KELLER'S TAKE KELLER: Five reasons WWE and TNA should feature more jobbers in squash matches on TV Aug 8, 2007 - 3:23:00 PM

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By Wade Keller, Torch editor

WWE has been featuring a few more squash matches lately. Jobbers such as Nate Nickerson and Joey Blaylock got TV time. Not exactly household names. What's surprised me is that some readers have written in saying they don't want to see jobbers on TV. Not to sound too old, but back in the day in the 1980s (when Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair were the biggest stars and Sting had yet to start his career), jobber matches were still the norm. World Class Championship Wrestling broke the mold with their nationally syndicated show featuring marquee matches between the Von Erichs and Freebirds and others. But the WWF, NWA, AWA, and remaining territories filled their TV time with squash matches featuring stars versus jobbers. It wasn't bad. I've been a proponent of featuring more squash matches on TV. Here are a few reasons:

1 - A squash matches gives an established star, or especially a newer rising star, a chance to establish their personality and signature moves, including their finisher. It allows for a decisive win without the TNA specialty of creating an "excuse" for virtually every loss on TV, such as interference or distractions. A star can win decisively, cleanly, and in spectacular fashion.

2 - Squashes can be succinct without the losing wrestler losing anything - because he had nothing to lose to begin with. He's a jobber, after all. Mid-level wrestlers asked to lose on TV look really weak when they lose quickly, so sometimes the match is drawn out needlessly to give that lower card or mid-card wrestler a little offense when the point of the match should be to get the higher-level star some TV exposure.

3 - Jobbers are great fun! One of the great pastimes among wrestling fans in the 1970s and 1980s was talking about their favorite jobbers. In the AWA, we had Rooster Griffin and Tom "Rocky" Stone. In the NWA you had the Mulky Brothers. In the WWF, you had Rusty Brooks. Some jobbers rise to become top stars (such as The Hardys, Rick Rude, Arn Anderson). Other remain jobbers their entire careers. The loss of the quirky array of jobbers over the past 15 years has been a loss for fans.

4 - Hey, it's just a minute or two. Do you want to see Val Venis and Scotty 2 Hotty lose again, with a little offense thrown their way mid-match, or would you rather have a skinny oddity with weird hair who can bump like a madman? The goofier the jobber looks, the better and bigger and more spectacular the star looks by comparison.

5 - The idea that you're getting cheated when you see a jobber is backwards. Nothing is worse than seeing the same old familiar lower card wrestler being trotted out for another loss against a star. Even worse is when tag team wrestlers or cruiserweights are placed in the position that should be reserved for a jobber (most often a local indy wrestler with a good rep), thus damaging the stature of the other two underutlized divisions in WWE.

If I were TNA, I'd put a squash match in the middle of each show, giving lesser known names with huge star potential such as Black Machismo, Alex Shelley, and Sonjay Dutt a chance to show off their signature spots and personalities. I'd take that over Shelley & Chris Sabin jobbing in a two or three minute tag match to a team perceived by TNA management as higher on the totem pole because in another era they were in WWE every week.

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