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Great show, guys! Love the booking ones you do.
* Man, it never even occurred to me to move Triple H or Shawn Michaels over to SmackDown. I remember pipe-dreaming about HBK moving at the time, but I think the unwritten move was that he wasn't going to be going anywhere, sadly. But in the realm you guys create, you can just force Hunter over, so that's awesome.
* An idea I had for Ric Flair and the IC Title: After he wins Money in the Bank, maybe he actually forfeits the belt? I usually hate title vacancies, but you don't want Flair eating too many pinfalls heading into his shot at #17, so him letting go of one rock to swim to another makes sense. Flair can talk about how the IC Title proved that he can still be a champion, and it meant a lot to be able to keep up with the innovative and hungry talent in that division, but he needs to prove he can be THE MAN again.
Instead of the 2006 King of the Ring, you can do a tournament for the vacant IC Title. Maybe you have Carlito and Chris Masters meet in the finals of that? Or maybe Shelton wins it post-Mania.
* A Bobby Lashley idea: He wasn't the greatest talker, but it's hard to find guys who can be babyface mouthpieces. But after Lashley tore through Regal & Burchill through the latter parts of 2005, Regal finds an appreciation in Blaster? Regal talks him up as this man with giant paws that he's going to help guide to greatness. Lashley can enter a feud with JBL, because if you've got Benoit vs. Orton for the US Title, then you're obviously not running JBL vs. Benoit, and those guys will need something to do.
Mark Henry was doing his prototype Hall of Pain "forced sabbatical" stuff around this time, wasn't he? Seems like a perfect opportunity for a young Lashley to stand up to the bully. Have Lashley beat Henry at No Way Out en route to taking issue with JBL over something. JBL can bring in Henry as his personal enforcer (I think by this point in time he had ditched The Cabinet), which could lead to Henry doing some shit with Regal that no one really wants to see, but would be bearable because it's Regal.
So a random proposed WrestleMania 22 match would be: JBL (w/ Mark Henry) vs. Bobby Lashley (w/ William Regal) or a tag match featuring the parties.
* I like what you've done with Money in the Bank. I like the idea of keeping Lashley out of it, so you can build him separately. I like Masters (didn't at the time), but protection is not as important, and his whole gimmick was basically chasing the WWE Title at this point. Gives him a chance to earn some respect points with fans when he gets knocked off a few things onto a few things.
* Even if you're avoiding the King Booker gimmick, I like the idea of using the spot they would use in the Money in the Bank the following year. During the 2007 edition of the match, it looked like King Booker was about to win the briefcase, but Matt Hardy (a babyface) got Sharmell in position for the Twist of Fate, coercing Booker into jumping down. The heel basically chose his wife over the title shot. It might seem a bit needlessly "blurry," but I really liked that dimension it added to Booker.
* Instead of just doing the Benoit vs. Orton vs. Booker angle, maybe you can spin it out to include Matt Hardy? The guy's not really doing much of anything until Jeff is back anyway. You have the heat between Hardy and Booker coming out of the MITB; the obviously history between Benoit and Booker; the history between Benoit and Orton; the developments between Orton and Booker; and issues between Hardy and Benoit and Hardy and Orton wouldn't be too hard to develop. Matt was pretty over at the time, and I think an eventual Four-Way between them could be of value to a July PPV or something. You get to round robin a whole bunch of televised matches out of those guys too.
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