Daniel Bryan, Hot Commodity: Why Wade Barrett Needed the Win at SummerSlam

Pictured: The Right Call
Photo Credit: WWE.com

There's an overwhelming paranoia among some wrestling fans on the Internet that any time one of their favorites gets to WWE, they're always fighting an uphill battle with management to get quality screen time, booking support and a chance to make a meaningful connection with the genpop fans. This can lead to a hypersensitivity towards wins and losses where every time a cult favorite loses a match, he's "buried". This is nothing new, and it's been happening for years. These overreactions are a big reason why we can't have nice things.

So, it should go without saying that there was an undercurrent of people who were pissed off that Daniel Bryan, maybe the patron saint, or at the very least co-patron saint with CM Punk, of Internet darlings, lost to Wade Barrett. Here's the thing though. Bryan didn't need to win that match. Barrett though? You bet your sweet ass he did.

Let's take a look at both guys over the last couple of months, or at least for Barrett, the last six months. Bryan recently has been involved in a hot free TV feud with Cody Rhodes where he won a bunch of matches, won the Smackdown Money in the Bank match and then announced he'd cash it in at WrestleMania, thus ensuring himself one of the three or four biggest matches on the card. Barrett, meanwhile, has lost his stable twice, lost his Championship belt with little fanfare to a guy who's not over with the crowd and who's really lost his way since being arguably the biggest villain in WWE.

Common sense is that if you were going to put both of those guys in a big match, then Barrett should have been the one to win. Granted, if you also wanted to argue that both guys needed protection, and thus shouldn't have been programmed against each other, then yeah, I'd see where you were coming from. That being said, we were already through the looking glass on this one when the match was booked. Really, it was a damn good match, and only the most intensively-focused on wins and losses will see Bryan as losing anything because of it.

The new hotness among some fans is that Barrett should be next in line for a shot at Randy Orton. With Mark Henry's feud with Sheamus looking to me like it still has a lot of legs on it, that wouldn't be the worst stopgap program for Night of Champions (especially if the endgame for Hell in a Cell is a final Orton/Christian match). That being said, I think there's a lot of ground left to explore between the American Dragon and the former Nexus overlord. I would love to see these two continue their series of matches, because they had good chemistry with each other Sunday, because they have history that ostensibly reaches back more than a year, and because Barrett could learn a thing or two by wrestling Bryan. Maybe that's the direction they're going, maybe it isn't, but whatever the situation is, Barrett winning that match was the right call.

Rehabbing the Monster: Mark Henry's Rebirth

Somebody gon' get they ass kicked
Photo Credit: WWE.com

When you're with WWE for as long as Mark Henry has without really busting through to the main event, it can be easy to claim that he'll never be a big player, he'll never be really over, he'll never get that allure about him. I mean, you'd think that if he hasn't connected with the crowds all this time, what makes anyone think he could be the guy they thought he could be when they signed him 15 years ago? But that's the funny thing about pro wrestling and crowds in general. They don't tend to have long memories. That's why it kills me when people say that "so and so has been ruined forever because of being booked badly for one night!" Unless the performance is so dreadfully bad or the humiliation is so severe that it scars a guy for life, people can come back from most degrees of malaise. When I say that heat is elastic, it's not some trite, anti-smark sentiment that I use to look down on the pessimists. I really do think it's true.

Case in point, look at Henry since Capitol Punishment. He womped on the Big Show. He beat on Kane like he was some sort of hybrid government mule/red-headed stepchild. In two segments, Mark Henry became a monster again, and from the way the crowd reacted, ESPECIALLY that lady with the cell phone, they bought it. It was sublime.

Of course, it's all for naught if they don't follow up on this. If Henry is back threatening to put his stank on the Divas or gets squashed within the next few weeks as recourse, then it's a failure. I don't give the WWE any credit to keep this going until they prove to me they can. I've seen too many instances of bullshit parity booking in the last couple of years to really believe they have a long term star here. However, the initial spark is enough for me to prove that it doesn't matter who you are. If you get a good faith push and you get to destroy peeps, you'll get over, especially if you're talented like Henry is.

Seriously, there's no reason why Mark Henry has had to languish his whole career. Call it a grudge against him from management, call it Vince Russo and those who were scions of his awful style of booking trying to get too fancy with a simple archetype, call it whatever. It's better late than never, but for a guy who's as good a big man worker as he is, a guy whose angry scowl is among the best facial expressions in the business, for a guy who can project anger and rage and fearsomeness as good as some of the best in the business, well, I'm glad that he is getting chance after chance.

Hopefully, the front office will stop dicking around and notice that hey, this is working and hey, maybe he could be used for something better than fodder.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

A Stunning Entry into WWE: Was It a Good Idea to Lay Out the Winner of Tough Enough?

Not the best debut for Mr. Leavine, is it?
Photo Credit: WWE.com

Andy Leavine won WWE Tough Enough. I'm not going to pretend I was emotionally invested in him or the show because I watched maybe fifteen minutes of it total before the end last night, both scheduled and the part where it spilled over into the intro of the actual RAW telecast. I have to admit, the guy's got a good look and seems WAY better suited for immediate success than Maven, the winner of the first season of the first incarnation of the show.

However, his entry into WWE after winning the competition was inauspicious to say the least. He was greeted first by a slap from Vince McMahon that segued into the worst sell-job off a Stone Cold Stunner that I have ever seen in my life. I chalk it up to jitters and greenness, but it wasn't the sell-job that had most people up in arms. It was the act of the stunner itself that made folks upset. Why lay out a guy in his first real act as a WWE superstar? Wasn't the whole point to create a new, hot act through 10 weeks of personal investment? To squelch it there just seemed pointless to some, not as much to me, but to those who watched the show, yeah, I can see where they might be angry.

Maybe it's because I didn't watch the show and thus didn't really have much of an attachment to him. I don't know. Maybe it's because I also think that there's almost no way for someone to get completely derailed nowadays, or even ever. Heat is very much elastic. Look at Dolph Ziggler. Earlier this year, his push was bungled about as hardcore as you can fuck someone's momentum up. He's still over. He still can garner heat, although Vickie Guerrero does have a lot to do with that. Then again, Vickie didn't quite get that horrible Enri... what the fuck was his name again? The guy who was on the roster for a hot second before getting future endeavored last year? So forgettable.

This feels to me like one of those situations where the WWE really did something dumb, but where Andy may end up being fine because hey, he does have the talent enough that four WWE/WCW alumni saw it. Then again, I just don't see what the hell their philosophy in making guys "pay dues" is anymore. It's like, they're afraid of creating a Brock Lesnar, but like AnonymousJX pointed out, there are those who've been snakebitten by WWE's asinine "building" practices like Ki who point out that they don't want world-humbled indie wrestlers either and look for ego. It's like they're looking for the guy who's egotistical, but not too egotistical, almost as if they're trying to break people. Well, the breaking process doesn't really lend itself to getting guys over like the tried-and-true process of a slow build through the card does.

Yeah, I know that TE doesn't exactly seem like the kind of slow build vehicle I'm talking about, but then again, who said anything about the winner going right from the training dojo to main events? This is where the lack of a defined midcard and tag division hurts them the most.

So yeah, maybe my glibness over how Andy Leavine was treated is a bit wrong here. I want to think he'll be fine, but then again, their track record, both with TE in the past and NXT, seems to indicate that he might be in trouble. This points to a fatal flaw in how WWE treats true rookies, and that things like the Nexus angle, which we can all agree was executed well from debut until at least SummerSlam, are the exception and not the rule.

Hopefully, eating a stunner doesn't mean that Andy is the latter and not the former. If that's the case, and I'm USA Network, then I'd be pissed.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!