Too often I com­plain about the things I dis­like in pro­fes­sional wrestling, but instead of rant­ing and rav­ing about these things, I decided to write about how I would fix some things. Some of you may agree or dis­agree with my sce­nar­ios and are wel­come to comment.

Wel­come to the first col­umn of The Arm­chair Booker!

Let’s start with the num­ber one WWE show:

RAW

• Do away with the guest host­ing and either intro­duce a GM or some author­ity fig­ure to run the show.

• John Cena-Needs a heel turn to freshen up his char­ac­ter. Bring back the freestyles and street swag. Fans will enjoy the turn I’m sure. I would have also aligned him with Cryme Tyme for a solid faction.

• Bret Hart– Should have had the Hart Dynasty with him when he appeared on Raw and align DX with Vince. Would have ele­vated The Hart Dynasty and taken advan­tage of exist­ing beef between Bret,HBK & HHH.
• Bring in the other Dib­i­ase brother and make a Tag Team in Legacy. That way you could have the Dib­i­ase broth­ers for the tag belts, Cody for IC/US title, and Orton for the World Title. I’d call the Dib­i­ase broth­ers Money Inc. as an homage to their dad.
• Reunite the Colon Boithers, Car­l­ito & Primo, since solo they are struggling.
• Ele­vate Evan Bourne into a stronger mid-card feud with Swag­ger and MVP as your core guys.
• No more Hornswoggle!
• Would make San­tino a legit threat and cap­i­tal­ize on his pop­u­lar­ity by putting him in the IC/US title hunt as well.

Smack­down

• Cre­ate a sta­ble with Finlay,Drew McIn­tyre and Shea­mus. Have a vet­eran work with both of these young tal­ents and also cre­ate a tag team as well.
• Push Edge as your num­ber one heel.

• Con­tinue build­ing CM Punk’s Straight Edge Society.
• Move Khali to an enforcer role and limit his ring work.
• Build you Women’s Divi­sion around Beth Phoenix.
• Make Dolph Zig­gler, John Mor­ri­son and Matt Hardy your main mid-card guys for the US title, but ele­vate them into the main event often. This will allow you to both gauge crowd response and inject new blood into the main event scene.
• Chris Jeri­cho & Rey Mys­te­rio need to feud at the main event level.
• Keep and Kane & The Under­taker together and have them be the cen­ter of your Tag Team Division.

ECW

• Bring back the Hard­core Matches.
• Intro­duce a TV Title to give the mid-card guys a title to feud over.
• Shel­ton Ben­jamin needs some sort of mouth piece that can help him get over as a heel. I’d go with him, Zeke and Regal.
• Koslov needs to work on not look­ing so robotic in the ring.
• Align Baretta & Croft with Zack Ryder.
• Chris­t­ian needs to leave ECW in the Draft. Bring in a new vet­eran to carry the brand.
• I would move Char­lie Haas to ECW.
• Con­tinue push­ing Yoshi Tatsu.
• Use ECW to build new tal­ent and keep call­ing up new ros­ter mem­bers to keep the brand fresh.

This is just a sam­pling of how I’d change things. I am sure many of  you will have thoughts and sug­ges­tions of your own. Feel free to share them.

WWE has decided to release a DVD with some of the best moments from RAW in 2009. As a life­long WWE fan I will always have good and bad things to say about the direc­tion of their flag­ship show. This DVD looks like a solid col­lec­tion of great raw moments but I feel that these releases need to be avail­able in Hi-Def sim­ply because USA is in HD and Raw is taped in HD as well.

I am not going to use this post to vent about my dis­plea­sure regard­ing the cur­rent state of RAW. On the con­trary I will instead post some of my favorite 2009 Raw Moments

• CM Punk win­ning the IC Belt from William Regal in Chicago
• Orton and Triple H Feud– Orton attack­ing Stephanie McMa­hon ele­vated that feud from good to great in fell swoop
• Ricky Steam­boat wrestling bet­ter than most of the RAW roster
• Kofi Kingston get­ting a solid push
• Batista turn­ing on Rey Mysterio
• Trish Stra­tus return­ing to Mon­day Night RAW
• CM Punk’s World & Heavy­weight Champ title reigns
• San­tino Marella– Almost every seg­ment he was in was fuck­ing gold
• RAW Being com­mer­cial free-I did not enjoy all the Trump BS

I am sure I left out tons of other moments. I hope WWE does with all their flag­ship shows and hope­fully tran­si­tions to HD in the near future.

Enjoy the trailer

Every few years, a group of tal­ented ath­letes rise through the ranks of the WWE farm sys­tem or are brought in from other pro­mo­tions that are all des­tined for great­ness. While I have not been impressed with the over­all WWE prod­uct as of late I do see wrestlers that will be major play­ers in the next few years. This will be the first of  many MTR posts that will exam­ine break­through per­form­ers from var­i­ous promotions.

10. Cody Rhodes - Cur­rent Legacy mem­ber, for­mer Tag Team Cham­pion, 3rd gen­er­a­tion per­former. Cody Rhodes cur­rently is the default mem­ber of Legacy that eats pin­falls and plays sec­ond fid­dle to Randy Orton and Ted Dib­i­ase Jr., but he does have flashes of bril­liance. I think that once Legacy runs it’s course, Cody will be a great US/IC Title con­tender. With the pres­sure of being a 3rd gen star rest­ing on his back, I am sure the son of “The Dream” will be around for along time.

9. Ezekiel Jack­son - Big Zeke got his start as a body­guard to the tal­ented yet under-utilized Brian Kendrick, but after see­ing him in action dur­ing tag matches and the over­all vicious­ness of his per­sona I knew a solo push wasn’t far off. My only gripe with Zeke is that his voice does not match his size and he’s seems ten­ta­tive on the mic.  His time paired with Regal and Koslov has done him well because has allowed his abil­ity to shine in the ring with­out the pres­sures of mic work. He reminds me of how Batista was in Evo­lu­tion and we all know how suc­cess­ful Batista became once he went solo. I see the same suc­cess for Zeke as well.

8. Yoshi Tatsu- Even though Yoshi has the typ­i­cal (and stereo­typ­i­cal) mar­tial arts gim­mick, I see that he has tons of poten­tial and is great combo of high fly­ing abilty and solid strik­ing. I see shades of Tajiri in Yoshi Tatsu due to the pop­u­lar­ity he is gain­ing with the ECW audi­ence. His music is kind of catchy too.

7. Dolph Zig­gler- For­mer Spirit Squad mem­ber and Mr. Per­fect replica. DZ exploded on the scene with a semi-cheesy gim­mick where he intro­duced him­self to every­one dur­ing var­i­ous broad­casts. I con­sid­ered him a com­edy char­ac­ter but I have to admit that his matches with John Mor­ri­son have been clas­sic. His gim­mick now is pretty close to the late Curt Hen­nig, which may not be the inten­tion, how­ever, that isn’t a bad per­former to take inspi­ra­tion from. He seems to be in limbo regard­ing his cur­rent sto­ry­line. Rumors are that he may be paired with Vicky Guer­rero since Eric Esco­bar hasn’t proven as pop­u­lar as they expected. If that proves true, we’ll see if Mr. Zig­gles can make the most of this pairing.

6. Kaval aka Low Ki– ROH & TNA leg­end Low Ki has signed with WWE and while I was sad­dened by his depar­ture from TNA, I know that he would be a great addi­tion to any ros­ter. Low Ki has great pres­ence and awe­some kicks & strikes. His foot stomp fin­isher is awe­some and I hope they let him use it. Rumors are point­ing towards a masked gim­mick that will have him feud with Rey Mys­te­rio. If uti­lized cor­rectly I can guar­an­tee Kaval will be a major player.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VsSzs4ATho]

5. Amer­i­can Dragon Bryan Daniel­son– For­mer ROH Cham­pion and one of the best tech­ni­cal wrestlers in the game today. As a fan of the late Chris Benoit, it’s great to see another tech­ni­cal mas­ter fol­low in his foot­steps. Bryan Daniel­son gets a lot of shit for his mic work but much like Benoit, his tal­ent does the talk­ing for him. Besides, I per­son­ally feel his pro­mos are intense and suit him. I look for­ward to some 5-star clas­sics from the for­mer ROH champion.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtL3mtHoMDI]

4.Ted Dib­i­ase Jr. –Cur­rent Legacy mem­ber, for­mer Tag Team Cham­pion, 3rd gen­er­a­tion per­former. Much like Cody Rhodes, Ted Dib­i­ase is also play­ing sec­ond fid­dle to Randy Orton. WWE seems to really have big plans for Ted, given the many times he’s been put at odds with Orton and the slow burn that’s lead­ing to a clash between these two super­stars. With his act­ing debut in The Marine 2, a face turn is immi­nent and should allow the fans to see the other of side of Dib­i­ase. We’ll see if a face turn will prove suc­cess­ful or if he’s des­tined to be a bad guy for­ever like his dad.

3. Hart Dynasty– Now I could have given all three super­stars their own seper­ate entries but I feel that this fac­tion together has tons of poten­tial given their sto­ried back­grounds. I hon­estly thought they would have been added to Legacy and later Orton and crew would turn on the Harts. Sadly right now they seem to also be in limbo. With the power of DH Smith and the quick­ness of Tyson Kidd, not to men­tion the techi­cal prowess of Natalya Nei­d­hart, I see this tag team doing major things in the com­ing year. (WWE are you listening?)

2. Kofi Kingston– I am sure many of you expected Kofi at Num­ber One on my list. Kofi has started on the path towards super­star­dom. With an active pro­gram going on with Orton and a ton of good matches under his belt, Mr. S.O.S is sky­rock­et­ing to the top. Kofi has a mar­ketable per­son­al­ity and tons of ath­letic abil­ity. I do feel his mic work is a bit sus­pect, but I am sure that in feud­ing with some of the major play­ers he’ll learn a thing or two.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpIf6_ADj-I]

1. Matt Sydal aka Evan Bourne– With one of the most beau­ti­ful fin­ish­ers in the Air­bourne Shoot­ing Star Press and years of action under his belt, this Raw super­star has star writ­ten all over him. His matches with Rey Mys­te­rio, Tyson Kidd and Kofi were all clas­sics. He is cur­rently being jobbed out on Mon­day nights, but I think that this kid has the tools to be cham­pion. Sadly I see him being kept away from World Titles due to his size which is unfor­tu­nate. I hope the bias toward smaller per­form­ers changes sooner rather than later because Bourne is way too pop­u­lar to go unnoticed.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pdlb3TeBD4g]

Hon­or­able Mentions:

• MVP
• Chris­t­ian Cage
• Zack Ryder
• San­tino Marella
• John Mor­ri­son
• The Miz
• Shea­mus
• Matt Hardy
• Drew McIn­tyre
• The Rip­per — Paul Burchill