The anonymous GM has been a staple on Raw since Nexus debuted months ago. This GM was hand picked by Mr. Mcmahon and delivers his decisions via email to Michael Cole. Clearly the GM was made to appear to be a person of great importance, but this is where the problems arise. Nobody cares anymore. It has been months and the closest thing we have to identifying him is the rumor that Chris Jericho knows who it is. So let’s get down to each individual problem of this GM scheme.
The GM remained anonymous supposedly to protect his identity from Nexus, fearing an assault similar to the one dealt to Bret Hart. This is a fine premise. When Nexus was tearing apart Raw and then laid out Bret Hart, Mr. Mcmahon, John Cena, and others, it would have made sense to be a little scared. Currently, Nexus isn’t a threat. The last rampage they went on was…the night they came in? They’ve taken out people, but generally part of matches. None of their victims have been out of action since Bret Hart. Nexus also lost three members. The Nexus of old has weakened. There is little reason to fear them. Keep in mind, as GM, he has a golden ticket. If anyone touches him they’re fired. Even better now, an assault by a Nexus member frees Cena.
Through all this, the GM hasn’t even developed as a character. The decisions he makes are no different than the matches created by the guest hosts of the months before. They could be made by anyone. We don’t see his personality, who he favors, who he dislikes, what his goals are, why he’s making matches. Ultimately we don’t see where he’s taking Raw. A plan for the show should be the motive behind all of a general manager’s decisions. As fans we just don’t see any continuity. To make a character stand out, the fans have to progress with him. He has to grow. There has been nothing like this to date sadly.
To make his character even worse, the two people who actually started stories that could have eventually have led to the discovery of the GM (Edge and Chris Jericho) been traded or taken time off. I can’t imagine that the feud with Edge was all done with a long termed trade planned. It’s most likely Edge or Jericho was supposed to find the identity eventually. Now we have an anonymous general manager who has no personality, no feuds, and no friends. Your average person hears the email beep and thinks boring. What is said by the GM could be said by anyone.
Having established the GM remaining anonymous is meaningless at the moment, we need to decide who could actually be the GM and how to expose them. There are three obvious choices.
First, a WWE legend. Who exactly doesn’t matter. It could be any legend as long as they are well known by the crowds. They could fit in with the original angle and fear a similar fate to Bret Hart. They could try and turn Raw into a Raw they remember and could be a great change. It could be Teddy Long and help the members of Nexus who got kicked out. It could be HHH, recuperating or maybe he used his wife for the powers. The Rock or Austin or HBK would be cool, but would be a tough sell to the crowd. Fans don’t want to remember the great pasts of the three with the recent GM stint. And fearing anyone doesn’t really fit their characters.
Second, a new Nexus member. What better way to finally establish credibility to Nexus as owning Raw? Perhaps the GM could be a friend of Cena’s and encourage him to fully join Nexus. Maybe even eventually have Wade Barret be the GM. The fearing Nexus could have been a red herring. WWE tried to use red herrings at the start of the angle with things such as past stars catch phrases being used.
Lastly, Michael Cole. WWE is big on him right now. It would turn him into an instant heel. He’s already out at ringside. He already speaks for the general manager. He could just say he didn’t want to be attacked again. He could even say the laptops were fake the whole time. This would create tremendous anger towards him, something the WWE is trying to push anyways. The only downside is that when people in power commentate, their credibility drops and quality suffers. When Bischoff was calling Nitro AND part of nWo, he was less believable as an announcer. Michael Cole already has six different personalities, trying to be heel but liking Cena? This would just make his character harder to perform and he would probably mess it up in the minds of observant fans. While Cole would make sense, I think it would overall be a bad move for Raw.
So how do we bring out the GM? Well, we develop a personality for him. Show anger or support for someone. Help promote a wrestler into a spot he might not normally be in. He could even try to destroy a fan favorite. Make the fans think this is unfair. Make the fans ask themselves, “What is he doing?” Through the chaos, subtle hints should be dropped, along with a few red herrings. At the end, we should all be thinking it’s obvious who the GM is, and then throw us someone we didn’t expect.
Or…My favorite idea. Going into Bragging Rights, if team Edge wins, we get to find out the GM. It would be a good stipulation for an otherwise pointless match. I would sure as hell be curious as to who wins. I would be pulling for team smackdown all the way. End the stupid. Why they didn’t finish this earlier with both Edge and Jericho is beyond me, but it needs to end as soon as possible. The fans are over it, WWE seems to not have any direction with it, and without a change soon it will continue to hurt ratings.
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