Scott after watching Raw last night I feel I have to get something off my chest. Feel free to throw this on the blog if you'd like. I think it may stir up some discussion.
I don't quite feel worthy to rant here, because after all you are the founder of Rantsylvania, the Netcop (wait can I still say that?), the showstopper, main event, and best there ever will be, brother. But for the love of Hellwig, what in the holy flying PIGSHIT is going on with the WWE these days?
Fucking BATISTA as the #1 FACE? No, seriously? REALLY?
Batista is NOT LIKEABLE. He receives face reactions, and he is portrayed as a face, yes. But what about him is actually likeable, nay - good?
He doesn't take his opponents seriously. (Keeping in mind I'm speaking in the context of whatever is left of kayfabe) Every FUCKING TIME he is on screen doing a promo against a heel, we have to deal with his shit-eating laugh before EVERY DAMN RESPONSE. I"m reminded of when Mick Foley said that if you treat your opponent like a joke, and you win, what have you accomplished? All you beat was a joke. If you lose, then YOU look like the joke. If Batista loses to Jericho at Cyber Sunday, what the FUCK grounds would he even have to stand on in asking for any type of title match anymore?
What makes it worse is that Jericho, despite playing a prickish character, is mostly right and justified in everything he says. He may not say it nicely but he's not really inaccurate. He is made to have to overcome odds every week and get screwed around with by Adamle despite his claim being true (AGAIN THIS IS WITHIN KAYFABE) - he IS the champion and he IS The most valuable asset on the roster.
Jericho, the supposed villainous heel champion, gets to job by DQ to Mark Henry, and then Kane's foot, while Batista goes over them + Regal in mere seconds? REALLY? This is supposed to make people want to see Jericho lose on Sunday? Him LOSING twice while his FACE opponent gets to go over strong? Isn't this backwards? Shouldn't Jericho be looking like the total bastard, cheating, lying piece of shit and screwing Batista at every possible turn in order to build heat on this feud? Remember how fucking well HHH pulled it off in 2000? It's because he was SUCH an asshole that people WANTED TO SEE HIM LOSE. Why do we need to see Jericho lose; why would we want to? He's already treated like a joke by his opponent, and jobbed twice on Raw in one day. The GM fucks with him under false pretenses. Shouldn't this kind of shit be happening to faces?
I am convinced, 100% convinced, that if they were to keep up this same pattern of the course of six more months (maybe less), that Jericho and Batista would switch crowd reactions. If this keeps up, Jericho is going to look more and more like the disrespected, sympathetic chamption with the odds against him, while Batista is going to come off as a greedy, bullying, irreverent choker.
Am I completely nuts or do I have some kind of point here?
Well I don't watch the show so obviously my opinion on the subject is limited, but I'll certainly throw this one out to the floor for discussion.
Tags: Rants
Batista does seem like kind of a jerk, but the fans are cheering him and booing Jericho, so go with that.
I think the reason is fans just want babyfaces to win even if they have to cheat sometimes, not back down, and not whine. Last week, they loved Batista, as the biased ref, totally screwing over Jericho, and they cheered Punk for accepting a tainted victory. Remember Jericho’s debut in WCW aganist Alex Wright? Both were babyfaces, and Jericho was going to be awarded the win because Alex got hurt. Jericho refused to take the victory because he wanted to earn a win and was booed out of the building for doing so.
It really doesn’t make sense when you think about it, but if the people want to hate Jericho despite him making sense, let them. It’s best to just let the fans react the way they want.
Maybe they are under the markish impression that fans want to see title changes? So if Jericho loses 100 times and Batista crushes everyone in sight, then fans will buy Cyber Sunday because they know that Batista will win the World Championship?
(forgetting, of course, that Batista has failed in his last 87 of 88 attempts…)
Jericho was treated horribly on RAW, reminiscent of his previous world championship reign, in one of the worst RAW main events in a long, long time. That’s a shame, because Jericho has been on a roll lately.
That definitely bothered me when Batista just kind of gave him that dismissive smirk and “oh, so YOU are going to beat me, huh?” comment after Jericho said all he had to say. I don’t mind Batista, but it’s ridiculous for him to act that way as a face.
The problem with you’re point, and it’s a real problem, is that you’re response is so self-centered and smarky that you’re not seeing the big picture. Batista is over, and all great bad-ass babyfaces are as confident as Batista.
If Hogan proved anything, it’s not what you do but how you do it. Hogan did all kinds of cheating crap as the hero in the 80’s but his brothers and dude’s and all for the fans mentality kept him a hero. Jericho’s making a point, but he’s being a real dick about it, which is even more annoying than making a bad point and being nice about it. Also, Jericho is completely self-obsessed and plays Adamle like a fiddle whenever he can and shits all over the fans which makes the fans not like him. I didn’t mind the main event of Raw because it made Batista look like an unstoppable monster, and Jericho exposed as not being able to win without cheating or help. If this was the 1980’s and it was Flair and not Jericho the same thing would’ve happened, except it probably would have ended in a couple of hour draws instead of a quick cop-out ending sure to be at Cyber Sunday.
I for one have really been enjoying RAW since the draft lottery. You have an entertaining mid card. A lot of over talent in the main event who can bring it when called upon, and comedy gold with Santino and Charlie Haas.
You’re right, it could certainly be a lot worse for the brand in terms of talent, and I’m not about to give up RAW because of a couple shitty episodes. But I still take issue with Batista as top face.
In regards to the Hogan comparison, first off, Hogan won. In his day the amount of belt-shot finishes and other shenanigans were more rare (not to mention monthly PPVs), but be that as it may, Hogan still won the vast majority of his matches. As has been pointed out already, Batista has been losing consistently on PPV for over two years now (I count a below .500 record as ‘consistent’).
It’s great that he’s willing to put people over, but it makes it so much harder for people like myself, who follow the shows, to buy in when he is top face. One PPV win over Cena probably does it for some, but not fickle old me. If he went further down the card as a result of his big match defeats for say 6-12 months and scratched and clawed his way to the WM main event and won the big one, I would get on my feet and clap for the man. As it stands now, however, I am very underwhelmed by their matchup and it seems like a forgone conclusion that Jericho will (somehow) retain. Where’s the spectacle in a face (who loses a lot) laughing at a heel over whether he could possibly beat him, and then inevitably getting beaten by this heel? This feud can’t be anything more than window dressing designed to set up the champ’s next feud. And it sucks that’s I’ve resigned myself to this.
Second, Hogan bought his own hype. He ‘knew’ he was cool. I always seem to get the impression that Batista is trying his hardest to be cool, and God bless him, but it just rings hollow so often for me. I was watching some Botchamanias the other day and realized just how good people like Hogan, Rock, and Austin were at never letting up the facade. They would incorporate screw-ups into their segment or act as if they’d planned to stutter or get smoked in the face by a flying can of beer. A more recent example is Shawn diving out of the ring to go after Jericho and injuring his triceps, but makes up for it by flailing a bit and never letting up his rage. Batista slips on his way to the ring, fumbles interviews, and just leaves it out there for a few seconds until he tries to resume his macho character. He’ll never be Hogan, but there is still plenty of room for character improvement.
Some will think I’m just taking a shit on a guy who’s only doing his best and gets cheered by the fans. Well I might not classify as the typical lifelong wrestling fan, and I dislike the character Batista (while I respect the man). Brother.
I was actually using the Hogan comparison to Jericho.
Hogan was doing heelish things in a way that made the fans cheer him.
Jericho is making good points and standing up for what he thinks is right but he’s being a prick about it.
It’s not about what you do, but how you do it.
Hogan/Batista would be a bad comparison.
Reading your post again, I see how I sort of hijacked a couple points you were making for the sake of my rant against Batista. Sorry about that.
So at the risk of getting too deeply into this…
Jericho’s situation would traditionally get sympathy, but his persona’s still the work of classic heel booking. This character lacks sympathetic traits, won’t shut up about what he deserves, and tries to stack the deck. For all this he fails, and comes across as a whiner who isn’t getting what he wants and is actively bad at it. His title reign’s mostly been about winning big matches intelligently if by unheroic means (look at how he won the World Title), so the fans are justified in wanting to see him lose the belt or otherwise be destroyed. The OP is correct, though, in saying such developments won’t keep Jericho a heel or, otherwise, credible as champ. So if Jericho’s keeping the belt, he’d probably need an edge like maybe a replacement for Lance Cade or an Adamle heel turn, something that wouldn’t involve upping Jericho’s credibility mid-reign (which would be interesting but is unexpected for the ‘E to do for a world title).
Jericho lost big time on Monday to make it seem like Batista with his never ending title shots may have a legit chance at winning the World Title, which makes sense. I agree that it’d be more interesting if Jericho had cheated, but keeping the challenger strong tends to be more interesting longterm than putting all the attention on a ref or hated champion since that cred builds and helps make the challenger seem more likely to win the strap next title shot (assuming Batista doesn’t lose like a doofus this Sunday), hence momentum and the chase. That sort of booking is already coming to define Batista’s career, not in a good way, but it seems WWE’s idea of variety is doing the same old shit on different shows.
About character: everyone reasons from personal values, but Jericho has definitely become a thinking man’s wrestler, who bends the rules, validly interprets facts to his advantage, and otherwise protects himself at anyone else’s expense. He’s not booked as a genius, but it’s easy for an adult to understand where Jericho’s coming from and to like or respect the character’s actions. To a kid, I imagine he’d seem kind of horrible. I personally dislike this character in the heel sense less than, oh, Edge’s but it’s hard to like Jericho’s character as a person, even if it comes across as smart.
And I like Batista, character-wise. From a personal standpoint, he seems like a cool guy who you’d want to have a beer with. He shares fans’ basic opinions about heels, expressed in a short tempered and cocky way. From a wrestling standpoint, that amounts to a sort of everyman. Compare this to Cena, who is essentially superman and seems borderline idealistic in how respectful and polite he is to most opponents. Not to mention Cena dresses like a jackass, whereas Batista dresses mostly like a classic wrestler. To put it obviously, I think of Cena as more of a teenybopper cartoon character who wrestles while Batista as more of a real person and an actual wrestler.
Anyway, Batista’s #2 face on RAW and it’s plain to tell. (I think CM Punk would be #1 face, if he’d developed more with the title or were still in the hunt.) Batista hasn’t done anything exciting in any feud since the draft, no spectacle or major match worth a replay besides maybe words or Batista Bombs. If one doesn’t like Batista’s personality, this period of Batista dominance could even be brutally dull and alienating. Cena’s still #1 face and conspicuous by his absence, plus World titles don’t usually go to wrestlers who conduct themselves as uneventfully as Batista’s been booked. (And for everything Cena is, he’s rarely booked boring.) The real test for Batista’s future will be whether Cena immediately goes to feud with Jericho over the World title upon returning or if Batista wins the belt before that, which may give us a Cena-Batista match at Mania after all.
Since I may already sound insane, I’ll stop before this gets outright speculative.
There is one thing that needs to be remembered about this whole program. Jericho should be the face in all this, but because his problem was with the guru sitting at the top of Mount Perpetually Over (thanks Scott) Shawn Michaels, Jericho was made the heel in the crowd’s eyes simply because he was opposition to HBK. What would this whole storyline have ben like if it was anyone else but Shawn that retired Ric Flair, faked an injury for a cheap win over Batista, and tried to cripple his opponent on several occasions, both before and after he brought his non-wrestler wife into the ring for cheap sympathy, who ended up a casualty? Put, for instance, Randy Orton in that role, and he would be completely crucified and Jericho would be the babyface of all-time. They could show footage of Shawn molesting children while defecating on his mother after burning down an orphanage and the crowd would still cheer him on. Maybe that’s why he was kept off this Raw, to keep the focus where it belongs. Hopefully, Batista won’t win out at Cyber Sunday so CM Punk can get the belt back from Jericho, but I don’t like the odds of that happening.
I have to disagree with the original poster’s point on Jericho. The reason he’s such a great heel is BECAUSE he’s accurate in the case he presents for himself. He takes things that actually happened and spins them in a way to make himself look better or like the victim. This is what all great heels do and it’s what makes his character believeable.
The fact is Batista is simply a stop gap for WWE until Cena is ready to resume in-ring action. Mysterio hasn’t gotten over that well with the smart fanbase, Kingston and Punk have taken a couple of steps back largely due to Creative wanting to make Dibiase, Rhodes, and Manu big stars, and guys like Bourne, Finaly, and Matt Hardy are only there because of the talent exchange.
The fact remains that babyfaces are in scarce supply right now. Batista is a proven draw on top and Jericho, despite the lame tv main on Monday is still the hottest heel act to hit WWE since the glory days of McMahon-Helmsley. He plays the victim so well that is conceivable that he could use the alleged “Adamle Bias” and turn that into a win on PPV. Its the old “back against the wall” theory for heels.
Meh. Raw to me has become so boring and stale that I am just about done with it. There are some occasionally good moments and matches, but by in large, I forget about everything 1 minute after the show ends. Wake me up when the glass breaks for Stone Cold’s entrance or something. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
You obviously must not know about the surprise return of Stone Cold Steve Haastin this week.
Yeah, I heard. Sounds like it was one of his worst impersonations yet.
I missed RAW again this past week due to falling asleep WAITING for the show to start because I wasn’t excited about ANYTHING that could potentially happen. And look, nothing happened. Nothing was announced before hand and nothing happened during, leaving nothing for me to look foward to next week. There’s another PPV this weekend?? Didn’t I just plunk down half of $50 for a PPV two weeks ago with roughly the same card? To quote someone else, “zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz”.
Just give Punk an honest run against Jericho and turn Batista heel for fuck’s sake. Reitre DX.
*retire
Yeah, Jericho’s been booked as the weakest heel champ since Mysterio. It’s not just the losing, because other than this week, he’s done pretty well for himself, with a fairly clean ladder match win over Michaels to his credit. It’s moreso the “THIS guy is champion?” attitude that seems to invade the show, kayfabe-wise, when he’s on top. It happened last time he had the big belt, too. Jericho is fantastic, so that sucks.
The new Raw on 24/7 shows Shawn Michaels, ironically, being exactly the sort of obnoxious prick that Jericho should try to emulate. Shawn just lying there on his stomach with his head on his hands and his feet dangling in the air like a school girl watching the Nation and the Hart Foundation get into a brawl he started is just masterful dickery. Hell, the previous week he opened the show with a heel promo that got the crowd riled up and carried over a commercial break! When does that ever happen? Seriously, the crowd didn’t even like Bret Hart, but being the one to finally interrupt Shawn Michaels and end his tirade got him on the crowd’s side, if only for a brief moment. HBK really should be teaching a Masters class in heelishness. Even though I know the direction history takes, I still wanna see Shawn get FUCKED UP every time I catch Raw on 24/7.
Seriously, I have become very bored with wrestling. The reality is that I have been bored for a while, and have continued watching out of habit, I guess.
Outside of Miz, Morrison, and Santino, there is just nothing for me. Which is a damn shame, because Jericho is doing some of the best work seen in years.
I would like to see Cena become more “vulnerable” after his injury, and see he and Jericho build toward WM. Jericho could manage to avoid him until then (battling with possibly Punk, Kane, Rey Rey, even Khali). Cena could win an Elimination Chamber to advance to WM.
Let Orton screw Batista out of the title at the PPV, and let them have a match at Survivor Series. They could then cool off until the Royal Rumble when they eliminate each other, continue through the Elimination Chambers, and set up a “Blow Off” at WM.
Somewhere in there, I think you can have CM Punk and HBK have a little series of matches up until the Rumble (face/face, face/tweener, either guy could play either role).
Over on SmackDown!, Edge should be returning soon. I have a feeling he and Big Show will be facing off at Wrestlemania.
Play it however you want to, but I think THE Brian Kendrick should win the Money in the Bank.
After the Draft Lottery, I predicted a HHH/Kennedy WM title match. Who knows what’s happening with Kennedy, and if the WWE would have enough faith in him. I doubt it, so I’m gonna go with Trips keeping the title until WM, and dropping it to The Undertaker there.
I’m still not sure where Shawn Michaels fits in to WM (I know it was rumored that he would have UT, but that doesn’t fit into my equation here).
Any other suggestions?
Cabs, I agree wholeheartedly. I’ve also been watching a lot of 1997 HBK lately, thanks to 24/7. I see a lot of parallels between Shawn then and Jericho now. Both were egomaniacs (in Shawn’s case, it wasn’t kayfabe) who irritated everyone until it didn’t matter who opposed them, face or heel. They’d book Shawn into a corner and he’d manage to win no matter how high the deck was stacked again against him (i.e. Hell In The Cell at Badd Blood). Shawn went over everyone in the company until Austin finally derailed him at Mania.
Batista can tell the fans to fuck off and proceed to bitch slap everyone at ringside on a weekly basis. They’ll still pull for him to whip Jericho, just like the U.S. fans pulled for Bret to beat Shawn in ‘97, despite Bret never really turning face again. The best thing WWE can do right now is to keep Jericho as the underdog heel who keeps pulling wins out of his ass, to everyone’s displeasure. Then, have Cena (who ironically, is returning from injury, just like 1997 Austin) destroy him at Mania. By the time Mania comes around, Jericho will be so over as a shit heel that when Cena beats him, the fans will eat it up. They’ve long had a problem keeping Cena a face in some fans’ eyes. This could finally cement him as “The Man.”
“It’s moreso the “THIS guy is champion?” attitude that seems to invade the show, kayfabe-wise, when he’s on top. It happened last time he had the big belt, too. Jericho is fantastic, so that sucks.”
I was really looking forward to Jericho getting his run as the top heel after the fantastic HBK feud…until I realized that it was going to be 2001 all over again. I guess the lesson here is that if you work hard, get over with the crowd and win the title, you’ll be just fine…as long as you’re a member of the inner circle. If not, you get to be everyone’s prison bitch.
It’ll be interesting to see what scenario Cena comes back to.. a battle with Batista would be very fitting!
I just heard – Mr. Kennedy will be signing autographs in Peterborough:
Thursday, November 20 @ 7 pm
Galaxy Theatres
320 Water St.
Peterborough, ON
Good opportunity for anyone in Ontario!