Reverse the question Big Bri and you'll find your answer. How did Chris Benoit become viewed as a viable threat to compete for the Title at WM 20? The answer is through others working hard to puelevate his status and him over. From the guys on Smackdown, to winning the Royal Rumble and everything in between leading up to the big day. Everyone worked hard to get him to the point of appearing like 'Benoit Is For Real' to the average fan (not just the hardcores who already respected him).
What Chris Benoit did last night reminded me _WHY_ I have so much respect for him as a performer. He did what he's done all his career...make another one of his fellow performers look great for the good of the company as a whole.
When it comes to Batista, everyone in the company seems to be doing their part. From the guys working squash matches, to Jericho doing stretcher jobs, to Hunter mentoring him on & off stage all year, right down to Benoit losing to him clean and making him look like a monster. It's been a team effort to turn him into a major star.
While I'm no fan of some of the things Triple H has done creatively, he deserves major credit for at least trying to help create a new star.
Here's what he said in a recent interview that gives some insight into 'why' Benoit did the job last night...and why it was the right thing to do:
Courtesy of ign.com
IGN Sports: Evolution is a cool group because there is actually meaning to it, the past, present, and future of wrestling. Was the group your idea?
Triple H: It was my initial concept and I ran it by Vince and I ran it by Flair. My initial concept was pretty much what we said on TV. I looked around and we had Ric Flair as a baby face just sitting there and not doing a whole lot, then you had myself, and I felt like Ric could be utilized better as a mentor to a younger guy who was up and coming. I felt like somebody could get the rub off of him, then the more I started thinking about it, I thought if we put together a group where we took a couple of guys and they could get a rub off of both Ric and I, and Ric could be accompanying them to the ring and become part-wrestler, part-mentor, part-manager, that this could really get big. So I ran it by Ric and he liked the idea. And when I was talking to Vince about it, he asked me what other wrestlers I wanted to do Evolution with, and I honestly didn't know. So Ric and I spent a lot of time just watching guys. Ric and I would actually watch ever match, scouting each wrestler to see who could pull this off. To me, this was an important deal because I had to pick two guys who I thought could be big stars on their own one day, otherwise we're just wasting our time.
This isn't a knock against anybody, but there are a lot of groups, and when the group folds, the guys in that group fold because they were propped up by that group. That's not what we wanted. I wanted two guys who could be stars standing on their own, we just needed to get them to that point of standing on their own, and that's what we've done. If you look at Randy Orton, it was time for him to get kicked out of the nest and try to fly on his own, so we kicked him out and he's out there flying. He's in a place where he's either going to become a huge star or he's going to hit the ground, but we got him to that point, and he got himself to that point too.
Same thing with Batista. We're going to turn Batista into a big star here, and he's working his ass off at it. And when the time is right, we'll kick him out of the nest and see how he flies. That was part of the whole thrill of doing Evolution. We took two guys who, if they would've kept doing the same things they were doing, they would've just been a couple of other guys, and it would've been hard for them to progress from that level. We literally took them out with us everywhere we went, talked business to them non-stop, and they watched matches with us, they wrestled with us, and listened to our advice. I'm not trying to take credit for where they are, they are the ones who had to put in the work, but we gave them the platform to do it from. They deserve the credit, though, because they are the ones who did it.
