Last year in 2004 everyone was saying that year was going to be the year of Chris Benoit. The plan was Benoit would win the Royal Rumble - done. He would then go and beat HHH at WrestleMania 20 - done, after winning a great Triple Threat match, and then be the Champion and star of RAW. Well the last part never happened; he was the Champion but was never the star of RAW. Benoit would wrestle HHH at least five more times on TV and PPV, pretty much leaving most of the wrestling world once again bored with the same old thing. Benoit would lose his title to Randy Orton at SummerSlam 2004 in a decent match with just one problem: it had very little build up, while the HHH match with Eugene was built up to the sky. You think that was the only time" Hell no; Benoit vs. Kane at Bad Blood and took a back seat to HHH once again as HHH beat HBK in a Hell In A Cell match, this time not even being in the main event. Benoit was then knocked down to midcard level, only doing a tag match at the next PPV.

Randy Orton was the next victim. Orton picked up a lot of steam after a great feud with Mick Foley, coming to an end at Backlash in the match of the night in a Hardcore street fight. Orton would bring some prestige to the Intercontinental title after a decent 8-month reign. Orton won a Battle Royal and would go on to beat Benoit, which posed the question, what was next" People who follow wrestling knew the plan for WrestleMania 21 was Orton vs. HHH for the title but there was one big problem with that. The night after SummerSlam he beat Benoit in a rematch on RAW only to have Evolution with HHH destroy Orton. Which was the first mistake. Orton was a heel for over a year by that point and was all of a sudden supposed to be a face, and even though he had the face reaction, sometimes he never got the reaction they were hoping for.

Now on to the second huge mistake. Orton would go on to face HHH at the next PPV, Unforgiven. The problem was instead of putting Orton over or at least making it a DQ (considering there was a ridiculous amount of interference during the match), Orton was pinned and lost the title. Why was this a mistake" Orton was having a lot of problems trying to get over as a face and also had a lot of critics saying he shouldn't be champion yet, and having him lose sucked out all the steam the guy had. By the time the Elimination Chamber came most fans hated Orton and most were tired of the feud already, which saw HHH win the belt back (after it was vacant for a month just so he could win it back.) So what was next" We headed to the Royal Rumble with, by this time, rumors that they were going to do a triple threat match with Orton vs. HHH vs. Batista. That night another match between HHH vs. Orton ended with HHH once again winning, but had Batista win the Royal Rumble. After a few weeks it was obvious Orton was out of the title picture and Batista was the new person to put in that slot.

In the weeks leading up to this, Batista and HHH were on a rocky road with accidental mistakes by both men and fighting, but always Batista came back. The question though was if Batista was going to go to SmackDown! after winning the Rumble. They handled the Batista turn the way they should have turned Orton - having him slowly build his character up. Anyone with brains would have had Orton beat some challengers at a few PPV's and then turned him at the Rumble or before. Anyway Batista vs. HHH was set for 'Mania and Batista won the match. We thought 2005 would be the year of Batista. Well so far that's been another lie.

We had Batista vs. HHH at Backlash which I can get - they needed a rematch - but now that it is over and we're on RAW ready for something fresh and it hasn't happened. Batista is just like Benoit; shoved behind HHH so HHH could go do a big "I'm quitting" angle and leave RAW for a few weeks. Which is kind of funny to me because I saw the ratings for RAW this week of May 16th, 2005 - it was a 4.3 which is the highest in a while. Isn't it funny knowing HHH wasn't going to be on, fans turned into watch RAW" Anyway it is already known that at Vengeance 2005 we will see Batista vs. HHH in a Hell in a Cell match. Which begs the question: how many darn times do we need to see HHH vs. Batista before the WWE once again kills another wrestler"

I get HHH is a McMahon, but you know how many times must they fail before they get that it is killing off their fan base" You know HHH was made the main star in 2002 and if you check business numbers they have taken a slide from there to now and it's sad that everyone sees it but them. Its funny how even though the ratings slide, the business goes down, there is nothing but negative comments from former WWE workers such as Billy Gunn, who said just the other day HHH is a back stabber, but the WWE decides to blame their rating problems on people who have nothing to do with it.

The main problem is HHH, though in my opinion he doesn't care about the fans or the company, he only cares about making himself look good. He doesn't help the show and doesn't help the younger talents. I mean just look at the list of people that he crushed in the last 3 years alone: Orton, RVD, Booker T, HBK, Kane, Benoit, Goldberg, and it looks like Batista will soon be apart of that list. I'm sorry but it amazing how Batista, unlike Orton, has gotten monster pops from the fans, is really over, so don't you think they should move him to a different challenger instead of fighting the same battle over and over again against HHH"

The problem the WWE has is that they need to realize the reason HHH was popular in the first place was mostly because of other things not HHH himself. DX is a big reason that started to finally get his character over, then the McMahon's got him in as the big heel and then Austin, Rock, and Foley carried HHH's character. So now that none of them are really around anymore, HHH's weakness is showing.

What's next for Batista" Hopefully after he beats HHH at Vengeance he will move on to a feud with a Jericho, or maybe Orton after he comes back. Maybe they should make HHH put a young star over making him bigger, hell at least pay back wrestlers who were put HHH over. Until next time...

by Jason "Xtremefalls" Simmons..