Vince McMahon has recently taken to claiming that he didn’t want to put all of his competition out of business. Revisionist history aside, McMahon clearly appreciated the top talent and ideas of the various territories– he ended up stealing nearly all of them. The 1980s boom period was certainly on the back of Hulk Hogan, as well as Rock n’ Wrestling, but it is also due to having top talent from every territory. Without territories to cherry pick now, the WWE has taken to modeling its wrestlers after the best each territory had to offer. Let’s examine a big more closely, beginning with Raw.
Triple H comes right out and tells us who he’s modeled after. Triple H is intended to be perennial World Champion, amazing wrestler and legitimate tough guy Harley Race. In the race mold, Triple H is beatable, but amazingly persistent and H goes so far as to mimic many of Race’s signature knee attacks. Race was a far superior bumper, but besides that Triple H is a modern day Harley Race, the ace of St. Louis and wrestling’s second American capitol, the Keel Auditorium.
In a slight inversion, while Race gave way to Charolette’s Ric Flair as the World Champion, in the WWE, their Race actually got his push due to the current Ric Flair, Shawn Michaels. Michaels has Flair comparisons going throughout his career and has (relatively) lately taken to really taken to pushing them after retiring Flair and using a modified figure four in his matches.
Of course, the NWA top guys cannot go ahead of the WWF’s old top star type– the half-intense and half-cartoonish brawler exemplified by Bruno Sammartino or Hulk Hogan once upon a time. A certain WWE Champion, John Cena gets that distinction now.
WWE attempted to have a smart-mouth heel talk his way into a feud with Cena, just like a smart mouth heel from the Northwest, Portland to be exact, Roddy Piper once did with Hulk Hogan. Unfortunately, the WWE decided their new Piper, The Miz, needed more time to work on his little things.
They could afford to give him more time because they stumbled into the perfect Texas heel. Randy Orton has everything from the overdrawn psychology to the goofy selling to the cowardice mixed with insanity down cold to be a perfect resident of Amarillo with the Funks and Dick Murdoch. His successor? Though he can’t ever live up to the hype of his Texan predecessor, a whiny, cocky heel in the image of those who followed the Funks in Texas, Cody Rhodes is cast as Tully Blanchard of Southwest wrestling.
The other member of Legacy is cast, therefore as the face side of the heir to the Funks, the Von Erichs. With his emphasis on realism and big match persona being built to be a pure babyface, Ted Dibiase is set to be the star a sober Von Erich, whether Kerry or David, would have been.
Another of the major territories was Watts era Mid-South. Watts would make sure he hit a prime demographic by always having a strong African American talent on top. Once, that was the charismatic Junkyard Dog, but now, that niche is filled by Kofi Kingston. Mark Henry and MVP are both failed experiments to fulfill this niche on Raw.
Jack Swagger was to get a push as a pure wrestler. One territory above all others had a great love of the pure wrestler, always trying to keep a “legitimate†athlete on top. That territory was Verne Gagne’s AWA. Although Swagger was meant for this role, he has apparently disappointed those in power and his push has gone to a different archetype. The free uncontrollable, wild-man free agent is represented by none other than Sheamus, modeled after the ever dangerous Bruiser Brody.
The undercard has the type of wrestler McMahon would take from Stampede in Calgary. A great technical wrestler, gifted with ahead of his time offense, we have Evan Bourne in the mold of Dynamite Kid or Owen Hart, without too many great matches in WWE at first, just like them.
That covers all of the serious wrestlers on Raw, leaving only five spots to be filled. These are taken care of on Smackdown, though with far less care. Let’s head over to Examiner for Smackdown.
