A Missed Opportunity for Shawn Michaels and WWE

For the past few weeks, RAW has been the victim of one of the weakest storylines in recent history. The Shawn Michaels storyline in which he becomes JBL's puppet has had most WWE fans moaning over the absurdity.

First of all Shawn Michaels being in the poorhouse is really far-fetched, even with the U.S. economy in the shape it is right now.

If he really wanted to, he could sign a pair of his chaps and sell them for enough money to feed his family for a week, if not a month.

Maybe Shawn is just not accustomed to a lower-tier class of lifestyle and can't adapt to driving his Dodge Charger to work instead of his Mercedes.

Backed with the point he had asked JBL for money instead of his longtime friend and ally Triple H. Why? Because it would loom over him.

Yeah I guess owing your friend money isn't as bad as betraying your friend, your fans and even yourself. Besides wasn't JBL pummeling him in the backstage area just a few months back? Why in the world would he ask him for money?

It would seem WWE is trying to make use of the failing economy to push a storyline, one in which JBL's character is a natural fit.

Now I am not a fan of Shawn Michaels the person, but the man can wrestle and can act. However there are several things working against this storyline that make it uninteresting.

1. JBL is terrible in the ring, and has all the physique of a bean bag chair. He does have great mic skills, but his characters focus is too narrow. With JBL it's all about the economy and money. It's not a bad premise, but if that is the only angle a character can work, it gets old quick.
2. As I said, the angle just has many plot holes and seems silly to boot. Better writing could have cleared up this mess.
3. It's more of the same from Shawn Michaels in terms of acting. Now like I said he can act, but we've seen pretty much the same look on his face since he retired Ric at last year's Wrestlemania. He was sad then as he put away the 16-time world champ, he was sad when he came out to announce his retirement in front of Y2J, and he had the same look of sadness on his face when he first announced he sold out to JBL. Shawn, we all know you can be sad, but we are sick of it.

When I watched RAW last Monday night I was very happy to see Orton and Jericho in the ring trying to protest JBL's win last week which put him in the title match at Royal Rumble.

The points both Jericho and Orton were making were clearly points that the fans hoped would sway Stephanie's decision as they cheered them on. However to rain on the parade, JBL showed up with HBK in tow.

At this point, my interest in the show was fading, and quickly, of course JBL started talking and my interest had nearly hit rock bottom.

However, Orton and Jericho turned the focus away from Bradshaw and instead directed their attention on Shawn. They called him a sell-out, they questioned his integrity and above all else Jericho noted that everything he had said about HBK before was true.

Now my attention was back in the game. It looked like we were going to see HBK turn heel on us all. Instead he utters something about how happy he is that he kept Jericho and Orton from being in the world title picture.

Bad move. The fans were clearly not behind this at all, as the audience's confused laughs and boos illustrated.

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