WWE: What Does the Future Hold for Jason Jordan?

By Alexander Podgorski | Jul 18, 2017

With this new creative direction, will Jason Jordan experience any major success?

On the July 17, 2017 edition of RAW, Jason Jordan was revealed to be Kurt Angle’s illegitimate child from a fling he had with a woman he met back in college. In doing so, Angle brought closure to a storyline that involved him and RAW commentator Corey Graves meeting randomly throughout the RAW broadcasts. Angle sold this as a major event, and he even teared up when he confronted his ‘son’ in the ring moments later. It was obvious that this was meant to be a historic moment.

So now the big question is, how will Jason Jordan be used going forward?

With Angle as Jordan’s storyline father, we can expect a major singles push for Jordan now that he’s on RAW. The downside to this, however, is that this effectively ended Jordan’s pairing with Chad Gable. As American Alpha, the duo were one of the best tag teams in NXT yet were bizarrely underused while on SmackDown. In a way, this new revelation of Angle’s gave WWE a way to do a ‘soft reset’ on Jordan’s character and creative direction.

It made sense for WWE to go in this creative direction with Jason Jordan. After all, two of his finishers were the Ankle Lock and the Jordan Slam, which was Angle’s Olympic/Angle Slam. Before Angle returned to WWE, these moves were probably done as a tribute to him. But with this storyline in place, it makes perfect logical sense for Jordan to use these moves.

Furthermore, WWE considers Angle’s in-ring career to be effectively over, and they don’t want to risk his health by putting him in the ring, no matter how safe his opponent might be. At the same time, a lot of fans were probably nostalgic over seeing Angle return and still want him to wrestle.

So what WWE did instead was they found a milieu between both sides and created a proxy through which Angle could still wrestle without actually stepping into the ring: Jason Jordan as Angle’s son.

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From here, WWE will probably go down one of two storyline directions. The first option would see Angle put his son Jordan though some kind of ‘tough love’ booking to make him into a better wrestler. This would be the ‘babyface’ direction to make Jordan into a more relatable wrestler and to help him connect with the audience more.

While he was teaming with Chad Gable under American Alpha, the majority of his positive fan reaction came from his time in NXT, which WWE didn’t capitalize on too much while he was on SmackDown. With this new storyline, Jordan has the chance to develop a character and improve on his promo abilities. In that regard, he has a great person to help him in Kurt Angle.

Angle transitioned from serious amateur to a pro wrestler that cut great promos and could make fun of himself with ease. It’s likely that Jason Jordan, who has been something of a big name in NXT and in developmental for a long time, is someone whom WWE wants to push to a more prominent position, and are thus trying to give him a new character to elevate him.

Since he already has the look and the technique, it’s clear this creative direction would help him improve as a babyface. To this end, one could expect Angle to put Jordan into challenging matches in the hopes that Jordan can live up to the standard set by the Olympic Gold Medalist. Down the road, this could lead to title shots and victories, which would only further help Jordan improve as a star.

The second option would be for Angle and Jordan to both turn heel, with Angle becoming the corrupt authority figure that uses nepotism to help his family. This would lead to situations in which Jordan gets a major advantage against his opponents and is put into unfair situations that benefit him.

The justification here would be that Angle would use his status to protect his family in an increasingly-cutthroat WWE. Jordan would win matches using his power, but whenever he did something illegal in a match or something unethical, his ‘father’ would help him out, no matter how unfair. This, of course, would he the heel direction if WWE were interested elevating Jordan into that sort of character in order to counter the rising number of babyfaces on the roster.

Out of these two directions, the babyface direction is more likely to be the one in which they go. Angle has been receiving a noticeable babyface reaction since his return, and WWE aren’t likely to change that anytime soon.

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Furthermore, a lot of people like Angle’s values (intensity, integrity and intelligence), and the heel turn and direction described above wouldn’t mesh with those values. Instead, it’s possible that WWE would want to create a new white-bread, All-American babyface that’s an excellent amateur wrestler.

One can expect Jason Jordan to be promoted heavily over the next coming months, with the commentators selling him as a major star in the making. He’ll be in several big matches, and will have many segments with his ‘father’. Whether he fills Angle’s enormous wrestling boots and becomes a big star remains to be seen. At this point, his fate is in the writers’ hands.