Like Moving Pieces Across A Board

I typically come up with analogies to explain the diva division. This time, I want to talk about a way you can think about what the WWE is doing in general.

Chess. It's been a long time since I had a good game of chess. In any case, there are different pieces with different moves. Everyone who has played the game knows how important the king is. That is what you have to protect. Checkmate ends the game. You know how powerful the queen is. And the bishops, knights, and rooks can come in very handy, to say the least. Lastly, pawns are pawns.

In the WWE, you have various wrestlers in various positions. John Cena is obviously the centerpiece. He is like the king in the chess comparison. The diva division currently lacks a centerpiece, but that is the queen. Besides the centerpieces, the WWE also pushes other individuals as stars. These are your bishops, knights, and rooks. And you have jobbers to those stars. Those are your pawns. Moreover, I sometimes use the term "pawns" to refer to supporting players of storylines mainly involving two others.

I think it is a relatively simple comparison, but let me go a little further and explain why I like the analogy. First, those chess pieces don't move themselves, do they? The player has to come up with his strategy and execute that strategy. The same logic holds true in the WWE. These wrestlers don't push themselves. Even those who have creative control only have it because the company allows it. Look at John Cena, the centerpiece. So many say Cena will never turn heel. If the person with the power to control that company wants it to happen, he can make it happen. Moving that king when you are playing chess is always something you have to think about before doing it. You don't want to put yourself in position for an easy trap in a few moves. That is the same kind of thinking that makes it hard for the WWE to pull the trigger on turning Cena heel. And yet, if you ask me, doing something like that might be a shocking move that can actually make things more intriguing. I don't hate John Cena for not turning heel. It isn't fair for anyone to hate Cena for that reason. Hate the person moving the pieces across the board who refuses to make that certain move. If you want to hate Cena for how he actually performs, that is a different story. Does he deserve hate for being an annoyingly stale face performer?

Michelle McCool said in some interviews a few months ago that the WWE would sometimes be unhappy with her for trying to wrestle good matches. First of all, that never stopped them from pushing her as the centerpiece. How you are being pushed over time determines what kind of career you are getting, and they were pushing her as centerpiece from 2008 to the night she left. But does all this pretty much imply that the WWE was trying to groom her into what they wanted her to be? Shocking! No, not really. They want her to be the centerpiece, but they want her to be the centerpiece they want her to be. That queen on the chessboard, despite how powerful she is, is still moved around by the player. In the end, I don't think not holding Michelle McCool back, as she says they were, would have done much with getting her over. I see some divas during this era of holding them back that actually wrestle an entertaining style. Your job is not to just appeal to those fans who want to rate your performances out of ten. I believe Michelle McCool was very solid in the ring, but not good enough to get over on that ability alone. If wrestling ability alone will not keep Antonio Cesaro getting pushed, why should it with Michelle McCool? Now that I think about it, compare Antonio Cesaro yodeling to Michelle McCool doing push ups when she first turned heel after her centerpiece push started. How do you make boring people seem interesting? They really should have done with Michelle McCool what they did with Cesaro. Depush her. She had a lot more opportunities than Cesaro.

Last remark I want to make about this chess analogy, who are you playing against? Who ever plays chess against themselves? I learned the game by playing against myself. Got bored during winter recess when I was around 10, had a chess set I never opened, and just read the instructions and taught myself the game. Of course, it's not the same unless you are playing against someone else, whether an actual person or a computer. Who is sitting across that chessboard from the WWE? Their closest competition is TNA. In theory, TNA can have a centerpiece of their entire company, centerpiece of their women's division, other top stars, and jobbers. In practice, what they have does not compare to the WWE. They have all the pieces, I honestly believe that, or at least the potential to make the pieces, but their execution sucks. They don't seem to know how to play the game. People say that the WWE would be doing better right now if they had some legitimate competition to light a fire under them. Without any proper competition to keep you on your toes, your ability might worsen over time. You still know how to play the game, but you don't do it as well as you used to. I haven't had a good chess game in so long, I definitely feel rusty. Beyond rusty. Better competition would lead to the WWE utilizing their workers better.