Welcome to another edition of WWE Heat Index, where one of the biggest stories from the past week is examined under a microscope and picked apart for analytical purposes.
This week’s episode of Monday Night Raw gave us the revelation that Kurt Angle’s big, career-threatening secret was that he fathered a child in college who grew up to be Jason Jordan, who is now also part of the Raw roster.
At first, my reaction was “Thank God” as I didn’t want to see some affair angle with Stephanie McMahon or to have Dixie Carter brought onto WWE television like many were speculating about, and I rather liked the idea that Jordan was picked instead of Chad Gable.
There’s certainly a lot of potential for this to be what makes Jordan’s career, but with anything in WWE, there are no certainties, and there also runs the risk of it failing miserably.
One fear that I have is that Jordan will be lost in the shuffle, particularly with the current time frame they decided to start this storyline. SummerSlam is coming up, and these “big four” events always focus on the biggest names possible while the lesser developed Superstars are left off the card.
Also read: Jason Jordan: 5 things you probably didn’t know about him
Already, we can tell most of the storylines heading into August’s event, as there will be a Fatal 4-Way for the Universal Championship as well as possibly the Raw Women’s Championship, Big Show and Big Cass are at odds, Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose are entangled with The Miz and The Hardy Boyz are doing the heavy lifting for the tag team division despite not holding the titles.
Who is left for Jason Jordan to feud with?
The only option I can see is Elias Samson, once he gets done working with Finn Balor, who will move on to Bray Wyatt. However, there’s no way Samson vs. Jordan will be considered a high enough priority to make it onto the SummerSlam card.
That has me worried that we’ll look back on this in September or October and feel like nothing has been accomplished, and Jordan’s crowning achievement will have been beating Curt Hawkins a few times on Main Event.
Also, what is the limit for this story? Is WWE really interested in pushing Jordan to the moon, or is he just a pawn in the game of giving Angle a story and they’ll sacrifice him at any time with little to no regard for his career?
At best, right now, I can imagine we’re looking at an Intercontinental Championship reign sometime around Survivor Series, but even that may be too much to wish for, as the Universal Championship will probably stay on Lesnar until WrestleMania, and I can’t imagine WWE putting the top active title on Jordan over Rollins, Miz, Balor, Samoa Joe and company.
Another thing that has me worried is how this story will end. If they do indeed just drop Jordan at the first sign of trouble, he’ll have an immense mountain to climb to get back to any prominence, so WWE needs to set him up with something halfway decent instead.
The only idea that makes sense to me is for the story to end with Jordan revealing that he lied about the whole thing.
We can’t really keep him as Angle’s legitimate son forever, so if he explains that he manipulated Angle into getting a push—contrary to his current “I want no special treatment” persona right now, which would be a reverse psychology tactic—then he goes back to being normal Jason Jordan, but a heel.
Hopefully, no matter what route WWE goes in the future, we don’t have to sit through some ridiculous angle (no pun intended) with the fake mother making an appearance, as those never turn out good.
What’s interesting to see is what becomes of Chad Gable over on SmackDown now that American Alpha is no more. He already proved himself a worthy singles competitor in his recent matches against Kevin Owens and AJ Styles, so that’s a good start, for sure.
Gable may be in a similar position to Jordan, wherein the best course of action is to keep him around the midcard level and to feed him a few feuds for victories until the crowd embraces him as a potential title-holder.
It’s a shame, though, that the brand split in general and WWE’s recent storytelling has fallen back into old habits of decimating the tag team division, as that was a problem with the previous roster divide.
In 2017, we’ve seen the dissolving of Big Cass and Enzo Amore, The Wyatt Family, The Golden Truth, The Vaudevillians, #DIY, Rusev and Jinder Mahal, possibly Akira Tozawa leaving Titus Worldwide this week, and we may see The Hype Bros split soon, too. Add American Alpha to the mix, and it’s a wonder we still have enough teams to fight for two titles.
Right now, the best we can hope for is that WWE freshens up the main roster by adding new tag teams and allowing a wider variety of feuds to happen on both Raw and SmackDown, opening Jason Jordan and Chad Gable to many different programs while also maintaining a nice balance with the rest of the Superstars who are worthy of the same treatment.
Realistically, that’s not going to happen. Either the American Alpha duo will be screwed, or other people will be skipped over in order to make room for Jordan and Gable.
If both members of American Alpha along with Kurt Angle can get out of this without suffering the same problems that befell the likes of Mr Kennedy, Hornswoggle, JBL, Finlay and Vince McMahon with our previous “surprise son” storyline, then our prayers will be answered.
Until everything is wrapped up and in the past, we won’t know, so for now, let’s just hope for the best and look forward to what’s sure to be an interesting mentor/mentee relationship between “father” and “son” on Raw.
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