The New Breed

Most of us who grew up in the 90′s remember watching just one show on television, WWF, now WWE, RAW is WAR.

A crazy three hour show which basically gave us growing kids, a brilliant show with over the top characters, moves that we all at some point tried at home and more so because we would get that “DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME” message. Those were the days when we had some of the best wrestlers ever to have graced “sports entertainment”. The Rock, Austin, The Undertaker, Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Kane, Edge, Goldberg, Sting, Nash, Hogan and a whole host of others who pushed wrestling into the spotlight and made it a billion dollar industry.

However, there still seems to be something lacking, even though viewership is going up and money keeps pouring in thanks to extensive touring that is done by the WWE. The showmanship has become somewhat of a farce and while pathetic story lines are coming up there still is hope for some of the purist wrestling fans among us.

The wrestling back then was more enjoyable with larger than life personalities, but it was limited to the wrestling and the trash talk between wrestlers and wrestlers alone, no one brought their family members into the story lines, like Rey Mysterio had to do or bring out ridiculous topics like Kane being a necrophiliac or the equally cringe worthy bit about Kane trying to marry Lita. Speaking of Lita, the shameless exploitation that women or “divas” are subjected to is pathetic or was pathetic, from what I have seen recently the almost semi nude wrestling matches are gone and with Beth Phoenix and Natalya coming into the fray.

The WWE has understood what the fans need and the focus has shifted back to wrestling. So while the limelight is still hogged by the Rock and John Cena for Wrestlemania and this whole crazy bit about Undertaker going unbeaten at the same event against Triple H and Shawn Michaels. Its time to pay attention to the future of the business of wrestling.

Here is a basic list of wrestlers we should all look out for, in terms of pure wrestling talent and not being a loud mouth. Not all are from the WWE, some of them have made a name from Indie wrestling circuits as well.

Wrestling skills wise CM Punk certainly has picked it up and certainly in terms of showmanship, no one can beat him to it right now, while he is still quite young in the circuit, other notable wrestlers to look out for are Dolph Ziggler, who in spite of being a Heel and managed by Vicki still has to be one of the hottest properties in the WWE along with Zach Ryder who has received such a massive push into the limelight thanks to his amazing Z! Long Island story webisodes on YouTube. Daniel Bryan certainly deserves a mention here for being one of the most technically gifted wrestlers to have come onto the screen. Another set of wrestlers to follow are the Motor City Machine guns , Alex Shelly and Chris Sabin are just brilliant as a tag team and they are not bad as singles competitors also. Zema Ion also should be kept an eye on, very young and raw but this kid certainly has the moves to take him a long way.

Hopefully wrestling companies will push kids into more technical aspects rather than coming up with stupid gimmicks to sell merchandize, the transformation of Brodus Clay to funkasaurus certainly was something we did not need.