The Reality of Wrestling: Monty Brown to The E
By Phil Clark & J.D. Speich
One of the forgotten stories of the last few weeks was The E’s signing of Monty Brown. This was an event that yours truly had been anticipating since the first rumors came out of Monty’s disgruntlement with his use in TNA. It has seemed to me that Monty would be a better fit in The E than in TNA despite being one of TNA’s most over heavyweights. The reason is simply he fits what The E looks for in its main-event stars. Not only that, but Monty does have incredibly charisma and obviously his time in TNA has been noticed by Vince (or Heyman, or Hayes, or whoever thought to sign him). However, with another monster in ECW (Lashley), DX on RAW and Batista on SmackDown!, it seems that The E has a lot to think about in terms of their usage of their latest free-agent pick up.
Since our opinions are very similar on this topic and since he’s been gone for a while, I’m giving this one to J.D. this week.
J.D. Says: Monty Brown’s future is in WWE’s hands
It’s been official for a few weeks, Monty Brown is now a member of World Wrestling Entertainment, but the question that has to be on everyone’s mind is what is the WWE going to do with the man who invented THE POUUUUUUUUUUNCE?
In my opinion Monty Brown could be used a couple of different ways with the WWE. First of all my colleague and I are in agreement that Monty will most likely debut at the Royal Rumble this year, but will he be a heel or a face and which brand will he go to? If the WWE introduces Monty as a heel I believe that he could go to Smackdown and feud with a number of competitors. We could possibly see such feuds as Monty/Benoit, Monty/Undertaker, and Monty/Batista, if he gets pushed. Each of those feuds wouldn’t have the greatest match quality, but seeing as how WWE doesn’t worry about that anyways, those feuds would be great in the build up towards the match. Or, if WWE wanted to put Monty’s mic work to the test right away, they could put him in a feud with, dare I say, The Boogeyman in order to get really good entertainment value out of the two.
Now if Monty were to come in as a face and go to Smackdown, the fueds would be a little less limited, but there are still decent possibilities. For instance, WWE could put together Monty/Kennedy, Monty/King Booker, and Monty/Finlay. Although there are possibilities with Monty as a face on Smackdown, I just don’t see that happening. Personally, I’d rather see Monty as a heel on Smackdown just because I believe he would get pushed better as a heel than a face.
The other two-way possibility with Monty Brown is that he could go as either a face or heel to Raw. As a heel he could slowly build on Raw with a starting feud against Carlito. Not only would this feud be great on the mic, but I think Carlito is good enough to pull Monty to a decent three star match and make the feud worthwhile. In fact, I would go as far to say that Monty/Calito might be the best feud for WWE to run with right now and could go months into the year. Aside from Carlito, unfortunately, I really don’t see any more heel feuds for him to get involved with. As a face on Raw, however, Monty would have a plethora of opportunities. As a face that gets pushed right away Monty could feud with Orton, Edge, or Umaga. All three of these feuds are unlikely, but would be good feuds in their own right. The other feuds that will be more likely for Monty when he first enters Raw as a face would be against Shelton Benjamin, Johnny Nitro, or even Chris Masters. Hopefully, out of those three possibilities we would get the chance to see Monty/Shelton because ever since Wrestlemania Shelton has nothing to do and a feud with Monty could put him back in the spotlight as a great performer, while at the same time the feud would get Monty over big as a face. I wouldn’t even mind Monty/Nitro, as long as Monty squashes Nitro and moves up right away. As far as Monty/Masters, well, lets just say I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn’t happen.
Now, as far as Monty Brown going to ECW, this should not happen at all and should be put out of everyone’s mind. For one, we don’t even know how much longer ECW is going to be around and when it does crash and burn, every good wrestler that is in ECW will have to end up working their way back to the top on either Raw or Smackdown. Since that would be the case it wouldn’t make much sense to put Monty in ECW for a few months and then have him go to another brand and rebuild his push. Secondly, if Monty went to ECW there aren’t a whole lot of credible feuds that Monty could be put into. The only credible ones that come to mind would see Monty as a heel against C.M. Punk, Rob Van Dam, or Bobby Lashley. Now, out of those three feuds I would cancel out Lashley/Monty right away because they look too much alike and it would be confusing to tell them apart during a match. R.V.D./Monty could work as a feud, but it would take a lot of work on R.V.D.’s part to make the feud work. As far as Monty/C.M. Punk, well, lets just say that even though Punk is incredibly over right now, it’s way too early to have Punk and Monty happen, save that for when ECW goes down and Punk has built himself up enough to be put in a real main event situation.
All in all it is uncertain what the WWE will do with Monty and we don’t even know if they’re going to use Monty realistically. The WWE could just do with Monty what they did with everyone else that they signed from TNA (Matt Hardy, Shannon Moore, and Frank Kazarian), and that’s not build them at all and then send them back to TNA when they’ve felt that they have embarrassed them enough to prove a point that TNA isn’t a threat to them. Of course realistically, TNA is a threat to WWE and it would be in the WWE’s best interest to push Monty and make something out of him while he’s in his prime. But we’ll just have to wait on see what the WWE is going to do with Monty, either they’re going to push the hell out of him, or they’re going to run his character into the ground, stay tuned until then.
The Reality is”¦we don’t know. We simply do not know what the f*ck The E has in mind for the man from The Serengeti. If pushed correctly Monty could become a big star, if pushed as The E historically does for people from the competition, this could be another wasted opportunity. But, are we going to get The Alpha Male or just Monty Brown. I don’t have any idea (if someone knows, please e-mail me) if Monty owns any rights to his character from TNA and if he doesn’t, then TNA would be smart to trademark all of it. They have enough footage of Monty where they could make money off the character with a “Best of” DVD. Not only that, but without the Alpha Male character, The E would have to create something for Monty to run with. Lately, The E hasn’t been good at that, so from now until his debut, we (and probably Monty himself) will keep our fingers crossed and see what happens.
