BBB Rants About the Current State of WWE

 

So I read this week that WWE is really trying to improve it’s product. They are attempting this by having focus group meetings in New York City.

A focus group you say?

Yep. WWE is legitimately trying to reach out to fans of the past and present to get popular opinion on how they should steer their current product.

Well, I couldn’t attend any of these mainly because I assume they were scheduled in secret. However, I think I can provide somewhat of a voice via this blog, so here goes nothing!

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July 22nd will mark the ninth anniversary of the episode of RAW that “marked” me.

Yes, that sentence was really bad.

As you could see from a prior blog entry from my 30 (well, a helluva lot more than that) day challenge, this episode of RAW had a very memorable angle of Triple H turning on his best friend Shawn Michaels. That led to a kick-ass match at SummerSlam the month after.

Also let’s keep in mind that RAW back in those days was TV-14, and one of the main culprits why people are turned off the product today. More on that later.

For right now, I want to accentuate the positives of that episode of RAW.

In addition to the DX reunion/breakup angle, we had a wonderful segment with Eddie Guerrero and The Rock.

Rock, who had just won the WWE Championship the night before at the Vengeance PPV*, was challenged by Latino Heat to a match in the main event of the show. Not before Rock went Viva Eddie on his ass!

I didn’t know if you were Cheech, or Chong!

Also, let’s keep in check that Eddie was nothing more than a mid-carder who had a couple of runs with the Intercontinental Championship at this point in his WWE tenure.

This started the catapult of Eddie to the echelon of WWE talent.

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There is one of the biggest reasons why WWE programming is in the craphole, so to speak.

For the last several years, two men have held the top spots affirmatively. Those two men are John Cena and Randy Orton, both whom are beloved face “Superman” World Champions. 

Now I don’t have a problem with having very strong and established champions as they can bring any promotion at least some credibility.

Let’s face it though: those two men aren’t getting any younger. Cena has been banged up for a while and Orton, while not in as big a danger as Cena, still can have that one big injury that can put him on the shelf for a while.

Taking the Wasteland bad from Barrett almost made this career-ending. Fortunately, it wasn’t that much of an issue and returned to action just a couple of weeks later.

So what do you have underneath?

Well, you have guys (heels mind you) of Miz, R-Truth, Alberto Del Rio, Christian, and a boatload of others that can carry the ship. Let’s also give some shout-outs to faces on the card like Kofi Kingston, Big Show (for an attraction short-term champ), hell even Alex Riley who has started to come into his own as of late.

If anything, NOW is the time to start. WWE has no direct competition in the sports-entertainment field, and thus can take risks that won’t end the company like the potential thereof in 1997.

Speaking of risks, let’s get back to this in my mind bullshit “ratings” thing. I’ll go on both meanings here.

The first meaning is the Nielsen (not Leslie) ones. People think that because RAW and/or SMACKDOWN aren’t pulling ratings like they did ten years ago will die sooner than later, is absolute horse manure. Couple merch sale with booming “Live” (aka house show) audiences, and investing in fields not invested in back then, WWE is going to keep on going for YEARS to come.

Now let’s get to the other one, the “TV-‘x’” variety.

For the longest time, WWE programming was originally TV-PG. That’s right, from your Hogan era all the way to late 1997, all the shows were either PG or their equivalent.

At the penultimate weeks of 1997, Vince McMahon pulled the trigger on letting the second half of Monday’s show get a little more ‘raw’. In an almost unprecedented move, “RAW is WAR” was now TV-14, and let more risqué segments air.

An F-U to USA that the network ironically loved!

While it helped WWE become #1 in the wrestling wars, it also made for some unnecessarily tasteless television. For example:

Remember this? Neither do I!

Yes. Meat. As in he wrestles with a boner. Accompanied by a women’s faction called PMS, aka Pretty Mean Sisters.

From about 2000-early 2008, after Vince Russo left/”Crash-TV” ended/became a public entity, WWE went through a wholesale of changes in its identity. Top guys were leaving, competition was nowhere to be had, and people were turned off the product for one reason or another.

A lot of people blamed the recent (as in 2008) change to PG programming as a crutch.

While originally the product became more toned down as a change of what they can and can’t do, the last couple of years have signaled that WWE is now knowing what to do, and the reigns are a bit looser.

To branch out the point, ratings have nothing to do with the quality of the television as the script writers and entertainers do. Look at this segment from 1997:

This proves my point.

It shows the potential heel turn of Bret Hart, the potential face turn of “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, and the WWE Championship feud with Sid and Undertaker mixed in for good measure. THAT is great television.

What rating is it? PG!

Besides the language, I think WWE’s writers are more than capable of making something like this again, with multiple high-dollar feuds conjoining and making for some high-rolling television.

If anything, the writing is what makes the product so stale now.

There are episodes of RAW that I can predict what will happen, and eight out of ten times I’m correct. Oh gee, Cena wins AGAIN! Oh gee, Miz is ‘really’ bad on the mic AGAIN! Even worse, the main event guys are so “out there”, the mid-card can never stand a chance. Getting a couple of mid-carders to have some meddle with the world champs could really make someone sound like a legitimate threat, something much needed in this current landscape.

While I’m not a person in the WWE office or anything like that, I have to believe that there is a stranglehold going on where the writers are pretty much grounded into doing what the higher-ups want, and not much else.

The last few weeks has featured CM Punk in the height of his career, cutting controversial promos on the Chairman Vince McMahon himself, the “idiot and doofus”, and more so, pretty much breaking down the fourth wall of inner-working in the WWE. This should be an exciting time with a wave of change seemingly to follow.

I’m not holding my breath. When Punk leaves or perhaps stays, it’ll just be a flash in the pan and that everything will go back the way it was before. Unlike Austin or Rock who took charge of their characters, the current talent is not as free to do that now, and have every little aspect micro-managed down to a science.

Before I start rambling into that and probably start saying things I have no clue about, I’m going to wrap this rant up like Dave Chappelle’s “Wrap It Box”.

BAH GAWD KANG!

Now here’s your moment of Zen:

I get on top!