos. WWE is better with canned responses than WCW ever was, but to someone who’s taken a great deal of interest in film and sound production and actually has some idea of how it’s all done, it’s beyond obvious. The crowd on TV is barely reacting, but yet, you can hear 10,000 people booing when JBL talks. Something’s not right here. Either the people reacting are not visible on-camera (which, for the number of people supposedly reacting, is a near-impossibility on a WWE program), or the reaction is fake. The same thing can be seen in Hogan’s 1999 babyface run in WCW. The cheers you hear sounds like a full arena of no less than 10,000 people, but on camera, you only see small sections of maybe three or four fans in any one area actually cheering. They all also happen to be fat, in their mid-thirties, and wearing their Hulkamania shirts from 1986, but that’s besides the point… Now, I’m not saying JBL doesn’t get booed at all, because there’s always some section of ‘Net Marks reacting, and another small section of Liberals screaming at JBL, the most obvious Conservative in wrestling today. I’m simply saying that he’s not getting booed nearly as much as WWE would like us to believe, and certainly not enough to be considered a credible heel champion.
Under JBL’s watch, ratings have gone down, PPV buyrates have gone down, and fan interest in the SmackDown brand has tanked. JBL’s reign has also had an adverse effect on two of WWE’s top stars, Eddie Guerrero and the Undertaker. Both Guerrero and Undertaker have been on the jobbing end of JBL’s monster push to the top, and in putting him over, they have lost a CONSIDERABLE amount of heat. Eddie, who practically owned 2003 and helped make SmackDown become the superior brand during the first two years of the Brand Split, went from WWE Champion to floundering in the midcard with no direction. As for the Undertaker, his marquee value has been declining ever since he came back to WWE in 2000 as the American Bad Ass, but in 2004, he might as well have been a job boy, because that’s all he was seemingly allowed to do since WrestleMania XX. Fans are unable and unwilling to take JBL seriously as a champion, so much so that the men JBL has defeated to claim and maintain his WWE Championship have been seriously devalued in the process. In case you’re not sure what this means, it means that every person that JBL defeats loses value in the eyes of fans, but JBL’s value also fails to increase once he’s defeated a challenger.
Now, let’s say that every wrestler is worth a certain amount of money, and each wrestler can either increase or decrease his monetary value with wins and losses over other wrestlers. If a less-expensive wrestler defeats a more-expensive wrestler, the higher-priced wrestler would lose value while the lower-priced wrestler would gain value. The problem with JBL is that while the people he has defeated are losing value, his value does not increase. In turn, the loss of value incurred by the wrestlers he has defeated is considerable, because the economy of this system is thrown off-balance. Think of this as a Stock Market Crash. Money now simply disappears, meaning that there is less money in the economy, therefore, wrestlers in general are now worth far less with prices falling sharply. JBL is the catalyst of this Market Crash that is as we speak devaluing the net value of the entire SmackDown Brand, as well as the value of World Wrestling Entertainment as a company.
Basically, this explanation is a simplification of how wrestling, as a business, actually works. Wrestlers have a monetary value, and that value is based on the fans’ perception of how good a particular wrestler is, based on whom he has defeated and who has defeated him. The difference between wrestling and other sports, in this matter, is that the outcomes of matches are predetermined, which means that WWE can choose whom ought to win in order to make more money by pushing their higher-valued superstars and not doing as much with their lower-valued superstars. The problem is that WWE is not doing that. Their decisions over the past several years have been causing them to lose money at an ever-increasing rate, devaluing their stock and causing WWE to lose money. That is very real. JBL is just one of many problems that have caused WWE to lose money. He is also one of the easiest to fix, which makes one wonder why Vince McMahon, presented with all of this information on a regular basis, doesn’t simply ax JBL’s push and put the WWE Title on someone with more value ASAP. That, if anything, is what is so aggravating about John Bradshaw Layfield’s role in WWE for me personally.
Call me crazy, but I’d want to run a company that was making money rather than losing it, no matter how rich I already was, because I know that I’m not the only one my company makes money for. There would be countless numbers of people working under me who depend on the success of my company in order to make ends meet, as well as investors, sponsors, and the people who purchase and use my products. This is a responsibility of any responsible company owner who, unlike the folks at Enron and Halliburton, actually give a damn about the people who benefit from my company’s existence. Then again, perhaps I’m not suited for business… Not to say I’m all that nice a guy when it comes to business, but rather, because I still believe in the concept of Mutual Benefit as the ultimate business motivation, and not simply the lust of money. Either way, no one benefits from John Bradsahw Layfield’s push except Vince McMahon’s ego, which, as of now, has cost WWE millions of dollars in revenue. This results in cutbacks, layoffs, and lower pay for all WWE employees, including wrestlers, who, despite the myths, don’t get paid HALF as well as people seem to think they do. When the top 1% of wrestlers only make money in the high six-digits before taxes each year working as wrestler, you tend to get the idea that wrestlers are not paid in the same league as most professional athletes, stuntmen, or actors. Some wrestlers at the top levels of the business are fortunate enough to supplement their income with endorsements, appearances, CD sales, movie roles and book deals, but most are not. Most are simply able to live out life in the Middle Class with a mortgage, car payments, insurance premiums, and monthly bills just like the rest of us. If one day, they lost their job because Vince McMahon chose to stroke his ego rather than make a decision that was for the best of the company, his employees, his investors, and his customers, what kind of an impact would that decision have on their lives? Maybe they’ll get lucky and TNA can give them a regular role, but most of them will spend most of their time flying around the country and touring Japan, working three to five times as often as they ever did in WWE, just to make ends meet. And even if they do get a role in TNA, they’ll still end up working a bunch of Indy shows all around the country anyway, because they need the work. And to think that all of this could be caused simply because someone felt the need to stroke their ego instead of making the best decision for the company…
When it’s all said and done, JBL has been a disastrous business decision for the WWE, causing WWE to lose more money and make even more cutbacks in order to turn any sort of profit whatsoever. This, on top of the over-extension of funds caused by the Brand Split, the failure of the XFL, the failure of The World (WWF New York), the failure of SmackDown Records, and the downturn of the national economy since 2001, only creates more problems for WWE. Perhaps Vince McMahon feels he can afford to make a few mistakes very now and then, but what about the WWE employees, the investors, and the wrestlers? Can they afford to pay for Vince McMahon’s mistakes? And does he actually expect us to just sit here and watch his lame-duck product sink like the Titanic? Christmas in Iraq was the first WWE show I have watched since Unforgiven in September. SEPTEMBER. The last time I watched SmackDown, prior to Christmas in Iraq was in July. JULY. Did it ever occur to anyone reading this column why I might have been writing predominantly TNA-oriented columns over the past 6 months? This is why. I stopped watching WWE, and the reason I stopped watching WWE begins with John Bradshaw Layfield. I can’t just sit for two hours and watch the WWE rot and die while they push a guy like JBL who couldn’t draw heat if someone set his ass on fire, or bury Randy Orton in favor of a guy who’s been holding the World Title for the vast majority of the past 3 years! I’m tired of watching the same bullsh*t over and over, and I’m really f*cking sick of having my wrestling viewing options cut in half because Vince McMahon doesn’t care to produce a strong wrestling product anymore! I don’t care about your son-in-law, I don’t care about T&A, I don’t give a rat’s ass about Gene Stinski or Carlito Caribbean Cool, and I don’t care about John Bradshaw Layfield stinking up my TV with his half-baked character and lame-duck championship reign! In fact, the ONLY thing I like in WWE right now is Christy Hemme, although only God knows if she’s even been on TV because I haven’t seen RAW in over THREE MONTHS!!! Christy Hemme may be a hyperactive whack-job, but at least she’s an ENTERTAINING hyperactive whack-job, which is more than I can say for anything else that the WWE has put on TV in the past year, and she doesn’t even f*cking WRESTLE!!!! If this is all that WWE has to offer me in 2005, forget it! TNA may not be perfect, but at least TNA gives me SOMETHING that I’d actually want to watch, and not some half-baked Bush wanna-be, some kid with an afro, an idiot who can’t write poetry, another idiot named Snitski, an OVW reject with a bunch of ugly tattoos who can’t wrestle, another OVW reject who’s supposedly about to luck into a major feud with Vince’s son-in-law, and of course, Vince’s son-in-law talking for 20 minutes about nothing I give a rat’s ass about when all I really want to see is Christy Hemme’s crazy ass before I continue doing whatever it is that I’m doing instead of watching WWE!
So, there you go, my thoughts on the year 2004 in wrestling, and the dumbass that ruined it all… If you have any comments, questions, or anything else you’d like to share, feel free to write me at TheMaverickMJ@yahoo.com. Thanks for reading, and feel free to come back again for another installment of The Trademark Rants!
