Demise of the Jobbers

Barry Horowitz, Lenny Lane, Barry Darsow, what do all of these men have in common?

Overenthusiastic Dumbguy: All there names are Barry!

No, one of there names are Lenny. Okay you give up....

Overenthusiastic Dumbguy: They were all part of a tag-team!

No, that's....

Overenthusiastic Dumbguy: Yes there were Lenny Lane still tags with Lodi as the West Hollywood Blondes, Barry Darsow was part of Demolition, and Barry Darsow surely tagged with another guy at one time or another.

Okay I'm just about sick and tired of you the point I was trying to make before I tried to be funny was that what all three of those men have in common is that they were jobbers. Yep they did the job. {Please don't insert any sexual reference in after this quote.]

But the newer fans have yet to see these great jobbers in action. They were never able to watch a WCW Saturday Night with Barry Darsow coming out to the ring in his Peeble Beach duds, and challenges his opponent that evening to a putting contest only to be beaten in the putting contest, and use his putter to gain the early advantage on his adversary, only to job once again as the man makes a mammoth comeback and goes onto big and better things. Thus the live of the jobber to give his opponent the win and then go back into the shadows as his opponent slowly gets a push and works his way up the ladder and achieves greatness. The jobber doesn't complain he just simply does his "Job" and moves onto the next town to do his "Job" in another place, to elevate yet another rising star.

These brave men known as Jobbers don't get the credit they so rightfully deserve from the pro wrestling community. Without the jobbers of the world there would be no stars, for who would know who was who? The Mid-Carders, the Curtain Jerkers, and the Main Event Type players would all be jumbled up into one big pot of pro wrestling gumbo with out any clear cut levels of where a professional wrestler is at.

So when pro wrestling loses the jobbers, it loses everything, it loses the ratings, it loses a certain degree of humor, in fact without jobbers pro wrestling loses it's identity. To fully understand how pro wrestling began to lose it's identity we must travel back in time to a time that I like to call the DEMISE OF THE JOBBERS

Demise of the Jobbers

The Monday Night Wars are what brought about the demise of the jobbers.

Of course the Monday Night Wars have been broken apart by wrestling historians as perhaps the greatest thing to ever happen to pro wrestling. While it was great seeing the airwaves bringing the nWo forward, the creation of DX and the rise of "Stonecold" Steve Austion historians often over look one minor intangible, but however minor it may be it would come back to huant the world of pro wrestling far after the Monday Night Wars were won by Vince McMahon.

The minor intangible that everyone overlooked was the jobbers.

With the all out Monday Night Wars between WCW and WWF, neither promotion had any television time they could devote to the perennial jobbers except of course on WCW Saturday Night where jobber would battle jobbers. With both the main promotions throwing everything they had out there were no more room for jobbers on Nitro or Raw, so we never got to see the great squash matches.

Both promotions began giving away PPV style shows out away for free every Monday night, and everyone knows those jobbers just don't make it to PPV's so by giving the fans what they wanted every week hurt the product now. Because now people keep wanting more and more........instead of being happy about a huge match between the Rock and Chris Jericho they want more and more and more.......everyone's become much to greedy all because the jobbers have all but become extinct.

How the product is hurt now by the killing off of the jobbers

Without the jobbers the lines have become blurred, no one knows who the best is anymore, because everyone's almost on an even playing field. Chris Jericho squares off against the Big Show and that's just not supposed to happen, instead of having your World Champion be thrown around by some guy that the fans don't care about wouldn't it be smarter to put Chris Jericho in the ring against Barry Horowitz and let Chris Jericho absolutely decimate his opponent. It would lend Jericho credibility and it would help in other ways as well.

By placing the top tier players against less then worthy opponents it will build anticipation towards PPV's where the top stars will be battling each other, think about how much more people would appreciate a good Kurt Angle Vs. Steve Austin match if they only got it every month or so, instead of seeing it nearly every show. PPV's would become special, Main Eventers would be looked upon as such, squash's would be come common place again, and people would be able to remember great matches, and feuds could be built better then ever before, and why? Because of the jobbers.

So keep your nWo reformation, screw bringing in Goldberg, I'll take Jobbers any day to save the state of pro wrestling.