by Erin Anderson
Exclusive to OnlineOnslaught.com

I noticed something odd while watching Vengeance at Hooters last Sunday during the U.S. Championship match. The crowd (both in Denver and at the restaurant) were hyped for the match, as I expected them to be. The fans seemed torn: they didn't know whether to cheer for Eddie Guerrero or Chris Benoit. Again, nothing surprising there. But the general feeling at Hooters when Guerrero won the belt was one of slight disappointment; we all wanted Benoit to have it.

Everyone went nuts for Benoit's moves: any time he slapped on the crossface, we screamed for Eddie to tap. The back suplex off the top rope got a big "Holy Shit!" chant. When Benoit kicked out of the belt shot to the head, the place exploded. We all groaned when the ref was accidentally hit by the flying head-butt, and there were many audible "Dammit!"s when Rhyno gored Benoit instead of Guerrero.

That's not to say our cheers were completely one-sided; we still loved Guerrero. He had us rolling with laughter when he tried to revive the ref after planting the belt on a motionless Benoit, and we all applauded his work in the ring. We grudgingly appreciated his genius, but in the end, we didn't want him to win.

Since when have the casual fans wanted Benoit to defeat a more popular babyface? Was I in some sort of alternate smark universe where Kurt Angle main-evented every show while Triple H jobbed to Spike Dudley on Heat? I thought perhaps that the Hooters crowd consisted of mainly "smart" fans; when I first sat down, I heard the people at the table behind me deep in conversation about which wrestlers were "over" and who would "do the job" that night. My explanation seemed reasonable enough at the time.

As it turned out, though, I was wrong. In a post-Vengeance chat, I discovered that Jeb Lund saw the exact same reaction at The Press Box bar in Tampa from a decidedly non-smark crowd of drunken rednecks and families with their children.

What the hell is going on here?

Ever since he received a standing ovation after his hard-fought match with Angle at the Royal Rumble in January, I've gotten the sense that the casual fans appreciate Benoit far more than I originally gave them credit for. Even so, I never expected the reaction that I heard on Sunday. I can't quite understand it: if the fans wanted Benoit to have the title, why doesn't he get more cheers than Eddie from the live audience?

When it comes to wrestling skill, they're pretty evenly matched. Eddie occasionally pulls out more high-flying moves, but Benoit trumps him in sheer mat-wrestling ability. But both men are brilliant in the ring, so that isn't the issue. Guerrero simply has the charm and natural ability to manipulate a live audience that Benoit doesn't. It isn't Benoit's size that is keeping him from main-eventing every show that he's on, it's his lack of personality.

But most of us know this, and it still doesn't explain why most of us at Hooters wanted Benoit to win his match. If Eddie is just about on par with Benoit's in-ring skill and possesses so much more charisma, we should have hoped that he would take home the gold. But we didn't.

As wrestling fans, we feel that performers like Eddie Guerrero should be rewarded with popularity, while the less charismatic but obviously gifted wrestlers like Chris Benoit should be rewarded with titles.

It's almost as if we're reluctant to cheer Benoit too much. Really, when was the last time you heard an Austin-caliber ovation for a wrestler who kicks ass in the ring but is lacking in the personality department? Instead of giving massive vocal support to guys like Benoit, we choose to legitimize their talent by saying they should hold titles. And in turn, a title on such a performer gives us more reason to cheer for him. I find it a bit sad that the crowd doesn't give the deafening pops to the performers they want to win, but I don't see a change coming anytime soon.

Thinking back, there was a similar effect on last week's Smackdown! during Eddie and Benoit's verbal confrontation. Benoit made a few solid points that were hard to disagree with: a man who lies, cheats, and steals probably doesn't have that many friends, and a man who put his tag-team partner and supposed "friend" through the windshield of a car probably isn't too trustworthy. But we still heard a mixed reaction to his remarks, and more cheers than anything else when Eddie sprayed wax into his former friend's eyes. Most other performers would get tremendous heat for something like that, but not Eddie. He's just too damned charming and clever for us to dislike him; it was an impressive "fuck you" from the fans to the writers for telling them whom they should cheer and boo.

Creative must have noticed this, and took what was probably the only way to get out of Eddie's botched heel turn while still keeping Benoit a face: they had Rhyno cost Benoit the match at Vengeance. I suspect that Rhyno's heel turn was slated to come later than the pay-per-view; after all, we hadn't seen any indications as of late that he and Benoit were walking on eggshells with each other. The seeds had been planted over the previous month, but for the past several weeks, the two have been all buddy-buddy.

It's a brilliant bit of booking, really, if the goal was to keep Benoit as a face: they gave him an adversary that we could easily boo. Benoit gets cheered by default, and Eddie can move on to other things for the time being while still being a fan favorite. I've read some criticism that Rhyno's turn on Benoit came out of nowhere, since any teases of a breakup between the two took place last month and not more recently. But that isn't the case; if Rhyno had taken Eddie's side during his confrontation with Benoit last week, it would have been painfully obvious that he would have screwed Benoit out of the U.S. title. Instead, we saw Rhyno run into the ring at Vengeance, fully expecting him to gore Eddie, and got a surprise when he instead took out his former tag-team partner.

Besides, a Benoit/Rhyno feud isn't anything to complain about. As far as I'm concerned, the ends justify the means here. And may the days of Chris Benoit as Smackdown!'s über-face soon be upon us. I can dream, can't I?
  

E-MAIL ERIN
BROWSE THE BROAD'S ARCHIVES

Erin Anderson is an Atlanta native and a student at Georgia State University. Since writing about wrestling didn't go over too well with her English professors, she vents here at Online Onslaught.

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