Hi Scott
There’s been lots of talk on the blog recently about how thin the WWE roster is with the exodus of top talent in the past few years.
Occurred to me that the problem isn’t so much the high turnover of stars at the top, that’s happened before at the end of the Rock n Wrestling, New Generation and Attitude eras.
The issue is more how many of the WWE’s headliners of the past 5 years have left without putting over any new stars on the way out.
HBK – Retired by the UndertakerFlair – Retired by HBKBatista – Quit following loss to CenaRVD – Lost to Orton in a Stretcher MatchJBL – Quit after losing to MysterioVince McMahon – Fired by HHH, lost last match to Bret HartJericho – Left 1st time following loss to Cena, left second time following loss to Orton
In all these guys leaving the WWE the wrestlers who got the rub on the way out were Cena, Orton, Mysterio, HHH, HBK and The Undertaker. All of them multi-time world champs by that point anyway.
On top of that you’ve got the ones that left due to unforeseen circumstances
Angle – Left due to Wellness issues (last televised match a no contest against Sabu)Edge – Retired as Champion defeating Del Rio in last matchBobby Lashley – Quit while injured to pursue MMAUmaga – Fired due to Wellness issues
Plus you’ve got the Benoit and Guerrero tragedies.
Then you’ve got HHH and Undertaker who are semi-retired. I don’t think HHH has put over a new main eventer since Jeff Hardy and honestly cannot remember the last time Undertaker lost to someone who wasn’t already a bona fide main eventer.
In fact in all this Jeff Hardy is probably the closest they’ve come to someone going out on their back, but then I really don’t think they planned for him to go out to Punk like he did and it’s not like they made anything of it.
Isn’t this the root cause of the lack of elevation? Punk, Bryan, Barrett, Rhodes Sheamus, Ziggler etc are all trying to make each other. Nobody from the previous generation (except maybe Booker?) is giving them a leg up.
What do you think?
I absolutely agree. Not to mention that WWF treats the previous generation like a bunch of clowns who we’re supposed to mock as entertainment, so if they do bring in a “Legend” to give someone a rub it never works anyway. So you’ve got Dolph Ziggler out there paying tribute to Curt Hennig every night, but Hennig isn’t on the current politically approved list of people who we’re allowed to remember respectfully, so they never bring it up. And now the guys they’ve got get beat all the time, so beating them means nothing.