This Is My Job

Green. Jobber. Enhancement talent. Whatever you wanna call ‘em I want more of ‘em. Back in the day you could turn on the WWF or WCW Saturday Night and see some dude who had his name announced during the commercial break fight against a star and be totally satisfied with it.

You didn’t care where he was from, what his finisher (if any) was, or where he was before. You just wanted to see your favorite wrestler beat him and add a little extra stank on his finisher.

Nowadays you have star versus star. That seemed cool for a while. We actually got used to it. It used to be only at PPV’s or very special occasions where we could see the kind of matches we see weekly. And we’ve become spoiled by it. We’re used to seeing HHH and Undertaker often. This should not be the case. We should have to ask ourselves “When will I get to see this guy again?!” instead of “He needs to take some time off.” Absence makes the heart grow fond and this is especially true with wrestling. When a worker is gone for an extended amount of time only because he is suspended or hurt something is very wrong.

During Goldberg’s streak he beat all kinds of jobbers. Yes, a large amount of his streak was because he fought “Lightning Foot” Jerry Flynn every Saturday, but that’s beside the point. All we wanted to see was our guy in action. Now we get squashes at the expense of someone else’s career. The art of making an opponent look good in defeat is damned near gone. Now jobbing is a part of storylines. Gillberg, Spike Dudley, Colin Delaney, and Barry Horowitz.

These guys made careers out of being punching bags. With Delaney it is being done at the wrong place at the wrong time. Using wrestlers from "Raw" and "SmackDown!" does nothing but hurt the ECW wrestlers he eventually defeats. Are you telling me that Jesse and Festus can lose repeatedly to The Miz and Morrison but Delaney can get close and even get hardcore on their asses?

There has always been the reliable jobber and the “Holy crap, did that just happen?!” jobber. Horowitz and The 1-2-3 Kid were reliable. You saw them get beat every week but they looked good doing it. You can’t tell me you didn’t “O!” when The Kid beat Razor Ramon. That shit was legitimately shocking. Or when Goldberg beat Hugh Morris. When he kicked out of the No Laughing Matter I thought he made a mistake. Years later and we’re still talking about the guy.

There is a place for jobbers in wrestling even though we have been conditioned to think there isn’t. “There isn’t enough TV time!” “The roster is too big as it is!” People, at one point there was less than half of the TV time and we somehow managed to not only get by just fine, but have better matches and feuds. Or use them for their new name: “Enhancement talent.” Use them to make your current or rising stars look good.

There is no damned reason why Elijah Burke should be sacrificed to make Kane look strong. Use one of those guys that Kofi Kingston beats every week to make Kane look good. Hell, throw two of ‘em in with him! To me it seems like companies are using one shovel to dig two graves and that’s not fair to either wrestler.

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