WWE Needs to Develop More Jobbers

Where have all the good jobbers gone in WWE?

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Bo Dallas runs around telling faces they need to Bo-Lieve. He puts on decent, short matches against a variety of members of the roster. He’s had a few short feuds on the main roster, most recently with Neville. Dallas fills a roll that WWE is so hesitant to have filled: consistent jobbers.

WWE is missing jobbers from programming.

The jobber is not a glamorous role. The role of the jobber is to lose consistently to mid card and main event talent while making them look good in the process. Dallas does this better than anybody on the roster right now. He has done it twice this past week on WWE television, losing to Cesaro on SmackDown and Randy Orton last night on RAW. Dallas puts up enough of a fight, but in the end makes his opponents look strong.

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The jobber takes the role of doing the job away from other more valuable superstars. To have superstars who WWE intends to have in the midcard as title contenders consistently lose to one another does nothing but stifle their push. Cesaro was a victim of this style of booking this past week.

Cesaro is not in the middle of any sort of feud. He’s supremely talented and warranting of a push (at least according to the internet). His opponent on Monday was Big Show, who is about to have his most high-profile match of the last year when he faces Brock Lesnar on Saturday at Madison Square Garden live on WWE Network. Since WWE needed to make Big Show look better, they put him over Cesaro. Why did Cesaro have to be the one to give Big Show the rub?

Big Show could have easily beaten a number of lower card guys on the roster. Why not call on R-Truth to face Big Show? Was Curtis Axel so busy still being in the Royal Rumble that he couldn’t take the pinfall? Either of these two or a number of other lower card superstars would still give the desired effect of making Big Show look like a monster.

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A problem with not using the lower card guys on RAW and SmackDown is that it leads to seeing the same thing over and over. After being a pay-per-view level feud for two months, why is Neville battling Stardust happening again on RAW? How many times can Sheamus battle John Cena? Remember when Dean Ambrose could never get his hands on Seth Rollins leading up to their Lumberjack and Hell in a Cell matches? Rollins and Ambrose have met four times in singles action on SmackDown and RAW since April. These are pay-per-view level matches being put on TV. Once and a while is okay, but why not use the deep talent pool that WWE has.

There is a reason the United States Open Challenge has become such a fan favorite while Cena is champion: Anyone can contend. Zack Ryder barely gets on TV any more, but had a fun contested match against “The Face Who Runs The Place.” It is a fresh matchup every week. This week was Xavier Woods, who provided a new opponent for Cena and an intriguing match up.

From a wrestling talent perspective, the WWE roster may be deeper than it ever has been. There are talented performers being relegated to Superstars and Main Event and only really performing on house shows. Where are these wrestlers on the flagship programs? Why not have the roster have the chance to be on national television?

There are tons of talented wrestlers who could fit the bill. The aforementioned Ryder, Axel, R-Truth, as well as Jack Swagger, Damien Sandow, Heath Slater, Adam Rose, Fandango, Diego & Fernando, and Jimmy Uso (until his brother returns from injury). These wrestlers all make occasional appearances on television. There is one thing that they all need to be a successful act like Bo Dallas: motivation.

We all understand Dallas’ motivation. He’s the inspirational one. He wants to make all the faces of WWE believe in themselves. Since we know this when we see Dallas it gives us context for his matches. Dallas also is entertaining on the microphone and is given a little time before matches to insult the local crowd. As a crowd, we are invested enough in Dallas to want to see him lose in his matches or any short term feuds he enters in. That’s what the rest of the lower card is missing.

The jobber has two real roles to be successful: the cocky heel or the scrappy face. If you took this general concept and gave it to any of the guys listed it would increase their value and let them compete on RAW and SmackDown more frequently. This would involve giving these wrestlers some air time to let fans know about their character, but a small amount of character development would expand the roster significantly.

People always look at the Attitude Era as a golden era of wrestling. If you watch any of the RAW episodes from this era, you’ll see low-level wrestlers fighting top guys like Stone Cold, Undertaker or The Rock. On one episode you could see matches like Goldust vs Gillberg, X-Pac vs Kane, and Steve Blackman vs The Rock. The whole card was developed and had motivation. Fans were invested in everyone from top to bottom of the roster.

By the way, those matches were all on the February 8th, 1999 show. Here’s the WWE Network link if you want to see it.

WWE has a deep roster which could solve one of their most basic booking problems. They don’t need to bring back the local indy jobbers to be squashed like in an old Ryback handicap match. They do however need more depth on their main shows, and with the right amount of work could do it. I’m not suggesting that Bo Dallas and all the lower carders need pushes. Instead, they need more time and maybe a little motivation.

It’s not crazy. All you have to do is Bo-Lieve.

Evan Gomes is a journalism student at Loyalist College in Ontario, Canada. Connect with him on twitter at @E_Gomes. For booking, contact egomes27@gmail.com.

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Bo Dallas and WWE’s Lack of Good Jobbers

By Evan Gomes | Sep 29, 2015