By Wade Keller, PWTorch editor

The General Manager in WWE has become a booking crutch. On Friday's Smackdown, Booker T actually gave away a World Title shot via a random draw of all names in a tumbler.

A World Title match was given out to a random person.

WWE didn't even try to hide the absurdity of the concept, since the first name drawn was Santino. He got hurt when Sheamus tried to teach him the Brogue Kick. Sheamus didn't kick him by mistake; Santino pulled a hamstring or something. Yes, Booker T's genius G.M. decision led to someone getting a World Title shot who was a comedy lower card figure who almost never wins, and who ended up injured doing essentially a stretching exercise with his leg.

With Santino out, the next person drawn was Ricardo Rodriguez, who isn't even officially a wrestler. He hasn't been presented on TV as a wrestler, yet Booker T threw his name into the tumbler as being worthy of a World Title shot if his name came up.

Ricardo also got injured when Big Show slapped him. So with Ricardo out, that left Alberto Del Rio being handed the match by Booker for no apparent reason other than the little known, long forgotten "Best Friend Rule" (you know, where if a no. 1 contender - in this case Ricardo - gets hurt, his best friend automatically is first in line to replace him in a World Title match. It's on page 32 of the Official Wrestling Rulebook.).

Then Del Rio went on to face Big Show, and the match didn't even have a finish. Nothing was announced. The show just ended. Could more have been done in two hours to undermine the very notion that a World Title match is a big deal?

Throughout all of this, the dimwitted Josh Mathews and usually sharp-tongued JBL just sat back and called it as if it was all very reasonable. (JBL did manage to complain about Dolph Ziggler's Money in the Bank briefcase being put at stake against John Cena at the last PPV, so it's not like he's timid about this stuff.)

Booker T's decision-making was grounds for firing. (By the way, when I write this type of thing, some of the less seasoned readers write: "Hey, Keller, your boss should fire you. Wrestling is fake, so why would Booker be fired? It's all just scripted." Understand, my stating Booker's actions are "grounds for firing" is in the context of believing WWE is presenting a product that should make sense, and just as wrestlers are suspended for heinous acts, a G.M. should be reprimanded or suspended or fired for being incompetent, in a storyline sense.)

I'm a fan of Booker T as G.M. I'm just not a fan of how he is scripted. For all I know, he read the script and shook his head at how stupid it all was. Or, more likely, he just did what he was told and didn't think much about it at all. He doesn't seem like the type to sweat this kind of thing.

In any case, this is one example of many where the G.M. character has become a crutch for bad and lazy booking. There are just too many arbitrary or nonsensical decisions being made. Why did The WWE Board, given Vickie Guerrero's track record, decide she was a good interim candidate to run Raw?

The G.M. character also often is just making up matches as he goes along during the show. The very act of just making up matches during the show undermines the idea that matches are important and wrestlers need time to prepare. Yes, it would take some planning by Vince McMahon & Creative to announce matches ahead of time. But even if Vince McMahon & Creative didn't write the show until ten minutes before showtime, the announcers could pretend all the of the matches were planned at least days earlier and wrestlers had time to prepare and scout.

G.M.s don't sell PPVs. They don't sell house show tickets. And their very presence as weekly fixtures leads to lazy booking and a show-structure that undermines matches seeming important. They take up TV time that could be used for more important things.

Booker T, Teddy Long, and Vickie Guerrero (and even at times John Laurinaitis) all played their parts well during 2012 when called upon, so this isn't a case of the G.M.s doing a bad job. It's just a bad concept that's been overused and leads to lazy booking. Without the G.M. characters as a crutch to "book on the fly" and make stupid decisions just to fill a two-hour show, Vince McMahon & Creative would be forced to discipline themselves to book a more solid, logical product.

The G.M. could still exist in an entirely different role, similar to Jack Tunney back in the day, where they appear only for major announcements such as who the no. 1 contender at the next PPV will be or to discipline a wrestler who has gotten out of hand. If Booker were still Smackdown G.M., he could even occasionally be interviewed to get his thoughts on a controversial referee decision or react to criticism over a decision he made regarding who he named as no. 1 contender for a title. But the "make it up as they go along" weekly fixture version of the G.M. has played itself out and enabled poor booking and scripting of the weekly TV shows.

(Wade Keller is founder and supervising editor of PWTorch.com and MMATorch.com. He began Pro Wrestling Torch in 1987, starting as a print newsletter and expanding since into a website, mobile apps, and podcasts.)

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