Another good thing about having veterans around was that they kept the younger wrestlers in check backstage, too. If anyone breached wrestling protocol or acted up, the resident veterans would be there to make sure that the wrestler knew where they had went wrong. The term 'locker room leader' is often used to describe these people. There were many locker room leaders in 2005. On Raw you had Kurt Angle, Shawn Michaels, Triple H and Chris Jericho. On Smackdown, meanwhile, were Hardcore Holly, JBL, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero and, most importantly, The Undertaker. There are many a tale of these guys having to 'sort out' a wrestler who perhaps either wasn't pulling his weight or was flat-out p***ing off the locker room. Muhammad Hassan, for example, was taken to wrestler's court (as well as potato'd in the ring) for acting arrogantly and showing disrespect to veterans and legends (he once told Sargent Slaughter that he wouldn't sell for him). WWE knew about this and turned a blind eye. Some wrestlers and fans have retrospectively agreed that guys maybe took things a little bit too far (Mike 'Simon Dean' Bucci labelled the Smackdown vets the 'goon squad'), but they served their purpose. Who is there to enforce these days? And could they even enforce anything, given the corporate nature of WWE and the recent allegations about Bill DeMott?
