Piggy Backing. A term used when one person hitches a ride by being carried by someone else on their back. In wrestling, we call this term “carrying”, when one wrestler carries another wrestler through a match. It is an invisible concept to most people because successful carrying can lead to great matches involving people who may or may not be that good alone. The most recent debate about this topic is being waged over Batista, Booker, & Finlay. Did Booker fail to carry Batista? Is Finlay the salvation needed for him? Was Triple H the only guy to make Batista ‘look’ good? This and many more ideas are going to be discussed in this episode.
Let’s Be Pro-Realistic:
Piggy Backing to Success: Right or Wrong?
Wrestlemania 21 marked the night when two fresh faces in the WWE climbed their mountain and became World Champions. I am also talking about the two people who embody everything that is wrong with the WWE. John Cena and Batista. When they won their belts, they were on two different shows as two different people. Cena was a ‘thug’ mid-card US Champ fighting the political tyrant JBL. Batista was the enforcer who turned on his leader and led a charge to dismantle Evolution once and for all, something even the greatest of rebels couldn’t succeed in doing. Their storied climb to the top isn’t bad, in fact, I enjoyed the storylines for both men. What I didn’t like, was what these guys represented to the wrestling business.
John Cena is the most complex topic in all of wrestling today. He is the combination of Rock-like promos and Stone Cold arrogance. Although Cena does not suck at either wrestling or promos, he isn’t perfect at any one thing either. The Rock will be forever known as the promo machine, and Austin will always be remembered as the Bionic Rattlesnake who stunned everyone and fought against every odd. While their in-ring work was always slightly above average, their other talents made the flaws seem non-existent.
But the one thing that made them different from other wrestlers was their ability to make matches into main events. Austin, Undertaker, Rock, HHH, and all the others who made the Attitude Era so exciting was that they didn’t rely on anyone else to make them look good. Their ability was always at least enough to make anything into a Match of the Year candidate. More recent main eventers also have not needed any ‘ability help’, people like Jericho, Benoit, & Angle were all proven in their skill. Although their popularity didn’t rival the previously mentioned names at first, they didn’t need a ‘Finlay’ or ‘Triple H’ to help anyone out.
So why is it that John Cena isn’t one of those guys? He can wrestle, he does have intensity, and he can spit on the mic. That is what Vince McMahon knows and sees. Only those who ever watched The Prototype wrestle know what he can do. Hell, if you watched Monday Night Raw this past week you saw a fired up Cena that left me wanting more of his ass kicking style, much like Stone Cold used to give me. My only real conclusion is that although McMahon knows Cena can wrestle, he is scared to let him unleash his full potential. Why he feels he has to make Cena hold back is beyond me. Cena has had the stigma of needing people to carry him but that shouldn’t be the case. When he fought Edge on several occasions, it wasn’t Edge carrying Cena. Both these guys have put on solid matches and they should. The Edge vs Cena rivalry will be one of those epic Rock vs Austin feuds in the scope of these guys’ careers. It embodied ‘cool’ vs ‘posers’ and is in my mind, a 2006 classic.
But fortunately, Cena is growing out of it. Hopefully the days of assigning Jericho & Angle like wrestlers to help Cena out are over with. Cena’s feud with HHH & Edge have shown that he can now attempt to stand up against other main eventers in history. Although he has a slow time getting there, Cena stands out as someone who doesn’t need to be in a piggy back situation to get over now. But his rise is not mirrored by a true case of piggy back success, known as the Animal.
Batista is an interesting character to say the least. The former body guard for D-Von Dudley and then for Evolution shocked the world when he replaced Randy Orton (the WWE’s heavy investment) in the Wrestlemania main event against Triple H. Although I disagree with how the E went about Orton’s story, I do like how Batista was able to take the opening and run with it. Batista as a wrestler was always average. He had power, speed, and intensity. He looked a lot like Brock Lesnar at first. I was very hopeful that Lesnar & Batista would fight one day, but that idea may never come true now… anyways… But it seemed that the Animal has a curse, as his hair got shorter, so did his ability.
Batista looked his best in mid-2004 and showed real potential. When he did mature into the Animal Unleashed in early 2005, it was because he was going against the very best ‘piggy back machine’ in the world today. No one makes other people look as good as HHH tries to do. Say what you want about who he has ‘held back’ in the past, HHH had put people on the map that otherwise would never have had a chance. Triple H put over some of the worst in-ring skilled people of all time including Scott Steiner, Goldberg, Kevin Nash, (anyone see a trend in the pathetic talent wCw had?) and several others. Even by burying other wrestlers, like Booker & RVD, it only truly helped them by giving them main event status at one time or another.
When Triple H did the job to Batista in 3 PPV’s in a row, HHH did everything in his power to sell Batista as the destructive Animal that he portrayed. But once Batista was sent to Smackdown, he faced good talent that couldn’t carry him. The art of carrying another wrestler is in the deception it creates for fans. Even now, my friends are blind to the help some wrestlers give others during their matches. The most recent example is someone telling me that the triple threat match on Smackdown the other night involving the big 3 was Batista’s best showing in a long time. Is that true?
Yes and no. The way carrying wrestlers works is that the more clever way to ‘hide’ a wrestler’s flaws, the better. Putting any crappy wrestler in a triple threat is almost a perfect way to boost their ability. During that particular triple threat, Batista spent a majority of his time inactive. When he did make his presence known, it was to use his high impact moves and win the match at the end. The real medal goes to Finlay & Booker for using innovative ways to add excitement to the match, allow Batista to get the win, and thus, make Batista look like the Heavyweight Champion. But this deception shouldn’t be used on top stars.
Batista & Cena shouldn’t have been carried AFTER they won their world titles. Kurt Angle, Triple H, Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, and anyone else who contributed to carrying them on their backs shouldn’t be responsible for making main eventers popular. Those people should be the damn champs, since they have the damn talent! I still wonder to this day what Jericho’s thoughts were jobbing to Cena all those times. Was he wondering “why the hell does this guy get massive attention when he is half the worker I am?”. Or was it good to fuel Kurt Angle’s theory of him being the world’s greatest wrestler by telling him “go make Cena look like a star, we know you can do it?”.
Another thing to think about is not every wrestler can carry any wrestler. Booker T does not mesh well with Batista. The King may be able to have great matches (none of which I have seen lately, though) but only against certain people. I think Booker had his best matches against Triple H, The Rock, Chris Benoit, and Kurt Angle. But against people like John Cena & Batista, he looks weak. This brings in the idea of chemistry, and that is a different topic altogether.
The bottom line for today’s column is that Piggy Backing is fine to develop talent. I believe people like Randy Orton & Brock Lesnar had learned a lot fighting the veterans like Mick Foley & Undertaker to build a legitimacy in the ring. But they had the talent to back up their matches. There is a perfect time for being carried, it is during the time we like to call ‘climbing the mountain’ when you are learning all that you can while you trudge to the World Championship. But for people to be given the belt then get carried along their title reign, there is no need for it. There are plenty of people who deserve to be recognized for their skill and not their look more so than both Cena and Batista. I won’t even go into Bobby Lashley because he goes without saying that he embodies this entire column by being the ECW World Champion.
My say: “Don’t ask to piggy back if you got the weight of the gold around your waist.”
Thank you for your time.
Trevor Dumais
T_dumais@salemstate.edu
By the way: I am fully behind the New Age Outlaws to get rid of the Dumb to the Extreme bits on Raw. I support the Voodoo Kin Mafia in their quest to fire Big Dick Johnson and rid the WWE of the cancer that is this shitful D-Generation X.
But I warn the Outlaws not to face HBK & HHH in the ring. They will kick your ass.
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