Columns
Morning Glory #17: The
Heyman Myth
There should be no doubt in
anyone’s mind that the product offered to us by the Smackdown brand of WWE currently
sucks dick. Right now, we have the horrible angle involving Vince McMahon ‘whoring
his daughter out when she was 17’, and said daughter, Stephanie McMahon, trying to
give a wrestling contract to a man with one leg (Zack Gowen). In addition to this, we have
the never ending pushes of the useless Big Show, and Hulk ‘Mr America’ Hogan.
Wrestlers with good characters (Matt Hardy, John Cena) are stuck near the bottom of the
card, alongside great workers with no character thanks to the writers (Rhyno, Chris
Benoit). Brock Lesnar, the current World Champion, is a shell of the cold, emotionless
destroyer we saw as a heel, preferring to smile rather than kick ass. The only saving
graces right now are the development of Cruiserweight characters such as Billy Kidman,
Ultimo Dragon, and Rey Mysterio, and the return of Kurt Angle and his subsequent feud with
Charlie Haas and Shelton Benjamin. Ask any internet fan why Smackdown sucks right now, and
they’ll blame the writers. They’d be correct.
The same fans would also be likely to tell you that Paul Heyman is the right man to
resurrect Smackdown as it’s head writer, as he did a great job as head writer from
August-December 2002 (which is the timeframe I’m going to be discussing here), before
Vince McMahon relieved him of the role. This time, however, they’d be dead wrong. You
see, to say Heyman’s writing was great would be like suggesting Nathan Jones is
capable of a ***** match. It’s simply not true. I’m not about to tell you that
Smackdown has improved without Heyman as head writer – it most certainly hasn’t.
But it definitely hasn’t gotten any worse. During Heyman’s reign as head writer,
we saw almost as many horrid, Wrestlecrap-worthy angles as we are currently seeing now.
And did we see any really, really good feuds or angles, which helped to develop the
characters of those involved? Many internet fans will say yes, and they will point to the
feud between Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit, a feud which eventually incorporated Chavo and
Eddie Guerrero, as well as Edge and Rey Mysterio.
Angle and Benoit’s feud is one of the more fondly-remembered feuds of 2002 amongst
smart, internet fans. Not with this fan, it’s not. The feud went a little like this
– Angle and Benoit, two heels, argued over who was the better wrestler, had a number
of matches on TV and on PPV, before being forced to team up and enter the tournament for
the WWE Tag Team Titles. The unlikely duo went on to win the titles, and feuded over them
with Los Guerreros and the Rey/Edge team, before going their separate ways in December,
both as faces. The supporters of Heyman’s writing will tell you that this feud was
great, one of the greatest feuds of recent times, because it produced excellent matches.
For these fans, the wrestling is what matters – as long as they see a good match,
they’re satisfied. Other fans, myself included, prefer the character, storyline
driven side of the business. And to us, the Angle/Benoit feud did not satisfy, regardless
of the 20 minute, ****+ PPV matches.
Firstly, what were they actually feuding over? The focal point was ‘finding out who
the better man was’. It was a weak reason for a feud – especially a feud between
two men who really should have been chasing the WWE Title. Not only that, you’d
expect that a ‘great writer’ such as Heyman could provide some character
development for the two in such a feud. Again, it wasn’t so. Both men were shown to
be extremely petty – almost like children. They fought during a Halloween party,
wrecking the place, and did things such as causing the other man to receive a Stinkface
from Rikishi. The worst point of the feud came when, after winning the Tag Titles, they
fought over a meaningless trophy, and ended up being slapped by Stephanie McMahon. More
poor writing was to follow, as Angle and Benoit lost the Tag Titles, but went right back
after them, continuing their run as a team. Pretty stupid, considering they supposedly
hated one another. But, even with all the plot holes, Heyman supporters will tell you it
was a great feud, for the matches. This is NOT down to Heyman’s writing though.
It’s the equivalent of the basketball coach on Hey Arnold! telling his team to
“go out there and WIN!”. Angle and Benoit are probably the best workers on the
Smackdown brand – of COURSE they’re going to have great matches together. Having
said that, is it true that Heyman likes to give us good wrestling matches, featuring good
workers? Hs original plan for Edge in December involved a feud with Matt Hardy, who would
injure Rey Mysterio. That would’ve given us a good PPV match. Instead, it was
changed, after advice from Undertaker, and Albert/A-Train was given Hardy’s spot.
Obviously, the match and feud bombed, and Heyman apologists will use this example to tell
you that he was the one who wanted the good worker pushed into that spot, therefore
he’s all about the guys who can go in the ring, rather than ‘hosses’, like
Vince McMahon. However, looking to November as an example, this is clearly wrong. Brock
Lesnar, a man who, for the most part, was actually booked correctly by Heyman, had just
finished his feud with The Undertaker by beating him cleanly in Hell In A Cell. Lesnar was
the hottest heel on Smackdown.
Most people then expected a face turned Chris Benoit, or Edge, a rising face, to provide
Lesnar’s opponent for November’s Survivor Series. Both men had worked
consistently well throughout the year, and at that point, were dying for a match that
would offer their big break. A feud with Lesnar, over the Winter, would have done just
that. Instead, we saw Big Show, a lazy, out of shape, poor worker, who had done nothing to
warrant a push of any kind, moved to Smackdown and immediately pushed as a contender to
Lesnar’s title. Not content with giving us a horrid Lesnar/Show program for Survivor
Series, the booking was such that Heyman, playing Lesnar’s agent, turned on Lesnar to
ally himself with the Big Show. This gave Big Show, a totally undeserving worker, the
first pinfall win over Lesnar, AND the WWE Title. Lesnar was then hastily turned face, and
some might say that his character has gone downhill from there. The feud was actually
rather enjoyable – but think to yourself – how much better would it have been,
without a sack of shit like Paul Wight as the opponent? While people were praising Heyman
for writing Angle/Benoit matches, we had to suffer the Big Show’s brutal title reign.
As I mentioned, Brock Lesnar was one of the few people who was booked right for the first
few months of Heyman’s spell as head writer. However, his feud with The Undertaker,
while it produced an awesome blowoff match in Hell In A Cell, was booked horribly. The
first half of it was not so bad, as it centered around Taker wanting revenge for his
pregnant wife, who Lesnar had threatened. A bit soapy, but decent enough. The second half
of the feud had writing that could be compared on the same level as the current Gowen
angle. Heyman, as Lesnar’s agent, claimed that he had someone who could expose
Undertaker for what he ‘really was’. They introduced a woman called
‘Tracy’ (Playboy model Tracy Dali – lucky they didn’t hire her as a
‘diva’, eh?) who claimed that while Taker’s wife Sara was pregnant,
Undertaker had been sleeping with her. Taker denied it, and was slapped by Tracy, who said
“You’re a bastard, Mark!”. I suppose you could constitute this as
‘mind games’ within the feud, but what good did it actually do for the
characters of Lesnar or Undertaker? None whatsoever. If anything, it took the focus away
from their feud, and onto Taker’s private life. It was also rendered meaningless, as
hours before the big blowoff match, Tracy admitted she’d been lying anyway. Another
poorly booked, poorly written feud from Heyman’s reign as head booker.
But if you thought Tracy and Undertaker’s ‘affair’ was bad writing, then
you would have forgotten the worst angle of 2002, and one that safely beats the current
Gowen/Stephanie/Vince storyline into the ground. I’m talking about Al Wilson’s
marriage to Dawn Marie. The character of ‘Al Wilson’ was introduced in October,
as the father of Torrie Wilson. Torrie was embroiled in a feud with Dawn Marie at the
time, which was pretty worthless, but also harmless. However, this all changed when Al
Wilson became romantically involved with Dawn Marie. The incredibly wooden Al was shown in
compromising positions with Dawn week after week on Smackdown (once inexplicably appearing
in the shower with Dawn – WITH HIS CLOTHES ON), and this frustrated his
‘daughter’, Torrie. The storyline, which began as being pretty funny, with Al
Wilson’s horrid acting being a focal point of comedy on Smackdown, began to eat up
more and more of the programming time, until one week, Al was not at the show, and Dawn,
in exchange for her breaking up with Al, enticed Torrie to her hotel room for the night.
The ‘footage’ was plugged for the upcoming PPV, Armageddon, and the segment
showing the footage on the PPV (a tame kiss between the two women) took up a mind boggling
15 minutes. The angle got even worse, as Dawn went on to ‘marry’ Al, before he
died during the honeymoon, sparking a brawl between Torrie and Dawn at his funeral wake,
before the feud was finally blown off at the Royal Rumble, around three months too late.
Why this angle was allowed so much air time is honestly beyond me. Most people will tell
you that it was given so much time because of Vince McMahon. But it DID come when
Heyman was Smackdown’s head writer.
So, looking back at some of the shocking angles we saw during Paul Heyman’s run as
head writer, it is safe to say that Heyman was no better as head writer than whoever is
writing the shows today. The one difference was that Heyman pleased the internet fans by
sticking a bunch of good workers together, and gave them inane feuds, which created some
good matches. Today, we’re seeing few good matches (due to the Big Show’s
never-ending push), but we’re also seeing the same amount of brutal angles that were
around during Heyman’s run. Any monkey can stick great workers like Chris Benoit,
Kurt Angle, and Eddie Guerrero in the ring and tell them to have a good match. It takes a
special kind of monkey to write a feud that makes their characters interesting, and
actually builds interest into the match, and clearly, Heyman was not that monkey.
Scott Newman: scott.newman@ntlworld.com
AOLIM: thesuperstar24
With special thanks to Justin T, who actually challenged me to write this column
|
