Sometimes, there's points when, as a booker, you have to leave well-enough alone. For example, that one time when WCW turned Bill Goldberg heel because it would be a "shocking swerve" that would "get more eyes on the product" didn't really need to happen. By 2000, WCW was in a place where the company was truly on its last legs. Anyone still avidly watching WCW needed a scorecard to keep track of the champions and storylines, as in the year 2000 alone there were 24 different actions taken surrounding the WCW Heavyweight Championship, 10 different United States Champions, 20 Tag Team Championship holders and the Television Championship was literally in a garbage can. Yeah, it was pretty hectic. But amid everything, WCW fans still believed that Goldberg was the man who was above the fray. He was a tough, take-no-prisoners babyface who was still largely bulletproof as a character, minimal wrestling and promo skills be damned. Of course, when he turned heel at WCW's Great American Bash in 2000, all of Goldberg's strengths (save his intensity, which the crowd could no longer get behind) were stripped from him in one heel turn. On occasion a heel turn plays to a wrestler's other strengths negated by being a babyface. However, when a wrestler has one truly great marketable commodity, taking it away from him to "swerve the fans" is a terrible move.
Besides having been an independent professional wrestling manager for a decade, Marcus Dowling is a Washington, DC-based writer who has contributed to a plethora of online and print magazines and newspapers writing about music and popular culture over the past 15 years.
