Hulkamania

The Trump should've been champ.

 

If you're black, you've got a better chance of getting into a building trades union than succeeding in the WWE.

 

... Sounds like a Roger Goodell wet dream

 

You must pick apart first-grade Thanksgiving plays, don't you?

 

The 45 champions is for the top WWE belt, not the IC belt, or the World belt that essentially was just given to Triple H without a match. It's not the big gold belt.

 

It's fun watching Baron defend that lefty Vince

 

Where have I defended him?

 

Maybe you should find some who aren't Dominican.

 

Never been to one.

 

Stoney pretty much nailed it. Even if the champions are picked in a board room, you still need to have a lot of skills to succeed in that position just like any major job in any business. Charisma, The Look, ring skills, the ability not to trip over your own dick when given a live microphone in front of a live crowd.
The biggest might be an intangible, which is how the fans react to and perceive you.
People like JohnHammond think of wrestling fans as mouth breathing morons, but the truth is these days there's a large segment of fans who are highly educated about the business and the craft, and watch it with the same critical eye people assess movies or other performances with. If someone gets pushed who obviously is boring in the ring or as a personality, or simply isn't believable as a champion, they'll get eaten alive by the crowd. That's not good for business, or for the person they're trying to push.
Case in point, Roman Reigns. In a matter of months he went from the company's biggest rising star to someone the fans despise simply because they felt like he was getting an undeserved company push to the top. It hasn't destroyed his career, but it has put it in a holding pattern. It's taken a lot of work for him to keep from slipping into the abyss.

That was my point. It takes a lot of skills for someone to be thought of as "championship material," and then the stars have to align at the right time for it to actually happen.
Junkyard Dog in the 1980s might have had the skills, but he had the misfortune of being a contemporary of Hulk Hogan who -- no matter what's going on with him now -- was filling arenas and making the company ungodly sums of money. There's a reason Hogan was champion for four years, and it ain't racism. JYD is hardly the only guy from the 80s who could've carried the ball as champion for a bit and never got the opportunity.

 

Plus, in addition to not tripping over your own dick in the ring, they want someone who won't trip out of the ring either, i.e., Rob Van Dam.

 

Nicely done.
Randy Orton is another example of that. What did he have, a good two or three years in purgatory after his second wellness policy violation before they let him come anywhere near the title again?

In a slightly different spin on the same theme, you could say the same about Mark Henry. He wasn't good enough to be a champion when he was younger, but certainly is now. Everything I've ever read and seen the last few years says he's one of the more personable and professional wrestlers in the company, is a great ambassador for the business, and fans love him. Unfortunately, his body started to break down at the same time he came into his own. He probably can't hold up physically through the grind of a 4-6 month title reign anymore. So he becomes more of a threatening challenger who makes someone else look good, rather than a champion.
There's a lot of ways to be a star in professional wrestling, especially these days when fans greatly appreciate the way role players like Henry do their jobs. Just because someone isn't a champion doesn't mean they're not a big star.