Charisma Expert

For the first fifteen years of his wrestling career Jay ‘Christian’ Reso managed to remain injury free. If you look at how common injuries are in wrestling that was a fairly remarkable feat. It allowed Christian to build up a reputation for being reliable and afforded him a consistent spot on the roster, which in turn granted him enough face time to build a loyal following.

Unfortunately for him his once glowing track record with injuries has become notoriously spotty over the last few years. Less than two years after he returned to WWE from a moderately successful run in TNA he was struck with a pectoral injury. He was back in the ring for around seven months before suffering another injury, this one to his neck. He came back from that too, but since then he’s been plagued by injuries, most of them to his shoulder.

This has transformed ‘Captain Charisma’ from a reliable go-to guy who can be sent out to have a good match with anyone into a fragile liability. Or at least that seems to be WWE’s opinion of him. Even when he’s cleared to wrestle these days they seem reluctant to let him do so. I’m sure this is largely because of the lengthy injury list. His recent concussion problems and his age (forty) probably don’t help either.

"Hey look! There's my push!"

It seems that Reso’s in-ring career is winding down. I think he’s done enough for the company to deserve a televised retirement match on a pay-per-view. Because he was never a considered “a draw” by the promotion that seems unlikely. ‘The Instant Classic’ is likely to be shuffled off into a special appearance based role similar to Booker T’s.

Which, of course, is a massive waste of Christian’s talent. Even though I don’t agree with it I can understand WWE deeming him unreliable. But he’s only “unreliable” for actual wrestling. There are contributions Christian could make outside the ring that would improve WWE’s TV shows. I’ve written before that he’d make a good announcer. Surely something other than clogging up the NXT announce desk could be found for Alex Riley and the artist formerly known as Lord Tensai to do. Christian would be a far better fit: he’s a better talker than either and has accomplished more in his career.

The thing I’d really like to see Christian do is become a manager. His above average microphone skills and nineteen years as an active wrestler make him ideal for the role. Theoretically it could be argued that he’d be a good guy to pair with the incoming KENTA because he’d do a fine job of handling his promos. But in actuality that would be terrible, the only thing making it at all appealing is the timing of Christian seemingly being free from wrestling duties and KENTA signing and being in need of someone to talk for him.

Christian would be a natural manager for a tag team. That’s where he had the greatest levels of success in his career. It would be easy for the commentary team to pass him off as a tag veteran and expert taking a fledging team under his wing and guiding them to the top. Any heel team that aren’t very good at promos would benefit from having Christian doing their talking and interacting with audiences during their matches.

But the truth is that Christian’s unlikely to be used as a manager or a regular commentator. WWE have never seen him as anything more than a nifty mid-carder and they’ll continue treating him as such, no matter in how many ways he could improve and help with new acts. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for one… more… match. But I’m not going to get my hopes up.