Hey Scott,
With the discussion of Jack Swagger, it got me to thinking that the Money in the Bank winner today is like the King of the Ring winner except much worse. In both cases, WWE wants to push a midcard guy to the main event level with the easy way out. Sometimes they are successful like with Owen, Brock, and Kurt (KotR); and Edge, RVD, Bryan (MitB). However, in many cases, he is just not there yet. With the KotR winner, if he flops at the next level, no big deal. Examples of this would be Mabel and Billy Gunn. Sometimes the KotR winner is just not ready to be a main eventer but would be in a year to a few years like HHH, Edge and Steve Austin. Imagine if Edge, Austin, Mabel or Gunn won the world title through a KotR win, it would hurt their careers because they are not good enough to be a world champ and be seen as a joke (like Swagger) or just too soon to be world champ (Punk's first reign or Miz). If Austin had won the title in the fall of 1996, his rise to main eventer and eventual title win at Wrestlemania XIV would not have been as special. If HHH won his first world title through KotR, his reign would be just way too soon. Alberto del Rio, Dolph Ziggler, early CM Punk, Miz, Daniel Bryan, and even Jack Swagger would have made great King winners because it pushes them to the next level without forcing WWE to make them world champ. Thoughts?
Very true. I was always a big fan of the King of the Ring idea, because TOURNAMENTS ARE AWESOME and also because it's a fairly low-risk and potentially high reward scenario. The trouble came at the end, when they were trying to make it into a bigger deal than it needed to be and it started being obvious that, say, Brock Lesnar had to win the thing because he was the biggest star getting the biggest push. Their most recent attempt, where they put Sheamus over, was fine even if the followup was somewhat misguided.
But yeah, absolutely, bring it back and make it an annual event again. It's not like it could do any worse on PPV than Bragging Rights or Capital Punishment or whatever.