The current
WWE product has featured the same major players for years. The top wrestler and face of the company is
John Cena. He has been on top since 2005
when he won his first WWE championship at WrestleMania 21. It has been 8 years with Cena as the top of
card with little new blood injected into the main event scene. I recently watched every Pay Per Event offered
by WWE during the year 2005. I watched
every match from Edge vs. Shawn Michaels at the Royal Rumble to Orton and
Undertaker battling inside Hell in a Cell at Armageddon. I wanted to look back on the year that Cena
became the MAN. I came across an
interesting trend about that showed how WWE failed to create new stars during
that year.
The year
was the known as the ascension of Cena and Batista. Early in the year Batista was the focus of
the show as he won the Royal Rumble and his title win headlined WrestleMania
over Cena’s. The brand split was in full
effect so each television show, Raw and Smackdown, had their own PPV’s. This led to the many matches that made the
PPV that never would have seen the light of day in years past or today. This made it hard to sit through some of the undercards but it also gave me a chance to see a wide array of talent that was on the roster in 2005.
The focus
of many of those undercards was on the young talent and many older wrestlers
brought back to take some spotlight. This is where
the WWE didn’t give their younger talent the benefit of the doubt and focused
on the older stars. The current and former main event stars owned the young guns.
Young stars
like Carlito, Shelton Benjamin, Chris Masters, Gene Snitsky, Maven, Tyson
Tomko, Mercury, Nitro and Rob Conway all had poor records on Pay Per View in
2005. Blasts from the pasts like Hulk
Hogan, Mick Foley, Jimmy Snuka, and Bob Orton were all undefeated. A guy with tons of promise, Carlito, lost to
both Foley and Ric Flair on the big stage.
The young guys were beaten down before they had a chance to grow and
become stars. None of the young guys are
still with the company and none ever had a one on one PPV World Title match, let
alone win the big one. This lost
generation has cost the WWE a lot of money over the years as fans tire of the
same match-ups over and over again. This
trend continues over the next few years.
No new stars were elevated to the main events and most eventually left
the company. Each new batch of young
guys fell by the wayside.
The guys
who piled up wins in 2005 have definitely made their mark in WWE, as Cena,
Batista, JBL, Kane, Big Show, Kurt Angle, Shawn Michaels Randy Orton and
Undertaker have made tons of money for Vince McMahon. Those guys were all established stars at this
point having won multiple titles and sold tons of tickets and Pay Per View buys. The only stars that were used to really put
over other talent were Jericho, Christian andEddie Guerrero who went a combined
and very Barry Horrowitz like 1-16. The only wrestlers that were built towards
the main event scene during 2005 were Edge and Rey Mysterio. These two would go on to headline many shows
and win plenty of matches, but in a business where careers can be short and
attention spans even shorter, only two superstars taking the steps from also
ran to main event stars is not the way to grow your company.
The WWE is
just now spending the time to develop young stars and debut them strongly and
give the fans a reason to care about them.
The Shield, Fandango, Damien Sandow, Daniel Bryan, Dolph Ziggler and
others have been given plenty of big wins over established stars and showing
that the future of the business is bright.
Too many years the WWE ignored the future and buried its young talent
under mountain of losses. This caused
the company to enter a period of staleness that began in 2005 and did not end
until this year. Hopefully new stars
being made the right way means that the product will improve greatly. This is great news for someone who loves this
“fake” sport enough to write this blog post and say watch every Pay Per View
from 2005 in succession.
Please check out my other posts and feedback in appreciated
below or at MattFerrell75@gmail.com
or on Twitter @Ferrellcomedy
Below are the win loss records of every superstar to have a
match on Pay-Per-View in 2005. The Bonus
points were racked up for being in main events, intial title wins which I gave
more credo to then title retentions, and wins at WrestleMania or special
matches like Money in the Bank, and the Royal Rumble.
| win | loss | B/C | Title win | BONUS | |
| Rey | 8 | 2 | 80% | 1 | 3 |
| Batista | 8 | 3 | 73% | 6 | 13 |
| Cena | 7 | 1 | 88% | 7 | 9 |
| JBL | 6 | 2 | 75% | 2 | 4 |
| Benoit | 6 | 3 | 67% | 2 | 2 |
| Kane | 5 | 2 | 71% | 1 | 2 |
| Taker | 5 | 2 | 71% | 0 | 2 |
| Edge | 4 | 3 | 57% | 0 | 3 |
| Benjamin | 3 | 2 | 60% | 2 | 0 |
| Booker | 3 | 3 | 50% | 0 | 0 |
| Triple H | 3 | 4 | 43% | 2 | 5 |
| Big Show | 3 | 4 | 43% | 1 | 3 |
| Orton | 3 | 4 | 43% | 0 | 5 |
| Angle | 3 | 5 | 38% | 0 | 3 |
| Animal | 2 | 0 | 100% | 1 | 1 |
| Hogan | 2 | 0 | 100% | 0 | 1 |
| Lashley | 2 | 0 | 100% | 0 | 1 |
| Flair | 2 | 1 | 67% | 2 | 1 |
| Juventud | 2 | 1 | 67% | 1 | 1 |
| Eugene | 2 | 1 | 67% | 1 | 0 |
| Super Crazy | 2 | 1 | 67% | 0 | 0 |
| Jordan | 2 | 2 | 50% | 2 | 0 |
| Mercury | 2 | 2 | 50% | 0 | 0 |
| Nitro | 2 | 2 | 50% | 0 | 0 |
| Heidenreich | 2 | 3 | 40% | 1 | 1 |
| Hardy | 2 | 3 | 40% | 0 | 0 |
| HBK | 2 | 6 | 25% | 0 | 3 |
| Bob Orton | 1 | 0 | 100% | 0 | 1 |
| Kash | 1 | 0 | 100% | 1 | 1 |
| Bubba | 1 | 0 | 100% | 0 | 1 |
| Devon | 1 | 0 | 100% | 0 | 1 |
| Storm | 1 | 0 | 100% | 0 | 0 |
| Sabu | 1 | 0 | 100% | 0 | 0 |
| Awesome | 1 | 0 | 100% | 0 | 0 |
| Kennedy | 1 | 0 | 100% | 0 | 0 |
| Long | 1 | 0 | 100% | 0 | 0 |
| Rosey | 1 | 1 | 50% | 1 | 1 |
| Hurricane | 1 | 1 | 50% | 1 | 1 |
| Cade | 1 | 1 | 50% | 1 | 1 |
| Murdoch | 1 | 1 | 50% | 1 | 1 |
| London | 1 | 1 | 50% | 1 | 0 |
| Chavo | 1 | 2 | 33% | 1 | 1 |
| Regal | 1 | 2 | 33% | 1 | 0 |
| Hassan | 1 | 2 | 33% | 0 | 0 |
| Psychosis | 1 | 2 | 33% | 0 | 0 |
| Carlito | 1 | 3 | 25% | 1 | 1 |
| Eddie | 1 | 6 | 14% | 1 | 1 |
| Jericho | 0 | 6 | 0% | 0 | 1 |
| Christian | 0 | 4 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Masters | 0 | 3 | 0% | 0 | 1 |
| Tomko | 0 | 2 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Maven | 0 | 2 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Snitsky | 0 | 2 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Dean | 0 | 2 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Conway | 0 | 2 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Holly | 0 | 2 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Nunzio | 0 | 2 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Dreamer | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 1 |
| Sandman | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 1 |
| Doug | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Danny | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Funaki | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Spike | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Moore | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Akio | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Reigns | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Lawler | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Tajiri | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Antonio | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Romeo | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Grenier | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Viscera | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Davari | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Haas | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Rhyno | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Tanaka | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Richards | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Meanie | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Foley | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Snuka | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Coach | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Bischoff | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Burchill | 0 | 1 | 0% | 0 | 0 |