Hello everyone! This is my second blog here. In this blog I will try to take a look at the year of 2011 in WWE (obviously, see title) by comparing it a bit to 2010

Was it good/bad? What did we get out of this year? Where did WWE get better/worse? I'll try and divide things into different categories (might have to make this a blog series, not sure yet)

We will start by taking a look at the "lowest ranks" in WWE ..

The Jobbers

When I say the word jobber, I think of the usual WWE Superstars wrestlers like JTG, Heath Slater, Trent Baretta and so on. But another name comes to mind as well: John Morrison! At the beginning of the year (actually the very first RAW of 2011) Morrison had a shot at the WWE title against The Miz.
And from there .... It went downhill, he had another WWE Title shot at Extreme Rules, until he got injured and "taken out" by R-Truth. Since then, he didnt really win many matches and turned into a jobber. My point is, this year we lost a superstar with great potential, even though he might return?
if you're a Morrison fan, you can hope that he returns in 2012, the question is, if he will ever break into the main event? Well ... Look where Mark Henry was in 2010 ... Which brings us to the next topic

The Breakout Stars

While we lost 1 superstar with great potential, we began to see a lot of potential from other superstars.

Zack Ryder - Last year, this guy was doing nothing but jobbing on superstars, but the big turning point came, when he started Z! True Long Island Story, and began the Ryder Revolution. Today, he is the United States Champion. This year he proved, that if you work hard, you can go from jobber to US Champion!

Cody Rhodes - Last year, when Legacy broke up, everyone thought that Ted DiBiase was gonna be the next big star, from that group. But it turns out, that the people who said that (including myself) were oh so wrong.
This year, Cody Rhodes has beaten Rey Mysterio at Mania, and held the IC title for 141(+) days. I believe that in 2012, Cody Rhodes will definately be a World Champion!

Mark Henry - What was Mark Henry doing last year again ?? NOTHING! But this year, he turned heel, and had a loooooong reign with the World Heavyweight Championship (one of the best in recent years imo). WWE has tryed to push Henry many times, this year, it finally happened, and I was finally entertained by Mark Henry


Dolph Ziggler - This entire year has gone well, for Ziggler, at the beginning of the year, he feuded with Edge over the World Title, before going back to the US title and having great match after great match after great match, and on the first RAW of 2012, Ziggler is getting a WWE Title shot! The question is though .. Can Ziggler keep his heat without Vickie Guerrero? I think they will split up sometime in 2012, and we will find out. I think Dolph has potential to main event Wrestlemania 28, and he might not get the title on the first RAW of 2012, but a World Title is in his sights in 2012!


R-Truth - Was anyone else annoyed by R-Truths singing and dancing last year? ... I was ... But this year, he has been hilarious and actually entertaining, he even had a WWE title shot! He was also a part of a great tag team with The Miz! Truth's heel turn has definately been for the better, will he be World Champ in 2012 though? I doubt it ..


Now .. The question we can ask ourselves is .. will these guys become World Champions in 2012? Well ... We can take a look at the breakout stars from last year. The first one that comes to mind is Wade Barrett, who last year, was the leader of The Nexus, and had multiple WWE Title shots, but never got the title. In 2011 he didnt get the World Title either, but it looks like he might get one in 2012! Two other guys that comes to mind are Del Rio & Miz, look where they are today ... and what a year they had, so the future could look bright for at least two of these guys (in my opinion, definately Ziggler & Rhodes!)

But did WWE create as many stars this year as last year?

Hmm .. This year we had Henry become a World Champion, Ziggler & Rhodes becoming ready for a World Title, Zack Ryder became US Title material and R-Truth became relevant again and we lost John Morrison

Now if we look at 5 breakout stars from last year, we had: Miz who became a WWE Champion, Del Rio & Barrett who became ready for a World Title next year (even though Barrett didnt get one), Sheamus had 2 good runs with the title, and Daniel Bryan was pushed into the US title and we lost MVP

In my opinion, 2011's breakout stars looks a bit weak, compared to 2010's, so I guess 2010 wins on that note.


Epic Fails

Our next topic is Epic Fails, which is something nobody really likes to see, so the fewer the better! When I think of Epic Fails in 2011, 3 thing come to mind:

Michael Cole vs Jerry Lawler - Okay, going into Wrestlemania, I was actually okay with this, it was actually kinda entertaining, and I thought "Ok let King have his Mania moment and beat Cole up" ... but that didnt exactly happen, no ... the feud continued for 3 DAMN STRAIGHT PPV'S! I was already fed up with it, after their first match took so much time, and after Extreme Rules, I just wanted to kill both Cole and Lawler.

Kevin Nash's text message storyline - It created a mystery in the Wrestling World... "Who sent the text! Was it Vince, Stephanie, Triple H, someone else, who wants to take over WWE?????" ... It turned out that Kevin Nash sent the damn message to himself .. WTF, is the only thing I can say to that. Something, everyone was waiting to find out, became really really dumb

Sin Cara - When it was announced that Mistico was coming to WWE, I was excited (im a big fan of Lucha Style wrestling). He did a few botches in the beginning, but I didnt mind it too much, since I thought he needed some time to get used to WWE and all that ... But then ... He botched again .. and again ... and again, and in the end ... he became very uninteresting (the lights in his matches didnt help), he ended up entering a feud, with a fake Sin Cara, because Cara himself, got suspended, a feud that nobody really cared about. Finally he ended up botching again, and injuring himself for quite a while.


Now, I can try and compare this with 3 moments from 2010.
This year, WWE tried to push Sin Cara as a high flyer, but last year, they gave Evan Bourne a short lived push, which didnt last long either, and actually ended up being an Epic Fail, because of the fact that he main evented RAW once, beat Jericho at a PPV, but got absolutely nowhere.

Cole vs Lawler, lasted too long, but something that didnt last long in 2010, was Jack Swagger's title reign, WWE decided to give the World Title to a guy who was jobbing to Santino, not a smart choice, and the title reign didnt last very long, they should have let him keep the title for a while, or not gived it to him at all, epic fail.

The last Epic Fail from 2010, also created a lot of anticipation, like the Kevin Nash storyline ... It was when John Cena got "fired" after Barrett lost at Survivor Series to Orton. Now everyone was speculating, what was gonna happen with Cena??? It turned out that he came back the week after ... Another epic fail.


This one is pretty close, but I will say that 2011 had bigger epic fails than 2010, mainly because of Lawler & Cole.

So thus far its 2-0 for 2010, come back and read part 2 later, and see if 2011 was actually any good?

In part 2, I will take a look at the Announcers, The PPV's, The Matches and maybe more!


Hope you enjoyed this blog and it wasnt too long (okay maybe it was?)