Tommy Mercer has been a mixed bag since becoming Crimson in TNA. He was given an undefeated streak that lasted until Slammiversary Sunday, but he was often panned by fans who were looking for a bit more substance behind their phenomena. I had more of a negative impression about him than positive, but he did one thing right. As his undefeated streak grew and grew, he drew more and more "Goooooldberg! Goooooldberg!" chants, and rather than ignoring them, he started throwing them back at the crowd. Granted, it was a more recent development and was a way to pump his character up with more hubris so that when James Storm came back to end that streak, it meant something more than what it would have. That being said, better they tried having Crimson emote that than just having Mike Tenay screech over and over again that he was unbeaten with Tazz chiming in to say "Oh, he's still undefeated? Damn, I didn't know that," every once in awhile.

WWE has two situations where fans are chanting things they may not want them to chant at burgeoning (and repackaged) monster threats. Lance Corporal Tensai and Ryback have been getting "Albert!" and "Goldberg!" chants respectively. I've seen people on the Twitters blaming the fans for being too smart for their own good in their chants. Yes, sometimes smart-aleck crowds can be the reason why we don't have nice things (although I didn't hear anyone complaining when a group of smart-assed "smarks" blew the roof off Madison Square Garden for CM Punk and Daniel Bryan), but why is it we attack them for expression? Yeah, maybe they shouldn't be derisively making callbacks to former characters or comparisons to other former wrestlers, but they're going to do it, and they are free to do so. Why shouldn't the onus be put on WWE and the wrestlers themselves to diffuse the chants with their own barbs?

Granted, Tensai hasn't spoken a word of English since getting back, and Ryback only speaks when he's asking to be fed more (which rules, by the by). Still, there are these people called "managers" who talk for people, or at least they used to. Turns out that WWE kinda forgot they were pushing Abraham Washington as one, and they only paired Vickie Guerrero with people who actually had promo ability (yes, Jack Swagger has some promo ability, shut up). Maybe Ryback may not need one, as he could do things in response to the Goldberg chants like beating up the wonderfully named enhancement talent he goes up against even more viciously, or by yelling things before he mauls them in response to being compared to Goldberg. Tensai, however, could totally use someone to talk for him, and if Sakamoto isn't going to be the one (the fact that he's a "worshipper" of Tensai's is horribly, horribly insensitive at the very least), then Christ, someone else ought to be. I mean, they brought the guy back to big fanfare and shoved him right in the ring with the big players and the only thing we know about him is that he has a bunch of tattoos. What the shit, WWE? Tensai is awesome, and he should be treated as such.

Then again, there are so many other wrestlers in WWE right now who don't get the right treatment, and the crime is that with just a little bit of care and attention, the company would be so much better off. Little things like being able to go off script and engage the crowd when they start to get smart-alecky can do wonders. Wrestling used to be built off crowd interplay before Vince Russo got his grubby little hands all over it and started to introduce scripts in the first place. So, instead of letting the callback chants dominate the tone of the match or segment, why not let the wrestlers or their mouthpieces play off it?