Kasey, there is a point to non-title matches. MVP had his chance at the title at WrestleMania and dropped the ball. The idea here is that the champion or Teddy Long or who ever decided to go ahead with this match (in the magical Kingdom of Smackdown!... not in real life), thought that MVP needed to prove himself before getting another title match, which is completely legitimate. MVP just lost his opportunity at WrestleMania, why would he have another one a week or two later without really proving that he deserved one?
Yes, I know he dropped the ball. Then he should be fighting other contenders for the belt, and Benoit should be defending his title against the next top guy. The champion's purpose is to defend the belt...not to piss away airtime in matches that have zero weight to the fate of the title at that given moment. The title is to be defended, rather than set on the timekeeper's table for "next time."
Granted he could be wrestling other people and working his way up the ladder, but it's completely understandable that the champion himself, who ever he might be, would give him the opportunity to prove himself.
Your first half of sentence says the best way for MVP to be booked. Have the contenders fight each other, but when Benoit is in the ring? He defends the belt. A fighting champion is always preferable for building title credibility as opposed to a guy who wrestles "let's all jump through some hoops" matches that are nothing more than a stopgap to fill TV time in the end. Perfect example would be RVD when he held the ECW TV title years back. He was unbeaten for like two years. All he did was work his ass off and make it so that by the time he dropped that belt, it was more prestigious than the World Title in that company. Competition and a solid champion is great. It doesn't really matter if the challenger jobs to the champ, as long as the match is worth pissing on and no one is booked to look weak. Just look at the irreparable damage they did to Orlando Jordan with his lightspeed tapouts to Benoit. It negated the competitive aspect behind the belt, and it also took any morsel of potential they'd built into Jordan and flushed it down the pisser. I don't know about everyone else, but I like a title scene that is competitive and that has great matches. Maybe I'm just weird.
The only problem I have with this particular non-title match is that Chris Benoit doesn't strike me as a person who wouldn't be defending his title in any case... but that could be explained rather easily, I would imagine, by a GM's reluctance to put a title match on the card that's doesn't have as much oomph or build-up, or meaning, as another one. So I don't see Benoit not defending his title as a problem with Benoit's character, but a higher-level decision, which is completely understandable.
(again, everything I said here takes place in the magical Smackdown! Kingdom and not in real life... as it would be explained fictionally on Smackdown!, or as I would imagine it would be)..
I'm all for the GM not putting a title match on the card and that's cool. However, saddle the champ of whichever division in a tag match or something of the sort. But when he's in the ring, doing singles wrestling, I always feel he should be defending his singles title. Otherwise, what is the point to him having it?
All this being said, and this is a separate point, the problem with WWE or any wrestling these days is that they don't have good enough storytellers... in the ring, behind the announce table, the writers... inclusively. The scenario, or explanation to certain events happening the way they do that I just explained needs to be provided to a lot of wrestling fans... and the lack thereof of these things is one of the main reasons WWE is suffering in the eyes of its "fans".
I'm in agreeance with you so much that it's stunning on this one. Everything has been collectively dumbed down and the logic is absent from the booking schemes. Lately I've thought that MVP and a couple of the other younger guys have been doing a pretty good job of upping their ring psychology and learning their match layouts a little better (so that they have a better build for once), but there are still deadweights like Batista, Cena, and Lashley stinking up the title scenes. I mean, right now, RIGHT NOW, we could have the teams book a series of matches for the World Heavyweight Championship that sees HBK go to Smackdown and fight The Undertaker in surefire classics again. Do we see that, though? Hell no. They have all the pieces to the puzzle...they just misplaced their eyes when it came time to put it together.
