With being an old man and all that stuff, I can remember the good old days where we wouldn’t see the main superstars battle eachother week in and week out. They would face local enhancement talents aka jobbers. Back in the late 80’s/early 90’s these guys would have common place within the wrestling market and could do pretty good for themselves by being the guy that everyone beats to start them on their paths to bigger things. However until the recent brand split, jobbers really were a thing of the past, unless you had a monster like Umaga to feed them to.
However as mentioned all that has now changed. With the brand split offering up more opportunities for enhancement talent to be used, and with there being people like Braun Strowman and Nia Jax on the main rosters, these jobbers make these monsters look brutal with the way they take a beating and garner so much sympathy for themselves.
Before I move on to the recent success of everybodies current favourite enhancement talent, let me remind you of some names from days gone by who either made a full living out of being an enhancement talent, or those that started as an enhancement talent and made it further. There’s guys like the late Iron Mike Sharpe, The Brooklyn Brawler, The Red Rooster from yesteryear, then you look at guys like Bryan Danielson, Samoa Joe and The Hardy Boyz who all had their first taste of WWE in an enhancement role. More recently Santino Marella was a comedy enhancement talent. Yes all of the guys picked up some big wins here and there, perhaps none more so than Brawler pinning HHH, but they all have their own role in the world of wrestling.
So now it’s time to mention the current success story of someone who was brought in as a jobber, but captured the hearts and imagination of the WWE Universe, one James Ellsworth. Here’s a guy that was brought in to be fed to Strowman, he did his job that well that he wasn’t just a one and done enhancement talent, he’s now had a couple of appearances on Smackdown Live, has a pinfall victory over AJ Styles and now has a WWE Title shot. Now we all expect nothing more to come of that match other than James ultimately taking the fall for AJ, however if it wasn’t for the opportunity to use enhancement talents again, and the rise of the jobbers did start to take place, we wouldn’t know of James Ellsworth, we wouldn’t potentially see guys who’ll be doing very well for themselves in 5-10 years time when they’re more seasoned, and we certainly wouldn’t have success stories of people making the most of an opportunity.
So to all you jobbers, past, present and future, I thank you for giving hope to the masses, I thank you for connecting with the audiences in ways a lot of higher level talent would love to do, and finally I thank you for being you.
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