This Week in ‘E – The State of the Brands

Columns

Chris Jericho wins after losing, another Samoan makes his roster debut and MVP pees in a cup, and then gets into trouble for it.

Opening Witty Banter
It’s late. I’m tired. I got stuff to do. Let’s move on.

The Top Story
WWE has been just rife with injuries and change-ups over the past few weeks.

After the two-week bloodletting in August, the roster has been refilled with a plethora of new stars called up from developmental, each with their own varying degree of success. Some like R-Truth have gotten old school vignettes hyping their debuts, while others like Scotty Goldman, Gavin Spears and Ryan Braddock have gotten non-descript jobber debuts and even more old-school picture-in-picture promo spots. Even others like Evan Bourne and Ricky Ortiz have started to get over on sheer talent, willpower and entertainment value. And a select few like Ted DiBiase and Manu have gotten full-on pay per view debuts with insta-pushes.

These new talents help shore up the card that was cleaned out of dead weight a month ago, plus fill in the gaps of the main event stars like John Cena, Randy Orton, Umaga and Mr. Kennedy who have all gone out with various injuries. Now word came out from last week’s RAW that Shawn Michaels tore his tricep during his show-closing brawl with Chris Jericho and Lance Cade. Although it wasn’t as serious as originally predicted, as he did work the pay per view last night, it will certainly slow him down for the next few weeks I would anticipate.

The WWE climate is just in a prime spot for change right now. Creative seems to be just throwing stuff against the wall to see what works and what doesn’t, and meanwhile is rewarding people with pushes who are apparently not only talented on TV but also have good attitudes backstage. RAW seems to be continuing their wildly successful Michaels-Jericho angle, only now with the Big Gold Belt included, while setting up Rey Mysterio-Kane and CM Punk-the young boys as the other top card feuds, which somehow still leaves name talent like Batista and JBL on the outside looking in.

As for SmackDown!, The Brian Kendrick is getting the most surprising push of the year, while MVP and Shelton Benjamin are set to battle for the US Championship and Triple H as WWE Champion looks to be without a hot program, unless they are planning to revisit his run with Jeff Hardy from last year. Plus Big Show just turned heel for the 700th time and is renewing his rivalry with Undertaker, while the undercard continues to be fleshed out with new stars.

ECW has safely become the place where mid-carders go to get a career resurgence while the rest of the card has become a glorified developmental program. I’m sure Matt Hardy, Tommy Dreamer, Mark Henry, Finlay and Chavo Guerrero are all happy there’s an ECW around where they can actually get some TV time.

All I know I’m excited to see where all three brands end up as the company gears up for an end of the year push going into flagship events like Survivor Series and the Royal Rumble

Everything Else Fit For Print
A lot of TNA talent is apparently up for contract negotiations, namely Kevin Nash, Christian Cage and Team 3-D, and could be heading back to WWE. Team 3-D worked an angle at TNA’s Manhattan Center house show and apparently re-signed with TNA, but Cage and Nash are apparently still on the fence of where they will go and what they will do.

Bring Cage back to WWE now! In a climate where CM Punk, Chris Jericho and Brian Kendrick are featured performers on WWE TV, Christian would slide easily back into a top card spot and not look out of place. Either a Christian and Edge reunion or feud would be great stuff.

MVP is apparently in the doghouse for smarting off to one of the urine test administrators. Porter apparently asked this guy if he went to college, and when he remarked that he had, MVP asked him why he had spent four years of college to look at guys’ dicks for a living. He’s also been told to study Shelton Benjamin’s work as a way to improve.

That just cracked me up for some reason. I can almost picture Porter smarting to some guy in some locker room bathroom. As for the Shelton Benjamin comment, I love Benjamin as much as the next guy, but he’s been so up and down the WWE ladder since 2003 that it’s hard to believe he has any sort of momentum at all. I don’t know if I can think of a guy who’s been so violently pushed and de-pushed up and down the card like Benjamin has.

Apparently WWE Creative isn’t high on Gavin Spears, Ryan Braddock or Scotty Goldman and once they got word that they needed to be called up they basically threw them to the proverbial wolves.

Spears and Braddock are incredibly bland, but in a weird way I think it’s refreshing to have new stars not necessarily be victory-getting machines. It makes the landscape look a little more credible that these guys aren’t immediately successful against established stars. Goldman will get over just on sheer entertainment value, but I’m worried about the other two. Spears makes Charlie Haas look like a charisma machine, and Braddock looks like Mike Awesome thrown into a dryer. I’m intrigued to see where all three end up.

The reason why the Chris Jericho-Shawn Michaels angle has been so compelling is that the duo are basically in charge of creating the angle themselves.

These two are true professionals and students of the game and it is refreshing that a top-level angle like this is in the hands of two people who actually know what they are doing.

WWE officially made a statement on their website this past week that the company and Mick Foley had parted ways.

Good. This will be the last time you’ll hear mention Foley in this WWE-centric column for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile on the other side of that coin Gail Kim apparently hasn’t signed her WWE deal. She’s waiting to see if TNA came come back with some sort of offer remotely close to the money WWE is offering.

Gail’s playing the money came. Nice business negotiating there. At least she’s trying to watch out for herself and set herself up financially for far down the road.

WWE hired Norman Smiley to work as a developmental trainer.

Great news for Norman. This seems like such a logical move, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened before.

Wrestler of the Week
I’m trying to think of new ways to change up/improve this column so each week I will highlight who I think was WWE’s Wrestler of the Week, kind of like what JR does on wwe.com. As this is still in its early stages I don’t really have any criteria, but I’m sure my choice will come from a combination of kayfabe and real-life factors.

Week of September 1 – 7: Chris Jericho
Chris Jericho came out of Unforgiven last night as the new World Heavyweight Champion in a match he wasn’t even scheduled to compete in. By all accounts he and Shawn Michaels tore down the house in a great Unsanctioned Match and then he took CM Punk’s place in the World Heavyweight Championship Scramble and came away with the belt. While Jericho and Michaels was easily the best angle running on RAW it now officially will take center stage as the belt will become centerpiece. Jericho’s victory here completely took me for a loop as I figured he’d be fifth or sixth on the totem pole in regards to getting the Championship, while the burgeoning Punk-Orton angle would take center stage.

RAW’s On Tonight!
The official preview is pretty light at this stage, but thanks to some surprising changes at Unforgiven, expect a heel-heavy night as new World Champion Chris Jericho will be gloating about his victory while his rivalry with Shawn Michaels seemingly continues to rage. Plus the “next generation” stable is finally coming to fruition thanks to Randy Orton returning and leading the World Tag Champions and “Manu,” son of Afa, debuting at the pay per view. And I’m sure we’ll see another appearance of the Honk-o-meter, the greatest running gag since Kaientai’s “evil…indeed” gimmick.

On Last Week’s Episode…
A little bit of SmackDown! coverage…

Two times the ECW coverage…

And a ridiculous amount of RAW coverage, including thoughts from Curran, Daniels, Glazer and Marshall…

How They Rated
A.M. RAW (8.31.08) – .3

RAW (9.1.08) – 2.9

ECW (9.2.08) – 1.4

SmackDown! (9.5.08) –

This is Boring, What Else is There to Read?
Wiswell examines the life an times of Jimmy Jacobs

Buckledee talks about a potential Super J Cup

Glazer does a fantastic job of breaking down the music of the ROH stars

In Case You Didn’t Spend the $40
Unforgiven was last night, and unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to see it, but here’s how the event broke down quick ‘n’ dirty style:

Matt Hardy walked out of the ECW Championship Scramble as the Champion (20:00).
Ted DiBiase & Cody Rhodes defended their World Tag Championships against Cryme Tyme (11:55).
Shawn Michaels beat Chris Jericho in an “unsanctioned” match due to referee stoppage (28:00).
Triple H retained the WWE Championship in a Championship Scramble (20:00).
Michelle McCool defended her Divas Championship against Maryse (6:00).
The Undertaker and The Big Show got into an in-ring brawl. Show worked under Vickie Guerrero’s counsel.
Chris Jericho won the World Championship in a Championship Scramble (20:00).

IP Staff Roundtable Results for WWE Unforgiven
Once again Pulse Wrestling’s brightest and best put their heads together to predict the victors of last night’s Unforgiven in a roundtable. Find out what the staff predicted and then read Murray’s real-time coverage of the show.

Roundtable Winners: Paul Marshall: 5-1 (81-50) and Raffi Shamir: 5-1 (49-40)

Here’s how the rest of the staff fared:
Iain Burnside: 4-2 (128-71)
Danny Cox: 4-2 (156-130)
Brad Curran: 4-2 (26-17)
Mark Neeley: 4-2 (26-24)
Andrew Wheeler: 3-3 (99-55)

Mark was a columnist for Pulse Wrestling for over four years, evolving from his original “Historically Speaking” commentary-style column into the Monday morning powerhouse known as “This Week in ‘E.” He also contributes to other ventures, outside of IP, most notably as the National Pro Wrestling Examiner for Examiner.com and a contributor for The Wrestling Press. Follow me on Twitter here.