At the recent WWE Conference Call, it was announced that Tough Enough will make a return to the WWE programming schedule, this time for the WWE Network.
There have been many iterations of Tough Enough, which first aired in 2001 for MTV. The first three seasons appeared as their own show, while the “$1,000,000 Tough Enough” was a running competition on WWE Smackdown. The WWE attempted a season five revival complete with Stone Cold Steve Austin, Booker T and Trish Stratus as trainers for the USA Network but ratings were not as strong as USA wished to have. I should also mention NXT, which resembled Tough Enough in competition but was considerably more scripted.
There has been a lot of criticism directed to Tough Enough, from how it completely exposes the business, to how veterans treat the rookies, and how few superstars were really made from it. Names from season one were Maven (winner, released in 2005), Nidia (winner, released in 2004) and Chris Nowinski, who probably had the most promising career due to his charisma but was released after an injury. He’s doing much more important work now than pro wrestling. Season two had two female winners in Jackie Gayda and Linda Miles, but the standout ended up being Matt Morgan, who carved a decent enough career in TNA. Jessie Ward from the competition ended up succeeding further as a television producer. Season three is often remembered as one of the stronger seasons, despite Hardcore Holly’s humiliation of eventual winner Matt Cappotelli. The other winner was John Hennigan, who became John Morrison. The $1,000,000 Tough Enough ended up being the launching pad for Mike “The Miz” Mizanin but also included Ryan Reeves who would become The Ryback and the disqualified Marty Wright, who would later appear in the WWE as The Boogeyman. Nick Mitchell was a forgotten member of the Spirit Squad. The closest to a standout in the last season comes from first episode embarrassment Ariane Andrew who is now Cameron in the Funkadactyls. To be fair, Ivelisse is now making a name for herself in the independent ranks.
Even with former WWE champion The Miz and John Morrison, It’s pretty clear that the Tough Enough reality competition has a much poorer ratio of creating stars than UFC’s The Ultimate Fighter, a show that was patterned to an extent after Tough Enough and has gone on to help catapult UFC to its modern success. The Ultimate Fighter focuses less on silly competitions and more on in house drama between teams, especially between the pros who are coaching said prospect fighters. UFC knew that people were really tuning in to see Chuck Lidell and Tito Ortiz go back and forth. WWE eventually learned that lesson from NXT, where rookies were matched up with pros. The next Tough Enough should continue this concept.
The other mistake of WWE Tough Enough was the amount of completely green, nothing but physique contestants they took in. While season five included guys like Andy Leavine and A.J. Kirsch who already had some wrestling experience (Leavine was actually in WWE’s development territory before Tough Enough), they also turned down Austin Aries for the competition. Aries at the time was one of the best wrestlers without a home and they told him he wasn’t good enough for their reality competition. TNA Wrestling ended up capitalizing on their mistake, gave Aries a shot and Aries rose his name to one of the best wrestlers in the world. WWE could have had that. They decided guys like Jeremiah Riggs was a better idea. WWE needs to look at how The Ultimate Fighter doesn’t discriminate against experience and allow already trained independent talent prove they are not simply tough enough to be pro wrestlers but tough enough to be WWE Superstars.
Imagine a Tough Enough roster including some of their already signed former indy talent like Tye Dillinger (formerly Shawn Spears), Solomon Crowe (Sami Callihan), Becky Lynch (Rebecca Knox) and Kalisto (Samuray Del Sol) mixed with other up and comers wrestling great matches all over the world. Put them all together for the competition, let the fans know who they are through the show. Pair each with a WWE Superstar or Diva or even just promote a major match underneath the guys like they do in TUF. Everyone now gets a taste of who these guys are and there’s no worries about someone being green. Everyone eliminated gets to either goto NXT to keep working their way up or go back to the independents. The final two face each other on a WWE Pay Per View and you know the match will be good. You’ll have WWE pros in their corner to keep the crowd hot, hoping that these wrestlers will be able to make it on their own once a winner is crowned.
Today in the Reality Era, WWE fans don’t just want to know what the men and women are like in the ring. They want to know who they are outside of it as well. A karaoke competition isn’t going to help people decide that. But putting them under the same room similar to Legends House is what’s going to bring out what they are going to be like in a WWE locker room. That’s what people want to see. They don’t want to see some green hoss do elbow drops to a punching bag. They want to see something they haven’t before. It’s a new era for WWE Tough Enough, and if WWE wants this to last and make superstars? They can’t be merely a six week course on how to be a bad pro wrestler. They have to find out who is the next WWE superstar.
Photo by WWE.com
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