I Don’t “Get” Creative

The Writers within WWE and TNA are often referred to as the creative department, or simply creative. While the idea of calling them WWE creative seems like an oxymoron to some, sort of like working lunch, or French deodorant, the truth is that sometimes it’s not that they aren’t creative enough, it’s that they’re simply too creative.

The best recent example is the disastrous execution behind the Vince McMahon and Bret Hart build for Wrestlemania 26. They didn’t need all the extraneous B.S. they included to make a compelling story such as Bret pretending to be injured in a car accident to trick Vince into having a match with him. In fact typing that last sentence it seems even more ridiculous. There was simply no way to improve on the real life storyline that happened in 1997, but they had to try.

Compare that to the Undertaker and Triple H feud from this Mania 27 that was largely well received. One man said someone needs to finally beat the other and it would be his greatest accomplishment, the other said someone may beat me some day and it may be you but not yet. Simple, and the fans just wanted to see who was right.

And that was a storyline where HHH and Taker had enough clout to largely keep the writers out of it. How about that?

In TNA you have a once hot feud between Kurt Angle and Jeff Jarrett that started out simply as tension between one that had an issue with another man marrying his ex wife. Simple, and people could relate and understand.

Then they started bringing the kids into it, and renewing their vows and getting cake shoved in faces to having horse feces dumped on Jeff and Karen Jarrett and guess what, now no one gives a damn.

You’d think they would learn when they had a match some people had some interest in with Kurt Angle and Sting wrestling for their world heavyweight championship that lost steam as soon as Kurt attacked Sting’s son coming out of a high school baseball game because people saw it as stupid.

But they had to give it a story to make it interesting because 2 great athletes competing for a belt wouldn’t be. Except it was with Kurt Angle defending against Samoa Joe in TNA’s greatest commercial and critical success, or every time UFC or boxing does it and makes a bunch of money.

But it’s not just with stories, but the gimmicks they give wrestlers too. Fans bought and loved Samoa Joe as an ass kicking submission machine who would destroy everyone he faced because he was that good. But that wasn’t sports entertainment enough, so he got a nation of violence, which he said was a nation of one, got a face tattoo and fancy tights. He carried around a big knife and kidnapped and tortured people and then got kidnapped himself and it was just so remarkably dumb, and fans stopped caring about him to the point I’m not sure if he can be fixed.

And WWE does this kind of thing too, and it’s not just a new phenomenon. When it was the WWF they wanted to give Bret Hart a cowboy gimmick He would ride to the ring on a horse and give pretty woman flowers, thank god this never happened.

But bad gimmicks don’t go away, they just fester, like an open wound, so now his nephew D.H. Smith has a similar gimmick, and it seems destined to fail too. It looks ridiculous to me to see him with a white cowboy hat and shiny grey suit jacket over wrestling trunks like some JBL wanna be.

People say Smith needs something because he has no personality, that he’s wooden and boring, but you can’t even give him that gimmick not because it’s a stupid gimmick to give anyone, which it is, but because Daniel Bryan already has a version of it.

But I think they’re wrong about Smith. I’ll grant he can’t deliver a scripted line to save his life, and he’s had trouble finding his in ring character, but maybe he seems wooden because you’ve never done anything to tell us who the hell he is as a person.

Smith is a large, athletic, talented and intelligent young man. He also has an interesting background. He wrestled his first match for the WWE at age 10. He was wrestling regularly by the time he was 14. He’s traveled the world to get better, and didn’t grow up dreaming of cutting a great promo but having a great match

He lost his cousin Mathew Annis to flesh eating disease. His uncle Owen died in an in ring tragedy. His 3rd cousin Tom Billington aka The Dynamite Kid may be the greatest under appreciated in ring performer ever but is a bitter man in a wheelchair.

His mother has never come to grips with not reaching the level of fame she felt she could. His grandfather Stu created a wrestling legacy of triumph and pain in and out of the ring. And his uncle Bret created a legacy in the ring in the WWE that casts a long shadow over him.

And his father died when he was 16, shortly after he had teamed with him a few times. And he saw his father who he loved and misses descend into a dark place, and was as a child in his house seeing horrors occur between his parents no child should have to go through.

So maybe D.H. Smith is not a wooden character but a serious young man for a reason. And maybe instead of turning him into a cowboy you could put him in front of a screen showing clips of those in his life that have shaped him. He can tell us the good and bad, and the pressure he feels to live up to a legacy before him that is personal, professional and national, and greater than perhaps any other 2nd or 3rd generation performer has faced.

And then he doesn’t need some great gimmick you’ve created, because maybe instead we can just understand who he is, emphasize and relate to him, and he can be a star.

Because sometimes WWE doesn’t need to be so creative, because sometimes being creative just gets in the way