A Hypothetical Closed Division

This is just a hypothetical situation I am throwing out there. I know this is not how things are exactly. Why do this? I hope to come back to this topic in the far future. By laying down a foundation here, I hope it would be easier to understand then than if I just jumped in out of nowhere.

What if Raw's main event was a "closed division". What do I mean? What if the people who become a part of this group can never be moved to any other division? What if people in other divisions on Raw could not become a part of this division at all? The only way to be in this division is to already be in it or be placed there upon being called up to Raw. The only title they could ever compete for is Raw's World title. Sometimes you may see "mixed tag" matches, which would feature someone from this division and another division facing a similar team. In rare instances, you may even see one from the Raw main event division face someone lower down in the card. However, these would be exceptions to the rule, not the norm. Typically, people in this division will only face each other.

Who could we include in this division? How about John Cena, Randy Orton, Triple H, Batista, Sheamus, Chris Jericho, Edge, and The Great Khali. Not much different from how things actually are, assume John Cena is the centerpiece of this division. That does not mean he is necessarily getting the best cheers than everybody else, everywhere he goes, every single time. It does mean, on the other hand, that the WWE is building the division around him.

Now introduce a new element. You cannot keep the same people in a division forever. They cannot always trade the title among each other forever. They cannot only fight each other forever. You would need to build credibility of other individuals, but at the expense of people already in the division. You will need to build fresh enemies for Cena to overcome. For argument's sake, say the WWE brings in Christian straight from TNA to Raw's main event. Christian was in the main event of TNA. He held the World title there. He would fit in.

Christian is both a good worker and a popular guy. Knowing this, the WWE has him be a face. His role would mainly be to act as a sidekick to the higher-ups in the division, such as Cena and Triple H, and be a credible jobber to the heels they plan on pushing, while also getting that credibility by beating the heels below him. He is not actually being buried, and may even hold the World title now and then, but he is not meant to be the centerpiece of the division.

Disaster strikes. John Cena is injured. Triple H was already out from injury and is not ready to return. The Great Khali is The Great Khali. Orton gets injured. Batista is involved in a retirement storyline with Edge. Who steps up as the top face? Christian. The WWE has Christian feud over the title with Sheamus, the heel they are currently most high on. What if Christian not only won the belt from Sheamus, but is able to get even more over in the time Cena is gone?

Cena returns in a few months. WWE takes the title off Christian and gives it back to Sheamus, with the intent of handing it back to Cena. What if those fans are still more high on Christian than Cena? What if Christian is doing too good a job, keeping him more over than anyone else in this division? What if the other people are not only not as over, but now frequently missing time due to injury and getting difficulty getting that overness back?

Does the WWE suddenly give up on pushing Cena, a man they made to be their centerpiece? Did I forget to mention that the WWE did not intend for Christian to get as over as he did? He was just meant to hold things down when Cena was gone, then go back to his old role as a sidekick. But how awkward would it look if the sidekick is getting more of a big reaction than the person they want to be a centerpiece?

What if, through not having credible enough contenders, having injured workers you would rather push, and just wanting to use him to give other workers a credible rub, Christian gets up to 15 World title reigns (including TNA)? How do you tell Triple H that he will not be beating Ric Flair's 16 before some other guy does, and right under his nose? How do you tell him that the guy reaching the record, and possibly beating it, before him is someone that the WWE only really pushed because they had to and only wanted to use him to get other guys looking interesting?

What do you do with Christian? Just start treating him as the centerpiece? I doubt Triple H will sleep through that. I doubt the WWE will just let the investment they made in John Cena go to waste. I doubt they will change their overall view of Christian. What do you do to get Christian out of the way? Depush him to feuding with the lesser heels in the division? What if the WWE rarely has time or resources to push more than one main-event storyline/feud without one getting the short end of the stick? Besides, the WWE would not really want to keep this guy over anyway. His overness is one thing which is making it difficult to push the men you would rather push and depush him. Christian was only supposed to be support staff. If you cannot use him to put people over without him meeting and breaking an important record in wrestling, what do you do? He has too much credibility to be buried successfully. He is obviously in the way and has become something the WWE did not intend. What do you do? Fire him. Go back to pushing Cena and Triple H in his place. If done correctly, the WWE can make the fans move on.

Again, just a hypothetical situation. Was it really so out of place that I used Christian? Back when he first came to ECW from TNA, wrestling news sites ran rumors that Vince didn't like Christian, just because they did not hand Christian the ECW title from Jack Swagger right away. Christian went on to hold that title longer than anyone else in its run in the WWE. I have said it before, but anyone could look good on ECW, just to become nothing on one of the major shows. With all the momentum and credibility Christian should have had from being the centerpiece of ECW for so long, and knowing that he can work well and is over, would it really have been hard to see him stepping right into some kind of main-event angle shortly after ECW? Did not happen on Raw. Not happening on Smackdown. That is okay. Christian is not in some closed division. The WWE does not only have to push him in World title matters to keep him truly relevant. He can have feuds and storylines in the midcard. No title has to even be involved. Fans can still be entertained by him. Christian can still be content with being used. He is not in anyone's way. If he was in someone's way in the midcard, which would be unlikely, they can just hook him up with a tag partner and have them go after tag gold. When that gets old, they can just push him somewhere else. Nevertheless, even though I would not say Vince dislikes Christian, the WWE just does not view him the same way they view a John Cena. If Christian really was in a position like that I just spoke of, it would be interesting to see what they did do to him.

To close it up, this was all just a hypothetical situation. The main event is not a closed division. The tag division is not even a closed division. The WWE frequently splits teams up to give one member, or sometimes both, big singles pushes, which may frequently fail for either or both. The WWE frequently brings together two guys who should be getting singles pushes to form a tag team. Even the cruiserweight division was not a totally closed division. Guys like Big Show may have been unable to compete for the title, but men already in the division were free to have feuds against any other man, and even go for tag gold. There is no more cruiserweight division. Cruiserweights are still around. Rey Mysterio, king of the division, has been World HEAVYWEIGHT Champion twice already. There is only one division in the WWE that really does have the rigid barriers that I talked about here. It is obvious what I am talking about. As I said before, in the future, I will bring this idea up again in something else I argue. Hopefully, I will not feel the need into going into a huge tangent to explain what I mean. I already did that here.

ECW Reborn In TNA

The closing segment on Impact this week involved Dixie Carter talking with the ECW guys that caused some trouble last week. Mick Foley and Tommy Dreamer were the main players for the group tonight, but Raven, Rhyno, and Stevie Richards were there too. The main message was that these ECW guys just wanted one more chance to go out respectably.

This was a good segment. It had heart to it. This was not an invasion or attack, like Nexus is doing. However, it would be interesting to have the TNA guys play the heel role. In any case, this ECW angle should see some former ECW talent make appearances, beyond those we have seen already. The fans want Sabu. Depending on how TNA does this, it may be done with more class than the WWE's ECW return.

ECW Meets TNA

All he had to do was stand there to distract Abyss, but it was great to see Mick Foley back in TNA. I figured he was pretty much done as far as storyline went. Mick Foley was a part of ECW. That is the major angle going on for TNA now.

Dreamer, Rhino, Raven, and Stevie Richards attacked Abyss. Other wrestlers and officials then joined into the mix. Some sided with the attackers, who are all from ECW fame, and others tried to fight them off. The segment ended with Dixie Carter saying she was the one who asked the ECW guys to come. Not too horrible. It still leaves the question, "Why would you do that, Dixie?"

I have read some people compare this to the Nexus attack, saying it was better than what WWE did. I watched the attack with that in mind. I will say that the attack is somewhat in the same class, but I would not say it is better. The Nexus attack was a lot more intense. Moreover, Taz was ruining the ECW attack a bit by not acting completely shocked by it. He is an ECW guy himself, so that may play into the future, but it ruined the moment a bit. The way the WWE commentators acted sent a better message. The TNA attack seemed too much like a common brawl. The Nexus attack was a destruction. When they did brawl with WWE guys, those segments lacked the appeal of what made the angle great, the intensity. You pretty much just have Nexus getting beaten down in the brawl segments and running when things get tough. That is not what their destructions have, and it is their destructions that draw viewers. To that person who thought TNA did a better job, I say not yet.

Even though I am saying that the TNA angle is lacking things that made the WWE angle great, I am not putting it down. TNA should not be trying to copy WWE exact move by exact move. They have to do their own thing. If they want to play the WWE's own game and outdo them, that is something else. That does not mean they are copying them to the letter. For what they are doing, I like it. WWE took 7 (8 if you count Daniel Bryan) rookies and made them look like a big deal in one night. That is not what TNA is doing. TNA is pulling on the history of ECW, on already established stars. This is more comparable to ECW return angles in WWE, not to Nexus. Still, I am hoping TNA can make it their own. Judging by the spoilers I read for next week, they take a good step in that direction.

Yoshi Tatsu: Another ECW Talent Down The Drain

Yoshi Tatsu was used very well on ECW. He had a string of wins. He was a contender for the ECW Championship. I believe he won the battle royal dark match before Wrestlemania. He even had multiple attempts to hype him as an exciting, big deal. They were making him seem like something great. I may be mistaken, but I do believe some fans even bought into it.

He goes to Raw. Do you even see him that much anymore? Yeah, when they need a few extra faces to run of Nexus. Other than that, Superstars seems to be his real new home. Hype for him from the WWE is diminished. I almost want to say that this was all a waste of time, but ECW was such a minor show, you had to hype even the jobbers. When will this guy get his chance? Well, Evan Bourne is enjoying his push now. Evan and Yoshi are not the same, I know, but things may happen. If not, Yoshi Tatsu is a new Akio. He will be released without really ever accomplishing anything.

TNA Has Another Former WWE Talent

My choices for tonight were either to talk more about the Daniel Bryan saga, which now includes John Cena, or talk about TNA's huge surprise tonight. Obviously, I am going with the minor issue. I do not feel like getting into a heated rant about what John Cena had to say right now.

Tommy Dreamer. That is your surprise. He is now in TNA. Obviously, I do not predict anything great for TNA because the ECW legend is now there. However, it is interesting to note that Dreamer is another WWE talent who defected to TNA after leaving the company somewhat on his own terms. He had a final match with Ryder on ECW. He lost, but he wanted to leave anyway. He now shows up in TNA. Why would he go and do something like that? Money is not everything. Respect and fair treatment mean more. The WWE may have been close to releasing Dreamer after ECW ended anyway. At least he got to leave there on his own.

I am glad to see him still in wrestling. He does not need to win titles, but I am sure he will not be treated exactly like the WWE treated him.

He's Single, Ladies!

Rosa Mendes is gone from Raw. That leaves Zack Ryder a free man on Raw. I feel so bad for him. Not so much due to the fact that he lost Rosa, but that this is another step in his destruction.

"Woo Woo Woo" really came into being on ECW. You know it? I will assume so. He actually challenged for the ECW Championship. To be honest, a lot of guys have. What really made me think for a second that they would do something with him is that he was involved in the last main event of ECW. He did that minor run in. In retrospect, why? William Regal was there to mess up the match enough for Christian. The more interference, the more epic the match may seem. That is true. But you also have the fact that Zack Ryder ended up on the same show as Christian. They really could have had some kind of final feud to settle things. That never happened.

Raw tonight was sad for Zack Ryder. He was out there trying to impress Alicia Fox and Gail Kim. Modified Jamie Noble on our hands here? Mark Henry killed him and left with the hookers....oh! I mean, the two female wrestlers. Yes, the WWE treats their women right. He has been treated as unimportant since coming to Raw, but he just seems to be going down further. His romance angle with Rosa is killed off without much hype. He is being treated as your typical small heel going against a big face, and loses. And is just being humiliated for the sake of comedy. Yes, at least he is still getting an angle, but this angle has been done before. I am not a huge fan of it. I cannot see it doing anything great for him. They have gone from setting him up to succeed to setting him up to fail.

Does Zack Ryder deserve better. He seemed impressive on ECW. On Raw, he seems so much more simple. I can spend time talking about where the WWE might go next for this. What diva, if any, may feel pity for him? Will this lead to a face turn? I am not going to go there. I want to see where the WWE goes with it next time. It would be funny if this would be the start of something good.