Friday, November 6, 2015

Dispatches from the Lake: Hope Springs Eternal

This scene may be inevitable, but it should be arrived at in an interesting manner
Photo Credit: WWE.com
John Cena is taking time off. Randy Orton is out until after WrestleMania. Rusev is out with injuries. Daniel Bryan will never again darken a WWE ring. Now Seth Rollins is out for 6 to 9 months and must vacate the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. The company will be holding a tournament at Survivor Series to decide the new Champion. Bad luck? Definitely.

The road ahead seems to point towards the towering obelisk of ROMAN REIGNS as champ, and that’s fine. Weird, right? You’d think I would be all pissy about that. I say just get that eventuality over with sooner rather than later. WWE is going to do it anyway. Rip that bandage right off.

What interests me is the tournament that they will be holding to determine the champ. The last two RAW episodes have shown that whoever is running things backstage has an idea of how to put on an interesting show with exciting wrestling. Has it all been perfect? Of course not, but it shows that WWE is capable of holding my attention for a full three hours. The large swath of shows just chased me back to the loving arms of Steven Universe and Gravity Falls, where gems and a maniacal pyramid demon have more characterization than 99% of the WWE main roster.

A tournament holds all the promise in the world to re-charge the WWE. You’re probably reading that statement and wondering how drunk I am for thinking it. Stick with me here.

There is an opportunity here to build simple but meaningful stories, with wrestlers both in the tournament and those left out. You can play around with wrestlers being pissed they didn’t get into the tournament. Have them feud with one that did get in. Say two beloved wrestlers end of in a match together. You could go the mutual respect route or have one of them give in to hate to win. And that’s just the few things I can come up with while ignoring this conference call I’m supposed to be listening to.

Nothing WWE has done on the main roster this year fuels this hope I have, but it’s hard not to see such a perfect moment in time, a flashpoint, if you will, and hope for the future. Something needs to happen to shake things up in WWE, and they have a pretty big arena to fill on April 3. Now is the time to start building stories for that event. Make some new guys while the old fall backs of Cena and Orton are away. Give people a reason to make the journey down to Texas instead of just ‘It’s WrestleMania’. And even if they go the super obvious route of final crowning Reigns, WWE can still give the Cesaros of the roster something entertaining to do. Go for broke at Survivor Series. Just start throwing this at the wall and see what sticks. Use the people who are already sticking to the wall, but being ignored. Give people a reason to start talking about your product again!

Hope can be a dangerous thing, though. It leads to lots of disappointment. Trust me, I know. I’m a Cubs fan. I'm probably the wrong person to be asking though. I just need something to distract from my beer soaked ‘W’ towel and broken dreams.