The Next Generation...

Anyone who's read my last blog (On The Ropes, I think it's deleted now) knows I'm a huge fan of the current pool of young stars the WWE are offering, particularly Cody Rhodes, Dolph Ziggler, Seth Rollins and Wade Barrett. I know a lot of people have recently started taking notice of Dolph Ziggler since he started pushing around the main event picture and picked up the Money In The Bank briefcase, and I have to admit, until he aligned himself with AJ Lee and Big E Langston and started to branch out on his own rather than hanging around Vickie Guerrero, I wasn't completely sold on him. I wasn't one of those fans that hated him just cause he was a heel, but I just thought his character was a little dry and we'd seen it all before in a certain Mr Perfect, however recently I've began to see more of a Shawn Michaels kind of character in him than a Mr Perfect kind of character, however the youngster I'm most sold on and have been for a while is Cody Rhodes.

Cody strikes me as a forerunner for the new generation of up and coming stars, he really looks like the one who can be the main guy, I think his character would work on many levels as a face or heel, he has a lot of in ring talent (clearly it runs in the blood) and he seems to have a real passion for everything he does in the ring. Most people who know me and my feelings on wrestling know I'm a huge Cody Rhodes fan, he's definitely up there with CM Punk and Randy Orton as my favorites. His promo work is totally solid, we seen that displayed very well during his feud with Rey Mysterio leading up to WrestleMania XXVII when he wore his face mask, he can be a really solid heel in that kind of character, a borderline heel/face type of character or a really solid face which in my opinion I think he's bordering on turning into. Right now I think the WWE is undergoing a change much like it did in the mid-90's, people are turning against the top faces and are beginning to cheer for the bad guys. Even though I guarantee that we won't see another 'attitude era' as far as crowd reaction (well, what qualifies as a crowd reaction these days) we're seeing a lot more of the heels cheered (Ziggler, Sandow, Rhodes, Prime Time Players) and the faces booed (Cena, Sheamus, Mysterio) simply because the older audience are sick of these 'Fantastic Face Friends' being shoved down our throats. 

As far as the direction of the current stars ago, I think Cena and Punk may actually becoming toward the end of their careers, Punk has said numerous times that he won't wrestle past 40, he's 34 now. As far as Cena, it's only a matter of time before he goes bone dry, it's obvious now that people are sick of him, WWE creative seem to be giving in and (with the exception of MITB, Royal Rumble and WrestleMania) are having him wrestle less main event matches. He seems to be fading away, and even sometimes when he does wrestle main event matches, he loses. It's just a matter of time until he fades down the card, and I think when he does, Sheamus will be the guy to take over. Right now everyone is a fan of Sheamus, he's a cool guy, a real decent person, with a good character and decent ring work, but it seems to me like he'll be on top for a long time to come then his fans will go the same direction as Cena's fans did and start to hate on him. It's a vicious cycle in this era, many fans just get too sick too quickly and the top stars are no longer top stars because the crowd hate them no matter what. 

Seth Rollins meanwhile has been impressing me a lot over the past year or so, he's very good in the ring and has decent promo skills, and to me he looks like the only guy in The Shield who can actually be a main event wrestler one day. His work is solid as you'd expect, his promos could maybe use a little work but he's definitely leaps and bounds ahead of anyone on NXT at the moment, there is a small handful of NXT wrestlers that seem like they will make it into the main roster (Adrian Neville [PAC], Kassius Ohno [Chris Hero], Corey Graves, Bo Dallas are just a few) and if WWE really is looking for their next top star, they shouldn't have to look much further than NXT. In fact, some weeks I find myself looking forward more to watching NXT than Raw or SmackDown, it's definitely more focused on sheer quality of the matches and the wrestlers ring work, rather than entertainment and promos, and stupid WWE App, and Twitter and Tout advertisements. 

So in conclusion, I think in the next few years we'll start to see a big change in the WWE landscape, the emergence of Ziggler, Rhodes, Barrett, and others, Cena and Punk dropping down the card, while Sheamus becomes the face of the company (interesting that I never really spoke about Orton, see my next blog post), and I honestly think that some of these "NXT rookies" could become major players in the wrestling business...unless WWE do what they managed to do with John Morrison, Shelton Benjamin, Carlito, Chris Masters...you know where I'm going with this,

Until next time,
Andrew.