Everyone else in the Internet Wrestling Community is writing serious commentary about how WWE will cope with the latest controversy, so I decided to be a little lighter and have some fun fantasy-booking. I’m not trying to make light of the situation; these drug issues are serious, and I truly hope something good comes out of all this (a stronger Wellness Program, more time off for wrestlers, some sort of financial/retirement planning assistance for talent by WWE, etc.). That being said, and assuming my pseudo-logical deduction from an earlier article is correct that these are indeed the ten suspended WWE superstars (with possibly two more to come, according to WWE’s lawyer)… and that it’s Randy’s second strike (i.e., 60-day unpaid suspension), a fair question to ask is how will WWE BOOK around this mess?
1 – Chavo Guerrero
2 – Gregory Helms
3 – Randy Orton
4 – John Morrison
5 – Ken Kennedy
6 – Funaki
7 – Charlie Haas
8 – Umaga
9 – William Regal
10 – Edge
It’s a long holiday weekend here in the U.S., but something tells me the Creative team will be working overtime (especially with RAW taping on Saturday and Smackdown & ECW on Sunday, since WWE is heading to South Africa next week). I’m assuming they won’t take the “easy way” out and just announce that each is suspended due to Wellness Program violations (although that’s how I’d go with it), so let’s help them be… “creative,” shall we?
RAW
– Randy Orton
– Ken Kennedy
– Charlie Haas
– Umaga
– William Regal
RAW obviously takes the biggest hit here. Kennedy’s in a program with Umaga, and rumored to be named Vince’s kid in two weeks in Green Bay. Umaga’s the IC Champ. Regal’s the newly-named General Manager. Haas is Haas. But oh yeah, there’s that Randy Orton guy too. Let’s go down the card…
– Randy Orton – if he’s really gone for two months, the only thing I can think of is having Vince suspend him for the heinous way he treated John Cena’s father. They can play off of the NBA/Ron Artest fight (you don’t attack a fan) or even the Vince storyline (he’s a proud father of a bastard son, and Orton goes and treats someone else’s innocent father this way), and just suspend him “indefinitely.”
– Umaga – He’ll have to be stripped of the title, if for no other reason than he can’t defend it for a whole month. Here’s where I’d use the Wellness Program excuse, but however they do it, it’s actually a great opportunity to have at least an eight-man tourney for the IC strap. I nominate (assuming they don’t end up suspended): Jeff Hardy, Carlito, Shelton Benjamin, Cody Rhodes, Santino, Sandman, Super Crazy and Val Venis.
– Ken Kennedy – Man, he looks like shit here, if guilty. Anyway, I really have no clue how to book his dissappearance except to maybe just have him… dissappear unexplained for a month. Jeff was gone a month and it went by pretty quickly, so maybe he can get lucky.
– William Regal – This hurts, ’cause he’s such an entertaining and integral part of RAW. They can hide it well though, as GMs/authority figures have come and gone in WWE so often no one will even notice. Just have Vince and Coachman run things while Regal is “on vacation” or something.
– Charlie Haas – No one will miss him, and I’ve always liked his work, so hopefully he doesn’t lose his job here (and more importantly, hopefully he’s off whatever he was getting from Signature, again assuming he’s guilty here). You know who benefits though? Shelton. Forget IC title, I can see him jump into the WWE Title picture now.
SMACKDOWN
– Chavo Guerrero
– Gregory Helms
– Funaki
– Edge
Edge and Helms are hurt anyway. Funaki’s a jobber. Really the only “loss” to SD here, assuming this list is accurate, is Chavo. HOWEVER, Chavo just lost his blowoff match vs. Rey, and I’m not even sure he was in a match at Tuesday’s tapings, so he may be another one who can just dissappear for a month with no need of an explanation.
ECW
– John Morrison
Well, it sucks to be you, Nitro. If WWE doesn’t put the ECW belt on the straightedge, drug-free CM Punk amidst all of this drug controversy, they’ll never do it. He’s the big beneficiary here, and as far as writing Nitro out of the storylines, unless they can figure out a way to have him make one more appearance to job out, the only thing I can think of is to have Armando hold up the belt due to some made-up reason… perhaps he doesn’t want to face Punk, and is instead taking time off to make some music/be in a movie. ECW holds a rematch of Tuesday’s four-way for the belt, and Punk again wins. It might not be pretty, but I’m not sure they have much of a choice.
All I know for sure is one thing: I’m glad I have a long weekend ahead of me. Whoever is on the final/accurate list of suspended wrestlers, I wouldn’t be surprised if WWE Creative suddenly “ran out of ideas” for many of them…
