CTG Presents-The Wrestling Report Card

[Chuck Taylor's Grenade]

CTG Presents-The Wrestling Report Card​

We all know that no wrestling promotion is perfect and anybody who thinks so is clearly fooling themselves. So with that in mind I thought it would be interesting to see what kind of grades people would give different wrestling promotions based on different criteria. At the end of a certain time period (or whenever this thread gets spammy) I'll tabulate all the report cards for one final overall grade for each promotion. Before we get to the criteria and the promotions to be graded a few ground rules.​

​

1. All grades must be explained with at least some detail behind your reasoning. I don't want to see “I giv TNA an A+++++ becuz dey are the bestest and Hogun rulez11eleventyone!1" Any grades like that won't be counted in the final tally.
2. Grade promotions you actually follow. If you don't watch Dragon Gate don't grade it. Simple as that.​
3. Since this will be an opinion based survey people should expect to have their ratings challenged and/or questioned. So you need to be able to defend your report cards without resorting to “lolfagâ€￾ type posts. Also this goes along with refraining from "lolfag" type posts please do not get sand in your vagina if someone has a different opinion than you or questions your grading.​

Now with that out of the way here are the promotions that will be open for grading.​

​

1. WWE
2. TNA​
3. ROH​

And now the criteria and the grade scales.​

​

1. Growth and development-How has the promotion done in terms of growing and becoming a bigger presence? Have they made the right moves to increase their fanbase? Are they making the right moves in terms of securing television deals, sponsorship, advertising and the like?
2. Talent Utilization-Pretty self explanatory. How has the promotion done in terms of developing new top stars and utilizing their entire talent pool to their full potential?​
3. Booking-How has the promotion done in terms of the booking of their shows? Are feuds carried out logically? Are titles treated with the proper respect? Are heel/face turns done properly and logically?​
4. Pay per views/Monthly shows-How well did each promotions monthly big shows deliver? Were they worth the price of admission/ordering?​
5. Television-How well was television utilized by each promotion? Did the shows serve the purpose of getting people to buy payperviews or go to the big monthly shows? Were/Are storylines properly developed? Are proper efforts made to increase ratings?​

And the grade scale to be used.​

A+
A
A-
B+
B-
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F​

That should about cover it. I look forward to seeing the differing opinions of how promotions are graded.​

 

[straight_edge76]

Awesome Thread.

I am going to grade the WWE and TNA being that those are the only promotions that I watch/follow.

I am going to Grade the WWE now and I will post my TNA grade later.

Growth & Development- This is where many people unfairly bash the WWE for using "the same old guys" in the main event; Cena, Orton, HHH, HBK, Taker, Batista, Edge, Jericho etc. But realistically other than HBK, Taker and Batista (and arguably Triple H) the entire WWE main event is in the prime of their carrer, Cena and Orton and both just hitting their early 30's. Jericho is imo as good as he has ever been. Edge has never imo been a dazzling in ring worker but what he does more then sufficed in his heel Rated-R Superstar gimmick, which I will elaborate on later. The WWE has also developed a few new Main Eventers/Upper mid carders like CM Punk, and Sheamus that have already been given runs with the World Heavyweight, and WWE championships respectively, which was a refreshing break from the usual champions. Plus with guys like Christan, JoMo, The Miz, Drew McIntyre and Kofi Kingston all being potential main eventers in late 2010 the WWE looks to be improving for the better in terms of creating new stars as the older ones fade out. The only real complaint I have is that the Punk and Sheamus title reigns were either short lived or a victim of crappy booking, which I will elaborate on in a later section.
Grade: B

Talent Utilization- I am not going to name all of the names that they should push over the names that they shouldn't because I am surte that would just spark a bunch of pointless debates/spam posts. Now, they are doing some good things, mainly with NXT which is one of the most interesting concepts imo in quite some time. Now, I have not gotten the chance to watch all of NXT but I have seen the first two episodes and bits and pieces since. It's really a great way to hopefully help these future WWE guys over to the WWE crowd, which would in term make it easier for them to transition from (In Daniel Bryan's case) a cult-indy star to a legit WWE talent. I have let my opinions on him be known and now I still am not a huge fan of his and still find him overrated by the iwc, I am opening up to him a bit more than before. Now aside from NXT the WWE has done a good thing by giving Sheamus the Lesnar treatment but, since his win over Cena at TLC he went from being built as a monsterish heel to a pussy heel which was a bad choice by the WWE. They honestly dropped the ball with the reign with the WWE title mainly because after he won the #1 contender's battle royal he squahsed Santino, Jerry Lawler and Mark Cuban. Not exactly what I would call an exciting build up. Even after winning the WWE title he didn't get a clean win at all throughout his reign. When he finally did lose his WWE title at Elimination Chamber, he looked like a total bitch imo. Other than that the only complaint I have to make is how CM Punk, who is imo the best heel in the WWE behind Jericho was totally destroyed in his feud by The Undertaker. I was not so much upset by the fact that he dropped the WHC to Taker but moreso upset as to how he was made his bitch throughout the feud imo. And after the feud he went from feuding with one of the biggest names in WWE history and getting owned to feuding with a fucking referee? Are you kidding?
Grade- C-

Booking- This, more than anything is where the WWE loses points. The booking is total crap atm. With the exception of Taker/HBK and Batista/Cena does any match at Wrestlemania XXVI interest anybody from a storyline standpoint? Jericho/Edge, which will be a great match could have had an awesome build up but it has been totally ignored. The feud consists of Edge saying he is going to spear Jericho, Edge spearing Jericho and then Jericho complaining about getting speared. This fued is being booked as a one sided affair, which I have never been a fan of. But that is not it, all aspects of the WWE booking have been questionable as of late. Bret Hart is back in the WWE, feuding with Vince McMahon... Which was predicatble imo but rather then having BRET HART partake in a match at Mania they could have inserted the HART DYNASTY into the fued. Thus not only saving us from the pain of having to watch one of the best workers of all time embarrass himself by attempting to take part in a match even though it's pretty obvious that he cannot. But it would also give the Hart Dynasty, who has done next to nothing since being teamed up something to do and with the help of the most well known member of the Hart Family they could get a real crowd reaction. The biggest flaw in the WWE booking however is the entire clusterfuck that is known as the mid-card. Outside of JoMo, R-Truth and maybe Kane, who is a legit threat to take his IC title? The same goes for The Miz on Raw, other than MVP, Kofi and Christan who looks strong enough to carry the U.S title? The WWE has an extremely talented mid-card roster; guys like Ziggler, Swagger, Bourne, Matt Hardy and Chris Masters. But all of those guys at this point and time are merely glorified jobbers and comedy characters, and for a guy like Matt Hardy who many people thought could have been a world champion one day it's a huge dissapointment.
Grade: D

Pay-Per Views- For the most part the WWE can put on one hell of a pay-per-view. They not only have the talent but also the means to give you an experience watching one of the major events (Mania, RR, SS, Sur. Series). But not only that they can typically make a decent PPV out of a smaller show like Night of Champions which I thought was an awesome PPV in 2009 as way Judgement Day. I am not saying that the WWE has a crack booking staff but when it comes to putting on a Pay Per View more often then not the WWE can deliever. However, the "nots" are far more recognizable than the "oftens" mainly because they have to potential to be so great. Wrestlemania 25 for example, The Undertaker/HBK, hands down the Match of the Year for 2009. Only to be totally crapped on my a Kid Rock performance, another Triple Threat at Mania and another lackluster Triple H/Orton match. The only other highlight was possibly the MitB match and even that wasn't all that great. More recently the WWE's Elimination Chamber wasn't anything to write home about, 4 matches announced. Only three on the card and the only match worth watching was the Smackdown chamber match. The Raw chamber was predictable and the IC title match was meh.

Grade- C-

Television- The WWE's on-air product is mainly hit and miss, especially with Raw. Ever since the guest host crap started it has been more miss than hit. Dozens of crappy guest host comedic segmenst with the Bellas and Santino, the occasional wrestler/host altercations (Tyson/Jericho, Show/Shaq, Piven/Cena etc) some lackluster matches and the occasional good promo and that about sums up Raw over the last year. ECw, which for a period was almost unwatchable was given a huge kick in the nuts when Christan, the biggest WWE signing in quite some time debuted on "The 3rd Brand. Honestly, before Christan was on ECW I rarely watched if at all. But it gave up some great matches, it was for the last few months the best pure wrestling show that the WWE had. But it has since been canned for NXT, which I have not watched a hige amount of but what I have seen like I said before is an interesting concept. Pros 'mentoring' rookies even though it doesn't have that reality show concept that many speculated it's still a good watch. Superstars isn't really a show I personally watch regularly but If I am able to catch it I will. It's simply put a hour long show with next to no promo time. It's a chance for guys who typically don't get a chance to be showcased on Raw and Smackdown to be given some exposure. Smackdown, which is my personal favorite WWE show is imo the best balance of wrestling and promos. Whereas at times ECW was a bit light on the promo side and Raw was a bit excessive. Smackdown was the perfect mix. You have who I think are among the best workers in the company on Smackdown; Jericho, Punk, Edge, JoMo etc. Smackdown has typically had some good to great matches and promos/feuds over the last few moths.
Grade: A-

Final Grade: C

 

[He who knows more than Nation]

I'll keep it short and simple for the sake I'm an optimist and maybe, just maybe we can get some discussion from this.

WWE: Growth and development: In the past year they added a new program and dumped ECW in favor of a somewhat innovative program in NXT. Superstars shows growth. NXT is certainly a bold idea and shows thought in it's development. And they did this in a down period for the business. They changed PPV names, not for the better, but in hopes that they can expand buyrates from the names and gimmicks of these shows. That can be construed as development. But the growth as far as business is concerned has remained about the same that it has for the past 5 years. It hasn't declined much nor grown. So for Growth and Development WWE gets a B+


Talent Utilization: People moan and gripe about the same names at the top of the card, but in honesty, no one outside of them is selling jack shit. Cena, Orton, Trips, Taker, Tista, Rey, Jericho, Edge and HBK are at the top because they have the most talent and sell shitloads of merchandise. You make money for the company, you're atop of the card. That's the way it's always been and that's the way it always will be. People who say "so and so should be main eventing because they can wrestle and so and so is old and always main eventing and blah blah" either don't understand that this is a business and what the masses, key word being masses, want, the masses get as said wrestler puts the masses asses in seats and their money in the boss' pockets.
That being said, WWE has given pushes to fresh, young talent in the past year. Sheamus, Miz, Kofi, and to lesser extents Morrison and McIntyre were all give pushes this year. In Sheamus' case he was given a Lesnar push, easily the biggest push anyone has received since Brock was the Next Big Thing and now he's heading to Mania in a program with the company standard bearer following a decent title reign. Miz, despite what people think about him being in a team with Show, is getting a nice, steady push as a dual champ and Kofi had a nice run with the top heel for a few months. True he has been de-pushed since then, but they still showed the interest of pushing the guy. Morrison, as awful as a face as he is, was given a brush of the main event with Hardy last summer and was given the match of his career by Rey. McIntyre is getting a rub from the boss. They are doing the best they've done since Cena, Batista and Orton's rises to the top and for that the WWE should be commended. A

Booking: This is short and simple: the main event scene is booked fairly well while the mid card is almost ignored and the tag titles are on a month to month, two team basis. The shows, in general, are booked differently. Raw, is always booked around the guest host and depending on the host, that has been anywhere from excellent to just god awful and the real victims besides the viewers are the mid card talents. They are seldom given direction, mid card titles have far less luster than they did ten years ago despite the caliber of talent holding them and there is just a "free flow" feel to the mid card. The tag team scene is iffy to me. I absolutely loved the Jerishow run, they added a degree of prestige to the belts and had a nice, solid reign. But after the break up there was no follow up between Show and Jericho, and everything went into a straight circle as after DX lost them, it was to almost the same team in ShowMiz. But that also serves two purposes, it keeps the prestige of the belts high having upper mid card talent such as Miz and Show as champs and it adds to the Miz's slow build and ascension. Now, to the main event scene: Punk-hardy was booked very nicely and letting Punk cut promos is prime, unfortunately Punk's momentum was crushed by Taker. Cena-Orton was very nice too. People want to complain that they were main eventing too many shows together, yet these are the same people who complian when programs are too short and halted abruptly. This was supposed to be one of the epic feuds of recent times and it didn't feel that way, besides the I quit match, the rest of the matches were somewhat lackluster. I can't fault the booking for trying to reignite epic rivalries. Sheamus' rise to the top was nice in premise, but the booking up to and after his title rein was poor. So has the Hart-Vince thing, that has been handled poorly. And now, around Wrestlemania time, the E has taken a match that alot of people really didn't want to see again and turned it into a masterfully booked angle and added the extra dimension to hype the match to the degree to not only where it feels fresh, it feels like a must-see match in Taker-HBK II. For all the good, it seems the E counters with some bad, but yet their storylines do show forward progress and do make sense so for booking they get a C, not bad, not great, just average. C

PPVs: Wrestlemania wasn't very good last year. This years looks like must see. That is how alot of the E's PPVs are, hit and miss. One thing though, their main events almost always deliver. They had some good shows this past year; SummerSlam, Survivor Series, the Rumble, Breaking Point and TLC were all solid shows. But for the price, the build should be better and some matches should go longer. Night of Champions, the Bash and Extreme Rules weren't worth the price. C

Television: Let's put it this way, the ration to good guest host expieriences on Raw to bad ones is a starling 1-8. And it seems the only good ones are the ones with former wrestlers as the hosts. It was a bad expierment that needs to end ASAP. Smackdown is a wrestling heavy show with some great talent and contrasts heavily to Raw. But as is the case with the E, you have to take the good with the bad. But the shows do serve their purpose as vehicles to sell PPVs and they do build fairly well to the PPVs, so the E is utilizing TV better than any promotion going. B-

Overall: it seems the theme is that you have to take the good with the bad with the E, but they do everything better than their "competiton", rated PG or not. They have the most recognizable stars, brands and put on the superior television product. I'm not saying it's the best or that I'm a huge fan, but they are vastly superior to TNA in every facet of the industry. B overall.\


I will do TNA in depth perhaps if this thread goes anywhere, but for not it gets a fat fuckin F.

 

[Chuck Taylor's Grenade]

TNA Report Card


Growth and Development: This has always been one of TNA's hindrances or downfalls. They have all the tools necessary to be held in higher regard and achieving higher ratings. The problem is they are always concerned with bringing in the next big name that will supposedly turn the company around. And I've said this before this is like putting a band-aid on a shotgun wound. It doesn't matter what wrestlers you bring in if you aren't advertising the product, putting on good payperviews and just generating positive interest in the product. TNA really needs a street team in order to generate interest in towns outside of Florida in order to perform better on the road and increase buyrates. Overall I think that TNA has really disappointed in terms of growth because really they're not really in a much better place than they were a year ago.
Grade: D


Talent Utilization: TNA's talent utilization is great if your a WWE castoff. Beyond that TNA is horrible about using talent to their maximum potential. It's almost infuriating watching talented people get misused and buried. When you have someone like Homicide (who along with Hernandez would be great at increasing your Latino market share) doing jack shit it's a little disheartening. But not nearly as bad as what's happened to Samoa Joe. Here's a guy who was massively over, could work a great match against anybody and what do they do with him? They job him off to queerboy and have him get kidnapped. Great job TNA.
Grade: D


Booking: This is a huge glowing problem for TNA. First of all they have way to many major storylines happening at one time. I mean look at this-


1. AJ Styles/Flair/Wolfe vs. Abyss/Pope/Hogan


2. Hernandez vs. Morgan


3. Samoa Joe kidnapping


4. Angelina Love vs. Beautiful People


5. Tara vs. Daffney


6. Magnus vs. Terry


7. Bischoff vs. Jarrett/Foley


8. The Band vs. Eric Young

1. Nasty Boys vs. Team 3D

10. Kurt Angle vs. Ken Anderson


11. Plus the Daniels/Kaz/Kendrick stuff, MCMG/Young Bucks thing, and whatever Beer Money has going on.


That's a lot of stuff going on for a two hour per week show. Not to mention the fact that TNA has what like 75 people on their roster. Half of which are doing fuck all at the moment. But aside from that TNA's booking is all over the place. One week this wrestler's a heel in a blood feud with that guy. Next week they're buddy buddy. Week after that they hate each other again. Heel turns are treated like transitional moves in a wrestling match. It's like hey he's a heel. Bastard. Anyway back to Hogan and Flair... But for everything TNA has going on I do have to say that hey have really improved in the booking department over the past few months. Plus the feuds they do give a shit about are quite well done. All TNA really needs to do is trim the dead weight, put more effort into getting the home grown (non-WWE) talent over with the fans and plan their storylines out better so they at least make sense when they play out.
Grade: C (A year ago this would have been a solid F Minus)


Payperview: There's a song by Jerry Reed that goes “When you're hot you're hot and when you're not you're not”. That pretty much sums up TNA. When TNA is motivated and actually care about a show it's great. If they don't care the show is horrible. Case in point for horrible look at Destination X and Victory Road. And that's part of what keeps TNA from breaking out. TNA needs each payperview to at least be a 7 out of 10 at minimum. TNA doesn't make nearly enough buyrates on standalone for them to not give a shit about PayPerViews. Plus if they don't care about a show why should the fans care enough to buy a show?
Grade: C


Television: Watching Impact is like watching a group of 4 year olds on a sugar high. Usually in less than five minutes you'll see an in-ring segment, a backstage segment, a promo package, and another backstage segment. That can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your perspective. It's good in that it prevents channel surfing because you never know what you're gonna miss. It's bad in that nothing really gets any time to develop and the matches are pretty much glanced over. In terms of TNA's television hyping up the PayPerView and putting over feuds they really are hit and miss. When they are on Impact is quite good but if not Impact is as bad as Wrestlicious. Perhaps if TNA used either a web show or Epics to kind of spread the roster out a little bit Impact wouldn't look like such a clusterfuck.
Grade: C+


Final Thoughts: There's a reason TNA has won worst promotion three years in a row. TNA has had so many opportunities to break through and it be looked at a true number two promotion. It's almost like someone is saying to TNA Management “Ok we're gonna increase the advertisements for PayPerViews and Impact, decrease the amount of dead weight, bump up the wrestling quality and be a true alternative to WWE” and TNA Management is like “NO! Fuck you! We don't want it to be that Goddamn convenient. We want to wallow in mediocrity.” It truly is like watching an airplane take off and land 50 times in a row. If they could take off, get altitude and level off they'd be much better off.
Overall Grade: C-