I’m beginning to think that those hoping for a main event push for guys like MVP and Dolph Ziggler are barking up the wrong tree. It isn’t because of the glass ceiling, or anything else that means the WWE aren’t willing to promote younger guys; they clearly are. It’s just that pretty much everyone the WWE seems to have serious plans for is coming from ECW. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look.
CM Punk is obviously the most successful wrestler to come out of the ECW camp thus far, as a two time champion, he’s already risen to the top. The man he faced most often in ECW is John Morrison, currently in the midst of a huge push on Smackdown, he’s beaten Punk clean and getting a huge push. In the undercard while these two were tearing up ECW, was Kofi Kingston. Kofi has been steadily pushed up the Raw card and given the U.S.Title, allowed to steal a few shows with extremely flashy moves, and has apparently been put into the RVD spot of flashy-uppercarder who can main event in-case of emergency. To set that up, they have him feuding with one of Raw’s few viable main eventers, the Big Show. Let’s not forget Morrison’s former partner, the Miz, who’s feuding with John Cena and seems to be getting a push mimicking that of Cena’s early career.
The current crop of ECW graduates are already receiving mega-pushes as well. Jack Swagger was brought to Raw, mixed in with Randy Orton, and now gets to work a program with MVP. While its certainly feasible that this program elevates both Swagger and MVP, Swagger is still likely the one to ultimately win and ascent first, since he’s now in front of a new audience and probably won’t job in his first big feud. Beyond Swagger, we have Evan Bourne, who was being pushed as the new Rey Misterio before injury and, now, has been brought to Raw where he immediately got a ton of offense in on the World Champion, then beat the U.S. Champ. Of course, the Hart Dynasty, with the least T.V. time of everyone were brought to their new show with less fanfare, even if the Unified Tag Titles suddenly found their way to the same show they were drafted to.
So while a push for MVP, Ziggler and the others would be nice, we’re also constantly left wondering why these guys are jobbed out so often. The answer that has to be looked at is that the WWE sees them as enhancement upper-midcarders, not trained and over in exactly the manner WWE wants like those the company chose to send to ECW, then brought to Raw and Smackdown to push to the moon.
