Fumbles of Wrestling: Jack Swagger, World Champion

Back when I first created Fumbles of Wrestling I made it a rule that I was never going to discuss anyone that had won a world championship. This is because for the majority of the time when you won the top title of a promotion it meant you had made it. You're the tops, the coliseum! You're finally The Guy that a promotion can build around and sell tickets and merchandise through.

This was in 2008. Times have since changed, so that rule is being struck.

There's a few reasons for this. By the time 2010 rolled around WWE was still pretending that the brand split existed despite the World champion of Smackdown (a separate belt from the WWE title at the time) and other talents showing up almost weekly on Raw. By at least 2012 it had become a glorified secondary title like the Intercontinental championship.

Reason number two, their Money in the Bank match had been given its own PPV built around it, and since they still pretended both titles were on equal ground they gave two opportunities for a briefcase, also allowing already established main eventers to win the briefcase which very much watered the concept down a good amount.

Third...TNA. After they had loss numerous fan favorites or just didn't bother pushing people unless they were ex-WWE performers, they thought pushing guys that were plain out not ready for being The Guy into that role would work out better for them.

And as much as I'd love to discuss TNA with all the built up frustrations over the years I rather discuss one of WWE's failed champions first as he was sort of what got this trend rolling in the modern era. So let's talk about that time Jack Swagger became World Heavyweight Champion!

Why Jack Swagger, though? The guy is pretty tall, especially since he was an all-American wrestler, and has been compared to Kurt Angle as far as ring style goes, which is probably why he has the Ankle Lock as a finisher. My thing with Swagger though is that he was NOT ready for this shot, wasn't built up properly for the responsibility of champion, and when he did get the belt finally his character took on a completely different identity from what fans actually liked about him. Not to mention he didn't really hold a midcard title to help build himself, but that's neither here nor there.

I guess I should wait until Swagger's gone from the company to go over it, but trust me, for all the Swagger Soaring Eagles and "We The Peoples" he had to try and stay over, this was the highlight of his WWE career.

And it's not like Swagger hadn't been integral in some form to WWE's programming. Prior to 2010 Swagger had beaten Matt Hardy to win the ECW title (back when it was a third brand to the company) and had some feuds on Raw afterwards. But looking back on both of these Jack didn't feel like he was an integral champion for WWECW and was more a body to put the belt on so that Matt and brother Jeff could feud (yes, again) and to keep it warm for a returning Christian who would be on top of ECW until the brand's demise.

As for his Raw time, his first appearance was intentionally getting counted out as part of a gauntlet against Randy Orton. This was never followed up on. He did feud with MVP and have a short feud with Miz and Kofi Kingston for the United States championship (and a short term crush on Eve Torres, what?), but never felt like he was built up for that main event role they wanted him to be in, not helped that when he promised never to lose for the rest of the year, he did just that to Evan Bourne some months later. 

Then came the buildup to The Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania 26. Otherwise called the Road to Wrestlemania, this is where you usually build up your stars for some big matches to get the fans interested in. Swagger's road was...pretty damn sloppy. To be polite.

The big problem with Swagger was in all this time they never BUILT him up to where they wanted him to be. He was in a feud with Santino Marella where the point was to get your opponent over the ropes...and he loses to the comic relief. That's out and out not a good way to build the guy up. Then in the Elimination Chamber qualifying matches he loses to Triple H. I get that SOMEONE was gonna be fed to him, but why the guy who two months later would be in the Money in the Bank match? And WIN?

After the Elimination Chamber PPV Jack would not only get his win back over Santino to qualify for Money in the Bank but yes, he also won the briefcase that guaranteed him a future WWE or World title shot within a year's time. And in embarrassing fashion, too. Normally the briefcase or belt in any ladder match is hung over the ring and is attached by a latch. In order to get the object off the rope, you had to unlatch the latch. Usually the unlatching process was made to look like a struggle for the wrestlers to create drama. In Swagger's case the struggle was real.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcwex7_jack-swagger-wins-the-money-in-the_sport

I'm not kidding, like ten or twenty seconds went by with no interference, nobody trying to get in the ring and climb the ladder, just Swagger not being able to unlatch the briefcase. Unfortunately there's no video evidence of this occurring as WWE has edited the footage out of DVDs and the Network to avoid making Swagger look like a fool (too late for that). Heck trying to find this footage in and of itself was a chore, though I did finally manage to find it.

But the short of it is that Swagger was now able to cash in whenever he wants, going over the likes of MVP and Kofi and Kane and Matt Hardy and Christian. The next step would be for them to rebuild Jack properly to show he can be as good a champion as the next guy could. Like they did with, say, Edge's original run or even the Miz later on in the year.

WWE did not do this.

Instead they had Jack Swagger tease a cash in attempt on John Cena for the WWE Championship, which did not happen, before heading to Smackdown the following day for tapings and to cash in successfully on a downed Chris Jericho after being speared by Edge to become the new World Heavyweight Champion. And in the blink of an eye Swagger had immediately become the World champion. And just as quickly Swagger had undergone a change in character.

This wasn't the smiling All American American anymore. Now it was a Jack Swagger that wore suits, talked very low key and became somewhat more serious in his delivery.

That's right. They turned him into SRS Chris Jericho. Even though they already had that form of Chris Jericho on the roster. In fact Swagger's cash in had interrupted a feud between him and Edge, which was over the title at WM26. So you think they'd have a triple threat match for the title at the next PPV, Extreme Rules, right?

Well they did. Sort of. The match didn't occur at the PPV but rather a Smackdown just a few weeks after Jack won the title. Probably because they wanted that feud to end already without the title involved. Swagger's actual opponent for the PPV was a freshly turned face Randy Orton, who had beaten Swagger in his first real match since becoming the World Champion, which was also nontitle.

Yup, that's not a problem or anything, nosiree.

It's usually pretty common to set up a match by having a number one contender defeat the champion in order to give them a shot, but the problem here is that it was Swagger's FIRST MATCH  AND FEUD since cashing in on a speared Chris Jericho! My problem with that is if you want to build the guy up as a strong champion, don't have him losing his first few matches! That kills off whatever aura the guy might have had for a few days. Not to mention making that loss against Randy Orton, an established main eventer that WWE is still very much behind and considers their second biggest star, shows that Jack was never capable of hanging on his level.

The match itself isn't anything bad, but I couldn't help but notice that Randy seems to get all of the cooler spots in the match, including hitting Jack with the World title belt mid-Swagger Bomb. This might not seem like a big deal except that while almost everyone in the MITB match was doing everything to make themselves look great, Jack's most notable spots are simply hitting people with a ladder and swinging the briefcase into Christian's face. Only Drew McIntyre did significantly less than he did. I'm just saying, for matches that require you to think creatively and impress the crowds, Swagger didn't really do a whole lot of that and just relied on his strength. Even then Swagger only won because Orton hurt himself on a chair when he was trying to RKO Swagger into it.

Following this was a feud against the Big Show. It seemed like for this particular feud they were REALLY trying to amp up Swagger's douchiness and arrogance as Swagger had 'Did you know?' segments that were all about him sprinkled throughout the shows. Fans got annoyed with these segments to the point they were begging Swagger to go away. Show would then come out and deliver a huge knockout punch to the champion, declaring him the next contender as he held up the belt.

The following week featured Jack in the middle of the ring with a collection of his accomplishments, which includes such items as trophies like the national ballroom champion (which makes me wonder why he didn't get the Fandango gimmick), varsity jacket, an Eagle Scout uniform, a sandwich called “The Swagger”, and my personal favorite, National Scrabble Champion. For a guy we're supposed to take seriously the segment seemed to go into such a comedic format for no real reason. Obviously they're just there for Big Show to break, but my point stands, it's a little goofy for this new character they've passed on Swagger.

Over the Limits came and went with Show and Swagger having their match, which ended in DQ after Swagger had hit Show with the World title. Obviously this was leading into a continuing feud, but realistically it served as an excuse to put Big Show into the World title match at Fatal Four-Way, which would also include the now masked CM Punk after Rey Mysterio shaved him bald, and Mr. 619 himself after Undertaker, who had originally qualified, was found by Kane to be in a “vegetative state” (I'm guessing Undertaker was legitimately injured at this point and needed a break, otherwise why would they give him the boot in storyline like this?)

At Fatal Four-Way, it seemed as if the Swagger-As-Champion experiment had come to an end as Rey Mysterio was the one to win the match and his second ever World title. They did at least give Jack one more shot at the Money in the Bank PPV, but he failed to win that as well, with Rey losing the title to Kane mere seconds afterwards.

While Swagger did go on to have some decent gimmicks such as the Swagger Soaring Eagle and “We The People”, these ideas seemed to get over in spite of him, the eagle doing it's best to get overly energetic while Zeb Coulter was Swagger's voice and effectively where the spotlight shone brightest, also not helped that he was teamed up with the bigger fan favorite in Cesaro.

So what do we take from this? It seems that a lot of Swagger's biggest title reigns come out of pure luck and timing. Like how he was ECW champion to allow Matt to feud with Jeff, Swagger seemed to only hold the MITB briefcase and cash in early so that by July when the MITB PPV debuted there weren't THREE briefcases running around (and given Kane's quick cash in you could tell this wasn't planned ahead of time either). It also doesn't seem to help him that fellow Oklahoman Jim Ross was super high on Swagger and wanted him pushed pretty heavy as well. Seemed to be the same case in early 2013 when Swagger was given another chance against Del Rio for the World title despite having just come back from injury, but...well, we know how that one worked out.

At least with Jack they knew enough when to quit, and unfortunately the same can't be said about Roman Reigns as of this writing.

Top Ten Dumbest Moments from Wrestlemania 32

Another Wrestlemania has come and gone. And a lot of time and effort had gone into this particular show, seeing as it would be not only the largest show WWE puts on all year, but possibly the largest ever with it's taking place in the new stadium for the Dallas Cowboys, seating over 100,000 people in attendance. As with most shows WWE and Vince McMahon would go all out with trying to fit every wrestler onto the card and give the fans a memorable experience.

Arguably they did just that, but in all the wrong ways.

The general consensus from fans seems to be that the wrestling for this year's show was good to great, but a lot of the decisions they had made were puzzling and made no sense whatsoever. It was bad enough that this particular Wrestlemania suffered from numerous injuries to top stars, the retirement of others, and a build for most storylines that made fans palm their faces, but the ideas they had to end some of their big stories with just came off as puzzling. From odd placements on the card to disappointing finishes to things that make you scratch your head going on from start to finish, nothing really worked from a storyline perspective, and the one that did was a conclusion the fans had rejected from the get-go anyway.

To answer the question of “How dumb can it get?”, allow me to answer that with my own set of answers in the form of a top ten countdown of the Dumbest Moments from Wrestlemania 32.

Honorable Mention

NXT Takeover Dallas: Joe's Gonna Kill the Blood Team

I want to get this out of the way first since it didn't actually happen at Wrestlemania, but was still a pretty bad move. What should have been a great Takeover main event between Samoa Joe and Finn Balor for the NXT championship got bogged down a little bit thanks to blood stoppage. Early in the fight Joe had received a cut over his eye and the ref was practically watching over him like a hawk to make sure he wasn't bleeding too much and would call a stoppage over what felt like every few minutes. This killed the mood of the live crowd, and it didn't help either man that both Sami Zayn vs. Shinsuke Nakamura and Bayley vs. Asuka for the NXT Women's title were terrific matches before this one happened.

I do want to point out I'm not upset with this moment because I'm one of those “damn PG rating” people, but rather it just killed the tone and the pacing of the match. Even Joe was getting annoyed, almost pushing people away to try and put SOMETHING into it. And I get why they did it, but trust me guys, Joe's a tough Samoan. A little blood isn't gonna stop him.

Now, onto the main course...

10. Shaq in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royale

Ignoring the fact that Baron Corbin won the match and is now on the Raw roster, which really isn't all that bad, why did Shaq need to be here? His appearance did nothing except allow him to toss several wrestlers out of the match and continue a feud with Big Show that by now a lot of us forgot because his guest host appearance was almost seven years ago.

Even more annoying (or laughable, depending on your outlook) was how after Show and Shaq eliminated themselves from the fight, they broke kayfabe and kinda just...walked off while being chatty and chummy with one another.

In the long run it's pretty pointless, but it looks pretty bad for a match that you're trying to get people to take seriously since it's still a fairly new concept.

9. Zack Ryder Wins the Intercontinental Championship

There's probably a lot of people wondering why this moment is even on the list. This moment was VERY shocking to everyone since it's been over four years since Zack Ryder held onto a title in the WWE, and in all that time it looked highly unlikely he'd ever hold gold again. Seeing him win that seven-man ladder match was probably one of the few surprisingly good moments in an otherwise oddball show.

But I put it on the list because it set the tone for the rest of the night; great matches with very odd decisions on the finish that kind of kills the mood. And it's great that Zack has a Wrestlemania moment on his hands that can finally top getting kicked in the balls by Eve (which I had the honor of seeing live), but considering how out of left field it was with the whole Owens/Zayn feud being teased and how pointless it became when Miz won it off him the next night? Was it worth it?

Yes. Yes it was.

8. AJ Styles loses to Chris Jericho

I feel like I should honestly just clump a good portion of this list into “the finishes were bad”, but I feel the need to explain WHY those finishes were bad.

In the case of this match, there's quite a few reasons. For starters here's AJ Styles, the one wrestler that for years was being built up to become TNA's future but was never allowed to sit in that position. He spends over twelve years in that company before moving onto Japan, and at the start of 2016 finally joins the biggest wrestling company in the US. It's his Wrestlemania debut, continuing and hopefully concluding his feud with Chris Jericho.

Sure, AJ had been pretty dominant in this feud already, but considering how much of a part timer Jericho has become in recent years and how much energy he's put into helping give other wrestlers credibility like Fandango, Ziggler, the Wyatts and such, you would think he was going to give that rub to AJ next.

Nope.

While the match was great the finish was a bit odd. As AJ gets ready to dive Jericho shoves the ref off of him and immediately hits AJ with another Codebreaker, getting the win. The problem with this is how Jericho doesn't need to rub, especially when the very next night AJ won contendership to the WWE title. There really was no reason for the finish to go like this.

Even worse is when you think about it, Jericho said a few Wrestlemanias back how he was sick of the Legends always coming in and taking precedence over him and the other full-time wrestlers. In some way Jericho has turned into what he hates most.

If the ending were better done, maybe I could see Jericho winning, but with AJ moving forward it really does nothing for either guy.

7. Most of the Hell in a Cell match

The match was pretty clunky from the get-go when you have Undertaker vs. Shane McMahon inside the Cell with Undertaker's legacy on the line, as well as Shane wanting ownership of Raw. And while Taker and Shane tried with breaking out their moves on top of the steel steps to Shane hitting his Coast to Coast dropkick, the majority of the match just kind of went at a slow pace.

The saving grace was, of course, the ending, with Shane O'Mac climbing to the top of the cage to hit an elbow drop onto Taker...only to fail. This cost Shane the match and gave Undertaker another win after his undefeated streak has already been broken. And in fairness I think that's all the match was built up for, but in getting to that spot there was a lot to sift through just to get to it.

On another note, though, how long has it been since anyone has climbed the cage for something that insane?

6. The League of Nations Win...And Lose

So for most of this feud with the much more over New Day, League of Nations were getting their butts kicked. In fact ever since Sheamus lost the WWE title (which was the whole point of the League, really, something to have Roman Reigns fight through in order to get to Sheamus) the group really does come off as nothing more than a big joke of a stable. And there's already one in the form of the Social Outcasts, and yet somehow people seem to take them with more credibility!

But the way they try to end this, after New Day has such a grand entrance? Get New Day to lose. Yup, the finish to this whole thing was for the League of Nations to taunt the New Day, get cocky about how no three man team could stop the League...and then you cue Shawn Michaels, Mick Foley, and Steve Austin all coming out and whooping their butts.

The issue isn't that the segment 'buries' League of Nation (who already had little credibility as a unit) or New Day, it's just...there was no need for the League to win. If they really wanted to have those three legends come back so badly, they could have just combined that with another segment and had themselves a good old beat down.

But nah, let's have our tag champions lose just to make the League look silly. At least New Day got their win back the next night, but geez...

5. The Finish To The Women's Title Match

Let me start off by saying this was one of the best matches of the night. Bar none, the women nearly stole the show this weekend between this, Asuka vs. Bayley, and hell I'll give the ten-woman match on the pre-show some credit, they did better than most people would expect of them. Even Eva Marie. Heck when Charlotte went for that moonsault onto the floor to Sasha and Becky my first thought was just how far we've come from the dark days of the mid-00's where Ashley Massaro was their pet project to focus the women's division on and yet couldn't go higher than the middle turnbuckles to hit her elbow drop. The women were given more time, allowed to do more, and they made the most out of what they could. And while I agree that Sasha should have been the choice to win with how she came out with her cousin Snoop Dogg, they built up Eddie Guerrero vs. Brock at No Way Out 2004 as her inspiring moment and she even came out in tights inspired by Eddie's, I guess it was just as good to have Charlotte walk in the Divas champion and walk out the Women's champion.

But that ending...

When Ric Flair grabs Sasha while Charlotte makes the pin, I don't think anyone was happy with it. This was a night for Charlotte to win on her own merits and for Ric to keep off the other girls, but that just soured the mood to an otherwise great match. Even more annoying is how, by the looks of things, instead of booking Sasha vs. Charlotte which should be the obvious continuation, they decide to lean towards Natalya as the next contender for Charlotte to face despite acknowledging that YEAH, Nattie kinda lost to Charlotte multiple times already.

This was more or less THE match on the card that didn't need a screwy finish, yet they went and managed to bungle that up.

4. The Time Budgetting

One of the things WWE can't seem to do very well is budget it's time. For example, you wouldn't think with three hours on Monday nights that Raw needs an overrun, but they manage to do it somehow. There was an instance at Summerslam 2010 where John Cena ended the match against Nexus in quick fashion because it was almost the end of their time on PPV and didn't want to end with fans being upset they didn't get to see the ending.

But then there's having your biggest show of the year go on for MUCH longer than you needed it to. This year's Wrestlemania may have taken over the record for the longest Wrestlemania ever, clocking in at just over four and a half hours of programming. But by the time the main event finally rolled out, people were already near falling asleep at home, and I'm sure the attending fans were annoyed as well since they had been there just after 5 PM EST, and in total sat for more than six hours worth of show when you include the pre-show matches. It was bad enough it felt like Usos vs. Dudleys were cut from the main show given how much they had built that feud up, but then you have the League of Nations post-match beatdown, and then that segment with the Rock and certain matches going on for too long when they didn't NEED to be so long just because they're big matches...

I can get trying to cram everyone, part time and full time, onto the Wrestlemania card, but their time could have been spent much better. Case in point...

3. The Rock's segment

This was probably the one segment they spent too much time on.

You didn't need the Dallas cheerleaders dancing to AC/DC, you didn't need the Rock coming out to use a FLAMETHROWER just to torch his own name...honestly, did you really need the Rock? At all?

I get he was advertised for weeks going into this show, but why? Just so he could announce the attendance for this show and have a six second match with the Wyatts? Just to have Cena come out to show he's either ready to get back into the ring or just give him something to do at Wrestlemania while rubbing elbows with Rock?

By the time it was five minutes to eleven EST I was wondering what they were doing with the main event, making it like a two minute squash or something. Then word over Twitter was that WWE informed their cable and satellite providers that they were going to do the overrun. Which again this whole segment could have been scrapped for, or even combine it with that segment earlier where the League of Nations got beat up by Michaels, Austin, and Foley. If they REALLY needed this though I will say The Rock's long walk and introduction was unnecessary. It could have been scrapped.

2. Dean Ambrose vs. Brock Lesnar

What a disappointment.

With all the build they put into this match, after having Dean come so close to beating Triple H at Roadblock, you would think they would make this match something more than it was. Give it about fifteen minutes, have the chainsaw and the barbwire bat come into play, make it a massacre for Dean to fight back from...and they do none of that.

What should have been a moment that puts Dean right into the main event scene seems to be turning into a similar problem they had with Undertaker once the streak had become a major hype machine for Wrestlemania; they don't know who should be the guy to beat Brock Lesnar. Seems last year the plan was originally for Roman to beat Lesnar, but we already know how well that went. Since then it looks like WWE is protecting Brock for the right guy at the right time. This was the right guy and the right time, especially when their handpicked babyface just was NOT getting over.

Add to that this was only the fourth fight on the main card, which was an odd spot for this match having so much build to it. It should have been given a higher spot, but I guess it wasn't that important compared to The Rock's Flamethrower Spectacular.

1. Reigns vs. Triple H

It was bad enough everyone knew this was the WWE title match for Wrestlemania after the Royal Rumble. It was bad enough the fans didn't want it and they still did everything they could to salvage Reigns. It was even worse when you knew this was going to main event the show, and it just was not what it should have been.

They had multiple opportunities to change it. You could have had Dean win at Fastlane, or Dean win at Roadblock, heck Brock winning at Fastlane would have been just as okay. But Vince and company were SO INTENT on making Roman their newest babyface they just HAD to overlook everything, spend the night muting fan mics to keep the boos from being heard on television sets around the globe (which didn't help since they were still pretty loud) all so they could continue to mold Roman into this new John Cena that the fans were tired of after so long.

And this is mostly just the build up.

Speaking of tired, it didn't help that by the time this match finally started it was well past the normal end time for a WWE PPV and the fans had sat through so much already. It also didn't help that this match had basically become a near carbon copy of Orton vs. Triple H from Wrestlemania 25 where you're expecting this big mess of a match that deserves so much hatred from both men coming to the surface, only for it to be a long and 'methodical' match because that's how Triple H rolls.

Even more annoying? They had a chance to change it, apparently. There were flyers all over Axxess that weekend that advertised the match as being a No Holds Barred match, which would have worked for all the build up these two had put into the match. Instead we were left with a long match that went on longer than it needed to be and did nothing for Roman as the new face of WWE.

For a show that had spectacular wrestling with stange booking decisions it only makes sense that the one match that ends the way WWE wanted it to is the one nobody wanted to buy for this show. One can only wonder what direction they're going in now with Reigns, but so far the signs aren't looking too good.