Vince Russo's Greatest Triumph

I was initially going to make this a Top Five Shows Booked by Vince Russo post. Then I started looking back on his body of work and it quickly became clear that wouldn't work. Russo's strength as a writer was in long-term storytelling and having something for everyone on the roster to do. His weakness was letting the act of actual wrestling be the focus of a show. Which has basically left us with a situation where there aren't many particularly good single shows booked by him.

"Cos it's a deadly game! Deadly game! Deadly game!"

The one time Russo managed to perfectly apply his approach to a pay-per-view was at the 1998 Survivor Series. That's the one, in case your wrestling lore is rusty, that featured a one night tournament (dubbed the Deadly Game tournament) to crown a new WWF champion. It allowed Russo to cram in everything he was good at and enjoyed, namely pushing the mid-card, constructing satisfying arcs for main event talents, and swerve developments, into one show, perfectly built to over the preceding months.

Part of the reason the show worked as well as it did (and holds up better than practically anything else Russo booked) was the build it had. After SummerSlam in August he and his writing partner Ed Ferrara set about repositioning key players in preparation for the story they knew they'd be telling at Survivors. Mankind became a sympathetic, comedic good guy. The Rock dropped the Nation of Domination (an albatross around his neck by SummerSlam anyway) and officially went face, dubbing himself 'The People's Champion'. Undertaker and Kane, who had been at loggerheads since Kane's debut the previous October, formed the first of many alliances and began pursuing WWF champion Steve Austin. Really, Austin was the only man not recast after SummerSlam. He remained the top babyface with the same agenda he'd always had: having the title and being a thorn in the side of Vince McMahon.

Vince was central to all of this. He butted heads with The Rock, based on his own hatred of "the people". He began manipulating Mankind, promising to make him his new "corporate" champion but clearly having little but disdain for him and using him simply as a tool in his wider plans. Which he did with Undertaker and Kane, of course, only they were presented as being intelligent enough to understand his schemes, playing along because it tied into their desire to be the champion. And, of course, his hatred of Austin was undiminished.

Through a typically Russo-esque convoluted sequence best summed up here as a double pin from the Brothers of Destruction, Austin was stripped of the WWF championship. An attempt to crown a new champion in a 'Taker v Kane match didn't work out because Vince (stupidly) made Austin the guest referee, leading the match to end with Austin attacking both competitors and declaring himself the winner. Vince's next plan to crown a champion was the Deadly Game tournament, bringing us back around to Vinnie Ru's greatest triumph.

The show featured a ludicrous fourteen matches (plus another four before the broadcast began) but was paced and structured so well that it avoided feeling bloated. Practically every match contributed something to the larger story of the show and the handful that didn't were either enjoyable enough to be overlooked (Shamrock v Goldust) or were short enough for it not to be an issue (Snow v Jarrett). The main characters were all placed in matches that advanced their own plots. Mankind found himself pitted against blatant ringer Duane Gill in the opening match (amusingly hyped up so much by Vince so as to deliberately mislead people into believing they' be seeing the injured Shawn Michaels), setting him and the audience up to believe that he truly was Vince's chosen one. Rock found himself pitted against Team Corporate henchmen in his first two matches and against Undertaker in his third, making it clear McMahon was doing everything in his power to keep him away from the final, and that the audience were right to believe in him because he overcame Vince's stacked odds.

Austin was ever so slightly an afterthought, odd considering he was the clear cut top star. He trounced Big Boss Man in his opening round match, received a bye in the second when nobody advanced to face him, and was double crossed in his semi-final match against Mankind. But this was all done for a reason. It allowed Rock and Mankind to close the show, helping to raise their status in the process. The double cross aspect of his semi-final loss was done to reunite Vince and Shane McMahon after Shane had been demoted to, in Vince's words, a lowly referee. It created a reason to further protract the McMahon-Austin rivalry to and neatly took 'Stone Cold' out of the title picture until WrestleMania.

Of course it's the main event that this show is, rightly, most remembered for. Mankind versus The Rock was a competitive match (although not as good as the work they'd do together over the months that followed) that played out with McMahon and his entourage at ringside. It was set up to make viewers believe that Mankind was Vince's choice for champion and Rock was the underdog fighting against all the odds. Not only did it make sense in its own right but it was a framing device designed to call back to the main event of the previous year's show. For anyone unfamiliar with that (not that I'd expect many bothering to read this far to be unfamiliar) the '97 Survivor Series had seen WWF champion Bret Hart defending against on-screen and real life arch rival Shawn Michaels, with it being (fairly) common knowledge that Hart was on his way out of the company and refusing to lose the belt to Michaels. The match ended with Michaels applying the Sharpshooter, Hart's own finishing hold, to Hart and Vince, who was uncharacteristically at ringside for the match, demanding the bell be rung and Michaels announced as the new champion.

That sequence, by November 1998, had become known as the Montreal Screwjob (because it was a screw job that took place in Montreal, obvs). It's something that's been played on a lot since, both by the WWF and others, but in late '98 it wasn't something that the WWF seemed reluctant to acknowledge or dwell it. That changed when Rock placed Mankind in the Sharpshooter and McMahon had the bell rung.

A successful swerve.

Russo and the rest of the WWF's creative types had had the genius idea of ending the show with a swerve turn, a reveal that The Rock and Vince had been in cahoots all along, Mankind a mere patsy in the chairman's villainous machinations. Russo has rightly been accused of booking too many swerve turns in his career but this one made complete sense and provided a neat payoff. Of course it was The Rock, with his movie star good looks and third generation status, that was Vince's chosen one, not the affable, slightly out of shape Mankind. Rock's victories over Corporate henchmen in the earlier rounds immediately made sense. His only real challenge all night had been his match against 'The Dead Man', and he'd won that after interference from Kane.

The show provided a great climax to story threads that had been present since SummerSlam and set up fresh ones that ran the company through to WrestleMania XV the following March. It was a pivotal show for the promotion creatively and showed just how good the Russo approach could be with the right conditions. He would never again produce anything this good. Certainly not enough to concoct a top five list.

Corporate Image

When the current Corporation story-slash-Triple H and Randy Orton heel turn started I was reluctant to join what seemed to be a large number of people saying that it’s a rerun of the, very successful, Austin v McMahon feud. For starters it doesn’t really matter if elements of the more successful plot crop up. It ended fourteen years ago. There are sufficient viewers regularly tuning in who can see this programme through entirely fresh eyes. Ad there’s nothing wrong with emulating successes, especially your own.

More to the point the original cries of a rerun seemed to be based exclusively on Daniel Bryan being pitted against a united McMahon family. For me that’s not grounds enough to compare storylines, or Bryan and Austin for that matter. Plenty of wrestlers have been in that situation.

As the story has developed things have happened that have made it harder to distance it from the original Corporation tale. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As I’ve already pointed out the original was a hit. Writing this isn’t intended as a knock or a complaint, more an opportunity for me to empty my mind on the subject of comparing the two Corporation factions.

 

Finally an excuse to use a picture of the original Corporation line-up!

 

One of the more obvious similarities is one that a lot of people seem to have overlooked. Both groups involved Triple H. In the current incarnation ‘The Game’ is very obviously at the centre of the plot, in the role previously occupied by Mr McMahon in 1998 and ’99. Vince, for his part, has drifted off into the ether (for now) to allow Trips to establish himself as the leading on-screen bad guy.

He was a late recruit to the original Corporation. He turned on his pal X Pac at WrestleMania XV, which marked the beginning of his journey to the very top of the card. He was overshadowed by The Rock for his first month in the group and barely got a chance to shine once ‘The Great One’ left the group before it was unified with The Ministry of Darkness and he was left playing second fiddle to The Undertaker. It’s easy to forget his involvement, but it was a significant part of his career.

The Shield are obvious equivalents of Big Boss Man. The way they’ve been tasked with guarding the ring since Helmsley went bad indicates that they have some sort of authority over security staff at venues. That was always the (hilarious) conceit with Boss Man. Apparently working as a prison guard in Cobb County, by God, Georgia prepared him for such a role.

Ambrose, Rollins and Reigns also vaguely, although not as clearly, also fill the same roles as Ken Shamrock and Test used to. They were and are all guys who can perform run-ins and work as bump fodder for the bigger names. Between the three of them they also hold a singles title and the tag straps, just like BBM and Shamrock did.

Another aspect of the original that seems to have been forgotten is Kane’s involvement. He was blackmailed into doing the bidding of his bosses with threats of being institutionalised¹. Does that or does that not sound incredibly similar to Big Show’s current plight?

Beyond the fact that both oppose the real life and on-screen bosses of the company there are no glaring similarities between Austin and Bryan. They’re very different personalities and wrestle very different styles. And as much as I like ‘The Dazzler’ he’s no ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin. ‘The Rattlesnake’ was a major part of creating WWE’s most successful period ever. Bryan is more simply a currently popular wrestler who may or may not work out as a long term headline attraction.

I’ll stop short of saying that Steph’s in the Shane McMahon role. Firstly it’s not an entirely accurate comparison. Secondly the relationship she shares with the Vince analogue and the original Vince and Shane relationship are very different things.

***

¹ This was at a time when ‘The Big Red Machine’s’ character was far less relatable and fleshed-out, and at a time when WWE were happy to run stories like that.

Long Live the King(s)

I'd been watching wrestling for about six months when I was first introduced to the King of the Ring concept. It was a sixteen person tournament (the number of participants varied each year depending on the strength of the roster) that pitted various mid-carders against one another in a series of matches. There was no overriding point to the series beyond signalling a push, which obviously wasn't the on-screen reason given but it amounted to the same thing. It was an unwritten rule by the late nineties that headliners were above King of the Ring.

That year the tournament was won by 'Bad Ass' Billy Gunn. He was not a shining example of what winning King of the Ring could do for a performer. Kurt Angle's win in 2000 was a better use of the gimmick, as were the victories of Edge and Brock Lesnar after that.

While there's not really anything for the wrestlers to win with King of the Ring besides a bragging right it was still a very useful idea and annual event. It would be slightly overdramatizing things to say that winning the tourney launched the careers of 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin, Triple H and Bret Hart but it did play an important part in each man's rise up the card. The same is true for Angle, Edge and Lesnar. Winning King of the Ring was a sign that each man was above their mid-card peers and destined for better things.

When WWE retired the tournament both as a pay-per-view and an annual occurrence in 2003 a lot of people thought it was a poor decision. While not everyone selected to make it to the finals and win had become a player for the group (joining 'Mr Ass' on that list are Mabel and Ken Shamrock) there were more successes than failures. It was a useful tool for raising wrestlers' profiles and WWE casually cancelled it, preferring instead to push their solo brand PPVs.

 

Yeah, this actually happened

 

The tournament made a low key return in 2006 as a tournament exclusively open to SmackDown wrestlers. It was won by Booker T, who changed his ring name to King Booker and became the brand’s top heel. It would become one of the best runs of his WWE career and was a perfect example of how the tournament could be used to build a new character (even if it did ignore the unwritten rule that only mid-carders got to win King of the Ring).

The gimmick returned on the April 21^st 2008 episode of RAW. The finals came down to CM Punk and William Regal. They had a very good outing which ended with a surprising win for Regal. It failed to spark a career renaissance for the Brit. Two years later the gimmick was dusted off again, this time to give Sheamus a boost. That resulted in his bizarre run as King Sheamus that saw him dressing like Loki from The Avengers.

 

And so did this

 

The last time we saw a King of the Ring show was then. I think the event is due a proper, regular comeback. It's the ideal tool for launching new careers because it creates so many booking options. Anyone winning would be signalled as someone due for a shove up the ranks but even non-finalists could be elevated by a surprise win in preliminary rounds.

There are plenty of ways to utilise the tournament format. It could provide a solid month’s worth of programming for RAW. That shouldn’t be dismissed as the show is currently pretty aimless. You could have a heel dominate all the ay to the finals, only to be upset by a plucky, young babyface. It’s the sort of thing WWE were going for earlier in the year with Bo Dallas before they lost interest in him.

It could be used to start rivalries too. There would obviously be a favourite in every match, and it would be very simple to book one guy to score a surprise win over another. The problem of there being no actual point to the event could easily be remedied by granting the inner a title shot at SummerSlam. It could even replace Money in the Bank, of WWE were feeling daring.

The tournament would be something fresh for WWE programming and could be used to spark some new stories. That alone makes it worth considering.

Considering the size of the roster there's never been a better time to resurrect King of the Ring. The promotion needs to make new stars as well as flesh out TV with interesting and talented characters who aren't necessarily in the main event. They need something that can highlight multiple wrestlers at once and create some surprises that aren't just booked for the sake of being surprising. The King of the Ring is, as it always has been, the perfect tool for the job.