The Death of the Special Attraction

The Last Attraction?

Last night was yet another chapter in the degredation of the Great Khali. If you watched RAW, you saw Sheamus kick the living hell out of Khali in a segment that put Sheamus over like gangbusters going into his Hell in the Cell contest for the WWE Championship against Randy Orton. It was effective in getting Sheamus over, but it could have gotten him over a whole shitload more without doing anything differently in that segment. What would have made it more powerful? Well, it would have been nice if Khali's heat matched his large stature.

Khali is not special in this regard. The Big Show, who entered the industry as the second coming of Andre the Giant, is now just another wrestler. For a guy who has the natural gift of height and size on freakish levels, he has become increasingly pedestrian in terms of his allure to fans. It's almost as if the WWE has forgotten how to book a special attraction wrestler... I know, it's hard to believe, but bear with me here, the WWE (and to be fair, in the case of Show, WCW too) fucked up booking someone.

Before the days of national television and national federations, of national penetration and exposure, guys like Khali or Show would have been given protection and used as draws even if they were put nowhere near titles. This is how Andre the Giant was used in the Northeast region by both Vince J. and Vince K. McMahons in the (W)WWF. The model may have changed, but can the mechanism still work? It kinda still does.

Necro Butcher is a guy in ROH who still has some kind of cache but doesn't really gravitate towards the title scene. You'd think that in this day and age, he'd be all over the title. He's been in movies, he's over wherever he goes and he gets a shitload of protection. Hell, you have to destroy him with every weapon in the locker to put him down it seems. Yeah, ROH is basically a part of the new regional system - the biggest part, yes, but still a part - but it shows that the model still works.

Of course, ROH is attempting to muck that up with turning him heel and putting him in the Embassy. Still, these things aren't permanent. Nothing in wrestling is. The model still works though. You just need to do it up right.

People like to see the freakshows, the iconoclasts, the special attractions. To see guys like Khali and Big Show become rank and file is a tragedy. To see the best special attraction in the world right now toiling as a heel against the wishes of the crowds, a guy who'll never make it to the big time because he's broken down even now due to years of hardcore wrestling, is damn shame. The special attraction wrestler is a lost art that is just one of the many symptoms of how bookers and writers are losing touch with what made wrestling great once upon a time.

Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein - Please visit his site to view the plentiful amounts of pictures he's taken for DGUSA, ROH and other indie feds: Get Lost Photography

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