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.