Now that Extreme Rules and the dust from that show and the draft have settled some I thought it may be interesting to take stock of where the WWE sees their Superstars ® ™ on both their Raw & Smackdown rosters in comparison to what a fan like myself might do.
First off the current RAW face side and heel side as I understand it.
1-Cena 2- Mysterio 3- Big Show 4- Morrison 5- Kingston 6- Lawler 7- Bourne 8- Marella 9- Masters 10- Kozlov 11- D.H. Smith 12- JTG
1- Miz 2- Del Rio 3- Punk 4- Swagger 5- Truth 6- Ryan 7- Ziggler 8- McIntyre 9- Otunga 10- McGillicutty 11- Reks 12- Ryder 13- Primo 14- Hawkins
Now where I would have the performers sit.
1- Cena 2- Mysterio 3- Morrison 4- Ryder 5- Kingston 6- Marella 7- Big Show 8- D.H. Smith 9- Bourne 10- Primo 11- JTG 12- Lawler 13- Kozlov
1- Punk 2 – Del Rio 3- Miz 4- Ziggler 5- Swagger 6- Truth 7- McIntyre 8 – Masters 9 – McGillicutty 10 – Reks 11 – Hawkins 12 – Otunga 13 – Ryan
As you can tell I’m not nearly as high on the jacked up bodybuilder type as Vince McMahon. I’d like to think that’s because I’m in touch with modern society.
Zack Ryder obviously stands out as my biggest push, and if you don’t know why check out his YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/LongIslandIcedZ
It’s absolutely reeking of awesomeness.
I’d also try & move Marella up the card some because he’s over to see how that would work out, and Primo is obviously much better suited to be a face. I wish I didn’t have Bourne so low down but in my world he’d be on Smackdown where he’d be much higher on the card. Other than that there’s not too many changes on the face side if I had my way. The latest Lawler run seems to have run it’s course so I push him down until the time is right to do another angle.
With the heels it’s a bit of artistic licence (actually this whole blog is but bear with me) with my #1 guy C.M. Punk looking like he’s going to leave the WWE for at least a while, but I have him at the top spot because I think he’s best suited for it.
I also have Ziggler & Swagger up ahead of Truth just because they are significantly younger, but Truth’s heel turn is going well so far.
The guys listed below him have some potential and are well suited for the U.S. title level with McIntyre my choice for that belt
Now for Smackdown
1- Orton 2- Christian 3- Kane 4- Cara 5- Bryan 6- Khali 7– Tatsu 8- Guerrero 9- Baretta
1- Sheamus 2- Barrett 3- Henry 4- Rhodes 5- Jackson 6- Gabriel 7- Slater 8- Clay 9- Riley 10 – DiBiase 11 – Kidd 12- Regal 3- Jimmy Uso 14- Jay Uso
My take
1- Orton 2- Christian 3- Sheamus 4- Cara 5- Tatsu 6- Gabriel 7- DiBiase 8- Guerrero 9- Baretta 10- Baretta 11- Khali
1- Barrett 2- Rhodes 3- Bryan 4- Regal 5- Kane 6- Clay 7- Riley 8- Henry 9- Jackson 10- Jimmy Uso 11- Jay Uso
First off some notes about the above Smackdown Rankings.
There seems to be some talk that now that Orton has quickly taken the World Championship from Christian that Christian may be in line for a heel turn to challenge. That would drastically alter these rankings & as well as change my feelings long term on how they did that which I was very angry at over hearing it at first.
While I don’t feel this is the time for Christian to turn personally if done right he could certainly get a ton of heat. I also hated turning Vickie Guerrero heel and that turned out great.
Also they appear to be in the process of turning Jackson face, Guerrero heel to work with Sin Cara, and have brought back Shawn Daivari to work as a heel and get some cheap heat of the Bin Laden situation (and I don’t have time to get into how much I hate that in this blog). But since none of these angles have come to fruition at the time of writing I’m going to ignore them for now.
Other than that the first thing I noticed in doing this is wow, the Smackdown roster sucks. No question they are still way behind the Raw roster coming out of the draft.
I tried to balance out the face/heel side here and turn some characters that seem stale.
You’ll notice right away that I turned Sheamus face. I find him likeable and would like to see if he could prosper in that role, fella. I also turn Daniel Bryan & while it might seem someone of his style and size is ill fated for that role I saw him work successfully as a heel in ROH and believe his wrestling mind is terrific and could pull it off.
Barrett gets the top heel spot almost by default since he was in recent main events with Cena and is such a good talker plus I don’t quite want Cody Rhodes there yet.
I would like Sin Cara in a tag team & think he could find good chemistry with Guerrero, Tatsu or even Bryan since he and Rey are on different brands.
I have Regal getting one last run near the top of the card and would think a pairing with a heel Bryan as a teacher/mentor thing would be good or have him as a leader of a group of monsters in Henry, Clay & Jackson. He’s a great promo and could work as a cowardly leader but who can actually go if needed. Kind off like Bobby Heenan was but more dangerous in the ring.
And that’s my thoughts. Drop me an email at wetalkwrestling@aim.com or follow on Twitter: http://twitter.com/WeTalkWrestling and let me know your opinions.
Also I would like to mention these rankings came from Dave Meltzer on his May.02 2011 Wrestling Observer newsletter. We have absolutely no affiliation with him or Bryan Alvarez but I didn’t think I should take his work without mentioning him. While there are many great paid and free wrestling sites they offer a ton of great wrestling and MMA content for $11 a month and can be found here http://www.f4wonline.com/ and is my personal favourite.
O-U-T
If you enjoy this blog try our Podcast at http://wetalkwrestling.com/ It’s an opinionated & energetic look at wrestling with lots of laughs and parody “fake” guests.
