Ray Lewis vs. Rex Ryan: An Example of Great Booking

NOTICE: This is a wrestling column. The opening may have you thinking this belonged on the NFL page, but it does eventually get to wrestling.

Nobody in television is better at selling its product than the NFL. Ratings have increased every year. This past season’s Super Bowl was the most watched show in television history. Thursday night’s season opener between the Saints and the Vikings were more than a 17.0 rating for what turned out to be a fairly lousy, sloppy game.

This Monday night, the Ravens and the Jets will take the field for a 7 p.m. start in one of the most anticipated games of the early season. As a Baltimore-native and avid sports-talk radio listener, the airwaves have been burning up regarding the former Ravens’ defensive coordinator, now Jets’ head coach Rex Ryan shooting his mouth off about “Super Bowl or Bust” and other equally or even more entertaining sound bites.

The Ravens, for the most part, have kept their mouths shut, laughing it off as Rex being Rex, a big, bombastic personality they had known and loved for the better part of a decade. That was until the last few days when the greatest player in franchise history Ray Lewis had finally had enough.

Regarding Rex’s comment about how Lewis and future Hall of Fame safety Ed Reed had “tapped out” to calling plays in the fourth quarter of preseason games in order to get a better understanding of the defensive scheme, Lewis had this to say:

"My name should not come out of Rex's mouth, unless you're telling somebody to come block me, which is going to be a very hard damn task come Monday night. All this pressure he wants to put on his team, I hope they can cash this check that he writes.”

Just listening to Baltimore Sun columnist Mike Preston, who has been covering the Ravens since the franchise arrived in Baltimore in 1996 (Ray Lewis’ rookie season), on the radio, its clear that Lewis and the Ravens are ready to play. He described the comments as clear, calm, yet intense. Preston said as Lewis talked, he started moving more, side to side, shuffling his feet, saying he looked ready to explode into his signature pregame dance, as if he was speaking to his teammates from the center of the circle on the sidelines before kick-off.

It was this image, this exchange between two true heavyweights in the AFC this season, two explosive personalities that made me think of some good ole fashioned wrestling booking.

Long-time wrestling fans know that Ray Lewis isn’t any stranger to the WWE. It was reported in the run-up to the greatest pay-per-view of all time, Wrestlemania X-7, that Lewis and the WWE had struck a deal. Fresh off a Super Bowl victory that launched Lewis into the national spotlight (this time for on-field play, not off-field shenanigans), the league’s most feared defensive players was to do battle with Triple H in a contest reminiscent of Bam Bam Bigelow’s encounter with Lawrence Taylor.

While it would have been truly a mark-out moment for many wrestling fans and it would have drawn much mainstream attention, it was probably for the better. If the deal had gone through, we wouldn’t have gotten the great Triple H–Undertaker match and the show many not have closed with the epic Rock-Austin battle as a culmination to the Attitude Era.

But before straying further from the point, the last few months of Rex Ryan jawing about his team, its talent, its limitless potential, and the fact that the Jets expect to win every game they play has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Outside of New York and the countless Jets bandwagon fans across the country, everybody has grown to hate the Jets.

When I hear Ryan give interviews or press conferences, I can’t help but see Bobby “The Brain” Heenan standing behind a mic, running his mouth about how great his client is and how he can’t wait to see him take the top title, because clearly, its inevitable. I hear “The Mouth from the South” Jimmy Hart running around screaming into a megaphone about his client’s talent, skill and impending domination of the company. I hear some of the best promo work a wrestling promoter could dream of when attempting to sell a show.

On the other end, when Ray Lewis, a well respected, at this point, legendary figure in the league responds as if he’s ready to go to war, I see Hulk Hogan pointing his finger to the crowd and pumping up his Hulkamaniacs. I envision Steve Austin pretending to stomping a mudhole on an opponent in the corner before turning to the middle of the ring, looking to the rafters and barking “Give me a Hell Yeah!”

Bookers, fans and often ourselves in the IWC seem to think that compelling professional wrestling programming is difficult to write. It’s actually quite simple.

You need two big personalities that don’t like each other. In fact, they don’t even need to not like each other as much as they both want to reach the same goal and are in each other’s way. You need one to be somewhat underhanded or at least braggadocios about the topic and the other must be a more subdued everyman. From here, you have the makings of a sure-fire winner at the box office.

Since I’ve already touched on the subject, one of my favorite to discuss, is the main event at Wrestlemania X-7. This was one of the more beautifully built matches due to its simplicity. The recipe for success included two combustible personalities, one WWE Championship and airtime.

WWE kept the two apart for a long time leading up to the confrontation. When the storyline began, there was even an agreement that the two would not lay a hand on one another until Wrestlemania—that was until Debra (who was mandated to manage the Rock) was caught in the middle of a match on Raw, leading to Austin stunnering the Rock for allowing his wife to be harmed.

The golden nugget in the entire storyline was during Jim Ross’ interview with the two prior to the match where Austin stated that he had to beat The Rock, he needed to beat the Rock. It was that feeling of desperation, the additional driving motivator that compelled Austin to do anything possible to defeat The Rock, bring back the WWE Championship, so much so that he “sold his soul to the Devil himself,” Vince McMahon.

It’s simple booking that is often missing today across the board, and I won’t even get into the mess that is TNA. While the Kane-Undertaker storyline involves supernatural mythology, it ultimately boils down to classic brotherly rivalry. When Kane says he seeks to be “the Devil’s favorite demon,” he means Dad’s favorite son. That means the two combatants are just two intriguing characters with a motive. Kane’s is to step out of his brother’s shadow, while the Undertaker’s is to remain the standard bearer for the company.

Perhaps, WWE should look to the NFL, and gasp, I’ll say it, MMA, as they seek to recapture the pay-per-view numbers they once touted. Elaborate, convoluted booking won’t sell the show as well as well-booked competitions between two believable foes.