WHY 18 IS A RETTER RANKING THAN TWO IN'03 I can usually get a laugh out of other people in this crazyfield of journalism by informing them I did quite a bit better on the math portion of the SATs than I did on the verbal portion ... and that I was once told by a math teacher in high school that I should strongly consider a career that somehow involved numbers.
Makes perfect sense, I suppose, that in 2003, I never once used the words logarithm, cosine, or parabola while on the job and instead completed my 10th full year as an editor for a family of professional wrestling magazines. (I didn't have the heart to tell my teacher there was no way I would go the math route.)
Maybe my arithmetic skills have eroded since I took my last math course in college - my freshman year of 1987 -'88 - because I am 100 percent convinced that The Undertaker's ranking of number 18 in the 2003 "PWI500" is a more impressive ranking than Triple-H's ranking of number two (and' he almost got number one, I should add). Make that a much more impressive ranking.
Fear not, this is not another Triple-H-bashing column. It's just a little friendly advice for the Raw champion conveniently provided by one of his old friends on the Smackdown side. You know, the guy who supposedly commands more respect in WWE dressing rooms than anyone on either roster. The guy who, coincidentally, was number two himself last year and had one staffer's support for number one.
'Taker dropped 16 places this year. He battled through a lot of injuries. He wasn't quite tough enough to beat Brock Lesnar in one of the bloodiest matches of the year. The Big Show even outwitted him a few times. Take away 2000, when injuries kept him out of the "500" altogether, and he hadn't finished lower than 11th since 1996. And there have been- four top-10 finishes since then.
Yet I'm here to tell you that UT had a fantastic year, one of the best of his career. At least if you can follow my logic.
See, at press time, 'Taker was embroiled in a feud with The Full Blooded Italians. Yep, Nunzio, Johnny Stamboli, and Chuck Palumbo, Mid-carders if there ever were any. He's also helping to introduce WWE fans to new-comer Orlando Jordan. Before that, he was mentor to Nathan Jones. Not since Lesnar humbled him in a "Hell In A Cell" match at No Mercy in October 2002 has he had a sniff of the Smackdown title. Bad news for all you loyal creatures of the night out there, I know, but good news for WWE's future
I seriously doubt that any member of the FBI is a future WWE main-eventer. I wouldn't be stunned in the least if not a single one of them made the WrestleMania cut next year. I haven't seen enough of Orlando Jordan yet to offer an assessment of his potential. And Nathan Jones might never amount to anything in WWE. What I have seen very clearly is a new approach from Undertaker. He's not clinging to his spot at the top of the card, crowing about how, as a proven main-eventer, he's the guy fans want to see in the big match every week and one of the few guys WWE can count on. Instead, he's rubbing elbows with some of the newer, less-proven people, the folks whose stock could go up just by being in the ring and holding their own with him.
I want to see Rhyno vs. Undertaker, Benoit vs. Undertaker, and maybe even Edge vs. Undertaker in the next year. And I want to see UT do the right thing with these guys in the same way he did the right thing with Lesnar at No Mercy. The perfect role for him as injuries and age continue to slow him is to build up the stars of today and tomorrow, not to cling to the legendary status he cemented yesterday. He can and probably should still mount the occasional challenge to the Smackdown title, but only if one of those young lions holds it.
Although injuries have also slowed "The Game," I'm not suggesting he is at the same stage of his career as "The Dead Man." If he can avoid more serious injuries in the future, he should have quite a few more years in the ring left than 'Taker does. And it wouldn't make much sense for him to be totally frozen out of the Raw title picture after a year of stifling dominance that didn't help WWE all that much. But he needn't and shouldn't be in the title picture month after month after month. A PPV loss or two to a Booker T wouldn't destroy H3, and think of what they would do for someone like Booker. He could also drop the Raw title to Goldberg and then have to deal with a returning Batista, who would want to know why he was quietly booted out of Evolution while he was recovering from injuries.
Maven, The Hurricane, and Mark Jindrak could benefit from competitive mid-card feuds with Triple-H while others tussled over the title for a time. Then Hunter could slide back into the title picture every few months and maybe - just maybe - come up short in a title bid or two. Meanwhile, Randy Orton's development into a main-event talent could progress fairly quickly. And just imagine what an Orton-Helmsley Raw title match, with Orton putting together a nice reign as champion beforehand, could mean if WWE built to it slowly over a period of six months.
If all goes well - for the company as a whole, not necessarily for `The Game' - Triple-H will study what 'Taker is doing as closely as he advises other WWE stars to study each other's matches and suffer a few more losses in the next 12 months than he did in the last 12. If he does, he'll likely end up in the 10 to 15 range in the 2004 "PWI 500." UT, meanwhile, should be aiming for 20 to 25 in 2004. If either one is significantly higher this time next year, trust me, that means he had a bad year.