The Midcard: Pro Wrestling's Forgotton Asset

It's 1998. The Monday Night Wars are in full swing. Everywhere you look there is an Austin 3:16 or an n.W.o. shirt. Yet at 9:24pm on a Monday night, it wasn't Nash or Austin who decided which show you were watching.

It was Eddie Guerrero. It was the New Age Outlaws. Or more often, it was something completely forgettable that still kept your eyes glued to the TV. But it was certainly something; it was the midcard.

The midcard of present day has one main purpose: to create main eventers. Gone is the day where most midcarders are designed to be just that, and in its place is the midcard full of guys being pushed to the top and guys who failed in their push to the top. Just off the top of my head, the Smackdown midcard includes Kofi Kingston, Dolph
Ziggler, Matt Hardy, Christian, Drew McIntyre, and MVP. Kingston, Ziggler, and McIntyre are seemingly being built for better things. Hardy, Christian, and MVP have already received varying degrees of pushes into the upper card. The midcard core relies on current pushes and failed pushes without a second though paid to stable midcarders.

On paper, it makes sense. In an era lacking stars, everyone is in a rush to create one. But the midcard of decades past allowed a shining star to be pushed through the midcard. He would battle these men for years, and slowly make his way through them until it was clear he was better than them. These men he was fighting had not done this before him, only to fail when they reached the top of the midcard.

For example, a feud between Ted Dibiase and John Morrison provides a zero sum gain. If Dibiase wins, he is as good as a man who beat main eventers but failed to be a star himself, which is a step on as Dibiase is a man who fought main eventers and just failed. If Morrison shines then he is shining against a man who is less accomplished and
less credible. A midcard feud where men are on uneven ground serves to just establish both as midcard acts.

What WWE is lacking here is a D'lo Brown, or an X-Pac, or a Raven, etc. for Ted Dibiase to feud with. There is no established lower midcarder who is never supposed to break out of the midcard to put him up against. No one around to raise him up to Morrison's level before a feud to show which one is actually better.

Beyond just the need for stable midcard acts comes the need for characters. Wrestling relies on characters. Some characters just aren't meant to be stars. Nobody other than Sean Morley even dreamed of seeing Val Venis headline WrestleMania, or even Backlash. But that never stopped a late 90s crowd from popping for his catchphrase. These designated midcarders are able to play up to the crowd completely, relying on their characters rather than their booking to make the crowd react. While main eventers tend to feel more realistic, the midcard can go completely over the top in order to garner the hot crowd reactions. And building a hot crowd early in the show is one thing, but sustaining it throughout a show takes an entire card filled with reasons for the crowd to care.

Am I calling for a return to the Attitude Era like so many others? Not at all. This is an issue of business learning from the past rather than trying to repeat it. The pinnacle of wrestling created stars and created cash, but at the end of the day, the supporting cast made sure that the stars always shined.