The Importance of...6.20.08: Mystery Opponents

Posted by Mike Chin on 06.20.2008

A draft preview, an analysis of the Lance Cade push, and in-depth look at wrestling's men of mystery.

Chincomparable Comments
Quick notes on the past week in wrestling

-Last week, I commented on the way in with the Murdoch-Cade program got blown off way too quickly. It seems like a case worth making once again after this week's Raw.

No question that the kayfabe story coming out of this Monday was that of Lance Cade's emergence on the main event scene, where he helped Y2J lay a beat down on John Cena and Triple H. I'd find this a lot easier to swallow if there was some lead up to the push, either in the form of Cade working his way up the ranks, or Cade having a direct issue with one of the major players involved. The reality of the matter is, though, that a few weeks ago, Cade was the less charismatic half of a jobber tag team, and the only thing he's really done to advance himself is to decisively beat his jobber ex-partner on free TV.

In my humble opinion, the Murdoch-Cade program should have been booked something like the Chris Harris-James Storm feud in TNA. Violent, and focused, culminating in one big match (i.e. the Texas Death Match). Where TNA failed was in not following up with a real push for either man (though you could argue they would have if Harris hadn't left the company). WWE failed in not bothering to do the program properly, period. Now, Cade is coming off to me like JBL when he first left The APA. Sure, JBL got over eventually, but the random character shift, and spontaneous push made no sense to the fans, and created a pretty gaping hole in the storylines. I do hope for the best with Cade, because WWE could certainly use a successful new top tier heel, and I think the guy's a decent talent. This rushed push does not bode well, though.

-Night of Champions is shaping up nicely. I like that the company seems interested in making it a legitimately big show, with a mix of marquee match ups (Cena-HHH, Edge-Batista), interesting new pairings (Chavo-Hardy, Mickie-Katie) and a pair of tag team matches that should at least be memorable (mixed midget action, Ted Dibiase's debut). Heck, I won't even join the Big Show-Kane haters—booked properly, that match could be fun too.

-I'm a sucker for a WWE draft, and am a bit disappointed that work obligations are going to keep me from catching the next Raw. A few predictions for what will happen…

Undertaker to Raw. I called this a couple weeks ago. It doesn't make sense on a few levels—in that he's kayfabe fired, and that he's got serious unfinished business with Edge. But with that being said, if WWE is really looking to shake things up, this is one of the biggest moves they could make. And it's not as though the logic has always been sound about what it means for someone to be fired/retired/whatever. In addition, the Undertaker-Edge program has likely hit a dead end, with the only place left to go being Taker completely burying The Rated R Superstar a la what he did to Orton or Kennedy, and that will not serve the company well. Let's see what the Deadman can do with one last run on Raw.

Batista to Raw. If Taker doesn't go, I'd bet the farm on this one. Even if Taker does move, there's a decent chance this happens. Batista has done all he can on Smackdown and it's time for him to find some fresh competition on the red brand.

CM Punk to Smackdown. With the biggest faces gone, it will pave the way for a new hero to rise on the blue brand. While many contend that Punk is Raw bound, I find this to be the more logical, organic step, as he continues to scale the ladder. That, and there's always the chance for him to jump to Raw anyway with the Money in the Bank shot.

Umaga to Smackdown. This one's a no-brainer given how long it's been rumored. The change of scenery should be good for the big man, and he'll finally get a fresh selection of guys to work with after a two year run in the upper-mid-card of Raw.

MVP to Raw. This is the other no-brainer. With the exception of the last couple months, the company has had no faster rising star than MVP, and he should take on a very interesting role at the upper end of the Raw card.

I'd like to see at least one half of DX get moved to Smackdown, but I'm skeptical it will happen.

There will, of course, be many more moves—many in the lower end of the card that won't really matter, and likely a few that will be forgotten or ignored. Whatever the case, this Monday should make for some interesting TV—hope you get to enjoy it.

And now, on to our regular column...

While it's not a gimmick in frequent use today, it's tough to deny the impact of mystery and surprise wrestlers in the history of wrestling. When we know a surprise is coming, it adds suspense to a show. When we don't know it, it can be all the more shocking. Whatever way you look at it, wrestling fans love to be surprised and there are fewer better ways to do it than having an unexpected performer take part in a match.

When a company announces that a mystery man will compete, it gets the wheels turning in each fan's mind. Is it going to be a returning star we haven't seen for years? Or will this mark the debut of a prominent newcomer, in a moment we'll look back to for years to come? Then again, it could be someone's big heel or face turn, to change the direction of the booking for months to come, or a comeback from an extended injury.

At the same time, a company needs to be careful about how it books mystery wrestlers. What if The Rock were to return to active competition? Or Ken Shamrock came back to the WWE? Such developments would make for great mystery storylines, but let's be honest, there's a ton more money to be made in broadcasting to the masses that these guys will be appearing in their first show in X number of years.

Like many devices in pro wrestling, the pre-announced mystery performer can be used to great success, and can also be a flop. Perhaps the most important and best executed booking of a mystery wrestler came at the start of WCW's NWO angle. Hall and Nash said they had a mystery third partner. Hulk Hogan had been a super prominent face for a decade and a half at the time, and had been off TV long enough to stand outside the average fan's consciousness. All of this made his heel turn absolutely epic, and one of the single most memorable moments of the 1990s. The importance of this booking becomes all the more interesting when you consider how many sources claim that Hogan was not the original man planned to play the part. Common lore has it that Bret Hart was slated to be the third man, and both Eric Bischoff and Hart himself support this claim in their respective memoirs. Hart would have been quite the effective mystery man himself, but I'd argue that it's a testament to just how well the mystery man angle worked here, that the person to actually fill the role could have logically and effectively been more than one man.

Hogan's membership in the NWO wasn't the only instance of a major player serving as the mystery man on a team. Many will recall The Undertaker filling the same role at Survivor Series 1990, rounding out Ted Dibiase's team for the event. Contrary to the NWO angle in which an established star made waves by defecting to the heel team, Taker made an impact by making his WWF debut. Try the same angle with Barry Horowitz or Paul Roma, and it would not have been close to has effective. The WWF had to have had a sense that Mark Calloway would be a major player. He came out looking like a star, busted up the faces, took an elimination that didn't damage him at all, and lo and behold, one year later he was winning his first world championship. Looking back, this surprise debut marks a unique introduction to one of the WWF's most important stars.

Another well-placed mystery man was Yokozuna appearing as Owen Hart's mystery partner at Wrestlemania XI. This surprise worked well on a number of levels. Yoko had had his run at the top, and was in poor enough shape that it made little sense to try and have the guy main eventing anymore. He still had the credibility to be a huge force at the mid-card level, though and being part of a tag team was the perfect way to transition him into this role. In addition, he was a big enough star and had been off TV long enough to make his surprise appearance at the mid-card level a very big deal, meaning that mystery man angle was not a let down.

Surprise, surprise, WCW was a little less adept at pulling off the mystery opponent angle in a similar time period. Slamboree 1994 is an example of the company not exactly failing at this gimmick, but not doing particularly well either. The situation was that a mystery man was going to challenge Ric Flair for the WCW title. The premise is absolutely sound. Even then, Flair had had a long and significant enough career that there were any number of guys on the active roster, and more importantly, dozens more off it, who could fill the role ably. Going into the show, I remember that I had drafted a list of three stars I suspected, and thought logically fill the role. One—the guy I thought was most likely—was Sid Vicious, a star who hadn't been around for some time, and certainly had unfinished business with the Nature Boy. The second was Hulk Hogan. I figured that was a stretch, given the Hulkster had never worked with WCW at that point, and this was a heel role that the guy would be filling. My third pick was Barry Windham. He was an upper-mid-card to main event level guy with a fair share of history with Flair. Nothing against Windham, but I more or less ruled him out, and had him in my third spot because he just didn't have the star power to compare to the other choices. Guess what? The mystery man was, in fact Barry Windham. In kayfabe, this made some sense given the history. In reality it's understandable, because bigger stars would have been hard to get, and it may have been a waste not to advertise that they were going to debut. The problem is that when you're selling a pay per view on the back of a mystery main event, that mystery had better be pretty darn significant. Windham was a bit of a surprise, but not a shocker, and not a big enough name to raise any eyebrows. Again, not a complete failure, but a demonstration of the care with which you need to handle mystery booking.

Mystery booking has, of course, become much more difficult due to the internet. If a guy works a dark match or a house show, you know someone's going to get that news posted somewhere, and it will spread from there. If an unlikely face so much as shows up backstage at a major show, you'll see it in the news column here at 411. There have been exceptionally few successful mystery angles in the last few years. One, appropriately, involved an Angle—Kurt Angle to be exact. TNA was unconventional in a number of ways, advertising a major announcement at a PPV show. They didn't even have Angle in attendance at the arena, to protect the secret that much more, but instead aired a vignette to introduce him to the fans. Classic stuff, and an incredible way to introduce a new star to the mix. TNA enjoyed similar success in bringing in Booker T, who, similar to Angle the IWC just didn't expect to make the jump at that time. Perhaps better executed than either of these surprise signings though, was WWE drawing from within its roster, having John Cena make his triumphant return at this year's Royal Rumble. The company didn't advertise a mystery participant in the Rumble, though astute fans observed that not every spot was full. The company had everyone believing Cena had several more months of time on the shelf before returning to the ring. Say what you will, haters, Cena's return got one of the biggest pops of the post Attitude era. Hell, I'm not even a big Cena fan, and I was borderline marking out as he walked to the ring. That, ladies in gentlemen, is how you book a surprise.

From the greatest surprises comes the one of lamest in modern memory. Many will disagree with me, but Chris Jericho's return to the WWE was one of the most mismanaged pieces of garbage booking in the history of the company. You start red hot with the mysterious code sequence appearing on screen—enough for wrestling geeks to piece together that Y2J may very well be coming back. You give it a month, enough time that everyone has a sense of what's going on, to the point where the general fan population was actually chanting for the man at No Mercy. Then you wait another month. Then another. Then you outright tell the fans that the code will be broken on the following week's Raw. Way to take every shred of suspense out of this storyline. Where at first, people wondered what the code meant, and then wondered when and where Jericho was coming back, by the time the reveal happened, everyone knew it was Jericho, everyone knew when he was showing up, and the actual return was generic enough that no casual fan will remember it in five years. Dreadful stuff, though it benefited from occurring in close enough proximity to the fumbled revelation of Vince's bastard son (which I wont' even touch…) to not look quite as bad as it otherwise might have.

One new dimension to the mystery booking has emerged with interactive television, and most specifically the Cyber Sunday and Taboo Tuesday PPVs, in which there have been a number of matches for which fans didn't know who one of the competitors would be, because their votes were, in fact, deciding it. This has been a mixed bag itself, ranging from meaningless to pretty darn entertaining. On one end of the spectrum, you have the fans choosing Umaga's opponent in 2006, with the choices of Kane, Chris Benoit and The Sandman. This isn't horrible booking by any means, it's just that none of these matches was particularly interesting, and it didn't help that the fans went with the only competitor who had already been in the ring with Umaga multiple times. On the far better end, we have Shelton Benjamin being elected out of a decent range of guys to take on Chris Jericho and win himself an IC title. This wasn't an absolute shocker, as Benjamin was on the shortlist of favorites to get the match. Still, it wasn't entirely predictable, and the fact that he won the strap made the moment seem pretty important. I have the sense WWE will only realize the full potential of these interactive shows when the company gives itself over that little extra bit to the fans—giving them a wider selection, with less clear cut choices, and upping the stakes a little bit more. Sure, it's risky, but that's how you make the fans feel important, and that's how a mystery can really equate to buys.

Mystery booking is a powerful thing. It has been misused many a time, but those instances in which it has worked have demonstrated that it has a great deal of value, and has an important place in the history and the future of the business. WWE writes a new chapter in mystery lore at Night of Champions next weekend, when Ted Dibiase debuts alongside a mystery partner. This isn't an incredibly high profile match, the it does have some intrigue. Could this be the start of the rumored second-generation stable, with the debut of another famous son? Could it mark Cody's heel turn to join that very stable? Or might Ted Jr. steal his dad's gimmick, and buy off an established star to team up with him and take the titles? The NWO angle this is not, but it still has some potential.

That's all for this column. This week, we dealt with mysteries. In my next column, there will be no mystery at all, as we take a look at the importance of the one and only Bret Hart. See you in seven.