Today’s Episode: ReBourne
Happily, and against all odds, WWE has allowed a relative newcomer, and someone with tremendous wrestling talent, to be pushed consistently not only on the minor-league ECW program, but on their flagship program, Raw, as well. Evan Bourne a.k.a. Matt Sydal has been allowed to be a big deal, even busting out gorgeous shooting-star presses week after week, despite Paul London being told not to do that crap anymore. Not surprisingly, he won by a landslide in the Cyber Sunday voting, and put on a great show with Matt Hardy.
Certainly, there’s no reason why Bourne shouldn’t be a big deal. He’s in tremendous shape, has innovative and interesting offense, can make anyone else’s offense look devestating, and has a face that doesn’t look like he was beaten with a pickle jar for an hour, like so many unfortunate masked fellows do. While I’m not a giant Ring of Honor fan, I’m happy to see Bourne thrive, even if he spends most of his time on the C-show.
And then, of course, he got injured. With that style, it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, but it’s still incredibly unfortunate given his current momentum and rise to fame. However, this can be viewed less as a tremendous setback, and more as an opportunity, and I essentially feel that way for one reason.
Kid can’t talk. At all. AT ALL.
Watching him give his promo on ECW leading up to Cyber Sunday, Bourne’s skills with a microphone were so attrocious that he made Mark Henry seem like The Rock. Bourne spoke like he was reading off of a teleptrompter in the crowd, and the timbre of his voice was closer to that of a fifteen-year old kid finally getting his chance to tell Betty Sue how swell he thinks she is, by willikers. It doesn’t help that, due to Bourne’s less than towering height and babyish face, he sometimes looks like he’s actually fifteen.
The way that I see it, the kid has two options:
1) Get better at delivering promos, although the best are just naturally better than their lesser counterparts.
or
2) Find some way to avoid giving them, which is an issue due to the general dissolution of managers in wrestling, .
Neither of these are particularly easy, but it also kind of explains a reason for Bourne’s problems. I would like you, noble reader, to take a moment to think about what exactly Bourne’s character is. I’ll give you a minute.
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You couldn’t think of it, could you? That’s because he doesn’t have one other than “plucky high-flyer boy.” He has no motivation (wanting the world title doesn’t count; everyone wants the world title), no personality traits that make him interesting, nothing to drive him other than the next match. I’m not saying that Bourne needs some kind of zany gimmick, like a wrestling plumber or something stupid like that, but some reason for existing aside from the fact that he’s a good wrestler. Even Ring of Honor, the bastion of pure wrestling, the workrate fanatic’s wet dream, has some kind of motivation for their wrestlers. The most bare-bones wrestler in the world, Bryan Danielson, is a character who knows how incredibly good he is, and sees the title as his even when it’s not. Let’s be honest; in Danielson’s mind, Nigel McGuinness is probably just holding the damn thing for him until he cares enough to really try and get it back.
(I apologize for any messing up of RoH storylines, but I think I generally have it).
Bourne needs to take these months off and come back as someone that has a reason for being, not just an ultra-talented kid doing flips to the delight of the crowd. As good as he is, think how fantastic he could be if he took even the slightest character tweak and added that to his outstanding in-ring arsenal. Think Brian Kendrick, but with even more support from the fans. Kendrick has gone from being a tag-team wrestler to one of the best parts of Smackdown, and one who could, concievably, be a major contender someday if he keeps up his currently level of heel dickishness.
Picture this:
Four months later, Evan Bourne has healed up and is given tons of promotional videos on ECW, watching him spin kick, shooting star press, and flippity-flop his way to victory. There is a lot of talk about his return, but no exact date specified by the announcers.
On Smackdown, Vladimir Kozlov and the Big Show are in a tag team match against Undertaker and HHH. HHH Pedigrees Kozlov to stun him for a bit, but Show knocks him outside before he can cover, and Kozlov finds himself a bit wonky in the ring.
While the other heavy hitters battle outside, a returning Evan Bourne runs out through the crowd, onto a turnbuckle, and nails a gorgeous shooting star onto the now-unmoving Kozlov, putting the exclamation point on HHH’s Pedigree. Everyone is stunned by this ECW kid, appearing on a show not his own, for no reason, and with no real motivation that we’re aware of.
Over the next two weeks, Borne continues to hit his nutty brand of offense on different heavy-hitters on all shows, including shooting star presses on Morrison, Randy Orton, and Tommy Dreamer, and even debuting the Cyclorama (top rope belly-to-back moonsault suplex thingy) on The Brian Kendrick. Finally, he agrees to a real interview on ECW, and swaggers out, peppy as always, as Todd Grisham asks what exactly he’s been doing the past couple of weeks. With new purpose, and with a goal for the first time in ever, Evan puts the promo skills he’s been working on the past four months to the test.
“Todd…I grew up watching wrestling, and more than anything, anything in this world? When I was a kid, I wanted to be a superstar. I mean, I loved Jake “the Snake†Roberts, and KoKo B. Ware, and Bret Hart, and Owen Hart, and Hulk Hogan…they were everything to me. And now, here I am…a WWE, ECW superstar, and it’s great.
“But I realized something over my time off. Looking at the way I wrestle, the way I love to wrestle, the way I always wrestle…I probably won’t be doing this forever. Just part of the style, man, you know how it is. So I realized that I can’t be who I want to be just by trying to be the best right now, trying to be a WWE superstar. I’ve realized…I have to be THE WWE superstar. Evan Bourne and WWE need to be so synonymous that no one realizes that there was ever one without the other. So I’m going to keep making impacts, making statements, until I’m on everyone’s lips and everyone’s minds, and until my waist is covered in gold from any brand I can get it from.
“I know who I am, and what I’m capable of. And now, I have purpose. Now…I’m Bourne again.â€
