The Best Damn Wrestling Column Period: Making the Tough Choices

If pink is this year's black, then Bradshaw is most certainly this year's Triple H.

Many wrestling fans spent much of 2003 taking out their frustration about WWE's struggles on Triple H. Everything wrong with RAW was somehow connected to Mr. H. But now that he's jobbing to Chris Benoit, Shelton Benjamin, and even Eugene, those fans have been forced to find a new target for their frustration.

Enter John Bradshaw Layfield, a guy who was propelled from tag team mediocrity to the WWE Championship in just three months. To be fair, the push is not entirely undeserved. Bradshaw has been with WWE since 1996, the longest of any superstar on the Smackdown roster besides the Undertaker (1990), Bob Holly (1991), Rikishi (1992), and Billy Gunn (1993). He's kept himself in good shape, he's comfortable on the mic, and between his books, cable news appearances, and military tours, he's doing as much as anyone this side of The Rock to introduce WWE to a non-wrestling audience.

 
Eddie Guerrero tries to cover his head before the sky begins to fall.

Still, that's little consolation to the fans out there who declared Bradshaw's victory at the Great American Bash the deathblow for Smackdown. Strangely, Vince McMahon seems to be strongly behind Bradshaw's push. While it doesn't make much sense to fans to take the title away from a popular champion and give it to someone who's universally hated, particularly at a time when ratings are low and the roster is depleted, it makes a whole lot of sense to Mr. McMahon.

The bottom line

It amazes me sometimes how little faith we have in Vince. Everything we've ever loved about WWE came from Mr. McMahon, and yet anytime something goes wrong, we assume he has lost his mind. Let's look at the rationale for the sudden rise of the JBL character and see if it's really all that crazy.

With Angle and Big Show headed toward the Disabled List and Brock Lesnar on his way out the door, the decision was made to run with Eddie as champion. Fans were pleasantly surprised and the loss of three big names was temporarily forgotten.

The next problem was finding a heel contender to feud with Eddie over the title. With all of the obvious names out of the picture, WWE decided to invent competition, and so the JBL character was born. They then proceeded to do everything they could to put JBL over as a monster heel and a legitimate threat to the belt. He gave Eddie's mother a heart attack, he almost put Eddie on the shelf after their Judgment Day bloodbath, he grates on our nerves with purposely long promos, and he has even found inventive new ways to insult fans around the world. While many heels will try to retain a shred of coolness in order to stay over and sell merchandise, Bradshaw is just straight heel. We really haven't seen someone play this much of a bad guy in quite awhile.

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06/16 Cultural Adaptation

06/02 The Wizard's Musings

05/19 Take It Outside

05/05 Facing The Music

04/21 Blasts From The Past

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So as the Eddie/JBL feud was winding to an apparent close at the Bash, WWE faced a familiar problem: Who's going to headline the next pay-per-view against the champ? When you look at the Smackdown roster, there are not a lot of options for Eddie. Ren