by Eric Szulczewski

People who remember my run at Emzee know that I did a column there called The Mirror, which focused on some of the irrationalities going around in the Internet wrestling scene.  I retired The Mirror at the end of Emzee (although I've been asked to bring it back by some webmasters for their sites), but that doesn't mean that I'm still not keeping my eye out for silliness going on at various sites.  I mourn the loss of Scoops; that place was a mountain with a rich vein of stupidity begging to be strip-mined.

It was recently that I ran across a statement that just about defined "silly" in terms of wrestling commentary.  I made a few comments about it in my news column on The Shooters, but it begged to be commented on in detail.  Here it is in full:

It wouldn't be that difficult for the WWF to come up with a way to make the outcome of the Rumble less predictable. Instead of the winner automatically moving on to WrestleMania as the number one contender, the winner should be given a match at the Feb. PPV to determine who will earn the title match at WrestleMania.

Perhaps the Rumble winner should face the Intercontinental Champion or King of the Ring winner at the Feb. PPV with the winner moving onto WrestleMania's title match. At the same time, the WWF Champion should defend his title against another top contender which would also set up the WrestleMania main event.

- Jason Powell, The Torch, January 22, 2001

If this had been put up at some whiteboard somewhere, it would have garnered no attention.  Readers would have simply disregarded it as the raving of some ninny and blew it off.  But coming from Jason Powell, and being put up on the Torch, gives this statement a much greater aura of importance and significance.

Yes, I could go along with all of you and say that Jason Powell is a moron.  I came to that conclusion a long time ago.  But it's not enough in this case.  It'd be a shame to miss out on an opportunity to slam the Torch on something other than spelling and syntax errors.  The chance to make one of Wade's right-hand flunkies look like a fool...like I'm going to pass that up.

So let's start deconstructing his argument.  Let me rephrase that.  Let's start destroying his argument:

Premise:  The Royal Rumble winner is not much of a mystery anymore, so let's put some uncertainty into it.

No argument from me on that one.  The reason I've soured on Royal Rumble is the fact that the best single match the WWF has on its schedule has been turned into a showcase of the obvious.  The possible winners are always one or two in number nowadays, with the occasional weird wildcard thrown in to make certain that the smarks start wondering how they'd get out of it if they booked this guy to win (example:  1999).  There's a need to get some uncertainty back into the mix.

1) No automatic title shot at Wrestlemania should be given to the Royal Rumble winner.

Then what's the whole point of the Royal Rumble?  Ever since the automatic title provision was put into place, it's become the reason why the Rumble's been conducted.  If you want to abandon the automatic title shot at WM in its place, then you have to substitute something else.  Here's some suggestions:

a) The winner of the Rumble gets an automatic title shot at the next night's Raw.  This opens up the booking completely.  You can give anyone you want to have a push a nice little boost by having them win the Rumble.

b) The title is up for grabs in the Rumble match itself, and the title holder gets #30 (or #27, or #24, if you want to play to the smarts).  This idea has been presented by a number of people.  Its merits are quite obvious.  It restores the atmosphere of mystery and importance to the Rumble, and it makes for a more competitive match.

c) Have nothing on the line and just have it be a showcase match.  Then it becomes a push-fest.  The Royal Rumble has worked out very well for some wrestlers who need to be given a push.  They're the ones who normally land up with the Kevin Nash Booking (Rikishi, Kane, etc.).

d) Get rid of No Way Out.  This PPV is the red-headed stepchild of the WWF.  Its placement in between Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania guarantees limited, uncreative booking and/or something out of the Twilight Zone in order to get the proper matches settled for WM.  Eliminating it entirely would be the best solution for the WWF, who would have more time to hype WM and get it back to being something more special.  Of course, asking the WWF to eliminate a PPV would be treated like taking food out of a baby's mouth.

2) The winner of the Rumble will have a match at No Way Out for the title.

This pumps No Way Out far beyond what it should be.  If the WWF persists in this fiction of having "major" PPVs, then Royal Rumble has to be considered one of them.  With the Rumble simply being a preliminary match for a non-title contest at No Way Out, the value of Royal Rumble seriously decreases, and the match just becomes another battle royal.

Of course, now the hypocrisy charge can get called on me.  I suggested that the Rumble winner should get a title shot on Raw the next night.  Isn't that deflating the importance of the Rumble?  No, it isn't.  PPVs have long been just a set-up for the next night's show rather than something important in and of themselves.  This would just continue that trend.

3) The Rumble winner should face either the IC title holder or the King of the Ring at No Way Out for the automatic title shot.

Oh, dear God...

This deserves a complete deconstruction and examples.  First of all, the purpose behind the suggestion is to free up the booking for the Royal Rumble.  So, instead, you're going to restrict the booking of the Intercontinental title in return.  Any hot-shot of the title prior to Royal Rumble or No Way Out will be seen as a setup.  And then you want to throw the King of the Ring into this mix?  You want to book ahead nine months in advance and hope that your KOTR winner gets over and stays over, just for a match at an off-month PPV?  If he hadn't included the King of the Ring, maybe I could have let this one get by.  But that suggestion throws this into the town square of Idiotville.

As a practical exercise, let's do a little time travel and see what the ramifications of this would be, shall we?

2001:  Royal Rumble winner Steve Austin versus Intercontinental Champion Chris Jericho (King of the Ring winner Kurt Angle, as WWF champion, is disqualified).  This is the match that Powell was probably thinking about when he thought of this idiocy.  Yeah, it works for me.  But they couldn't avoid an Austin squash in the No Way Out match.

2000:  Royal Rumble winner The Rock versus Intercontinental Champion Chris Jericho or King of the Ring Billy Gunn.  The thought of either of these matches, especially the second, makes me want to get out a cattle prod and do things to my genitals that aren't very pleasant.  The only one of the three that I enjoy watching, Jericho, would again be the victim of a squash.

1999:  Royal Rumble winner Vince McMahon versus Intercontinental Champion and King of the Ring Ken Shamrock.  Anyone want to run this one through TNM to see how many negative stars it would get?  Yes, let's give the main event of a PPV over to a shootfighter with no sense of self-control in the ring and a guy in his mid-fifties.  Actually, that's almost what we got at St. Valentines' Day Massacre with Austin and VKM, and it wasn't too painful.  But Shamrock's no Austin.

1998:  Royal Rumble winner Steve Austin versus Intercontinental Champion The Rock or King of the Ring HHH.  Hmmm, this sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?

In retrospect, of course, the decision made here would affect the entire future of the WWF.  It was at Royal Rumble that Shawn Michaels suffered the back injury that would put him out until later this year (read:  Wrestlemania).  Thus, the other person in the WM match would have been the man who he would pass the torch to at WMXIV (in real life, this was Austin, of course).  Could you imagine the cries of "Clique Conspiracy" if that other person had been Trip?  And if it had been the Rock, could you imagine...well, you don't have to imagine.  Just cut and paste the criticisms that were laid on the WWF when Trip won at WM last year.  Remember, Flex was still a heel (and I still liked him).  So the only rational solution to who would get the automatic title match was the one that the WWF made in real life.  There would have been no need for the obfuscation of this solution other than to elevate Trip.

1997:  Royal Rumble winner Steve Austin (I should have put that on macro) versus Intercontinental Champion HHH (Steve Austin, of course, was the reigning King of the Ring; the first Austin 3:16 speech, remember?).  Four years and nothing's changed.  The WWF has been officially diagnosed with sclerosis of the book.

1996:  Royal Rumble winner Shawn Michaels versus Intercontinental Champion Goldust or King of the Ring Mabel.  This is where any arguments in favor of this really start to break down, for obvious reasons.  One more just to prove it...

1995:  Royal Rumble winner Shawn Michaels versus Intercontinental Champion Jeff Jarrett or King of the Ring Owen Hart.  Okay, this doesn't prove it.  As Pat Barker told me when I hit him with this, you can't go wrong with either match (and wouldn't a three-way dance have been something to see?).  But it's still an exception, and the fact that you have to go back six years to find a match combo that we smarks would be thrilled to death over shows a great deal (the 1998 combo would certainly have thrilled the marks in the audience, even three years ago when Trip wasn't Trip yet).

It does prove the point about predictability.  Either Austin or Michaels has won the Rumble five years out of the last seven, and considering that the other two winners were non-wrestlers (obligatory anti-Rock shot accomplished), it isn't saying much about the importance these days of the Rumble match.  Powell's solution just doesn't work given the nature of WWF booking.  The restrictions imposed would drive the bookers insane, and make the Rumble match even more predictable in order to get something together that would make people buy No Way Out.

4) The WWF champion should defend his title against an opponent of someone's choice at No Way Out in order to finalize booking for Wrestlemania.

The WWF champion should be defending at every PPV regardless.  They're trying this particular tactic this year with Austin and Trip.  But it's just not working.  The WWF knows that their only big-money matches for Wrestlemania are some combination of Austin, Rock, or Trip, and I have this feeling they're going to book an inconclusive ending to this one so they can set up a repeat of that death march from last year sans Foley (who I feel will somehow get involved along with Michaels).

The booking of the main event of Wrestlemania is the main culprit behind the predictability of Royal Rumble.  The WWF feels that they have to deliver in spades in the main event at Wrestlemania, and the linkage between the Royal Rumble match and the main event at Wrestlemania can't help but instill an element of predictability.  The problem is that there isn't en masse complaining about this situation.  Fans are just accepting it and thrilled to death that Austin or the Rock are going over in the Rumble.  Some fans, though, are aware of that situation, but the suggestions seem to be worse than what we have right now.

Jason Powell's an idiot, but he's an idiot with his heart in the right place.  The bigger idiots are the people just sitting there accepting dull, predictable Rumble matches.