Review for WWE Ruthless Aggression Volume 2

WWE's second season of Ruthless Aggression looks at the building blocks which is what the current product is resting on at the moment. This time the five episodes focus on Hollywood Rock, Innovations, The First Revolution, The Resurrection of Shawn Michaels and Securing the Future.

First, I must say these are all great documentaries on their subjects. However, unlike The Monday Night War, what made that series great was how they would spend an episode on one aspect, this feels like they are trying to do too much in one episode and because of this a few of them feel very rushed.

Hollywood Rock looks at how The Rock changed from the popular People's Champion to a very Heelish character who thought more of Hollywood and his success there. This was fine and it was great to see the evolution of The Rock during this time. However, with WWE looking at Hollywood it would have been nice to have looked at the other stars who went across such as John Cena, The Miz and so on.

Innovations looked at all the new match types and things that were introduced during this time. These include Money in the Bank, Elimination Chamber, Taboo Tuesday, the breaking of the Kayfabe Wall with shows like Byte This! Again, there could have been an episode on each of these individually and instead the importance of things like Money in the Bank are just brushed over. This could have been better over a number of episodes.

The First Revolution was a look at how the 'Divas' and Women in the WWE made an impact with the likes of Trish Stratus, Lita and Mickie James. I am glad that they gave props to Fit Finlay who really worked with the women to get them to where they were competent and in some cases even more than competent workers. It was a shame that things like the Diva Search seemed to derail this momentum, but there are some great moments to remember.

The Resurrection of Shawn Michaels could almost have been the documentary for a set on HBK in itself. It was nice to hear people talk and tell the truth about what a jerk HBK was prior to finding God and returning in 2002. I remember at the time feeling this was a bad decision and an accident waiting to happen. Instead he went on to have an even better part of his career with many Wrestlemania moments and PWI Match of the Year winners.

Securing the Future really should have been put with the FCW documentary that WWE had already created. This was a very, very rushed look at WWE creating their own talent pool. It was great to see the early days of simply a ring, to Jim Cornette in OVW, the use of Tough Enough which was either a great experiment or an embarrassing mistake depending on your point of view. The creation of the Performance Centre and NXT is clearly the next steps for WWE to create their stars of the future and I just wish more time was given to those early days as seeing people like John Cena, Randy Orton and Brock Lesnar was great.

Ruthless Aggression Volume 2 almost confirms what a failure it was in comparison to the Attitude Era. Whereas that time was filled with memorable moments, this one wasn't and it is hard to pinpoint anything that happened during that time which could compete with Austin's Beer Bath, DX invading WCW or The Rock in his prime. However, it is an interesting look at this time and the episodes on Shawn Michaels and The Divas are great to reminisce on. I doubt there will be a Volume 3, which is a shame as they could have split some of these episodes into one or two, but if there is I'm not sure what else they would cover without being ruthlessly aggressive with the material.