Ask 411 Wrestling 02.03.10: Cena As Superman, Young Guys Getting The Mega-Push, Sting And The WWE Hall Of Fame, More

Posted by Ryan Byers on 02.03.2010

Why did WWE choose John Cena for the “Superman” push? If Sting retired from TNA, would he get into the WWE Hall of Fame? Are all wrestling fights over exaggerated? Get the answers to these questions and more in the latest edition of Ask 411: Wrestling!

Welcome, folks to Ask 411 Wrestling. I am Ryan Byers, and I got a somewhat last-minute notice that your good friend and mine, Matt Sforcina, won't be available for the column this week due to some medical issues. (He'll be fine, but he's not able to type comfortably.) Because I only had about twelve hours notice on which to get the column together, the answers might be a little bit more abrupt than some of your are used to, but they will still be complete to the best of my ability despite their brevity. If I've left out any important details, I'm sure that people will call me an idiot in the comments section and Matt can run those as corrections next week.

With that said, let's get on with the show!

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Sean Sapp writes:

I can understand Kurt Angle winning the European, Intercontinental, King of the Ring and WWF Championship within' one year because it goes with his overacheiving wrestling gimmick and wrestling abilities. I can even understand Brock Lesnar's meteoric rise in the WWE because he was such a beleivable beast with beyond exceptional wrestling skills, but what is the deal the likes of Santino Marella, Carlito, Ted Dibiase Jr, Big Show (Giant in WCW) and even Christian winning championship belts in their first match? Who decides whether those wrestlers should get instant championship recognition?

The issue of who wins what title and at what point in their career is decided by the same people who book every other aspect of the rest of the shows, regardless of whether the title is won in their first match or their seven hundredth match.

How the decision is made varies on a case-by-case basis. However, the general rule is that giving a person a title in their debut with the promotion means that whoever is booking has some faith in that wrestler's abilities and intends to give them an immediate push as opposed to simply throwing them out there as just another guy and seeing if they sink or swim with no company backing.

Here's a similar question from Sean Winter:

So my question this time is, why did they choose Cena for the superman push and not someone else? I don't believe it's just because they thought they could make money out of Cena as champ, because there are numerous examples of Vince jobbing out guys who could make him a ton of money because of capriciousness, spite, punishment, back stage politics etc. So was Cena just lucky enough to have been in the right place at the right time?

Cena was originally chosen to be a main event level performer and a World Champion because, if you watched him in 2003 and 2004, he was clearly the most over young performer that the company had, probably even moreso than folks like Dave Batista and Randy Orton who had gotten much larger, more overt pushes.

As far as his "superman" status is concerned, you claim that it can't be just because Cena makes the promotion a ton of money because so many guys who could have made them money have been blackballed for political reasons. If that truly is the case, the answer to your question is simple: John Cena can make WWE a lot of money, he's over with the crowd, and he hasn't burned any bridges politically. It's easy to understand how he's avoided doing this. If you listen to mainstream media interviews with the guy, he's always towing the company line and otherwise handles himself very well. He's a perfect public face for the promotion, just like Tiger Woods was a perfect public face for golf prior to the recent revalation of his extramarital affairs. Plus, no matter what some on the internet may think of his motivation and ability as an in-ring performer, he's a hard worker in that he's wiling to tackle one of the toughest road schedules in the company, doing most if not all of the regular WWE dates on top of a ton of extra promotional work.

In short, he's massively over, brings in plenty of dough, and he's a consummate professional. If you're going to push somebody as "superman," he's the perfect guy.

Jeff wants to lead us in to Hall of Fame season:

If Sting retired tomorrow from TNA, never to wrestle another day, would he ever be inducted into the WWE Hall Of Fame? As one of the only, if not only major wrestler not to compete in the WWE in the past 25 years, would Vince swallow his pride and put him in?

Also, who do you think are the front runners to go in this year? If Austin went in last year, do they put the Rock in this year?

My gut feeling is that, if he felt like he could make money off of it, Vince McMahon would absolutely induct Sting into the WWE Hall of Fame. Though it is true that Sting was the one big WCW star who never jumped over to the World Wrestling Federation, there has never been, to my knowledge, any real bad blood between the two sides. There are already people in the Hall who Vince would have significantly more reason to hold a grudge against, including Bret Hart (who legitimately punched McMahon out) and Verne Gagne (who reportedly offered wrestlers money to ruin major WWF events when the Fed was a competitor to the AWA). If he can get over things like that in order to make a quick buck off of the HOF, he can certainly get over the fact thatthe stars have ever aligned for Sting to be under WWF/WWE contract.

As far as frontrunners for this year's Hall of Fame Class are concerned, Bret Hart is with the company and there is a new Hart family DVD in the works, so I wouldn't be surprised to see one or more of that clan get inducted, even though they angle this past week on Raw was that Vince now refuses to induct Stu. Also, news broke this past week that a WWE official in Japan supposedly claimed that Antonio Inoki has been offered the opportunity to be inducted. Finally, a lot of people have been speculating about a Ted DiBiase induction given that he currently lives in the Phoenix area and that his son is currently in line for a big babyface push.

Another camp is also speculating that the Ultimate Warrior might be in the queue given that he too is an Arizona resident, but my gut feeling is that one is a longshot . . .

Brian loves his leg holds:

Great column, quick question. The other day I watched Wrestlemania 19 (which was great, btw), particularly the HHH/Booker match, which was highly underrated (though Lawler was awful on commentary for that match). At one point, Triple H broke out a submission move called an Indian leg lock or Indian deathlock, which JR went nuts about and said hadn't been done in forever. It was a variation of the figure four, and the move actually did look pretty awesome, and HHH deserved props for breaking it out. My question is why hasn't he done that move since and worked it into his repertoire? I even read on Wikipedia that he used that as his finisher in WCW? This move looked really cool, and I think it would give him a chance to have four or five star matches, which it seems like he hasn't had in a while.

Triple H using the Indian deathlock isn't unique to his Wrestlemania XIX match against Booker T. He was actually using the hold quite a bit in his matches that year, though it has faded into the background recently. My suspicion would be that he's not used it because lately he's been a babyface more often than not, and babyfaces don't make use of mid-match submission holds like the deathlock nearly as much as heels do. Even if Trips did turn back, I wouldn't necessarily expect to see the deathlock make a comeback just because submission wrestling in general seems to be on the downswing in WWE, with the only submission finishes used there these days being those that were established several years ago.

As far as Wikipedia's claim that the Indian deathlock was HHH's WCW finisher is concerned, I honestly can't comment. He may have used it to finish a match or to in the promotion (where he competed as Terra Ryzing and then Jean Paul Levesque), but I personally don't recall him winning enough television matches under either gimmick to have a move that could fairly be called his finisher.

Plus I sincerely doubt that anybody adding any one move to their repertoire would allow them to have more four or five star matches. The quality of a match involves much, much more than the holds that are used in it.

King Haku (not that one) writes:

I heard a radio interview the other day with Chris Jericho, and he and the hosts were laughing as he explained the backstage fight with Goldberg. I feel like this was the beginning of the audience losing interest in Goldberg's act. Not that he wasn't already tired but they really seemed to dwindle after that. Then that made me think of Batista and what a hot streak he was on...right up until the day that Booker T allegedly handed him his ass after he jumped him from behind. So, maybe this is an opinion question, but how much do you think the audience takes into account a wrestler's legitimate credibility? I mean, we all know this is a fake sport, so what difference should it make? Yet it seems to in these two cases. I could point out HBK's infamous "20 Marine beatdown" but that was so exaggerated and he was never pushed as a badass either that I don't think it makes the point less valid. Do you see any validity in this or am I just too jaded from internet news?

You're too jaded from internet news. The majority of professional wrestling fans don't even hear about backstage scuffles like Batista-Booker and Goldberg-Jericho because the majority of professional wrestling fans aren't reading websites like this one or listening to radio interviews with Chris Jericho. As a result, I would be amazed to learn that any "real life" fight involving a WWE guy would have any impact on that fellow's popularity, unless the fight was such a big story that it broke away from being covered by the general wrestling media and got covered by mainstream news sources.

With that being said, if word of a wrestler getting his butt handed to him DOES hit the mainstream, it can have a negative impact on that wrestler's popularity. If you want proof, you need look no further than the early part of this decade, when New Japan Pro Wrestling made the very ill-advised move of getting some of its top pro wrestlers into MMA (especially Yuji Nagata). Though most of the NJPW guys who got murdered in their MMA battles were able to recover and become major stars, it did severely hamper their upward momentum for quite some time.

Karthik isn't an alcoholic, because alcoholics go to meetings:

During a match between Scott Hall and Lex Luger (who was part of the wolfpack/red NWO at that time), Scott appeared to be drunk and was behaving silly and Lex pushed him to a corner and asked him knock it off. Then after some time Eric Bischoff and Kevin Nash came out and took Scott backstage. At this time Kevin and Scott were feuding and even Eric was against wolfpac IIRC. So was this a real incident where Scott came to the match drunk and misbehaved or was this staged as well?

Scott Hall had legitimate problems with alcohol during this period of his career, and he probably did show up to one or more WCW shows under the influence. However, the specific incident that you're talking about was part of a storyline that attempted to play off of Hall's real-life issues. It was fairly tasteless, and, the less that is said about it, the better.

It's time for Jake C. to take us to the pay windah:

When a guy gets injured and is out for months on end .. do companies like the 'E and TNA continue to pay them what they were making? How does that work?

What about guys like Jimmy Wang Yang, and Funaki .. who you see really REALLY rarely. Are they still under no compete clauses, even though the WWE doesnt use them very often? Are they still paid as often as everyone else? Or only when they do something? Which then means, if they're only paid when they're on TV, does that mean that they can wrestle for other promotions when they're not on WWE TV? Maybe everyone knows this .. but I'm baffled.

Essentially, everybody who you see as even a semi-regular part of the WWE roster is under an exclusive, written contract which requires them to work for WWE and WWE alone. There are very rare circumstances under which WWE might authorize an outside appearance, but it is far and away the exception and not the rule. (John Cena, for example, was allowed to make a guest appearance on a Massachusetts indy show a few years ago which his father, John Cena Sr., was promoting as a fundraiser for a local charity.)

As far as WWE pay is concerned, everybody has written into their contract a "downside guarantee." This is essentially a salary which, no matter what, you are guaranteed to receive for the year, even if you're injured for ten out of twelve months or if you're never seen on TV. There are also various bonuses written into the contract. For example, wrestlers are usually paid additional sums for every pay per view that they work and they are given a cut of all merchandise which bears their image. (This is why WWE wrestlers enjoy being in the company's video games, because a large royalty check usually comes along with it.) So, a guy like Shoichi Funaki is making a WWE salary that he can probably get by on, but he could also be making substantially more if he were regularly featured on TV, because that would increase his chances of being on pay per view, being merchandised, et cetera.

TNA is a little bit harder to figure out, just because they haven't been around for as long and different wrestlers tend to be treated differently. They are more likely than WWE to use wrestlers on a pay per appearance basis with less exclusivity, but, again, anybody who shows up somewhat regularly on their television is usually locked up under a contract which requires the promotion to approve their outside bookings.

Eh, what the hell, let's go back to Jake C. again:

My last question (in this email) related to the jobbers you see periodically that you never see again. Guys that are local that go against new talent. You'd think it's a huge boost for their career to get TV time, even if they're jobbing. Do they even get paid, or does the WWE "pay" them in saying .. hey, you get to be on TV and guys jump at the chance? Has anyone ever turned one of those matches, into a WWE career? A guy they thought was going to show up as a local to job, but showed them so much, they signed him?

The local "enhancement talent" (a.k.a. jobbers) are paid by WWE. From listening to interviews with wrestlers who have done this kind of work, it's usually a one-shot payment of somewhere in between $250.00 and $500.00, which is fairly decent if you think about the amount of time that the majority of them actually spend working.

There are several fellows who have done enhancement work that have later become full-time WWE talent. In fact, some of the local wrestlers are brought in specifically for the purpose of having a brief try-out. Perhaps the most notable examples of the enhancement wrestler turned full-timer are Matt and Jeff Hardy, who when they were teenagers in the mid-1990's, appeared as jobbers numerous times on the company's television tapings before they were finally offered a contract.

Similarly, ECW "legend" Colin Delaney (formerly upstate New York indy wrestler Colin Olsen) was only meant to last for a handful of WWE televisiontapings but got over to the point that he was offered a longer-term deal.

JB is a bit of a momma's boy:

In the long list of second generation wrestlers, are there any whose wrestling ancestor was their mother rather than their father?

Though I don't know that it was ever played up much (if at all) on television, I recall reading in a wrestling magazine several years ago that Ted DiBiase Sr.'s mother wrestled for a while under the name of Helen Hill. Of course, DiBiase Sr. also had a step-father who was a wrestler, "Iron" Mike DiBiase.

My understanding is that the Fabulous Moolah also had a daughter who wrestled for a period of time, albeit not on any high level.

Masurao is the Jekell to my Hyde:

I was thinking about it the other day and started wondering. Has there ever been a wrestling gimmick where the guy had a split personality? I'm not talking about something like Festus or The Hurricane, but someone who wrestled as two separate people and was "unaware" of it.

Yes. This was essentially the gimmick that Dustin Rhodes did when he was Black Reign in TNA. He would periodically make appearances without his Black Reign gear and would act as though he had no clue what his demented alter ego was doing.

According to Don, now (WOOO!) it's time to go to school:

The Hart Dungeon produced the Harts, Jericho, Benoit and Kidd; TWA had Bryan Danielson, Spanky, Paul London and Hernandez; WCW Powerplant had Jindrak, O'haire, Goldberg and Nash, OVW had Orton, Cena and Batista. These are the few schools/training gyms that I know of. My question is, what school/training gym is the most successful in terms of producing the most number of successful wrestlers?

First of all, I have to offer a couple of corrections. Chris Jericho really didn't train in the Hart Dungeon. If you read his book, he makes it pretty clear that he went to the "Hart Brothers Wrestling Camp," which was basically a school that the Harts slapped their name on to but did not actively participate in. Also, Kevin Nash was not trained by the WCW Power Plant. He was a professional wrestler for many, many years before the Power Plant even existed.

It's hard to answer your actual question just because it's difficult to measure "success" in terms of professional wrestling. The three schools that you mentioned are certainly contenders for the moniker of best of all time (though the Power Plant might be stretching it). The school that Verne Gagne and Billy Robinson ran in conjunction with the AWA certainly deserves some mention, as it churned out wrestlers like Ric Flair, Sgt. Slaughter, the Iron Sheik, and many more. Trainer Hiro Matsuda's Florida dojo gave us the likes of Hulk Hogan, Ron Simmons, and B. Brian Blair. Ultimo Dragon's Toryumon/Dragon Gym system in Mexico produced virtually the entire roster of Dragon Gate as well as at least forty other fairly talented wrestlers who work smaller Japanese independents. You could essentially pick any one of the three that you mentioned or any one of the three that I mentioned and make a viable argument for it having been the most influential wrestling school of all time.

Jake wants to follow up on the Royal Rumble:

With the Rumble being an over the top rope thing, and with how they sometimes have people barely catching themselves and pulling themselves back in .. my question is this. Has it ever happened where the person who was supposed to win the Rumble, didn't .. because he got eliminated accidentally? If so, what happens at that point? How did they determine who won? Do they have a short list before, like .. okay, if something happens and Person A gets eliminated accidentally .. then Person B wins. Again, if it happened .. what happened to the person who was supposed to win, but didn't? I guess this question can also extend to any major over the top rope challenges if it happened in a major way.

The only time that anything remotely similar to what you are describing occurred when John Cena and Dave Batista "co-won" the Rumble a couple of years ago before Vince McMahon ordered them to re-start the match. In fact, the spot with both men going over the top rope and to the floor at the same time was an accident, and Batista was meant to win all along. The Vince run-in and restart were improvised. Everything else that you've seen in a Royal Rumble match regarding a disputed finish (Austin sneaking back in to win his first Rumble, Rock and Big Show feuding over Show being screwed out of his win, etc.) was planned to occur the way that it did.

It's that time of the month for Mike A.:

The whole may 19th See No Evil movie release angle with Kane. How did that turn out i don't remember. I remember the angle being that Kane would freak out anytime people mentioned may 19th (his movie release date) but why would he ?? How did they explain it on tv? Or did they act like the movie just like wrestling was real ? lol what happened to that angle. What was the explenation storyline wise?

In addition to being the release date of the movie, the storyline was also that May 19th was the date on which the home of Kane and the Undertaker's parents was set on fire, killing them and psychologically scarring the Big Red Machine, turning him into the monster who we all know and love.

The angle was that some unknown person was using the May 19th date to taunt Kane and play head-games with him. The person doing this was presumably the impostor Kane, who debuted shortly thereafter. Kane and impostor Kane (played by the man we currently know as Luke Gallows) began to feud and had a PPV singles match that was so bad it was decided that the entire angle would be canceled the next night on Monday Night Raw, even though Gallows won the PPV bout, which would usually be a setup for a longer feud. It was never explained where the impostor Kane came from or why he decided to torment the genuine article. He just got beaten down on an episode of Raw, thrown out a door, and unmasked (albeit off camera), and was never heard from again.

It's child's play for Ben:

Do you think that the beginning of the end of popularity for X-Pac, or 1-2-3 Kid or Sean Waltman or whatever you wanna call him began when he was turned heel? I remember him being crazy over when he had a GREAT televised match against Bret Hart. That match should have launched him into the startusphere. Any idea why he fizzled?

No, I don't think that his heel turn was the beginning of the end for him. It was certainly a bump in the road, as, for whatever reason, the WWF decided that he wasn't credible as a bad guy and jobbed him out at every turn. Though this put a damper on the Kid's crowd reactions for quite some time, he was able to recover pretty easily when he bolted to WCW to become Syxx and returned to the WWF playing essentially the same character as X-Pac. He was massively over in that role for the first few years until the real nail in his coffin came, which was his gimmick not changing for many, many years, making him stale in the eyes of fans and leading to what many now call "X-Pac heat."

From Conor:

Was Buddy Landell getting pushed in late 95 in the WWE?I watch a youtube video of him squashing matt hardy and they were talking about his chances of winning the royal rumble.But he wasnt in it! Also was there any trouble or heat between him and Ric Flair over the 'Nature Boy' gimmick?

No, Landel was never seriously pushed by the WWF. He was brought in, wrestled a handful of unimportant matches, and promptly left.

There was never any dispute between Ric Flair and Buddy Landel regarding the "Nature Boy," gimmick, mainly because neither of them were the original. Buddy Rogers was the Nature Boy long before either Flair or Landel, and the two were given Rogers' old nickname independently of one another. In fact, in some territories they even did Nature Boy vs. Nature Boy matches against one another.

Brandon asks a pointed question:

When it comes to Hell In A Cell matches, Street Fights, and other matches where barbed wire could possibly become a weapon in the match, has the barbed wire ever been real in any of the WWE matches? The barbed wire wrapped around the chair in the Hell In A Cell match with Triple H and Batista came off as real when you looked at Batista's back, but could I be wrong and it's always fake?

Yes, barbed wire is sometimes real in WWF matches. The most famous example is probably the Royal Rumble 2000 street fight between Triple H and Cactus Jack, in which a barbed wire board is used. If you watch the match closely, there is a point after the board is introduced after which it disappears under the announcers' table, only be reintroduced later. The purpose of that spot was to switch between a board covered in real barbed wire and a board covered in fake barbed wire. The real stuff was used when Mick Foley was clobbered by it, and the fake stuff was reserved for Triple H.

I can't go through one of these columns without talking to Manu:

With WWE being PG, do you think its wise that the anti-drug CM Punk is a heel?

I mean, we're adults and we can see that he's a zealot and the subtleties of his character are what make him a heel, not just his anti-drug stance, but kids are kids - to them, punk hates drinking and drugs and is a bad guy, so drinking and drugs must be good things.

I don't see it as being a problem because WWE has made it pretty clear that the people who oppose Punk are not babyfaces because because they drink, smoke, and do drugs. They've made it pretty clear that the people who oppose Punk are babyfaces because this guy is a pompous, holier-than-thou ass who delivers his message in the wrong way and deserves to be roughed up for it. Even when Jeff Hardy was feuding with Punk and part of the storyline was that Jeff had, in the past, used drugs, it was made very clear by the announcers and others supporting Jeff that what he had done was wrong and that we should support him not because he was doing the right thing when he abused elicit substances but rather because he had made his mistakes, learned from them, and deserved a chance to move on.

We'll wrap it up with Steven:

2. After listening to Piledriver: Wrestling Album 2:

a.) Does love really feel like a piledriver?

Having been in love, I can tell you that, no, it does not. It feels more like a high-angle German suplex.

b.) Does nothing hurt you half as much as waking up alone?

The fact that America does not have universal health care coverage hurts me slightly more than waking up alone. Aside from that, nothing else does.

c.) Would the incredibly racist "Jive Soul Bro" video, and the stripping-teacher "Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo" video be allowed to be shown today?

I would be amazed.

d.) Doesn't a small part of you become nostalgic of the good old days when they could make an ensemble video like "If you only knew", where every wrestler fit into either the "good" or "evil" side? Ah, memories....................

I think that there are still fairly clear-cut heels and fairly clear-cut babyfaces in WWE, but the problem is that, unlike in the 1980's, the faces are not automatically friends with all of the other faces and the heels are not automatically friends with all of the other heels. They're all self-interested jerks who could never get together for a good old fashioned sing-along.

And that will do it for this week. Sforcina will most likely be back in seven days!