No, not an actual vote (though if it were I would put my check next to Santino Marella’s name for this month) but more a reminder that the WWE is just another company. Whilst talk of “boyhood dreams” might sound enlivening during a championship match promo the truth is that wrestlers are merely well-paid staff employed to act out the boss’ intentions and earn the company money. Now I’m no expert on the film industry but I’m fairly certain that few (if any) actors have been fired from studio productions because they believed the script wasn’t presenting their characters in the manner they would have wished. Come to think of it, I’ve never heard of an actor having ‘creative control’ over their role either. Not in the same way it applies to pro-wrestling in any case. With that in mind, today I have decided to address some issues relating to employment and whether a WWE career should be seen as a vocation or simply an occupation. If nothing else, at least it means that I can use the word “work” in its literal sense and not as the opposite of “shoot” (which any decent fan of soccer will tell you is, in fact, the word “pass”). Seriously people, I sometimes wonder if you even read the flyers for my grammar seminars.
It is quite an indication of the WWE’s injury problems that the two best employees of recent times are both currently out of action, that being John Cena and Candice Michelle. Now I appreciate that people will have different opinions to me, ones constructed using alternative criteria, but for me the fictional position of ‘employee of the month’ is best assigned recognising a performer’s adaptability and their willingness to accede to the needs of the product. By the middle of 2005 Cena was ideally positioned to be the next edgy ‘DX-style’ franchise in the WWE (although, this being the WWE, we are talking about ‘edginess’ in its toilet humour and gay jibes format). The problem started when Vince thought that by placing Cena in a similar role to Hulk Hogan back in 1985/6 he would either get a renaissance of the Hulkamania movement or a division of the fans into pro/anti Cena camps, of which we obviously got the latter. To his credit, Cena played the loved/hated hero without dropping the facade for WAY too long (for which we can all thank Vince again) and still managed to be a valuable spokesman for the WWE, a contradiction to the media’s assumptions of rampant drug abuse (despite CNN’s best efforts) and a wrestler that was involved in numerous four-star main events, even though he was never given acclaim for any of them. As is often the case in business, being the ideal employee is often a sacrifice instead of a blessing.
As for the wrestler who makes a bigger splash on the canvas than David Hockney (did I not learn the last time I made an ‘art’ joke?), Candice Michelle has been Vince’s pet project since she debuted in 2004. Wrongly attributed to the Diva Search competition (she was eliminated from the audition process before the TV portion) Candice had already been interviewed by Jerry Lawler on Raw, which suggests Vince saw potential in her prior to her early exit. The initial signs of a hands on approach (you can make the sexual inference if you wish, not me) came when Vince aligned her with his Mr McMahon character in several backstage sketches, a luxury he had previously furnished on Trish Stratus. From the material they were performing (faked orgasms, ridiculous melodrama) Vince was imbuing Candice with his belief that something is only bad if it can be ignored and that the audience should be forced to either love something or hate it. The reason why the aforementioned Trish Stratus was so valuable to the WWE was because she could wrestle a solid match but was equally comfortable cavorting in her underwear a week later without having to temporarily abandon her character. Not something that was applicable to Stacey Keibler or Molly Holly, respectively. Candice Michelle could fill that role in the future, especially in opposition to the impressive Beth Phoenix who offers her the in-ring solidity she needs at this time. And even though Stratus still stands head and shoulders above the other divas as the most versatile female champion in WWE history, the similarities between the two extend to more than just the fact that both experienced two injury layoffs during their formative wrestling developments. Hopefully that is something that will benefit Candice in the same way it benefited Trish, with an increase in popularity from the rest and return and a chance to add a few new moves in the process. Time will tell.
Of course, for every good apple there is a putrid, wormy one that leaves little more than a nasty taste in the mouth (enough food analogies?). And, as if maintaining the ‘apple’ comparison, Carlito seems to be main focus of this belief, though I would suggest that describing what he has gone through recently as ‘punishment’ is slightly simplistic. Undoubtedly his dematerialised push and subsequent jobs are a product of some personal lethargy and/or apathy but there is only a finite number of WWE performers who can be vigorously promoted at any one time and it is a necessity of the remaining roster to add their heat or pop to that promotion when it is needed. Vince has shown in the past that he is willing to keep people on (Michaels, HHH, Orton) or bring people back (Hogan, Sable, Austin) despite business relationship issues AS LONG AS that wrestler is of benefit to the product. Carlito needs to realise that, rather than ‘punishment’, what he is actually getting right now is another opportunity. A chance to show management that he can make other wrestlers look good with enthusiasm and effort; the sort of effort that could be endowed with a renewed push somewhere down the line. Vince revealed this belief in the subtext of one of his motivational speeches to Hornswoggle when he said, “every man should be knocked on his ass once in a while”. If Carlito needs an example of potentially how his career future could play out then he need look no further than Bob Holly. Holly is the ultimate example of someone who understands that being successful as an employee and ‘winning’ championships are two completely different things, which could explain why he is a highly respected veteran and one of Vince’s in-roster ‘enforcers’. It’s all very well Vince demanding, in his capacity as the owner, that his staff should “do as I say” but the point is reinforced when someone as well-regarded as Holly can instruct them to “do as I do”. It’s safe to say that if Vince really wanted to punish someone then you’d only realise it because you couldn’t remember their name or when you last saw them (what shall now become known as ‘The “Masterpiece” effect’).
However, it is also true that Vince likes his employees to be more than ‘yes men’, blandly reiterating the lines fed to them by the writers. His recent decision to have referees treat the matches as ‘real’, coupled with the fact that he keeps his wrestlers in the dark over certain booking plans until the audience discovers them, demonstrates that he likes to inhabit an environment of liveliness and unpredictability. Once again, a conclusion that has been pre-empted in subtext (“anything can happen in the WWE”). Despite all the cancelled PPV matches and problems arising from their inability to work together in 1996/7, I'm sure Vince would happily suffer the consequences of another Bret/HBK style disagreement if it created the same buzz in both his roster(s) and the wrestling media. This is also possibly why wwe.com has made mention in previous months of several non-storyline conflicts (Melina/Candice, Booker/Batista) in an attempt to bleed the tension through into their scripted feuds. Whilst I’m not against this type of pseudo-reality booking it would become restrictive if it ever replaced traditional pro-wrestling writing and would take the WWE further down the path of succumbing to the lure of celebrity, which is does sufficiently already. This bizarre balance of work/shoot (damn it!) also applies to promo delivery. Every fan that has seen a ‘reality’ documentary about the wrestling industry knows that interviews and promos are heavily scripted because they have to contain an amount of factual information (names, dates) and that disparaging comments have to be cleared to make sure they don’t present the opposing wrestler in a light that doesn’t fit the tone of the feud. The childishness of Miz/Morrison on commentary during a Punk match on ECW, which earned them a rebuke from Smackdown’s enforcer JBL, is as good a recent an example as you’ll find. But the reprimand was only necessary because the culprits were rookies and Vince wants to be seen to be protecting the business and his other talent in the process. Go back to a March 2002 episode of Raw when The Rock, in a promo with the NWO, called Kevin Nash “Big Daddy Bitch”. The unscripted comment had not been cleared with Nash and, reportedly, caused some backstage friction between the two. I’m sure the situation had to be handled by management with some care but inwardly Vince would have wanted any friction between them to persist so that their future on-air confrontations would have that same crackle. If for no other reason, you’ve got to admire that Vince even sees negatives as positives (“A mistake isn’t a mistake as long as it’s live”).
The reason why I chose to give my ‘employee of the month’ vote to Santino Marella (narrowly edging out Jeff Hardy) at the start of this column is because no one else recently has taken what has been given to them by the writers and thrown themselves into the part as well as he has. Admittedly, the benefit of his comedic enthusiasm hasn’t been felt at the business end of the cards (the main event) but Vince knows that getting an audience to the last quarter of the show in the right frame of mind is as important as what is done when they are there. And to that end, Santino has been a precious commodity of late. Chris Jericho’s return overshadowed everything else on Raw last week and there is high expectation of Y2J in the coming years to elevate himself from an almost to the finished article. Jericho exhibits many of the polished, amenable qualities of the previous franchise champion without the baggage of a near two-year title reign and a divided following and it is long overdue that he take advantage of that position. Might I suggest that he start with being next month’s fictional ‘employee of the month’ and take it from there.
Lee
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