Written By: Mike Johns on 12/14/06
Bobby Lashley is your new ECW World Champion. Well, I guess the saying is true – “If, at first, you don’t succeed, lower your standards.” Bobby went from being an up-and-coming wrestler on SmackDown to the Main Event of ECW, which most people would see as a promotion. Unfortunately, in a place called reality, the truth is a little different than what you’d like to believe.
Lashley was given an opportunity to headline No Mercy back in October against the World Heavyweight Champion, King Booker. Batista, who had previously been feuding with the champion, was taken out of the #1 Contender’s Spot after a rather poor showing at SummerSlam against Booker and replaced. Since Rey Mysterio was busy trying to convince people to shell out money to watch Chavo Guerrero wrestle, the only other baby face in a position to wrestle Booker was, of course, Bobby Lashley. WWE went into overdrive trying to promote the former US Champion against the man who defeated him to become the 2006 King Of The Ring for the World Title at No Mercy, but sales were slow, and fan interest in the match simply did not exist. Despite getting a major push of the better part of the past year, fans were not ready to accept Bobby Lashley as anything more than a midcarder, and in the weeks going into No Mercy, that showed. So, at the last minute, WWE decided to interject Batista and Finlay (who were scheduled to have a match of their own on the PPV) into the World Title match and make it a Fatal 4-Way. In other words, Batista and Finlay were brought in to bail Bobby Lashley out, and hopefully spark some last-minute ticket sales and PPV buys for No Mercy. In the end, the show only drew 9,000 fans and approximately 195,000 PPV buys, down significantly from the previous SmackDown PPV, The Great American Bash, which drew an estimated 228,000 buys (which, in itself was down from 240,000 buys from this year’s Judgment Day). While the live audience, according to today’s WWE standards, was somewhat respectable (I have no idea how a company who used to regularly draw 18,000 to 20,000 people to a TV taping could look a PPV that drew a mere 9,000 and call it a respectable attendance figure, but hey, what do I know?), the buyrate was downright shameful, and a lot of that can be put on Bobby Lashley. Despite what anyone will tell you, a heel can only draw as well as his opponent is perceived. Even the best heel draws aren’t going to pack a house wrestling a contender the fans don’t believe in, and the fans clearly did not believe that Bobby Lashley was ready to be a main eventer. So, instead of scaling back Lashley’s push, feuding him against other rising stars such as Mr. Kennedy, or somehow developing Lashley’s character more, WWE simply decides to push Lashley into the main event anyway, but on a different brand, where Lashley’s inability to draw isn’t as much of an issue. If this isn’t a clear example of someone lowering their standards after an initial failure, I don’t know what is.
I said months ago that I severely questioned whether Lashley was as good as he was being portrayed by WWE and Wrestling Insiders because of both a lack of experience and a lack of star power on SmackDown. ECW, comparatively speaking, has even fewer legitimate stars than SmackDown did going into the Summer of 2006, when I made those comments (see my 2006 Halftime Report). Outside of RVD, CM Punk, and maybe Sabu (now that Big Show is on “hiatus”, as WWE claims), ECW has nothing to really stand on. If Lashley can’t be seen as a star in ECW, he may as well not even exist, because there aren’t too many other people standing in his way.
ECW, for whatever reason, has been regulated to virtually nothing. Nowadays, if Creative doesn’t have anything for you, you generally end up on ECW before getting canned outright. Daivari, Khali, Elijah Burke, Sylvester Terkay, Matt Striker, Rene Dupree and Bob Holly can all be pointed to as examples of this theory in action. Sadly (in most cases, as I refuse to feel bad about Bob Holly’s inability to move up a card despite being more chances than Billy Gunn to get over), the move to ECW does little more for their careers than given them about as much TV time as they would have had if they had just stayed on their respective brands and Heat and Velocity were still on the air. Bob Holly can say he’s a main eventer now, but he’s also main eventing what is essentially Tuesday Night Heat. I can remember a time where he was the main event on Heat, then later, Velocity, too, but he wasn’t considered a main eventer then. He was considered lucky to have a job then. If, for whatever reason, Holly were to win the ECW Title, it could single-handedly kill what’s left of the brand.
Now, I don’t want to come off like I’m bashing Lashley, because really, I’m not. I’m simply saying he isn’t ready to be a main eventer, and, based on the buyrates and attendance figures, WWE fans agree. So why did WWE put the ECW Title on Lashley, knowing he failed to draw a respectable buy-rate at No Mercy just a few months earlier, and knowing that fans simply were not ready to support Lashley in the main event, especially when ECW has two major stars (CM Punk and Rob Van Dam) who already have the support of the crowd? Beyond turning Lashley heel and feuding him with Punk, there really is no point to it. ECW has no real heels for him to feud with. No one is going to pay to see Lashley vs. Test or Lashley vs. Bob Holly. You either have to get a heel from Raw or SmackDown, or turn Lashley. Otherwise, we’ll get stuck with dream matches such as Lashley vs. Mike Knox and Lashley vs. Kevin Thorn.
Of course, someone will whine and tell me I ought to be more patient, because Lashley will turn eventually (he almost has to, really), and all will be right with the universe (allegedly). The problem is that I shouldn’t have to be patient and wait for a turn. The turn should have already happened. According to most reports, the turn was going to take place at December to Dismember. With Big Show taking time off, or retiring from the business altogether, depending on what you choose to believe from what source (given the nature of wrestling “retirements”, I can understand people not believing a wrestler would walk away from the business entirely, as so few actually do), ECW is without a top heel. You need to establish that new heel BEFORE the old one disappears, or your show has no direction. It’s simple logic. If your heroes have no villain to work off of, there is no hero. Period. WWE should have turned Lashley in the Elimination Chamber, preferably eliminating one if not both of ECW’s top faces (Punk and RVD) by dastardly means. Screw Big Show if you want, he’s leaving anyway, so it might be easier. If he is going to retire, might as well let people cheer him on his way out. But regardless, WWE needed to think this out further. Now, because of all of this, Lashley will probably get his next villain from outside of ECW, instead of refreshing his persona (or lack thereof) by becoming that villain and working with the established faces, RVD, Sabu, and CM Punk.
Speaking of the Chamber, according to some reports, Vince McMahon wanted CM Punk and RVD eliminated early in order to force the crowd to cheer for Lashley. This, if anything, is the leading reason why Lashley should have turned. If you know, for a fact, that your fans will cheer someone else over your hand-picked hero, chances are, your hand-picked hero will flop. Why? Because it’s not about what you want, it’s about what your customers want. I got in an argument with a few people several months back over whether Kurt Angle should have turned face, and the basis of my argument was simply that the people wanted it. Angle, despite having been labeled within the business as a “lifer” heel because he won Olympic Gold, has generally been loved and embraced by wrestling fans. Fans would do the “You Suck” chants because it was fun, much in the way Ring of Honor fans do their dueling chants. They’d boo because they were supposed to, but, during his matches, they’d be cheering all the same. Since people were cheering, it would be easy to assume they were cheering for the good guy, and most people will believe that. A wrestling promoter should know better, though. A good promoter knows how to really listen to a crowd and figure out what they’re really saying. WWE is fortunate in the sense that fans bring signs to events. Indy shows don’t get that as much. Sure, there’s signs here and there, but it’s more common in WWE to see signs. Read them. That will show you what people really think. If you notice people dressing like a wrestler (the case with Carlito), that’s also a sign of love. You also need to pay attention to when they cheer, what they’re cheering for, and why. This helps you structure matches in the future, and tells you when a spot is working, and when fans are tired of seeing it. It also gives the promoter a better idea of what fans like and dislike about various talents, and ideas on how to better promote the talent to the fans. When a promoter knows how to do that, and actually follows through with it, it generally makes for a good product. Whatever success bookers have generally begin with someone knowing how to read their fans and how to appeal to them, while the downfall of most bookers tends to be when they stop listening to what the fans want and promote what they want, instead. Fans made their love of Angle obvious in his feud with Cena, and eventually, WWE wised up and finally gave the fans what they wanted – a baby face Angle. Then they demoted him, fired him, fueled various drug abuse rumors about him on the Internet (that, coincidentally, did not seem to exist prior to mid-2006 and his contract negotiations with WWE, despite the claim that Angle has had this alleged drug problem for years now), and insulted a fan of his who had an Angle tattoo in WWE Magazine. Why? Good question. I’d love to know that answer myself, actually.
So, anyway, back to the chamber. Instead of looking at the situation and seeing, perhaps, that it may be best to turn Bobby Lashley, as both RVD (who, given, will likely never get a major push again, but is still widely popular, and could be used to help build up a new heel) and CM Punk are far more popular, so much so that it is necessary to eliminate both of them from the match before Lashely even enters the ring, so they don’t scoop his heat, WWE decides to eliminate their two top baby faces in rapid-fire succession in an attempt to sway an audience into buying a baby face they clearly don’t support nearly as much. Does anyone else here see the logic problem?
Let’s dumb this down, shall we? You sell hamburgers. All kinds. Different shapes, sizes, and whatnot. Now, you have customers, who come in and buy your hamburgers. Of all the different kinds of burgers you make, the one that sells best is your double cheeseburger. But, you just happen to be lactose intolerant, and you can’t eat cheese, so you decide to take the double cheeseburger off your menu, which also means you now don’t sell single cheeseburgers, either. And, just for the hell of it, let’s say that your second most popular burger just happens to be your single cheeseburger. With no more cheeseburgers on the menu, what happens to your business? Simple, the customers who wanted cheeseburgers now go elsewhere. Now, given, the only places that sell cheeseburgers in your area are small, hardly known, and not necessarily as good as the cheeseburgers you once made, but at least they’re still cheeseburgers. So some of your customers go to those places. Others, burnt by your menu changes, simply decide not to have any more burgers at all, and start eating at the KFC down the road. The customers you do keep, though, don’t like hamburgers, but they either don’t know about or don’t like the other places that make burgers, so they still come to you because, while you don’t have cheeseburgers, you still have okay hamburgers. They don’t come as often or buy nearly as much, but they still show up every now and then. Are you getting this now?
To un-metaphor the last paragraph, WWE has fans who like wrestling. They have certain wrestlers they like a lot, and some, not so much. When WWE decides to ignore or get rid of popular talent in favor of pushing someone they don’t like, fans get upset. When fans get upset, they look for other options. TNA and ROH exist, but neither are like the WWE, and, depending on what a fan likes in a wrestling show, only offer certain aspects of what WWE would offer if they only cared about what the fans liked. Some get tired of wrestling altogether and stop watching, choosing to follow Mixed Martial Arts instead, or pursue other interests. And then, the people who are still watching WWE, despite the fact WWE isn’t giving them a show they’d actually want to see, do so out of habit or because the other options, TNA and ROH, are even worse, so they’ll still watch, but not as often. They might not get Pay Per Views anymore, or only watch one show a week, or, as is the case with most of my friends, they’ll catch a few minutes of a show here or there, then read the results on the Internet later on. This is what happens when you try to force something on the public that they clearly don’t want. Even if you’re the biggest game, or the only game in town, your business isn’t going to be as successful. Why you would want a less successful business, only God knows. But that’s what happens.
To sum it all up, I don’t want to say I’m completely against Lashley being ECW Champ, mainly because there are worse options (Bob Holly), but, at the same time, there was a right way of going about this, and a wrong way. Noting Lashley’s lack of heat, his inexperience, and his previous failure to draw as a main event baby face, it seems strange that WWE would want to prolong Lashley’s status as a face any longer than it absolutely had to in order to promote future ECW Title matches that fans might actually want to see. Sure, the turn seems inevitable and downright obvious, but the very fact that it is also leaves room for it to not happen, which could hurt Lashley, and ECW as a brand, further. Another failure like No Mercy on his record could send him to the midcard for a long time to come, and for a guy with as much athletic talent as he has, it would be a shame not to see him finally get over and do something great. It is possible. I’m not totally on the “I Hate Lashley” Train, after all. All I said was that I don’t believe anyone would see him being as big of a star as he’s currently perceived had he been on a roster with more major names attached to it. The move to ECW only furthers that claim, which is unfortunate, but, also, very true.
