There is a lot of talk about the WWE lacking talent depth atop the card and that being a major reason the separate brands both cross over so much and should end. With that in mind, let’s see just how many guys the WWE could plug into the main event in 2002, at the time the brand split was originally conceived.
Here are the main event players and upper-carders in WWE at the time of the first draft: The Rock, The Undertaker, Triple H, The NWO (we’ll count them as 1), Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, Hulk Hogan, Rob Van Dam, Booker T, Edge, Big Show, Kurt Angle, Brock Lesnar, and Kane. Along with this group, Rikishi was also being pushed as a top guy around this time, expected Steve Austin to be around, along with Eddie Guerrero being re-hired, and had future champions Jeff Hardy and JBL, along with the Dudleyz. For arguments sake, we’ll only count Eddie of that list. That makes 15 wrestlers.
Currently, we have Undertaker, Kane, Edge, Rey Mysterio, Big Show, John Cena, Sheamus, and Randy Orton along with Wade Barrett and Alberto Del Rio being built. That’s eight wrestlers, with two maybes, or, around half of what the list was back during the brand split. It seems those decrying the top of the card depth have a point.
It’s no secret the WWE has never been particularly good at building their own talent and creating their own stars. Back before the national expansion, the WWE was a face territory that would fly in big heels from around the country to take on their top guys and make money between that and renting out Andre the Giant.
Eventually, the WWE did expand nationally and, unsurprisingly, made their money not by making top stars, but by taking top stars from elsewhere, most notably, at first, the AWA, and later Mid South and Mid-Atlantic. Even Hulk Hogan came basically fully formed and over from the AWA.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe9kQiX4w2A
After Hogan faded away, the WWE tried to create a Hogan-lite in the Ultimate Warrior. To do so they mixed the look of Kerry Von Erich, the darling of WCCW, and The Road Warriors to get their new star. Vince McMahon being Vince McMahon, however, he picked a bodybuilder for the role who was also a maniac who didn’t know how to work, so despite early success, the Warrior fizzled.
Forced away from the Hogan era, the WWE found itself in need of new stars and so turned to Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels, as well as Kevin Nash as Diesel. While the first two at least didn’t bomb, the business was clearly in decline with the WWE creating it’s own stars for the first time in their history and all either of the first two could accomplish was keeping the company successful while the WWE awaited the next big idea to steal.
That idea came from both WCW and ECW. From WCW, the WWE took the cool heel stable, turning the NWO into the raunchier D-X. Along with D-X, the WWE took ECW’s hardcore bumps, in the form of Mick Foley, and wholesale lifted ECW’s personality and Sandman character (combined with Austin’s own personality from his brief ECW stint) for Steve Austin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEITL8D0uxw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV38FRJ6Gas
This, of course, became the wildly successful Attitude era. That worked for awhile, as WWE overtook WCW and was able to hire their stars, first, of all people X-Pac, then the Radicalz and Chris Jericho, and as WCW closed, the whole company.
Around this time, Jim Ross was put in charge of talent and the WWE had their only successful group of self-developed talent emerge, a group that began with The Rock and Triple H and included standouts like Brock Lesnar and Kurt Angle. Eventually though, because the WWE really only feels one style works (their own house style), Ross was replaced and a cookie cutter system was put into place for developing talent. Of this regime, only John Cena, Batista and Randy Orton became fully established, paralleling the earlier success of Bret Hart, Diesel and Shawn Michaels as the previous stars began to fade away and their was a gaping hole in the level of talent within the company.
Recently, the WWE has tried to push Sheamus and Wade Barrett into this group of self-made talent, but the pool is so excessively thin that Kane, a man who hasn’t main evented in at least a half of a decade, has a major title, and Undertaker and Rey Mysterio, part-timers now, are still relied on heavily to carry shows. There is new talent to be pushed, but the WWE has proven unwilling to elevate any but the tallest who make the right connections early. And so the brand extension is failing and seemingly coming to an end.
The real problem here is that top young talent, the kind the WWE has for the past decade mostly wasted in refusing to make stars, are now going into MMA, not pro wrestling. The WWE has along history of abusing their talents and those who are able are now simply no longer staying around forever to take the WWE’s insane schedule and restricted creative environment. Batista, Lashley, Brock Lesnar, Jeff Hardy, JBL, Chris Jericho, and the Rock were all made huge stars by the WWE, only to walk away to some extent as major draws. When you add in guys like Kurt Angle who could have come back had he wanted by now surely, the WWE is seeming more and more like a place talent is going to get exposure and financial gain before moving on. And worse, the WWE seemingly hasn’t noticed the paucity of talent they have to chose from or, at the very least, hasn’t put together that it’s because of both MMA and their own way of treating talent.
A change is in order. It will and must begin with the end of the brand extension. There is no longer the talent to support two brands atop the card without a ridiculous amount of repeat match-ups. The WWE is poor at making stars and even were they not, their stars are seemingly sick of being treated so poorly by them. With top talent more and more choosing MMA, this is just beginning.
