The last great world title match

[Guest Rob Edwards]

Eh, the problem with the booking became 9/11 oddly enough

 

The Angle push was fine up to that point, beyond that it went goofy because Vince suddenly felt the need to make Angle the all American boy again (understandable why he did it but it didn't come off)

 

Up until then we all knew what and why Angle was fighting for, his character is clear. He's toughening himself up to stand up to the toughest wrestler in the history of the WWF. He has to do it because Austin screwed him over to switch and now he finds himself the hope of the company and the chosen one to get the belt back.

 

Now it would be retarded to give him it straight away, as rating trends tend to show a lot of the joy is in the chase leading up to the ultimate victory, I mean this is the central storyline of the company and at this point there isn't any plan to have it die by Survivor Series, more likley they intended to stretch it to Mania 18 at the very least.

 

So you need a chase, and you need a method of doing it that brings Angle up to Austins level, the problem with having Austin win is that Angle isn't strong enough at that point, sure he's had a world title run at the turn of the year but they've really fucked up the feud with Benoit. He's not going over a midcarder easily and with the plans they had it's a problem, sure it makes Benoit look on Angles level but they're not defining where that level is well enough at the time.

 

A lot of this (as I was discussing on MSN a few days ago with the guy 2paccalyspe is aping :\) is down to the way they were putting submissions over with the other workers at the time. Benoit and Angle are in the midst of a feud heavily based around submission moves so are tapping left, right and centre. Unfortunatley other people just weren't tapping at the time in matches, Austin wasn't, Rock wasn't, HHH wasn't, Taker wasn't. Those are your top line guys at the time and they're not putting the moves over as killer or really even as that much of a problem, when moves the real main event guys brush off are being decisive in Benoit/Angle why are the public supposed to accept those guys as main eventers and consider it anything other than a midcard feud.

 

So yeah Angle just isn't strong enough to lose to Austin at that point and have intrest remain in the feud, you can't go the other way either because Austin needs to make Angle look a threat and build him up as one before he loses to him. Losing to him out of the blue off a sudden push makes the title look a lesser prize and makes Austin look bad. So a DQ finish is the logical way forward, you sense Angle could have beaten Austin but while you know Austin can't seem to put Angle away you're not quite sure whether Angle can finish Austin off or not, for all his pussy antics he was still over as a hugely tough guy to beat, after all he's Steve motherfucking Austin.

 

So they set up Austin as a paranoid bastard who'll do anything to keep his ill gotten gains and they set up Angle as the WWF hero heading to take back the title.

 

Given that build and the way the built the match the finish was always coming, it should have been obvious. That it wasn't and people felt conned was a testiment to how competitive feeling Austin kept a match in which the outcome was obvious really.

 

The problem is where the feud went after this. The milk segment was fine, a lot of Austins character at the time was about his ritual humilation of lesser Alliance members. As such Angle humiliating him in the way he did was something the fans could get into and although it was comedy it wasn't comedy at Angles expense as his character had previously been, we were encouraged to laugh with Angle at Austin. And to know that Austin wouldn't take that from anywhere else so there was a respect/fear developing for his enemy

 

And then 9/11

 

Logically it shouldn't have made a differance to the feud, They should have booked a no DQ match for Unforgiven and asked the question if Kurt can survive in Austins world. He's a pro wrestler, Austin is a brawler, Austin, by not letting Angle win in Kurts world (though we've made it clear he could have done) forces Angle to come and fight him in his world if he wants to take the title back where it belongs.

 

That's far more heroic and easy to get behind

 

In reality Vince tried to capitalise on (or sympathise with take your pick) 9/11 and the push switched too quickly

 

Former badass Angle was now all American boy Angle. Doing it for his country and for the memory of his father, the sudden change in character didn't catch on for the simple reason he wasn't really doing anything different to his 2000 heel character (other than not cheating) , a character fans were encouraged heavily to boo.

 

The fans recognise the switch and do start to sour on him and the guy who got that massive pop at Invasion becomes less popular than RVD

 

So yeah, that was rambling a bit but I hope it clears stuff up a bit ;-)