WWE Superstars are based on former territory wrestlers

As stated earlier, the WWE is modeling its current stars on the best of the territories. This can be seen on a wrester to wrestler basis, and we began here on Pulse with the Raw roster. Let’s get to Smackdown and see how these stars match up with those of another era.

California, notably Los Angeles, with its heavy Mexican population, always had a Latino star like Ricky Romero who would excite fans and draw in that audience. Rey Mysterio keeps that tradition alive today. With Rey Mysterio going out, the WWE is hot shotting that position onto Eric Escobar, hence his sudden troubles with Vickie Guerrero.

Of course, California also had Roy Shire’s San Francisco promotion where the dazzling, almost effeminate wrestler, a “Classy” Freddie Blassie type was king. John Morrison is all about that type of glitz right down to the flashy moves and great work-rate. With a bit more work and planning Morrison will move up the card.

Also on the mid-card is a wrestler who was nearly given the good wrestler, but cocky heel push that the Gagne’s in AWA gave to Nick Bockwinkel (counter to the Verne Gagne push almost given to Swagger). In the course of this, the WWE lost faith in Dolph Ziggler, leaving the AWA role still floundering.

After years of being a failed Von Erich, Batista gets a new lease on life as the evil heel ruler. Of course, no one did that quite like Detroit’s Sheik. A dominant force, Sheik almost never lost, mixing his skill with cold cheating to make the crowd want him dead.

This is running counter to the big, tough guy face. In Mid-South territory before Mid-South, Bill Watts himself was on top of Leroy McGuirk’s territory long term, though rarely champion, just like the Undertaker is now. Limited mobility never messes with a great mind for the business. The Undertaker’s brother is the heel side to the Watts coin. Also rarely a champion and usually a heel, Fritz Von Erich fit in multiple spots, being effective without needing the ball, so to speak.

From here we have the strong character work and storyline/psychology heavy wrestling of CM Punk. Cut right from the Bill Dundee or Jerry Lawler mold, this Memphis heel has it all, even without looking terribly dangerous, from convincing offense to an over the top character and even a giant heel sidekick which was so common in Memphis where now there’s Luke “Festus” Gallows, there was once King Kong Bundy or Kamala. Unfortunately, he’s feuding with R-Truth, the current version of Koko B. Ware.

Finally, we come to Chris Jericho. Jericho the heel no one can stand can only be a take on the Atlanta Andersons. He and Edge were meant to be Gene and Ole Anderson, the dastardly duo that ruled Georgia for years. Georgia was left without that iteration of its representative when Edge went down with injury. Instead of Edge, Ole Anderson, the miserable prick, picked up an enforcer, a much bigger Arn Anderson… the Big Show to be his tag partner.

This leaves two major territories for the WWE to fill. First is Championship Wrestling in Florida. The three options from here are Dusty Rhodes (the beloved common man, filled in by Jeff Hardy before… well, you know), Kevin Sullivan (the evil devil worshipper), and Jack Brisco (the perfect wrestler). Of these, Brisco is most likely to be filled, as Bryan Danielson is coming in and is a near perfect match. The other is, of course, the AWA, the spot the WWE can’t seem to fill. Since Swagger and Ziggler apparently aren’t doing the job and Nigel McGuinness wasn’t brought in to be the AWA’s Billy Robinson, perhaps a tough guy a la Dick the Bruiser can be had in Drew McIntyre.