Building a new star Gunner vs. Andy from TE

[Dream Machine]

This week both Impact Wrestling and WWE made new stars for their promotions in Andy in winning Tough Enough and Gunner in Impact Wrestling.

Not superstars, not main eventers, not future legends, just new stars for their shows and one way was handled right and one way was handled wrong.

Impact Wrestling has Mr. Anderson & Gunner vs. Sting and Eric Young, which combines the main event feud with the TV title feud for the main event. In the end, Gunner pins Sting cleanly and didn't pull tights to get the cheap victory. After the match, Mr. Anderson, looking shocked over this, motions for Gunner to come back to the ring where he raises his hand in victory. After the match, during the post match interview, Anderson admitted Gunenr was not as good as Sting, which is true, but nothing else was done by anyone to bury Gunner on pinning Sting. Which in the end could help Gunner in Impact Wrestling and getting over with the fans in the long run.

Meanwhile on Raw, we have the finals of Tough Enough between Andy and Luke. Much like the Ultimate Fighter on Spike, the fans have taken an emotional interest in the winner since we have watched them both from Day 1 and by this time the plan should be to get that emotional involvement with Andy & Luke to help get them over in the WWE.

The fans seem genuinely into this segment and actually seem to care about Andy being announced as the winner. At which point Vince McMahon looks at his newest employee and questions if Austin should have chosen Luke to win instead. Andy then gets the taste slapped out of him by Vince, which he sold fantastically by making us believe a 60+ year old can slap that hard, which is then followed by a Stone Cold Stunner.

Watching this, I am wondering why do I care about Andy at this moment and more importantly why exactlyis Vince McMahon slapping his new employee for winning Tough Enough. Which leads to why exactly is Austin stunning him for winning??

If I am suppose to watch Tough Enough and care about who is on the show and their dream to win a WWE contract, isn't Vince's slap to Andy more like a slap to all of us for caring at all about him or Tough Enough in general.

I am not a booker, I am not claiming to be one, but if that was my promotion and I am going to slap the taste out of the winner, why I still don't know, I would have him no-sell it and take a step toward me like he was pissed off. Maybe use the Silent Rage nickname he has for something positive to start his career. I find it hard to believe that the crowd would not have popped like crazy for a no sell on the slap and walking toward Vince and leaving that arena wanting to see Andy and taking him seriously as a future star.

My point is obvious, for all the negative criticisms that Impact Wrestling gets, I find it hard to believe that this week that they did a much better job creating the potential for a new star then WWE did.

 

[Hulk Hogan's Brother]

WOW. What a classic piece of the phrase "grasping at straws" do we have here.

Andy getting stunned by Austin is not something that you should read too much into. It was Austin's way of saying "Welcome to the WWE". It was almost like an intitiation ritual. Also the winner of Tough Enough is supposed to win an FCW contract, not appear on TV right away. There is no telling when he will become a part of the main shows and by that time people will forget about this segment. It was just a fun segment that the fans loved because that is what they wanted Austin to do. There is more than enough time to build Andy up.

If you want to see a young star getting built up by the WWE, look at the manner in which WWE have built up Alex Riley. In a matter of weeks he went from a jobber to someone who is getting solid pops and could very believably defeat a former World Champion.

On the other hand Gunner is someone who has been with TNA for a long time but, to be honest, he hasn't been built up very well. He started out as a security guard for Jeff Jarrett and was nothing more than a jobber back then. Then he won the TV title in some three minute match that no one cared about and went on to defend his title in similar short matches. Two weeks ago he got defeated by a comedy jobber in Eric Young and now all of a sudden he is pinning Sting clean. How is that even believable? A guy whom no one ever cared about is suddenly pinning the biggest babyface in TNA and a legend. This is no way to build someone up and no one will care unless TNA follow this move up by booking Gunner well in the upcoming shows. And by booking him well I mean that they should give him some meaningful storyline and give his matches time so that people start caring for him. That seems unlikely though as TNA does not care for anyone who is not a main eventer. Their matches rarely exceed 5 minutes either.

Building someone is something that should be logical and needs a bit of time to be carried out. It is not accomplished in a matter of one show and that is why both your examples absolutely suck.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

When it comes to building young stars, I don't see how anyone could think TNA is even remotely credible at this point. It's been years since TNA built up anyone that can legitimately be thought of or called a star. Since Kurt Angle arrived in TNA, their strategy has been to sign as many well known or established former WWE, WCW or ECW talent they can and using the young guys on the roster to put over these already established guys.

When I look at Gunner, I see someone that I just don't give two shits about and that's TNA's fault. Not to say that WWE doesn't have guys like that on the roster and in a similar situation, I'm just picking out Gunner for the sake of this particular discussion. Gunner's schtick is supposed to be this well built guy with tattoos that slaps himself in the face, growls and makes all kinds of mean faces. I guess that means we're supposed to go along with TNA calling him intense. It's true that Gunner was the TNA Television Champion but look at the circumstances. The title is easily the most meaningless piece of crap in wrestling today, it's been pretty much worthless since it's creation. Look who he beat to win the title: Murphy & Rob Terry. Two of the biggest no talent scrubs not only on the TNA roster but in wrestling. Now, look at how he lost the title and who he lost it to: Eric Young lays down for him, he makes the cover only for Young to roll him up in a small package. Gunner has zero credibility right now and all his pinfall over Sting in the tag match did was make Sting look weak. After all, Eric Young is a comedy wrestler at this point and how can you take anyone seriously that jobs out to Young at this point in time.

As for Andy, I admit that I would have personally preferred for Austin & McMahon to have welcomed Andy in a realistic way. You know, behave like a couple of actual human beings for a change. Austin stunning Andy wasn't at all surprising. Austin has to stun at least one person whenever he appears on Raw. It's what he does, it's what's expected and it's what most of the fans want. Andy was exposed to an audience of about 5 million viewers last Monday, the live crowd was very much into the segment as a whole and he's gotten consistent exposure from Tough Enough, which had an average of about 2.5-2.6 million viewers each Monday night before Raw. Now does that mean that Andy will actually become a huge megastar? Only time will tell that. However, I think he has a much better shot than Gunner at this point in time.

 

[Dagger Dias]

Andy is going to be a star. They are going about it in a good way by having win Tough Enough and already make an impact that way. Gunner on the other hand, I couldn't care less about. He was boring as the security guard character and is still boring now. TNA/Impact Wrestling has done absolutely nothing to make me care about him. NOT A THING. Perhaps if he had started out as himself rather than that pointless security guard character then he would have started with a smaller "you're boring!" issue than the one he currently faces. Andy's build makes more sense and he is on the path to stardom because unlike Gunner he has already made an IMPACT (see what I did there?) and he has made the fans care. Something every star needs to be able to do in order to be built up further.