MR. TITO: 26 Years of Writing Pro Wrestling Columns – Thank You SO MUCH For Reading!

Welcome back to the Excellence in Column Writing, as this column will be my OFFICIAL celebration of 26 years as Mr. Tito. My very first column was posted on Lords of Pain on October 26th, 1998 and the very first thing that I covered was WCW’s Halloween Havoc 1998. Ya know, the one with the awful Hulk Hogan vs. Warrior match on it? Same event that went long and cutoff the DDP vs. Bill Goldberg match, too. Special thanks to Mr. Calvin Martin of LoP for granting me the opportunity that I ran with for about 22 years and additional thanks to Aaron Rift here at NoDQ for posting my columns for the past 4 years.

My idea on writing columns was to be a current events writer who acts as a “watchdog” for the wrestling business, providing positive feedback for what was going right but holding those accountable for things that were going wrong. For example, through October 1998, the WWE was killing it with Austin vs. McMahon and things were about to erupt into further greatness when the Rock turned heel and Mick Foley got his big push. So, if you read my columns during late 1998 through mid 2000, I was mostly positive on the WWE with a few exceptions. Conversely, WCW was clearly going downhill by the time I began during October 1998, so thus my columns on WCW from then until the closure during March 2001 were pretty harsh and deservedly so.

By mid-2000, things felt differently in the WWE… Everything became too centered around Triple H and Stephanie and I really had a bad taste in my mouth from the awful Wrestlemania 16 besides the Hardys/Dudleys/Edge & Christian ladder match. When Stone Cold Steve Austin officially returned to wrestle again, it was a different WWE that was becoming more corporate and featured Triple H as the top star versus Austin or the Rock. Just didn’t feel right and you kind of knew something was up when the Kurt Angle and Stephanie storyline was quickly squashed to firmly put HHH and Stephanie back together. Furthermore, there was TOO MUCH wrestling on, as RAW and Smackdown were happening during the week and WWE was quickly burning through matches.

Then, 2001 rolls around and instead of fixing how dominant Triple H had become, WWE doubles down on him and opts to turn “Stone Cold” Steve Austin as heel at Wrestlemania 17. Stupid, stupid move made worse by Austin teaming up with Triple H, who schemed to hit Austin with the car with Rikishi at Survivor Series 1999, and then Austin was on the WCW/ECW Alliance side for most of the TERRIBLE Invasion angle. That’s right, WWE bought WCW during 2001 and after botching its debut, they tried to recreate ECW and merge it with WCW. Complete cluster, as WWE blew a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity because they wanted to spend more money on the XFL pile of crap rather than top drawing wrestling talent who could make the WWE more money to blow on terrible football leagues. Oh, and guess who was promoted to Lead Writer of the Creative Team to help make this nonsense happen and be a total enabler to Vince McMahon’s creative wishes to bury WCW? Stephanie McMahon and she’d lead the creative team until late 2013.

2002 was no better, as WWE botched the return of the New World Order. Holy cow, look at that roster during 2002… LOADED, yet they couldn’t be counted on for creating quality night in and night out, even with the “Class of 2002” Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) group beginning to debut with Brock Lesnar, Batista, John Cena, Randy Orton, and others. The BRAND EXTENSION first occurred during the late Summer of 2002 and call me crazy, but I enjoyed the Smackdown brand with younger, fresher talent and Paul Heyman writing television. Heyman not only continued to make Lesnar a bigger star, but Rey Mysterio, Edge, Angle, Benoit, Guerreros, Benjamin/Haas, and many others thrived with Paul writing for and pushing those wrestlers. But of course, the McMahons were jealous of Heyman getting credit by fans and they pushed him out of the Smackdown chair by early 2004. The Smackdown brand was meaningless from this point onward, as John Cena would would move to the RAW brand during 2005.

Those 2002-2003 RAW years were rough watches… Triple H just pushed his passive aggressive no-selling character on everyone and humiliated the likes of Kane (Katie Vick & unmasking), Rob Van Dam, Booker T, Scott Steiner, and other wrestlers. He was a dominant heel champ and only truly sold fear from Shawn Michaels until 2004 when he put Chris Benoit over and for 2005 when he put Batista over. HHH tried to make Randy Orton the youngest champion ever, but when Orton floundered after SummerSlam 2004, Triple H took his title back.

From 2005 and onward, it became the John Cena show… Loved his character on Smackdown, but on RAW as a babyface, they slowly took the rapping promos away and cleaned up his character. While his promos were weak at first, he had great opponents fed to him and made for a great main event scene that carried the WWE during the latter half of the 2000s. But by the early 2010s, much of that veteran talent were gone or taking reduced roles inside the ring, leading Cena to be surrounded with a bunch of green developmental callbacks. He lacked dance partners and literally put the WWE promotion on his back through 2014 before the WWE opted to give mega pushes to Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar when Cena began having Hollywood desires.

Before I go any further, I did take a brief break as Mr. Tito during the Summer of 2006 as I had a few things professionally and personally to take care of and you wouldn’t see another column from me until early 2010. Yep, I retired… But I also stopped watching wrestling entirely following the murders by Chris Benoit of his family during June 2007. Cold turkey… No more TV shows, no more Pay Per Views, no live events, nothing. That held until late 2009 when I was flipping through the television and I saw Chris Jericho cutting a promo. And then I came back the next week, and then the next week… By early 2010, I jokingly wrote a RAW review one night on the non-wrestling blog for Lords of Pain and many of my readers popped. So I wrote another one, and another one, and then I was back as Mr. Tito once again.

Point being following the Benoit murders, I was SICK and TIRED of WWE wrestlers being treated like pieces of meat and forcing them to work through injuries or concussions while looking the other way for any performance enhancing substances taken. I was over it, as Eddie’s death really impacted me during late 2005. Cutting off the WWE and boycotting it was my way of holding them accountable for me, personally, as a wrestling fan.

So I’m back and as an older wrestling fan, I appreciated John Cena more during the 2010s versus the “Super Cena” he was becoming during the late 2000s. And I thought the rest of the roster was kinda green, at the time, with Sheamus, Alberto Del Rio, the Miz, Jack Swagger, and much of the Nexus group. Because I disappeared as a wrestling fan, I never fully saw CM Punk but then during late 2010, he appeared on the RAW roster and I became a fan quick. First, he was an announcer as an injury was healing and he was tremendous. Then, he became a cult-like leader for the revamped Nexus. With his contract about to expire, CM Punk was out the door that year and then the WWE gave him the “Pipebomb” promo. That changed everything, as it’s the closest promo we’ve ever had to Steve Austin’s “Austin 3:16” promo from King of the Ring 1996.

I was completely on-board the CM Punk train and was hoping WWE would break their plans for the Summer of 2011, which was to eventually make Alberto Del Rio become WWE Champion by SummerSlam 2011. To our amazement, Punk wins the WWE Title at Money in the Bank 2011 and it was one of the BEST nights in WWE history and championship wins ever. But then, it all fell apart… From my standpoint, I immediately caught on that a BURIAL was going to happen. For one, WWE had no concrete plans after MITB 2011 and just booked on the fly to rig the Champion vs. Champion match at SummerSlam 2011. Secondly, Triple H began appearing on-screen as the “COO” and I sensed a bad vibe from him towards CM Punk. HHH clearly didn’t like him and I repeatedly reported that, which drew a ton of heat on him. Then, WWE pulled the trigger on screwing CM Punk at SummerSlam 2011 with that weird Kevin Nash finish to help Del Rio cash-in that MITB.

After SummerSlam 2011, the obvious storyline was for CM Punk to get revenge on Kevin Nash and then go after Triple H who probably induced his buddy Kevin Nash to attack him. Nash “couldn’t get cleared by doctors”, which big Kev later confirmed as BS because Triple H was eager to bury him inside the ring. CM Punk vs. Triple H happens and HHH defeats him. CM Punk gets his shoulders pinned for 3 more consecutive Pay Per Views to shovel more dirt on him. Now, Punk receives the title at Survivor Series 2011 but only because Del Rio was failing. Punk holds the title for over a year, but he barely headlines any Pay Per Views or RAW shows along with getting turned heel midway into his WWE Title run. He was just kept as champion so that the Rock could dispatch him twice during early 2013 and then Punk put over everyone after that for the rest of the year (Kane, Undertaker, Brock Lesnar) and then put over Roman Reigns to start 2013. Then, Punk walks out.

I took a TON of heat for saying “CM Punk was buried” both internally at LoP and from the outside, even Punk commented back to me on Twitter saying he was “buried in money”. By 2013, he knew that I was right and Punk would be OUT of pro wresting until showing up in AEW during the Summer of 2021. That didn’t last long, as AEW messed up having Punk in 1 year and then made things worse within 2 years. Now, CM Punk joins a healthier WWE culture as seen during 2023-2024 under an experienced and mature Triple H while AEW continues to crumble.

The latter part of the 2010s were hard for me… Just trying to push an inexperience Roman Reigns as the #1 babyface and WASTING Wrestlemania after Wrestlemania main event to convince everyone he was “great” was torture. He was given world class opponents, too, such as Brock Lesnar, Triple H, and the Undertaker yet the matches were awful. He just wasn’t good back then… But, by 2020, Roman has 10+ years of experience under his belt and then WWE gives him Paul Heyman to shape his promos and creative. Turned heel and BOOM, Roman is a star. Crazy how accurate Vince McMahon was on Roman being a top guy, but his poor use of him while he still needed experience hurt the business.

WWE has been greatly improving ever since August 2020… Bloodline has been great and again, getting Paul Heyman more involved is the key and Heyman has delivered for Vince and now with Triple H to help creatively build drama and suspense. Vince outside of the Bloodline was getting confused and watching RAW was a brutal task. Then, he gets hit with sexual allegations of paying off WWE employees for his bad behavior and thus Triple H gets put in charge. From 2022 through present here in October 2024, Triple H has been a steady hand and he’s more empowering of fellow staff and the wrestlers themselves to contribute more towards the creative process. The result is a positive culture backstage and a much better product.

And that’s where I’m at right now, celebrating 26 years as Mr. Tito.

Right now, I’m in a difficult situation because the WWE that I wanted since the early 2000s has finally arrived. I don’t have any nitpicks, as I just pick up the remote or tablet to just enjoy the show and not even need to second-guess the booking decisions. I TRUST that Triple H and WWE/TKO will make the right decisions.

Prior to 2022-2024, I would argue that the WWE was worthy of my criticisms because they made lots of creative and talent mistakes… However lately, I have zero advice to give. I’m just very impressed with their product.

So, with that said, where do I go in my 27th year as Mr. Tito? What can I write when I’m a current events writer? Maybe more economics columns like what I wrote yesterday about Wrestlemania 41 ticket prices? I don’t want to pile on AEW, as it’s not worth my time and their poorly drawing product speaks for itself. I don’t want to write any Retro stuff or Lists because that’s a tired format to go and everything from the past has been discussed too much by wrestling fans. I like to look forward, anyway, ya know, to turn the page?

Going to be honest, I’m just going to keep hanging around here at NoDQ but I cannot guarantee the frequency for which I’ll write. Maybe I’ll write more during the Rumble to Wrestlemania season when news headlines are being generated? But I found myself bored and struggling to write content following Wrestlemania 41 this year and don’t want to force myself to write.

I’m NOT saying that I’m retiring, but what I’m saying is that WWE has been so impressive that I don’t have much to write on them other than non-stop praise. And I don’t want to seem like a mark writing non-stop positivity columns that would get old fast. The last thing that I want to do is to crap on AEW, a promotion who refuses to fix itself.

Don’t worry, I’ll still be around… I’m NOT retiring, but I’m just lacking the motivation to write as constantly as I used to. You got my best stuff for the past 2 years, anyway, and I’ve fully cleared out what’s remaining in my basement.

But I’ve said all I needed to say on WWE and they’ve finally morphed into a WWE that I’ve wanted for over 20 years. I’m good.

So, we’ll see when I show up next, probably something involving Rumble to Wrestlemania unless some news breaks or I’m somehow inspired one day.

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