Welcome back to Cheap Heat. This is the first non-recap article I’ve written in quite a while. After September 11th, wrestling just didn’t seem important. I was going to write a piece on patriotism, but I think Hyatte handled that just fine. Besides, it was another one of those things where a bunch of different people were doing it, so I didn’t really feel another one would be any benefit taking up space in Widro’s new, slam-bang database.
Courtney Love suing Novaselic and Grohl for full control of Nirvana. Does this make anyone else sick to their stomachs?
So, that leads us here. Now, I’m going to write a take on the Alliance just like everyone else is doing. Mostly centered around the person who I’ve written more articles about than any other wrestler, Kurt Angle. So, this is probably a rehashing of stuff you’ve read elsewhere on the ‘net so, if you don’t want to hear it again, I suggest clicking off and going back to doing something useful… like looking at porn. Most of what I’m writing about is going to be about characterization. Mainly, Kurt Angle’s character.
A leopard can’t change his spots, goes the old saying. This argument is used often in wrestling, after a face turn, and then a heel re-turn. When HHH returned to his evil ways after a full month as a good guy, JR used this saying. If you watch Daytime Soaps, the theme is used constantly after one person tries to be good for a while, then goes back to being a bastard. The one thing Serial writers have over WWF writers, is they know how to keep a character stable even when he’s going through a change of heart. It’s arguable all soap characters are the same, but that’s beside the point.
Kurt Angle was something unique in today’s wrestling. He wasn’t an Austin-cloned face, which has been the standard since the early days of the NWO. The good guys had to be bad-ass. The sugar sweet faces of yesterday were gone. The honest Hulk Hogan types who fought for right had become a thing of the past.
Until Recently.
I wrote an article about Kurt Angle saying how he’d gone against all odds and resurrected the American Hero good guy. He drank milk, cried when he won, said “butt” instead of “ass” and heck instead of “hell,” and fought for good. Unfortunately, this title reign flushes that entire character down the crapper.
Something struck me as wrong when Angle gave his post title victory speech. The fact that 1) he knew he cheated and it didn’t bother him and 2) he talked it up like he did something to be proud of. The Angle that we’d been introduced to, and we’ve watched for the last couple years wouldn’t be proud of a tainted victory. In fact, I think it would have been more in Angle’s character to give the belt back to Austin.
OK, so some of you aren’t going to like that scenario, but whatever. Angle’s original character, the one who everyone started loving as the American Hero to Austin’s bitch heel would have saw the replay, come out on Raw and “done the right thing.” Call Austin out and say he couldn’t accept a false victory. He might demand a title shot for doing it, but he would give the belt back. In storylines, they could have chose for it to be a vacant or for the title to revert back to Austin.
I won’t go so far as to say the WWF has flubbed Angle’s title reign. But I definitely think they’ve taken the uniqueness out of Kurt Angle by now turning him into a badass American Hero, rather than the clean cut American Hero. Angle shouldn’t be a badass… Angle should be a geek. That’s what got him over in the first place. I think the reason people are beginning to get away from wrestling is because it’s starting to become the same thing, over and over again. Austin made the Austin character work… they don’t need to superimpose it on other people, too.
With the possible influx of people the WWF will be getting over the next year, all of the top faces are going to become indecipherable from each other. Nash, Steiner, Hall… they all have the same badass face character Austin does. Angle didn’t. Now he does. At the very least, handing the title back would have been something interesting to shake up what’s been going on lately. It would have pissed people off and made them hate Austin more.
But then, simpler things that have been going on lately have been violating my sense of reason as well. Like, this past Monday, why was a WWF referee allowed to overturn a WCW referee’s decision in a WCW Title match? For that matter, why are Steph and Shane able to make Raw booking decisions on camera? The “don’t even work for the WWF anymore.†Widro says it’s because Linda allows them to, but Vince could out-vote her. They both have 25%, and that random 50% that no one’s mentioned in a while.
So, while I will admit to being a little disgusted with the whole thing right now, I’m not ready to give it all up just yet.
Not with Hall and Nash showing up in a couple of months.
End Transmission
