Re: Former creative writer John Piermarini's opinion on Swagger's promo skill as the
I can safely say he's the most mishandled guy in the promotion, probably since... I don't know who. A certain poster around here would say MVP, I know that much. ;/
Seriously, the only way for his insta-push to work--unless they had an ace in the hole like they did with Sheamus following his first reign with the Triple H feud, and even then you have to keep pressing down on the gas some following that--was to give him a lengthy reign. It's hard for me to convey how much I believe Smackdown screwed the pooch in 2010 beginning with the inept booking of Swagger's reign in particular. Swagger is booked like a chump, drops his championship to Rey Mysterio (apparently over money grumbling issues once again, so Mysterio could be satisfied), who is once again a thoroughly inconsequential champion, dropping it to Kane after only a month, who takes it for five months. Kane, during that time, is allowed to be the one heel champion in ages who's allowed to look and act like a monster. He beats The Undertaker three times in a row on pay-per-view. Kane is suddenly entrenched as a supervillain of sorts; sure, the matches and feud stank but he was built-up. Who gets to benefit from all of that hard work on Kane's behalf? What young star does WWE turn to, to slay the monster? Well, of course, Edge, because he could really use a solid round number of championship reigns in the history books. And the worst part of all is that none of Kane's heat that he accumulated from his monster run was passed on to any young star(s), it was just The Kane Show, and then the Kane, Edge & Paul "KAAAAAAANE!" Bearer Show. And now that Edge, a face, is champ, it's given WWE the green light to... yes, you guessed it, push another heel to the top!
Pretty much everybody involved was screwed in some way, shape or form, and for what? To relive the Kane/Undertaker feud for the hundredth time? Their feud didn't sell, Smackdown's gates were very much down during that time and the buyrate numbers for Night of Champions and Bragging Rights in particular are pretty poor. Not to mention, they couldn't even wrap it up the way they envisioned doinng so because lo and behold, Taker got injured yet again.
Essentially, Smackdown wasted a year, between jerking Swagger up and down (Lita/Edge/JR Wrestlemania X7 reference FTW!), squeezing CM Punk to the point that he had to move to Raw to be resuscitated (unbelievable considering how hot he was at the beginning of the year), reliving an Attitude Era feud and giving us the unanimously-voted Worst Feud of the Year to close '10 out. Let's hope 2011 is a better year for the blue brand.
