A good idea at a bad time

On the June 10 episode of WWE Friday Night Smackdown, Christian, having turned heel by striking down World champ Randy Orton with the title belt at the end of the previous week's show, turned his back on his long-time supporters, the "Peeps", claiming they "didn't get it".

In reality, they do get it, but the one who really doesn't get it is the one who signs Orton's & Christian's paychecks, Vince McMahon.

Turn the clock back to mid-April, and the sudden announcement by Edge that he had to retire due to some injury issues that had cropped up. Rather than risk being paralyzed, Edge chose to hang up the tights and go out a winner, his last official match having come 8 days earlier at Wrestlemania 27. Christian won a battle royal to earn the right to face Alberto Del Rio, who had already been given a rematch for the title at Extreme Rules on May 1.

Then, it gets rather dicey. Christian defeated Del Rio, but dropped the title to Orton two days later at a taping for the May 6 episode of Smackdown. Some websites wasted little time dropping an additional bombshell by reporting that the organizational plan all along, at least following the April draft, was to eventually put the title on Orton, regardless of who won at Extreme Rules. It was a panic move that left fans up in arms, but as long as McMahon continues to pull the puppet strings and manipulate his audience, you're going to have a scenario come up as it did over the last two Fridays.

Some say that Christian performs better as a heel. Fine, I won't dispute the point, but the fact of the matter is that McMahon and his over-maligned creative staff had a feel-good story that could've lasted through the summer sitting right in front of them, allowing them to relax a tad and allow Orton to wait until, say, Summerslam in August, to win the title. But, no. McMahon, as he has in the past, has become too dependent on Orton and, over on Monday Night Raw, John Cena, to be the standard bearers for the company. He continues to ignore one simple, salient detail about his audience. They're not all marks.

In truth, Christian, if you count his 2 NWA titles won while with TNA (2005-08), is now a 3-time World champion. WWE doesn't want to acknowledge anything accomplished outside their myopic pocket universe, and for that reason Christian has been forced to earn penance, if you will, and work his way back up the corporate ladder. A case could be made that he would eventually turn heel, but this was the wrong time.

On the flip side of the coin is R-Truth, who, like Christian, is a 2-time NWA champ (under his given name, Ron Killings). He turned heel while WWE was on their spring tour of England, and the results have been spectacular. His new persona as a paranoid, nearly deranged lunatic who thinks he's the victim of a conspiracy has won him some respect, but there is a subtext.

In a way, the conspiracy rants are a veiled reference to racism within the WWE. McMahon and his creative staff have pushed the race card in the past without success, usually because the writers have botched the execution of such angles. Rather than come right out and say he's been held back because of race, R-Truth is being portrayed as being delusional and deranged. Whether or not that wins him a WWE title at Capitol Punishment on June 19 in Washington remains to be seen. So far, he's gotten the better of John Cena, but come the PPV, either he gets the brass ring or ends up like, say for example, LeBron James, who came away empty handed when Miami lost the NBA title to Dallas in 6 games.

You can give credit to the creative staff for being clever, though the faux Presidential press conferences leading up to the PPV are over-the-top silly and are a rip-off of Coors Light's lame ad campaign that has run during football season the last 3 years. While R-Truth's heel turn freshened his character, and perhaps saved his job, turning Christian less than 2 months later was a mistake borne out of corporate complacency. Now, the onus is on McMahon. Either we get two new champions at the PPV, or one, or, at worst, none. If McMahon stays the course with his golden boys, Cena & Orton, he's likely to lose viewers rather than gain them. If he has Truth and/or Christian win, it gets people talking. Either way, they won't give him any credit. He doesn't deserve it anymore.