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.

Triple H As the Sword of Damocles: WWE SummerSlam 2011 Preview

Who will stand tallest? If there's a God, it won't be the one with the microphone.
Photo Credit: WWE.com

It's weird.

The last time WWE has graced pay-per-view with its presence, it hit every note correctly. Every match was pitch perfect with the exception of the Divas Championship match. The right people won. The right decisions were made. Things looked like they'd be intriguing for awhile with everything that went down.

For the most part, SummerSlam still is intriguing, or at least it should be. Whether or not you felt CM Punk coming back after eight days was a good call or not, they've at least set the table for his match with Cena nicely in response to that. In a vacuum, SummerSlam, while not as highly anticipated as Money in the Bank was, still would look like a decent card on paper.

But then there's the Sword of Damocles hanging over that match, a huge insertion to the main event that has set several fans panicking. Despite the fact that I still remain hopeful despite there being no reason for me to remain hopeful, I can totally understand if people get scared with Triple H now being the special guest referee. There's a part of me that fears terribly that the man who stands tall when SummerSlam goes off the air won't be John Cena, won't be CM Punk, but will be the doofus son-in-law.

It's not just the history that I've been writing about this week in some regard. It's the recent shows where Trips' ego running wild has been a theme, whether overt or a bit muted. The opening segment to RAW this past week was a self-produced tribute to Trips, orchestrated by the man himself. The end segment, as beautiful and effective as it was, had Triple H butting his nose into the conversation and putting himself above Cena at one point. It's a scary time for folks like us who lived through is reign of terror as a wrestler, those who weren't in his fan camp and who didn't enjoy him going over our favorites, for whatever reason.

The thing is, Triple H in this match represents a zipper that could come undone and turn the entire new direction of WWE on its head to some people. If we get worried about Triple H exerting his will, then the play of Randy Orton decimating Christian in 5 minutes with no recourse whatsoever. That domino falls to knock over the Divas Championship match, where Kelly Kelly beats Beth Phoenix clean as a whistle with an ass-shaking stink face into an ass-shaking moonsault that's botched terribly with no discipline. That domino falls to have Wade Barrett defeat Daniel Bryan in three minutes, claiming his Money in the Bank briefcase in the process and having Michael Cole come in the ring and do a dance around the fallen "nerd". Then there's the domino of Sheamus and Mark Henry standing isolated in the middle, because hey, that's really the only sure thing on this PPV whether good or bad. Either you're a big fan of hosses pummeling each other or you're not. But if all of the other four scenarios play out the way they do, SummerSlam will serve as a scorched earth reminder that WWE really hasn't changed at all.

That being said, do I believe all of that will happen? Hell, I don't believe that any of that is going to happen very strongly. Why would WWE reverse direction so quickly, especially when a new regime is slowly taking over, letting the last two months play out the way they have with wrestling becoming more and more of the focus, letting Punk speak his mind, giving Christian a platform to work from that isn't "trusty sidekick" or "never-will-be". Hell, Triple H is the guy who spoke up loudest after Jamie Noble had the crazy idea that Bryan should win Smackdown's Money in the Bank match.

That being said, while I think this will be a step forward for WWE, even if it's a small one that seems like they've just ran in place, I still can't shake the feeling that Triple H is going to do something very terrible. The Sword of Damocles, naturally, is rooted a bit in paranoia. I've learned to recoil at the thought of trusting someone who's bitten me so many times before. So yeah, you'll have to forgive me if I speak out of both sides of my mouth on this one.

I don't know. I get the feeling that this year's Slam is going to be good. I really do. But this feeling of dread abounding, when in a vacuum, it shouldn't be there at all, is just disconcerting. Either way, it marks as a potential watershed moment for WWE. It'll be the point where we get a better idea if change really is afoot and we are in for very exciting times as wrestling fans, or whether the new boss is the same as the old boss.

And hey, if that gives the main event an extra added layer of unintentional tension, we might be talking about this for years to come like we will be Money in the Bank, especially if they shock us and actually do something that doesn't involve the thread on the Sword of Triplcles snapping, sending his long-nosed blade hurtling down at our heads in a terminal velocity of malaise and dissatisfaction.

Unfairly Unforgiven: Historical Perspective and Triple H in the Fall of 2000

Did we play The Game wrong too early?
Photo Credit: WWE.com

I remember vividly the build-up to SummerSlam 2000. Kurt Angle had won King of the Ring a few months prior and was staking his claim to the WWF Championship. Despite only being in the company for 8 months, he had gotten himself so over that he implicitly demanded to be counted among the big boys of the company, then The Rock, Triple H, Undertaker and Kane. He was given a big story being the third man in the Trips/Stephanie McMahon relationship. The Internet hordes, myself included among them, screamed for Angle to come out of the feud as the new top dog in the WWF, with Triple H cuckolded and the boss' daughter having a new, Olympic beau.

When that didn't happen at SummerSlam nor at Unforgiven, boy, was the reaction screaming bloody murder. It didn't matter that Angle would win the WWF Championship at No Mercy, the damage was done in that The Rock had to do what Triple H didn't do... put Angle over. At the time, many among us accused Triple H of being a political machinist, someone who was paranoid about his spot and thus screwed Angle out of elevation. In retrospect though, was that fair?

To begin to examine that is to look at the context. The most important part of this background information has nothing to do with the players or the storyline in question, but with the people criticizing it. Internet fans by and large seem to be a fickle bunch. Stereotypically, they're always looking for the next big thing, and if/when that person breaks through, the backlash almost immediately begins. As someone who used to get caught up in that frenzy a lot more than I do now (and I'm not going to sit here and say that I don't lose perspective every once in awhile), it seems a little shortsighted. Yes, pro wrestling companies need to be proactive in building new stars, but when you have a guy who just hit the main event, when is it that he has to start making new wrestlers stars, and how often does he need to do it?

That brings us to "Public Enemy #1", Triple H.

By the time SummerSlam had rolled around, it was a year or so since his official elevation so to speak. However, you could argue that he really wasn't cemented as a main eventer until the Royal Rumble and No Way Out, when he and Mick Foley (as Cactus Jack) tore the house down in two consecutive title matches, the latter being a Hell in a Cell. There's no doubt that he was entrenched as a main eventer by SummerSlam, but at the same time, he really was only cemented for eight months as a top guy. For Trips to start hearing the catcalls that he was a diabolical scoundrel after less than a year of really coming into his own as a main eventer in retrospect, when guys like Steve Austin and the Undertaker, just to name two, had years on top before the bloom came off their rose and they were called upon to put people over (and even then, you could argue that Austin never really did that anyway) in order to let them join the main event pantheon, seemed really premature.

I think the perfect example here is Bret Hart. While he went into WrestleMania IX as the WWF Champion, I think we can all agree he really wasn't "made" until a year later, when he finally felled the sumo warrior Yokozuna and got his first real (and one could argue only) WrestleMania moment. He was on top really for two years, I'd say, before he was called to the carpet to put over Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania XII. In that time of course, he didn't win every match, but at the same time, the people he put over in high profile matches at the time - Bob Backlund and Jerry Lawler - were established in their own ways. I'm sure if the Internet were around as prominently in 1995 as it is today, there'd have been people moaning that Hart didn't put over Jean-Pierre Lafitte or his brother Owen.

However, when he put Michaels over at WrestleMania XII, it ostensibly made him. The same could be said for his role in playing the foil for Steve Austin the next year. Even though Hart won that "I Quit" match, Austin came out of it looking like a million bucks, and Hart changed roles in order to further enhance the budding star of the man who'd become Stone Cold.

Of course, knowing what know now, it did take Triple H a lot longer to put someone not on his level over in a meaningful way (Chris Benoit at WrestleMania XX and then Batista the next year). And yeah, Trips did weasel his way out of putting over a lot of guys who could have used the bump, from Kane all the way up to Goldberg (whom you could argue didn't need the bump to be considered a main eventer, but at the same time, the iron was hot at SummerSlam in 2003). But that's where the question comes in... how long should a guy be continually put over before he starts returning the favor?

Whether you think it should have been Kane at the end of that horrible Katie Vick angle, Rob Van Dam, Booker T after the horrible racism angle or anyone else in the stretch between his comeback in 2002 until WM XX, can we all agree that maybe our angry mob was unjustified in 2000?

Then again, the reason why I rejected Triple H, at least at first, wasn't because of any political machinations. Seriously, I didn't really become "aware" of the backstage stuff until around early 2000, and by that time, I was already sick of Triple H. When he turned heel, he turned boring to me. The 20 minute promos to start RAW grated on me. He didn't have good matches with anyone not named The Rock, Undertaker or Mick Foley. So yeah, the political stuff was a great cover for the wholly subjective reasoning that we just didn't like the guy.

So, we now flash back to SummerSlam 2000, which for me is when the Triple H backlash kicked into high gear, ESPECIALLY since his relationship with Stephanie was being reported as more real than they were letting on on screen. Especially given that Angle at the time was a rookie himself, would you really blame WWF for putting a commodity they were trying to build at the time at risk for the benefit of a guy who wasn't even a year into his tenure on the main roster? Looking back at it, I'm not really sure I can.

If anything, I'd blame the braintrust in 2000 for booking the wrong angle. Yes, the love triangle was a good build, but they didn't pay it off correctly for various reasons. They would have been better served focusing Angle directly on The Rock, especially since the endgame was going to be Angle upending Rocky for the title anyway. Then, maybe you have Triple H continue his feud with Undertaker or Kane. Maybe he tangles with Rikishi or some other act that didn't have a whole lot of upward mobility. I don't know.

But what I do know is that a lot of the rage directed at Triple H at that time period might not have been justified. Granted, I'm still not happy at the way he refused to share the spotlight in 2002-04, and maybe he spent too much time as a Hulk Hogan when he was meant to be a Bret Hart all along. However, maybe we all got off on the wrong foot when it came to judging him outside the confines of whether we liked him or not.

Is the Thrill Gone?

Not the best show, but I'm not jumping yet
Photo Credit: WWE.com

They couldn't keep up that pace forever, right? Right? Well, if you ask some people, the string of epic RAW endings ended last week with Punk's allegedly premature return to action. I will still say that it was a right call (admitting that there were several potential right calls in that scenario), but a lot of it was very much dependent on how they followed up this week. In my eyes, they really didn't follow up that well at all.

The angle has been predicated on being cutting edge, or at least on the pretense of such an ideal. We had Punk venting about perceived wrongs, showing up and cuckolding Triple H at ComiCon, showing up at AAW, pulling a Chuck Taylor in Jimmy Kimmel, bolting out the genpop exit at Money in the Bank with the title... and we're reduced to dueling themes and holding up titles in the overrun? Yeah, you'll have to forgive me if I'm not enthralled with that cheese when in the last month, we've gotten nothing but A-list material.

That being said, it is the first time they've faltered on a consensus scale. The rational explanation is that it's impossible to keep up a string of excellence at a 100% clip. This is true. We were meant to get a lull in the action sooner or later. However, time and time again, wrestling fans, especially ones who reside on the Internet, myself included, have a tendency to overreact at times.

Then again, can you blame us? Asking fans of WWE (and even moreso, Impact) to trust the company on a new direction or an exciting storyline is like asking Charlie Brown to keep trying to kick the football even though every time, Lucy pulls it away. The question might then shift to why do we keep trying to kick the ball when we know the result, but hey, no one ever said that wrestling fans were the most rational bunch when it comes to how they allocate their time.

So here we are, back on the ledge. Personally, I've trained myself to be less cynical (and on the flip side, more set up to be disappointed), and yet I can't help but think that they took the thrill out of CM Punk last night. Is it an overreaction? Probably, but that's what we do. We overreact. That being said, they have two more weeks to try and get the thrill back, and given that the angle still contains Punk, they have a damn good chance to do it. Here's the thing about Punk; he's one of the rare talents who overcomes bad circumstance like Michael Jordan made fools look silly on the court in the early '90s. So right there, this angle has something going for it that the Nexus angle, or several other false start angles in the past didn't have going for them.

So yeah, maybe in this one instance, we shouldn't be so quick to jump off the ledge. The thrill may seem like it's gone now, but at the same time, you can never tell when Punk's got the power to turn a microphone into a pipe bomb. Granted, it's looking more and more like Triple H won't be as giving with him as Vince McMahon was with Steve Austin, but you know what? Punk can overcome that. Why? Because he's awesome, that's why.

And as long as CM Punk remains awesome, I'm not sure the thrill will ever go away from professional wrestling as long as he's there.

Crying Wolf: The WWE and Cynicism Among Fans

Photo Credit: WWE.com

I will reiterate that I thought that it wasn't a bad call to have CM Punk come back a week after he left. Pending the storyline reason he came back, it could be really good storytelling, especially looking at this in the lens of it being an extended story that began June 27th, not as a story that just ended with the end of Money in the Bank. I honestly don't see how having Punk back could be a bad thing.

There are those who'd argue tooth and nail with that, saying that regardless of execution, Punk's return should have been delayed. I disagree with that, but I see where they come from. I actually see exactly where they come from. It's been a similar story with Christian losing the World Heavyweight Championship, with John Cena being fired and not missing any time at work and with several other plot points that have been wrapped up too neatly or not given any time to marinate. Even though I couldn't disagree with the other side of this issue any more than I do now, I still can see where they come from because WWE hasn't given them a track record of being able to let things develop naturally. So in the one time when having a payoff happen shortly after the cliffhanger makes sense, they feel jilted.

I don't blame them, actually.

Storytelling is storytelling, and if it's good, it's good. I myself was proven wrong in the aftermath to Christian's title win in how much I enjoyed his feud with Randy Orton (cue the commenters chirping about how insane I am for liking the feud and what not). However, there's something to be said for letting a plot point marinate for a little bit and letting them sink in without another shock. It's a reason why the Vince Russo style of booking has grown so damn ineffective. Plot point after plot point after plot point burns an audience out. Christian as a conquering hero would have been a nice thing to let sit for a week. John Cena being off TV, or being on TV as Juan Cena (the biggest missed opportunity ever as it could have gotten a month or so out of Darren Young before they tossed him back into the NXT: Redemption pile), might have freshened him up a little bit before he got his revenge on Wade Barrett.

So now, there's a situation where Punk coming back was a valid decision. Because fans have been conditioned to think that everything the WWE does is always rushed, there's a rush to cynicism on this point. The WWE cried wolf on those other stories, letting the fans know that something was really important when it happened layered so quickly on top of the last thing that was important. Rather than having this quick return acting as a contrast to their MO, it's just another strike against them in their MO, even though, to keep with baseball terms, it's a strike that's being called on the outside corner off the strike zone.

The context surrounding the prior two situations noted here called for time to marinate. Christian's situation was addressed. With Cena being fired, his act was growing a bit tired with some fans, and time off might have refreshed him with those fans and even made him more palatable to the people who already liked him. With Punk? He'd just uncorked his batshit-awesome potential. He just got hot. You don't shelve someone who is hot, you feature them. You cultivate the fan reactions and you keep producing their merchandise and have them wear said merchandise so it continues to sell. It's simple.

But again, this is WWE. They don't let anything marinate, and thus they've conditioned their fanbase to cynicism. While I think those fans are wrong in this case, I can only blame WWE for their reactions. You breed a reaction, then you don't act surprised when people reject it based off a potential future action.

If Punk Loses, What Is Acceptable?

Cena could beat Punk clean... will it be greeted with open minds?
Photo Credit: WWE.com

There's a distinct possibility that CM Punk is going to beat John Cena Sunday. Whether he sticks around after, takes the title with him or gets cashed-in on after he wins the title by one (or more) Money in the Bank winner(s). The beauty of the main event is that it could virtually go in any direction. The possibilities are endless.

But with "endless" come the possibilities that Cena actually wins his match. Yes, it would defy logic at this point, given the amount of pomp and build that Punk has received. IT wouldn't make sense to job him out, but WWE Creative has proven they don't make sense from time to time. Is Cena going over Punk out of the realm of possibility? Well no, it's not. But is that a problem? Well, it depends on the way he loses.

I think we can all agree that SUPERCENA rearing his ugly head and dispatching CM Punk to his couch in Chicago would be the worst possible outcome and one that would make everyone collectively lose their shit, right? Well yeah, but how do we know what's SUPERCENA and what's just Cena making a comeback? Can Cena win clean without getting backlash, or at the very least, deserving backlash? I'm not sure about that, at least for the first part.

I mean, if Punk loses clean, we're on the precipice of an Internet meltdown over here. It's not that there are degrees of losing clean in some people's minds. Losing clean is a burial if it's a darling losing to someone monolithic. Always. It's one of the things I hate about the way people react sometimes. There's no perspective, no foresight. However, this time might be different because CM Punk could be leaving, and he's been blisteringly hot lately. I think I'd be pissed off if Cena just blows through Punk like he's a typical Cena PPV opponent.

I don't know. There's so much uncertainty going into Sunday, but I think that disappointment could be on the horizon. I hope not, because I want them to hit a home run here, but at the same time, the WWE hasn't exactly earned our trust in regards to a truly happy ending for anyone other than Cena and lately Randy Orton. That all being said, I have this perversely optimistic feeling that if Punk goes down, he's going down with a fight or even better, to someone other than Cena.

Has Punk Been a Success in WWE? Of Course He Has, Stop Being Dramatic

The portrait of a WWE success story
Photo Credit: WWE.com

For five years, CM Punk has gone nearly non-stop for WWE. Since being brought into the ECW brand, he's been on TV for the most part excepting a week or two between injuries. Even so, he's been in the public eye as an announcer when he's been hurt. He pretty humorously replied someone who asked him how he could stay on the program without using painkillers that he's "not a pussy". So now, as the Zero Hour approaches, many people are left to ask "Has Punk been a success in WWE in those five years?"

Those people miss the point entirely. Of course the man has been a success. A resounding one, I'd say.

The argument that a lot of people have is that CM Punk has been misused, mistreated or even buried in WWE since coming up. They point to long PPV losing streaks or shoddy booking and I get it. Punk hasn't been used optimally in WWE. I mean, I'd have booked him differently, but at the same time, you can say that for nearly everyone in the company save John Cena or Triple H at some point during the last five years. Even golden children like Randy Orton have had the run of bad booking slung against them. It's a fact of life.

Meanwhile, in his time in WWE, Punk has won the ECW Championship, the World Tag Team Titles, two Money in the Bank briefcases, the Intercontinental Championship, three World Championships, was featured prominently in two straight Royal Rumbles, got to be the guy who chased Jeff Hardy out of WWE, has a winning streak against Cena and was deemed to be so important by WWE that he was placed in the commentary position while injured. I'd say all of that is pretty successful by any metric.

It seems like there's a certain portion of the Internet that wants to paint all their indie favorites as martyrs, and that the WWE does EVERYTHING to screw them. It's microanalysis that ignores the bad treatment that other guys have gotten and dishonestly pretends that Punk is somehow maltreated. Even if he was made to look like a jackass at every turn, the maltreatment argument is bunk, because they're paying him pretty well.

So can the talk about him being unsuccessful is bunk. Could he have been "treated better"? Sure, but that's the nature of WWE nowadays. It's not acceptable in that they need to change their practices, but let's not pretend they're doing wrong by Punk (or Daniel Bryan or Evan Bourne or any other indie guy who made it), okay?

Card Position and Enjoyment

So what if Miz isn't programmed against Orton all the time?
Photo Credit: WWE.com

I saw this on the Wrestling Theory blog the other day:

if a wrestler gets “demoted” to the midcard, then the shit’s okay. It’s okay. That guy will still be on your television. He will still wrestle. It’s fine, for god’s sake.

Pretty bold words for a guy on the Internet. For the longest time, many folks on the Web live and died by how high up on the card their favorite guys are. The thing is, how warranted is the concern? Again, it's well-established that what we as fans care about and what wrestlers care about sometimes are far different. We cry for CM Punk and Chris Jericho, but in those situations where we lament, they're celebrating because hey, they went out and did their jobs excellently.

The latest example, which is probably what elicited this post from WT, is The Miz's latest issue with his pupil, Alex Riley. Many people celebrated it as an entertaining segment, but there are those who are bemoaning this as a "demotion" for Miz, where he now will not be in the main event. Okay, while that may be the case, why should I care? The only reason is if it leads to Miz not being on camera, and I'm not talking "on camera as much as he was during the Cena feud", but I'm talking more a TNA-style "here one week, gone the next two" style of building an angle. If a demotion in card position means I get deprived of Miz, then I'm pissed.

However, what makes anyone think that the WWE is going to suddenly not have Miz on camera? I mean, does Miz being on screen, cutting promos and wrestling matches really matter if he's doing against Cena or Riley? The answer is no, really, unless it bothers you on a metaphysical level that he's not in the tippy-top feud. If that's the case, then again, I wonder why you're a fan. Wrestling is supposed to be an escape from the every day trappings of BS politics and such. It's one thing to hate on a segment because it's unentertaining, but if is enjoyable, then why look for a reason to hate it?

The truth is, The Miz, as well as CM Punk, as well as Jericho all have major job security and they're all locks to be on camera (in Jericho's case, if/when he returns), doing entertaining things. If it's against Cena and it's entertaining, then great. If it's against Riley, great again. Evan Bourne, Daniel Bryan, Sin Cara, Cody Rhodes, Ted DiBiase... hell, even if it's against the Great fucking Khali and they somehow manage to get an entertaining segment out of him, then it's gravy too.

If a wrestler getting "demoted" means you see less of him, then there's a reason to get up in arms, but clearly, after a 180+ day title reign, countless pimping and exposure (to the point of overexposure to some), The Miz is not getting knocked down the card to the point where you're lucky if you see him on Superstars. He's a part of the big show, and will be for as long as the WWE will have him and vice versa.

Besides, with the way Miz has been booked against Cena, why would anyone want to see that kind of program continue? Then again, that's another post for another... oh wait, I already wrote about that this week. Seriously, I bet if you asked Miz what he thought about the last six or seven months he's had, he won't tell you that he's pissed because of the way he's been booked. He won't tell you he's mad at WWE for demoting him to possibly feuding with Alex Riley. No, and you know why? Because he's happy to be part of the WWE, have tons of airtime to go out there and perform and be the best he can be.

So yeah, in closing, I'd have to echo what WT said, and just be cool about everything. Unless Miz's knocking back means he's not going to be on TV, then it's nothing to get pissed off about. Not everyone can have the top program on the brand. Once you start doing that, you end up with TNA, where every program is pushed as the main event, making nothing feel all that important. Just take in the program as a show, and leave the politics to the guys backstage, okay?

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!

Whither The Miz (Hint: He's Gonna Be Just Fine)

He's AWESOME and will be just fine
Photo Credit: WWE.com

So, as with anytime someone not named Randy Orton, Undertaker or Triple H loses to John Cena at a PPV, the outcry begins anew. Oh, so-and-so got buried! Why can't Cena put anyone over! That's it for what's-his-face's heat! While this whining has been proven wrong more than once, it was out in full force again after The Miz lost to Cena at Over the Limit. Granted, the way in which he lost - easily to a couple of John Cena's signature moves after Miz spent the first 20 minutes of the match uncomfortably destroying him with Alex Riley's help - sounds pretty lopsided and heat crushing. On the surface, it makes Miz sound and look like a chump, but a lot of results make the losers sound and look like chumps. It's wrestling; not everyone can look 100% strong all the time.

Honestly, you can point to a fundamental flaw in the structure of how the WWE books main events involving Cena (or at this point Orton or any main event babyface... oh wait, I just named the only two they have) and I'd agree with you. They need to overhaul how they book those kinds of matches. It's been a broken record with me for years now, and I imagine it'll continue to be a broken record until something drastic happens in the front office. That being said, I'm over complaining specifically about people being buried. Why? Because they're not being buried in most cases.

It's true that bad booking can sink some wrestlers. The Miz is not "some wrestler". He's a heat generator. He could keep warm in the middle of deep space with the heat he can produce. He's over and got himself into the main event scene for a reason, and it wasn't just because McMahon wanted him to be there. The front office wanted more than a few people to get there, and if you notice, they don't really have all that great a success rate. That's why I'm not worried about Miz, nor should you be.

It's all about the follow up and the stage that Miz will get in the future. He got promo time on RAW, a good chunk of it. The peanut gallery cried "DEMOTION! HE'S WORKING WITH RILEY!", but I saw it more as a fresh start for A-Ry and a close to a story. In fact, the reason why the segment was done was probably to help Riley get a rub himself from how much the crowds HATED The Miz. Judging from the reactions that he got in kicking his former mentor's ass all around the ringside area, it was a great success.

I guess the main thing I'm saying is that yes, the WWE handles booking of heels as ham-handledly as you can get sometimes. That being said, there are guys you need to worry about and guys you don't need to worry about. Miz is one of the guys you don't need to worry about. As long as they give him a microphone and a chunk of time to talk, he'll be over, regardless of how "weak" he's made to look.

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!