Monday, June 16, 2014

Choosing The New WWE World Champion Is Not As Easy As It Seems

The biggest issue facing the WWE is who to make Champion with Daniel Bryan out of the mix. The fans point to names like Cesaro, Bray Wyatt or members of The Shield. The trouble in that is would any of those suggestions avoid being labelled as transitional Champion. It is one of the worst things to be tagged with for a wrestler still making his way up the ladder.

It isn’t a death blow as someone like Chris Jericho proved as some would label his first reign as Undisputed Champion as a “Transitional Reign” to get the belts to the returning Triple H at Wrestlemania. Jericho became the third character in a story of Triple H and Stephanie breaking apart and her trying to deny him winning the title. So much so that she would pair with a former hated rival in Chris Jericho. Sometimes it is all in how you sell it as Jericho just focuses on two points about that title reign. One the fact he beat Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock in the same night. Two he was the first ever Undisputed World Wrestling Federation Champion. Well at least with two belts as Randy Savage winning the tournament in Wrestlemania 4 was referenced as the “Undisputed Champion” as well. 

Many feel the WWE will go a safe route and put the belt on John Cena or Randy Orton and wait it out for Bryan to return. There seems to be a lot of speculation on when exactly that will be. It may or should have an impact on who wins this match coming up at “Money in the Bank” in the Ladder Match.

What also seems up in the air as we debated in the Podcast this week is if we will have an actual “Money in the Bank” match for the briefcase. I maintain it is a mistake to have one. I say delay it till Battleground or Summerslam. If not how about you just give the case to Seth Rollins as some form of motivation for why he has aligned with “The Authority” and “|Evolution” as a logical step in that story. If Reigns was planned to win the case in the first place you could have a match for the case at “Battleground” and the case ends up where it was suppose to go. The other name was Cesaro linked to possibly winning the case but that would not be as easy a transition of ownership of the case.

In any case the WWE has a ton of ground to cover with only two weeks to the Money in the Bank event. This is a card that is pretty much unknown at this point to a large degree. It has really been a mess for a variety of reasons since Wrestlemania as things have not gone as planned in a number of cases for a number of various reasons. All with the backdrop on the WWE Stock going into a freefall give this sense the WWE is struggling to some degree. Perhaps, they are in fact facing in short term at the moment for a variety of reasons.  Daniel Bryan’s injury clearly was not in the cards for what the WWE had planned to do and direction they were going. In the end will never know what that title reign was suppose to be or planned to be long term.

While the WWE can afford to enter an event like Money in the Bank a little disorganized they can not for Summerslam. Last year the WWE’S second biggest event in their view, was summarized by Vince McMahon as a “Swing and a miss,” which was a show headlined by Daniel Bryan and John Cena. Many have speculated that this card will be headlined by Brock Lesnar in the WWE Title Match. If this is true and Bryan isn’t ready does that score as a point in favour of putting the belt on Cesaro to get the Brock vs. Cesaro match that many have said is a matter of when not if it happens.

Lesnar is scheduled on the next PPV as well so in theory Brock winning the title is not out of the question. If he did though not sure how great it will be as he likely would drop the belt the next month based on his lack of appearances based on his contract. If they were cool with having a WWE Champion not around and not on house shows for a time than they would have just left the Championship on Bryan.

In the WWE’s view the belief is, the championship and the champion are legitimate draws for not just Raw and Pay-Per-Views, but live events.

This is a big time of transition for the company and how they handle any rising talents is very important it is highly unlikely winning the title in two weeks will make anyone’s career at this point but if handled wrong it could really break somebody’s career as a main event star. Ask Jack Swagger what can happen to you if you get the title to soon. Fans were not ready for Swagger as a champion and you can argue he has suffered from that misread ever since.

So if the WWE World Championship does end up in the hands of John Cena or Randy Orton we all may hate it but it could be good in a couple ways. It would likely be an admission or least a strong hope that Bryan will be back sooner than later. It also would protect some rising stars from getting labelled with the tag of being a “Transitional Champion,” WWE needs to protect any stars they have at this point.

Short term pain for long term gain might be the answer for Money in the Bank at the end of the day.

Condo on the Moon is on Twitter and Facebook and check out our weekly podcasts Every Friday! You can find us now at Condoonthemoon.com

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