The real problems with wrestling

[Chuck Taylor's Grenade]

It seems everywhere I look everyone is talking about what's wrong with wrestling and what sucks about wrestling. While I agree with the points that most of the people bring up (lack of wrestling on TNA, lack of talent being properly utilized on WWE) there are still other points that need to be addressed.

1. There is nothing to hook the casual on/off fans and get them to tune in next week. There is no point in someone watching a show if they don't tune in next week. All it does it spike the ratings a little for that show. In order to increase buyrates and ratings wrestling promotions need to have something that makes people want to tune in week after week. Back when TNA was still on weekly payperviews they did a great job of hyping up the next weekly show to get the fans excited and looking forward to spending 10 dollars next week and the week after that and the week after that. I will admit that WWE has been doing a better job of this specifically with the Race to the Rumble tournament. But other than that there is very little that makes the casual fan say "Oh man I can't wait until next week that match is gonna be insane" or "Oh dood so and so is gonna get his ass kicked next week after what he did. I can't wait" If wrestling companies want to be successful they need to create storylines and matches that intrigue the fans to tune in week after week after week. If you watch a show you should be looking forward to the next show, similar to if you watch 24 or prison break.

2. Matches are too short. I'll readily admit that WWE has gotten alot better about this. But TNA is godawful about this. I understand wanting to get several people over but here's the deal. There are 40 people under contract to TNA and TNA is trying their hardest to get each and every person over with the crowd. This is stupid. It is impossible for anyone to get over with the crowd when they are only wrestling in four minute matches. I'm not saying that every match needs to be 20 minutes long or anything like that but even adding two or three minutes to some matches and losing the bullshit skits would do wonders for helping get wrestlers over. Now onto the second point about short matches. Short matches have very little psychology. They don't have enough time. It's just spot, spot, spot, finish, done. Longer matches have the ability to tell a better story in the ring and build heat for everybody involved.

3. John Cena is not the worst thing about WWE. Everyone talks about how John Cena is the anti-christ because he can't wrestle. Ok, look at this list-Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, John Cena. Arguable the most popular wrestlers of their respective eras and also all three are not exactly the greatest technical wrestlers. But they each had the ability to connect with the fans and that's the most important thing. It doesn't matter how fundamentally sound a wrestler is if the fans can't connect with them. Say what you will about his ability in the ring the guy is over like a motherfucker and he brings in ratings. That's the most important thing to Vince. John Cena makes a shitload of money for Vince McMahon and the WWE. So no matter what John Cena is going to be in the main event scene for a long time to come.

4. Payperviews are treated as meaningless. There used to be a time when PPV meant spectacle. Now it seeems like some payperviews are used to build the next bigger payperview. Well that's all well and good but you still need to deliver on the current payperview to make the fans feel they got their money's worth. This is one of TNA's biggest problems. Some matches have very little build and feel more like Impact matches. PPVs should be where people are pulling out all the stops and really be hungry for the victory. If you watch one show and it pisses you off you're probably not going to watch the next show no matter how much it's hyped because you're going to be afraid that the next show will suck just as bad. This is why buyrates for TNA suck so bad. They're pissing off their fans with bad matches.

5. Not every match on a show needs to be a five star match. This one really pisses me off. If every match on the card is better than the previous match then the main event would need to be 3 hours long, have over 9000 false finishes and wouldn't end until one wrestler did a 1800 splash from the top of the building through four tables in order to be considered a good match. There is a reason some matches are not as good as others and that is because the wrestling company has strategically placed that match after particularly hot matches to give the crowd a chance to breath and get ready for the next match. Remember back to Wrestlemania 18 and the last three matches on the card in order-Rock vs. Hogan, Jazz vs. Lita vs. Trish, and Triple H vs. Jericho. You know the reason Jazz vs. Lita vs. Trish was placed in between those two matches? It was because the Rock-Hogan match was so hot that WWE knew that they needed to give the crowd a chance to breathe before the main event.

There's still a lot more to rant about. I may edit in more points or do a part two but in the meantime enjoy and I look forward to your responses.

 

[The Rated R CMStar]

Rep. Awesome post.

WWE has gotten a lot more better in some of those aspects, like the trying to hook fans for next shows. They do an awesome work on that one on SD. However, on Raw and ECW they fail because mostly they advertise the matches on WWE.com, and nobody goes to that site.

A month ago Raw's matches were ridiculous. However, from that point on now Raw has had a little more wrestling on their shows. SD iss always filled with action, same as ECW.


As for TNA, I just think they went with the wrong booking maneuver. Right before entering this MEM vs Frontline storyline, and even when it was starting, the product was hot. I found myself craving in Youtube and Dailymotion the latest Jarret/Angle/Foley promo, and the latest Joe/Sting confrontation. I watched the build up for Sting vs AJ. But from there, it went downhill, and it brought the ENTIRE product down.

That storyline would consume the entire product, we knew that, and if the storyline sucked, TNA as a whole would suck. And that is exactly what happened.

 

[gatesoftanhauser]

As far as the WWE goes, here's a few fixes that may help:

1: Drop the 12 PPV's a year back down to the "big 5" as it originally was back in the early 90's. Royal Rumble, King of the Ring, Summerslam, Survivor Series, Wrestlemania. Having too many PPV's leads to "rushed" feuds without a lot of substance. I'd rather see a 3 month build for a match than a 2 week eud over "spilled coffee". (how many times have we seen that lame excuse for a feud starter?)

2: Either import a few Japanese women to freshen up the actual wrestling of the Divas division, or just kill the shit off and have the girls be valets/managers.

3: Bring back some actual production value to the characters. No, we don't need another Duke the Dumpster Droese, but let's have promos, sets and some characteristics, not just "hey I wear black trunks and I'm a wrestler with a generic name".

4: GET RID OF THE GENERAL MANAGER/AUTHORITY CHARACTER and make the wrestlers rely on other creative means to attain matches. I'm sick of seeing Theodore Long and Stephanie McMahon as the go between so one guy can get a match with another guy. It was a cool gimmick back when Regal and Foley were commish, now it's stale and dumb, IMO. The commissioner character takes away from the storyline possibilities, IMO.

Even if I'm colossaly wrong, it's an idea, right?

 

[THE Brian Kendrick's Biceps]

If every match on the card is better than the previous match then the main event would need to be 3 hours long, have over 9000 false finishes and wouldn't end until one wrestler did a 1800 splash from the top of the building through four tables in order to be considered a good match.

I see you've been watching some of the epic Kevin Nash matches. There's a reason he's an X-Division pioneer.

 

[gatesoftanhauser]

I see you've been watching some of the epic Kevin Nash matches. There's a reason he's an X-Division pioneer.

Oh god, lol. His workrate is stellar.

lol I laughed irl/

 

[Chuck Taylor's Grenade]

Since I'm too lazy to break posts down bit by bit I'll do this this way concerning gates previous post.

Point 1-Not likely to happen. As much as we think they suck the monthly payperviews are here to stay because they still make a lot of money (well for WWE they do anyway). What needs to happen is they need to adjust the feuds so that some feuds are still building on PPVs while others are finishing up at the same show so we at least get one or two really good matches per payperview. Now most PPVs feel more like glorified episodes of raw or impact.

Point 2-A novel idea but also not likely to happen. I personally would love to see Manami Toyota, Megumi Kudo, or Kyoko Inoue in an American ring it won't happen for two reasons. One they'd probably want way too much money. And two if they did somehow end up in WWE no matter how good their matches are the typical american male response would be "show me your tits". A sad as it is women's wrestling will never be as respected as it is in japan and elsewhere.

Point 3-A good idea but I think it would be better if the promos were less scripted and the wrestlers were just given the bullet points and let it flow naturally and brought their own little nuances to the characters. I hate watching promos and it seems like I'm waiting for them to look off camera and go "line?".

Point 4-The GM character could be a good one if it didn't dominate the screen time. The GM should only be brought out for really important times like Jack Tunney was back in the day.

Now that that's out of the way let's continue with part two of my little rant that started this whole thing.

6. Fans acting like certain wrestlers' shit doesn't stink. There are three wrestlers in which this is very prevalent-Samoa Joe, Shawn Michaels and Bryan Danielson. These three are all extremely talented but they are not perfect as most people claim them to be. No wrestler is perfect in every aspect and any claim to be so is an exercise in stupidity. If wrestlers were perfect there'd be no point in improving and those three would be champion of everything. Everybody talks about all the 4+ star matches Bryan Danielson puts on. Well that's great but there was a time when his matches probably stunk up the arena. Same goes for the other two. If wrestlers aren't trying to improve in some way each time they enter the ring they need to hang up their boots.

7. Matches are too scripted. This is another one that grinds my gears. I hate watching a match where it seems like I can predict what's gonna happen next. Plus during some matches the crowd seems to be dead but the wrestlers don't change anything about the match. Which makes the crowd lose interest even more. My favorite matches are ones where the wrestlers know just the finish and wing it. Because I'll say this right now no match goes exactly according to the script. It's impossible. Plus scripted matches don't take crowd reaction into consideration like I said earlier.

8. Promos are too scripted. Like I said addressing gatesoftanhauser's post I think promos feel over scripted. There's no emotion behind them because the wrestlers are too busy trying to remember lines as opposed to letting it flow naturally. Wrestlers should just be given the bullet points and let the rest come naturally. This would also help people develop better characters because their natural personalities would show through and they would be allowed to put their own little nuances into the characters.

9. Titles being treated like worthless trinkets. Is it bad that I actually have to stop and think for 5 minutes to remember who the champions are in WWE? I remember when the Tag Team titles was as good as if not better than the world titles. Hell I remember when the Intercontinental Title was actually treated like the number two title in the promotion. Nowadays those titles along with the smackdown tag and US titles have no meaning at all because they just throw them on the next random person or random pairing they're trying to push. If they put even a tiny bit of effort in making those titles mean something it would help out their bottom line so much. Payperviews would improve because people would actually want to fight for these titles.

10. TNA trying to be WWE 2.0. Part of the appeal of TNA in the beginning was that it put on incredible matches while WWE was putting on crap. Plus it was supposed to be an alternative to WWE. Now TNA is trying too hard to copy WWE's style. And that's bullshit. TNA should not be trying to copy WWE. If people are burnt out on WWE's shows and TNA's the same type of shit it pisses people off. It used to be "well WWE's matches are sucking ass let's watch TNA they have awesome matches". I cannot remember the last time I watched a TNA match and was like holy shit this is awesome. Although that's probably because most matches on Impact are less than 2 minutes. I used to race home to catch impact when it was on fox sport at like 4 in the afternoon because the matches were awesome.

I think that's really it for now. At least I really hope so.

 

[Airfixx]

3. John Cena is not the worst thing about WWE. Everyone talks about how John Cena is the anti-christ because he can't wrestle. Ok, look at this list-Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, John Cena. Arguable the most popular wrestlers of their respective eras and also all three are not exactly the greatest technical wrestlers. But they each had the ability to connect with the fans and that's the most important thing. It doesn't matter how fundamentally sound a wrestler is if the fans can't connect with them. Say what you will about his ability in the ring the guy is over like a motherfucker and he brings in ratings. That's the most important thing to Vince. John Cena makes a shitload of money for Vince McMahon and the WWE. So no matter what John Cena is going to be in the main event scene for a long time to come.

What a lot of peeps also need to realise is that for every John Cena there is in WWE, they can afford to have a non-drawing 'smark' fave or two, like Shelton, on the roster.