Character Changes and Months-Long Sabbaticals

Character Changes

Sheamus. Where do we even begin? He’s the poor-man’s John Cena. Just another superhero babyface that WWE refuses to change. His character is so stale it’s sickening. His best work, undoubtedly, came when he was a newly arrived heel who had no trouble running over anyone and everyone in his path.

But somewhere along the line things changed. Sheamus picked up a goofy grin and started yelling “FELLA!” after everything he did. He made a series of utterly awful vignettes for his help-line, 1-800-FELLA, where he went around town wearing only his wrestling singlet and kicked down trees to rescue cats for old ladies. It was terrible.

1-800-FELLA - For those moments when you need a
pasty-skinned Irishman to kick your cat out of a tree

Recently Sheamus won a battle royal for the United States Championship. Because this battle royal was put together by Triple H in an effort to extract vengeance on The Shield, and because Sheamus won by last eliminating then-champion Dean Ambrose, it was expected that fans would realize that Sheamus was turning heel. Of course, no one noticed it. It’s hard to pull off a heel turn in a battle royal. Then news broke of Daniel Bryan’s neck surgery and his impending absence, and WWE seemingly put Sheamus’s heel turn on hold, arguing that they needed another top-tier babyface.

Sheamus’s lack of character development is representative of a problem plaguing modern day WWE. It’s the same reason John Cena is playing the exact same character he was in 2005. WWE has become deathly afraid of pulling the trigger on a heel turn because they don’t want to make sacrifices. In Sheamus’s case, they don’t want to give up the corny-as-all-crap K-Mart commercials he does. In Cena’s case, they don’t want to give up the buying power of soccer moms and John Cena’s Toddler Fan Base. So instead of letting talent determine the course, WWE would rather let merchandise sales tell them what to do.

This was an excuse they used momentarily in holding back Daniel Bryan. They claimed he didn’t sell enough merchandise, yet they refused to acknowledge that his merchandise was among the worst designed and ugliest things the WWE Store had to offer.

Every day I grow more convinced that the Hulk Hogan heel turn in 1996, setting off the now and revolutionizing the wrestling industry, could not happen in today’s WWE. Five years later, at WrestleMania X-7, Stone Cold Steve Austin turned heel by joining forces with Vince McMahon. I don’ believe this would happen today, either. WWE is too afraid that toddlers won’t understand. And yet, they had no problem turning Seth Rollins heel by letting him attack his teammates.

Why force a character change on a guy who was part of the hottest, freshest group in the industry…especially when you’re leaving the two stalest guys on the roster, Cena and Sheamus, the same way they’ve been for the last several years?

CM Punk, the McMahons, and Sabbaticals

If you follow WWE you realized in the immediate aftermath of the Royal Rumble that CM Punk disappeared. For lack of a better phrase, he took his ball and went home. Why?

That one’s quite simple. Reports are that Punk was incredibly unhappy with the way things were being done. It was obvious to everyone that Daniel Bryan was the most over guy on the roster. Punk knew something about being over, as he was pretty over himself. So the Royal Rumble rolls around, and wrestler after wrestler fills the ring. The time comes for the final entrant, and the arena goes nuts, chanting Daniel Bryan’s name. The timer counts down to zero and out comes…Rey Mysterio.

The arena went from adulation to anger in less time than it takes to blink. Everyone’s hero wasn’t even in the Rumble. Instead, we’d been force-fed the returning Batista, who was apparently promised the moon by Triple H. Punk himself was eliminated by a wrestler that had already been eliminated, although Punk did suffer a concussion during the Rumble. The final two competitors were the “babyface” Batista and the “heel” Roman Reigns, who had set the record for Rumble eliminations. Even though Reigns (and the Shield) were still technically heels at the time, the arena went crazy cheering for Roman Reigns. It was evident to anyone with a brain stem that the fans did not want Batista. At this point, the fans would’ve taken Santino over Batista. But Batista won the most predictable Rumble in recent memory…

So after the Royal Rumble, this was the landscape facing the WWE, and more specifically, CM Punk… The WWE World Heavyweight Champion was the Authority’s hand-picked title-holder, Randy Orton. The #1 Contender for the WWE WHC, as a result of winning the Rumble, was Batista. Daniel Bryan was left being told he would have “a spot on the card” at WrestleMania and CM Punk, who had basically been primed for a WrestleMania main event slot, was left to face Triple H in a meaningless singles match.

Punk recognized the way the wind was blowing. It was obvious that Daniel Bryan would have to ascend the ladder at some point. The fact that management was so obdurate in letting it happen seemed to reveal one of WWE’s key problems. The truth is, until CM Punk came along, any wrestler from the “indys” (independent circuits) who joined WWE would never rise above mid-card ranks. Even CM Punk, during his 434-day reign as champion, rarely main evented PPV events. That honor often went to John Cena, the company’s golden boy.

So Punk quit. He threw up his hands in disgust and walked out. Even though he had broken the “indy” glass ceiling, and paved the way for guys like Daniel Bryan and Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins, Punk realized that WWE was always going to give the preference to their own “homegrown” talent than to someone good from the indys.

Don't hug him, AJ...
the Authority will make you lose!

And now the word is out that Stephanie McMahon “hates” CM Punk for what he did. I’m of two opinions on the matter. One, Punk did not fulfill his contract, which means he did let the company down. But, two, the company was already letting down not just Punk, but Bryan and others. It was evident, until CM Punk’s “sabbatical” threw a monkey-wrench into the plans, that WWE was not going to give Bryan a shot for a long while.

Unfortunately, the fallout from Punk’s departure affected others. Punk’s girlfriend, AJ Lee, who was Divas Champion, went on a lengthy losing streak, winning just enough to keep the title on her until NXT “rookie” Paige could be called up to take the belt off her. Sadly, it looks like there may be a lot of personal animosity pouring into the product.