By Richard Gardner, Torch specialist

Please, it's time to stop the anonymous Raw General Manager gimmick. The audience booing every time Michael Cole leaves his desk to read from the MacBook Pro should be a clue to WWE that not only is the gimmick not working, it's antagonizing the fans.

There's nothing wrong with having an anonymous GM, per se. A good example would be a championship committee that never appears on television. But, I believe the execution of the anonymous Raw GM has been dreadful.

There's good heat and bad heat. For example, the sheer hatred shown by the fans at Bash at the Beach 1996 towards Hulk Hogan was good heat. The sheer apathy shown by the audience when Vince McMahon put on a match between a Donald Trump and a Rosie O'Donnell lookalike was definitely bad. The WWE writers don't seem to be able to discern between the two, with the current GM gimmick falling into the latter category.

The GM role seems to be fertile breeding ground for bad heat. Monotone announcer Mike Adamle had even less personality than the MacBook Pro that is in charge these days, yet he was put in a position that required him to be involved in the opening segment of Raw every week. The celebrity guest host gimmick regularly produced the sort of cringe-inducing comedy that could serve as a case study on why wrestling isn't as popular as it used to be.

The irony of this continued reliance on authority figures on both Raw and Smackdown is that they are not required. Fans should be able to comprehend why matches are taking place because of the way the shows are booked. Matches and stipulations spelled out clumsily at the beginning of every show is a hallmark of bad storytelling. Eliminating the General Manager position doesn't seem to be an option to the WWE creative team, to the point where a laptop in currently in charge while WWE decides who the next GM will be.

And what exactly was the point of teasing some "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and Roddy Piper catchphrases in the emails Cole has read? Austin would never go near a storyline so ridiculous. And WWE is dangerously raising fans's expectations in such a way that will backfire spectacularly when the GM turns out to be Hornswoggle or another choice of equal stupidity.

One thing I have noticed about the mystery GM is the speed in which the person can converse with John Cena and other wrestlers via email. Narrowing down wrestling personalities to those who have a typing speed of several hundred words per minute should be the first step that WWE Superstars take in finding out the identity of the GM.

Retiring the General Manager role completely would force WWE's writers to be more creative and book their angles more logically. But, in the meantime, if anyone accidentally spills a drink over the Raw GM laptop, I will not shed any tears. Not even if it invalidates its warranty.

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