by Jeb Tennyson Lund
OnlineOnslaught.com/CitizenScholar.net

This Sunday, Randy Orton had a good match with Mick "Cactus Jack" Foley. Meanwhile, Cactus Jack had an excellent match with Randy Orton. The distinction is important because it marks where credit is most due. Just as Ric Flair could carry a broomstick to a four-star match and we reserve praise for Flair and not the stick, so too should we take care to give the lion's share of the praise for this match to Mick Foley.

Yet this consideration has not stopped emails and IMs from being sent to me, asking me if I would now write a column in praise of Randy Orton. I won't. For one, I technically should write about Foley. For another, there is absolutely no sense in taking a few thousand words to compliment basic competence. Because something does not merit condemnation does not mean it merits adulation.

There's no better illustration for this than our favorite wrestler, Triple H.

Thoughts about competence and "non-undesirability" first occurred to me the day after WrestleMania. Benoit fans, disaffected fans and Triple H-loathers began gushing, with curious industry, in overweening praise of Triple H's loss. There were many thanks, many plaudits, many comments like, "It's time we reevaluate how much Triple H has done."

I found it incredibly funny. Suddenly, being bored, annoyed or outright furious for about a year was a good thing, because what happened after it was pleasing. (I know that a heel wrestler is supposed to make fans mad, but his mandate does not include making fans want to quit watching or boring them — two things of which Triple H can be reasonably accused.) By this rationale, my breaking your legs is a good thing, because you mightily appreciate the shot of demerol that the nice doctor gives you afterward. Without me, there wouldn't have been any loopy, halcyon demerol experience at all.

A few people also praised Triple H's loss based on counterfactuals — that's snooty history jargon for "what-ifs." One was that he could have lost to a less desirable champion. In that case, a year of being bored, annoyed or furious at Triple H's long, briefly interrupted reign would have been followed by a reign potentially just as boring, annoying or infuriating. Another counterfactual was that he could have lost to Benoit in an extremely compromised way — say, being trampled by an elephant first.

In each case, his loss was somehow ennobled not because it happened, but because something else didn't. This argument is extremely reductionist, in that Triple H (and especially Benoit) almost cease to be factors at all. Instead, they are mere counterpoint to a parallel nightmare reality. At the least, this is damning with faint praise. Yet somehow those presenting these arguments used them to issue the highest praise. The loss was good on its own and even better because it happened in spite of some looming, possible and dreaded circumstance.

But what was most curious is that people were struggling to find yet more celebratory adjectives to describe Triple H doing his job. In this case, his job was a job — a loss. That does not alter the fact that his WrestleMania loss was still a facet of the overall terms and aspects of his employment. Triple H is paid to be a wrestler. As such, sometimes part of being a wrestler is being a wrestler who loses. If you've already acknowledged that Triple H is a wrestler — by believing in the legitimacy of his ring and mic work, by buying a pay-per-view, by discussing him on a message board — then praising him for losing is simple redundancy.

Now I have emails from people asking me to print compliments of Randy Orton, and I refuse to do that for the same reasons I refused to do so for Triple H.

In one case, people are asking me to laud him based on counterfactuals. Just as I don't think Triple H is now Wrestling Jesus because he lost to Chris Benoit cleanly, I also don't think Orton is now a great wrestler because an amusing and compelling story came to a proper and convincing end. Triple H could have concluded his stultifying title reign by passing it to an appalling new champion or by passing it to Chris Benoit in the most ridiculous manner possible. His not doing so does not confer any particular greatness. He did what he ought, nothing more.

Similarly, Orton could have won through all manner of overbooking or poor psychology. Had he been unable or unwilling to defeat Foley on Foley's terms, he might have won the match by some gimmickry: copying the Rock/Mankind match at Royal Rumble 1999, using a tank, borrowing Triple H's sledgehammer... anything, really. That this did not happen — that it was, simply, a match — is no cause for celebration. At the very least, it's cause to celebrate the bookers for having the sense to insist on sticking to spots, twists and psychology essential to the basics of this kind of conflict.

It's another sort of counterfactual that makes up the second appeal from Orton fans. I'm asked to recognize that the match was good, had good spots, wasn't jarring in any way. But these comments are all exceptions: the statements that those who have appealed to me make are in exception to conditions that could just as easily exist. They ask me to note that there is nothing negative to note.

In short, "Please mention that the match did not, at any point, become bad." Or, in crueler terms: in spite of his typical work, Orton didn't screw up. After all, we are dealing with a guy who, after some slightly above-average showings on TV and pay-per-view, managed to completely miss hitting his own finisher. (At that point, I had been slowly coming around to the notion that the guy wasn't as bad as all that, but the fanned RKO set me back by weeks or months.)

Neither of the above conditions are praiseworthy. We should expect that the bookers do not plan something heinous, silly or repugnantly stupid. Their not doing so should be the rule. We should expect that Orton satisfies rudimentary workrate demands, completes his spots, sells moves, makes transitions smoothly and stays alert. If we expect otherwise, something is wrong.

What this all ultimately tends to is basic competence.

At WrestleMania and Backlash, the bookers, Triple H and Randy Orton did their jobs. Nothing about that fact merits individual veneration. We should expect all three parties to do this all the time. Most of us have similar attitudes about the world. Most of us have employers who hold similar attitudes.

When the buses run on time, we don't pen letters to the editor. That the automatic doors at the grocery store open at your approach is nothing upon which to pause and reflect with thanksgiving. If your tasks at work include you troubleshooting problems with the copy machine, your boss does not issue a page-long inter-office memo commemorating your twenty-minute quest to replace the toner. The Chamber of Commerce does not issue plaques that read, "In Honor of the Parent Who Feeds His or Her Child Three Times Every Day."

These are the things we expect — and that are expected of us — every day. When what we expect fails to occur, then we stop to comment. If we fail, or something fails, that is the time to pause and evaluate. If we do outstanding work, or something works in unexpectedly positive ways, that is also time to pause and evaluate.

No reasonable commentator would tell you that Randy Orton became a great wrestler at Backlash. The story in which he was involved was compelling and well-concluded (or -continued). He did not err in any appreciable manner. He executed sequences of moves. He used psychology. When a spot was set up, he followed through on it. None of this deserves a moment of exultation.

This is competence. This is his job. Greatness is in the future. Whether it is in Orton's is something we cannot, now, say for certain. A coronation now is jumping the gun. Simply put, at Backlash, Randy Orton met expectations and became — without modification or exception — what he should be, a wrestler.
 

E-MAIL JEB LUND
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Author, promote thyself: for no other reason than it amused me, I felt like sticking a fork in this thread. Enjoy second-person pulp fiction.

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