BY WADE KELLER, PWTORCH EDITOR

I talked on the PWTorch Livecast last week about Khama's promo on last week's Raw. I've gotten a number of emails and Twitter messages regarding the alternative scenario I created that make it worth my expanding and clarifying my points of view here...

PWTorch Livecast listener Brain J. Adkins sent this:

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So, you think it would have been better to have the anonymous RAW G.M. suspend Kharma? Let's say they had done that. The reason you give was to show the heels that there are consequences to their vile actions. Also,you wanted them to act like they didn't know how she got in the building nor why she's there because she's doesn't work there!? Are you serious with this!? This is the type of bad writing you criticize others for.

If the RAW G.M. wanted to punish the heel, why wait until after she had attacked more than one Diva?

Why wait until that week? Why not suspend her the first time she attacked someone?

Why hadn't the G.M. done more to other heels who have done worse? Why single out her?

If she doesn't work there how DID she get in the building?

Why didn't security stop her?

How would you explain that since even the G.M. didn't know how she got in?

Shouldn't she be in jail for assault and battery since this wasn't a match? (You've asked this before especiially of Russo's writing-and rightfully so.)

The way WWE went with it by allowing Kia Stevens to tell the truth turned out to be brilliant. It added a new, fresh take to a character that otherwise would have been one dimensional. I hope she has great success when she comes back.

Brian J. Adkins

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All fair questions, so let me use your email as a launching point for expressing my views here.

First, for those who didn't hear my Livecast comments or read the PWTorch Newsletter, here's the basic background...

I believe that it was a jarring change of character, too sharp of a turn in other words, for this non-speaking, maniacally laughing seeming crazy certainly mysterious lady to suddenly turn into a kind, soft-spoken woman announcing her dream of becoming a mother had just come true.

I believe that WWE went with this storyline, not because it was best for business, but because they got too excited to introduce "reality" into a TV character and decided they needed an explanation for her sudden exit after more two months of vignettes and run-ins.

My philosophical belief on pro wrestling is that there's almost never a benefit to introducing "real world truth" into a storyline, a character, or a TV show just because it's real. I've used the example of a TV show character suddenly, jarringly being rewritten to introduce some real-life issue into the TV show. If a character on, say, "Game of Thrones" was going through a divorce or had to care for an injured relative, there would be zero reason to introduce that into their TV character. Kharma was a WWE TV character.

The only reason to introduce a pregnancy storyline is if it'd best for her character, and using that logic, whether she was pregnant or not in real life, if the Kharma character being pregnant was best for her character, then by all means introduce that aspect. But if she's pregnant in real life and there's no on-air benefit, or at least the negatives outweigh the positives, then don't do it.

My belief is that there are more negatives than positives. Kharma was as compelling a new character as I've seen in a while, generating a lot of buzz. People wanted to know where this Barbie-decapitating maniacally laughing mold-breaking "Diva" was headed. Now we'll never know.

I proposed an alternative scenario.

All WWE had to do was suspend her for her run-ins. Kharma could have headed to the ring last week after another Divas match. Suddenly a swarm of security could have come out and blocked her. The Raw G.M. could then have announced that he had warned her that she had two strikes and she'd be suspended if she walked out to the ring unauthorized once more. He could say his punishment, in order to set an example for the type of respect he demands and law and order he wants restored in WWE, she is suspended for one year.

There are variations of this that would work. He could have claimed that when he and Teddy Long authorized the vignettes airing, she hadn't been assigned to brand yet nor had she been officially booked for a match yet. He could have explained that therefore she wasn't even officially part of either Raw or Smackdown yet, but she was allowed backstage to negotiate with both G.M.s. The details can vary, but the essence of my alternate scenario was this pregnancy in real life was an opportunity to assert a sense of order and authority again in WWE in a way that would bring back something missing from pro wrestling.

Back when Bill Watts was hired as the vice president of WCW in the early 1990s, he banned moves off the top rope. He was criticized for being terribly out of touch. As a wrestler and promoter in the 1970s and 1980s moves off the top rope were illegal in most territories. A heel would be "cheating" if he managed to come off the top rope behind the ref's back. That gave a sense to viewers that moves off the top rope were so dangerous, they had to be made illegal, and if a heel did it, he was causing potential great harm to his opponent.

By the time Watts was hired, he had been out of wrestling for a few years and during that time the Top Rope Move Genie had been let out of her bottle. Top rope moves were now expected and anticipated by fans, who saw them as a new way for wrestlers to take athleticism in pro wrestling to a new level. It wasn't a heel move, it was a babyface move. The most athletic wrestlers were usually babyfaces and they dazzled fans with the top rope moves. At the time, that included "Flyin'" Brian Pillman's top rope bodyblock. The WWF had been allowing top rope moves for years at that point, too, including Ricky Steamboat's top rope bodypress and top rope chop, and before that, Randy Savage's spectacularly executed top rope elbow.

Watts's motivation wasn't to dumb down pro wrestling and make it more boring. He was just unaware how integral a part of babyface wrestler routines top rope acrobatics had become. His heart was in the right place and philosophically he had a good point that stands today. That is: If you don't have rules, heels can't get heat for breaking them. Without heel heat, you lost the major selling point of pro wrestling matches, which is fans salivating at their favorite babyfaces getting revenge. Without cheating heels, heels cease to be heels, and instead they turn into merely people willing to get ahead by doing whatever they are allowed to get away with. It's like Jesse Ventura (a heel commentator) said: "It ain't cheating unless you get caught."

That's why I've been so disappointed with babyface commentators lately, such as Booker T and Taz. When a heel cheats, someone needs to speak out and call them out for it. Booker T actually praised Sheamus for attacking Kofi Kingston from behind, saying you gotta do what'll get you ahead. Well, how are fans supposed to rally behind Kingston when Sheamus is being portrayed as the wrestler who's more hungry, more determined, and more assertive?

So, going full circle back to Kharma, this was a rare opportunity for an authority figure to set an example that there are ground rules for conduct. Having an untenured, unassigned (to a roster) wrestler attacking other wrestlers will not be tolerated. By taking advantage of her real-life situation, he could have issued a stern example by keeping her off TV for a full year. Then when she returned in a year, the anticipation to see this intriguing Kharma character would still be there, perhaps greater than ever. In the mean time, and forever more, fans would get a little adrenaline rush every time a heel illegally ran in on a match or after a match. It would bring back something more than one generation of fans have lost out on, which is that feeling that a heel is going to be in trouble for acting in ways that, by definition, makes him a heel.

Unlike with Bill Watts and the top rope scenario, it's a genie that can be put back in the bottle. Heels acting without consequences is damaging the ability to tell compelling, effective stories in the context of pro wrestling. It raises the bar of what heels have to do to become "heelish" and get that vital heel heat from fans that leads to "asses in seats." You have run someone over with a car to get fans to think a heel went too far. I'm still waiting for Booker T to excuse it as being "assertive and opportunistic" for Del Rio and Ricardo to injure Big Show with a car and be proud of it.

Every other storytelling genre, be it TV series, movies, fiction books, even reality TV, they all have heels. They are heels or villains because they violate viewers' sense of what's right, what's fair, what's justice, what's acceptable. The reason you root for a hero on TV or in movies or in a book to prevail is that you identify with his values and ways of living his life. Maybe someone at your work gave sexual favors to get ahead and they got a promotion instead of you. Maybe someone at your work lies to get ahead or has a family member in high places to help them get ahead and they take advantage of that and don't carry their fair share of the work. That's cheating. And pro wrestling is a way to root against cheating and cheer for the hero who has values and is good enough that he doesn't have to cheat to succeed.

If pro wrestling promoters (writers, bookers, whatever) got back to the basics and stopped trying to be some oddball reality-scripted-sports hybrid that's "so revolutionary" and "so sophisticated" that it can't possibly live by the time-tested and effective basic storytelling tenets that go back thousands of years and are the core of essentially every drama ever told, fans would have a better product to watch each week. Embrace the simplicity of the pro wrestling formula in the macro, and then make it "interesting" by inserting interesting contemporary characters and great athleticism into the micro. In other words, be creative and groud-breaking in how characters are portrayed. Keep up with the times by making sure characters are contemporary and plugged society's latest trends. But keep that big picture structure in place. Have rules. Enforce rules. Decry cheating. Put fair and honest achievement on a pedestal. Portray winning a title as a symbol of success, and heap shame on those who hold the title without honor.

Promoters and writers today run from the very basic structure that should be the biggest asset of pro wrestling. There are good guys, bad guys, a set of rules, titles to chase, and riches, acclaim, and fame to come with holding that title. Then it's as simple as promoting "the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat." Let the wrestlers themselves be the stars, not the writers who are trying to reinvent something that doesn't need reinventing, or twist and shape the pro wrestling genre into something it's not and something it can't be and doesn't need to be, such as "reality TV."

Give us babyfaces who act in admirable ways that match our sense of fairness, have heels who aren't quite as good as the babyfaces so they need to cheat to get ahead or at least stay even, and then have them do battle in a setting where there are rules to assure that "the better man will win in the end." It's that simple. Nothing from any wrestler's real life being added to a TV show is necessary to tell thousands of interesting stories of "good vs. bad" that viewers can connect to and relate to.

The Kharma situation, as I saw it, was an example of the tendency throughout this industry in recent years to go down the wrong path, "mark out" for a "chance to introduce real life," and thus lose sight of the very basics of what draws: Fans paying to see a wrestler they like who stands for what they stand for beating up and showing up and getting revenge against a wrestler who doesn't stand for what they stand for and has to cheat to stay even or get ahead. Pro wrestling is escapist entertainment, and giving fans the satisfaction of seeing that story told never gets old as long as the wrestlers themselves are interesting characters who can deliver a great show inside of the ropes.

P.S. - Brian wrote at the end of his email that Kharma's promo introduced a brilliant new dimension to her otherwise one-dimensional character. The day that WWE needs to rely on something happening in real life to make their characters something better than "one-dimension" is the day WWE should shut down and let someone else run the pro wrestling industry. They shouldn't be waiting around for "real life" to give them interesting traits. And it's a rare coincidence when real life will match up with what is best for that fictional on-air character. In this case, I'd argue real life completely undid everything that was compelling about the Kharma character, who was just starting to reveal herself before this jarring 180 degree turn. I hope they make the best of this year one year from now, but abandoning the Kharma character as it was first conceived was unnecessary, and more so a glaring example of the wrong turn this industry has taken in the last ten years or so.

Please comment below and send any comments or questions to kellewade@gmail.com.

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