Heat

I'm sure those of you who follow A1E are now aware that Josh (The Sergeant) has decided A1E isn't for him, and he's calling it quits. I have to admit that this is very disappointing. Josh has a ton of potential, and I think he tells a very good story with his promoing style. Unfortunately, he's not found the success that he was looking for in his results so far.

That's a decision everybody must make for themselves, and I'm certainly not going to sit here and second guess him. It's his decision alone.

That being said, I've heard through the grapevine that Josh was more perturbed with how he was portrayed in the card than the actual loss itself. He feels that he was made to look like a "bitch" to the Highland Park Social Club.

Now, let me just start off by saying that I readily admit this is hearsay. I got it at least third hand, so it's entirely possible that the story morphed by the time it got to me. However, the point I'm going to try to make with the rest of this post isn't meant to be directed at Josh specifically. It just gave me an example to use.

What is the big deal about getting treated like a "bitch" every now and then?

The other example of this that I remember in the recent past was during JA's feud with Jack Gilkison. Tom felt as if we, the BC, were making JA into Jack's "bitch" in the early part of the feud.

Of course we did. How many feuds have you seen in televised wrestling that started out with the face getting the upperhand? We try to make the heel look like the bastard he is. He beats down the face, probably more than once, to create the heat for the feud. That leads to the payoff when the face finally gets his revenge and puts the heel in his place.

Take, for example, the BigDog/Anarchy feud. That angle lasted for just over a year, and I can count on one hand (more like 2 fingers) the number of times BigDog actually got the upperhand in the entire thing. How many cards ended with Torment or Haven hanging or otherwise maiming BigDog? How many times was he sent to the hospital?

And yet, at the end of the day, he came back and got his revenge at Sudden Death. I don't know about everyone else, but I thought that was a fun little storyline, and I didn't mind taking the brunt of the beatings because it gave me fodder for promoing and allowed me to evolve the character a little bit.

"Heat" is never a zero sum game during a single show. We will never get into a situation where we're trying to salvage anyone's heat prior to the end of a single card. That's just not going to happen. People are going to get beat down, and they're going to get sent to the hospital. You're just going to have to trust us that we'll get your heat back down the road.

Now, some of this could come back to an issue I touched on in an earlier blog entry regarding "Matters of National Security". We keep things so quiet around here as far as plans for upcoming storylines that the general public often doesn't know what we have in store for them. It's hard for them to trust us to do right by them when they don't really know what's coming.

In Sarge's example specifically, he was in the middle of a little one man war against the Highland Park Social Club. Now first off, anytime you're in a war against the HPSC, you're going to get your ass kicked from time to time. You're battling 5 people. Sooner or later, we're going to coordinate all 5 guys into beating you down.

But, help was on the way. BigDog and Dan Ryan are starting to get into an issue with Chip Friendly and Slambo over the tag titles. JA has Richard Farnswirth for the World Title at Vengeance. There is plenty of anti-HPSC effort that's going on in the next couple of months. In fact, since Dave and Roger want a truly final blowoff for Dan Ryan and Haven, BigDog was going to be without a partner for the tag match at Vengeance, and the plan was for him to seek out The Sergeant to join him for that match.

I'm sure this is the first Josh has ever heard of that plan, which I think is unfortunate.

At the end of the day, I think there are things on both sides that can be done to help improve this. The players could give the BC a little more credit for understanding how to tell a story and trust that we're not going to bury your character. And we as the BC can be a little more open with the participants as to what we've got planned for them.