WWE Sloppy with No Competition

[Sackfist]

If we take a little trip back to the Monday Night Wars. WCW vs WWF Entertainment. That was some great television and not so great television which had WWF Entertainment really pushing to be the best.

WCW beat WWF Entertainment for a good two years at one point in ratings. Resulting in Creative to result to desperate measures. Some say it got them to really desperate, as the show became raunchy, even to the point of pushing their stars to the point where they endangered their lives (Owen Hart). I personally think that WWE got far too desperate when they forced Owen to perform that stunt, and it completely changed from standard Face vs Heel wrestling to someone entertaining storylines, HBK & Diesel was won I did enjoy & The DX Invasion.

WCW lost ultimately with the decent in 1998. Since 2001, they haven't had competition as they bought out both WCW & ECW. The Alliance was an interesting storyline but predictable ending to it all. Evolution brought some life to it, The cruiserweight division was something that was entertaining, but lost that much air-time they retired the title.

Now there is no competition at all. And as a result of this, WWE have gotten sloppy, they have some gold feuds: Orton vs HHH with the whole attacking the McMahon Family. Another was Nexus another was Rock vs Cena. Smackdown back in 2002, was a gold show. Rock & Y2J were awesome. Benoit & Angle were so entertaining. Lesnar and McMahon were also entertaining. Despite Goldberg & Lesnar's departure, we still had some gold times, Guerrero's title run & JBL's title run, Evolution, Kane's gold feud with Shane. But gradually WWE have put so much focus on 1 star, John Cena and forgotten some of the new guys. Then result to desperate measures to promote new guys, ADR is one that comes to mind. A new guy with hardly any build wins Rumble & Title in his 1st year. Show's debut was a great one back in the 90's, he was great then in his prime.

TNA is probably a serious contender for WWE. I personally believe if TNA had the financial backing and moved to primetime television in a few years, they would overtake WWE in ratings easy. The past 2 years of TNA have been so good, they have well established stars and divisions. WWE how ever sacrifices a tag division to boost John Cena's career and he kills it whenever he wins the title. Daniel & Kane have brought an interest back to the division, but TNA Tag division is so much better. Great Tag Teams, all well established and certainly are better than any tag team on WWE. They still value the cruiserweights on TNA, WWE killed it off and have hardly any crusierweights left, Rey Misterio & Sin Cara are the only ones I can call.

WWE bookings are repetitive. CM Punk is a fantastic guy, but his gimmick is so darn cheezy and dull that has been done over and over. If creative could stop oogling and fapping to Divas and start actually brainstorming some great ideas, these guys are required to have 3 years writing experience. Do they just employee barney the dinosaur writers?

I hope that TNA becomes a major competitor for WWE soon and pushes it to become a better show because of it.

I see no need for Smackdown now. Smackdown has become The RAW Highlight Show. I recall one show came back from commercial, played a 3 minutes raw replay and cut to commercial. Invest in it, bring back cruiserweight division to it, do something with it, TNA has 1 Live Show, Xplosion which is the equivalent of Heat/Velocity from WWE.

 

[Leo C]

I agree. Although I wouldn't blame the writers, it's probably Vince's fault, as according to former writers he ignores their ideas and only does what he wants. But what you said is true, not only in wrestling but in every business there is, with no competition, the dominating company gets sloppy because they're not in danger, if they don't have anyone that can take them down and they're making money, why would they change anything? That's what they think, or at least that's what it looks like.

 

[Snowman1]

Agreed for sure. Watching Raw, it just comes across as lazy and effortless most of the time. Vince knows what sells, and that's Cena and the WWE logo. You put those two things out there, you have enough to get 4 million plus viewers. They don't bother building up so many new talents so you won't have stacked PPV's like you did in 2002 because... well, why would they? They have such a leg up on the competition. Even in the IWC, plenty of us bitch and complain about the show when it's bad, but we always watch so we can gather around our PC's and talk about it.

Obviously it's a different society, and we're alot more politically correct nowadays. The exact thing they did in the AE wouldn't work now, and with WWE going to such extreme lengths for Linda's damned Senate campaign, who knows what WWE would look like even with good competition?

TNA isn't well known enough, and very few people know who Austin Aries is outside of TNA fans. Maybe their style of booking would cater to the WWE fans, but they have to let people know they exist. I didn't until I read a random article on Bleacher Report after browsing around and saw Jeff Hardy went there, after watching WWE for 2 years. TNA just needs to get it's name out there.

Right now, WWE has quantity but not quality. Either Smackdown needs to gtfo, or the Supershow and the third hour of Raw can go. Although I still hope Koskey runs Smackdown again.

 

[Sackfist]

WWE Have killed every other division due to focusing on one thing and one thing alone. Cena. He goes round and round with opponents now. Edge vs Cena did bring some interest back in. But now it is WWE Title...WWE Title...Squash Match...WWE Title...WWE Title...Poor quality Diva match...WWE Title...WWE Title....Shit Tag Match...WWE Title...WWE Title

The US Division was long forgotten when Santino won it really. It is one of the most prestigious titles. Back in early 2000's, the title had it's own division, guys like Rhino, Benoit, Guerrero, Tajiri, Edge made that title interesting. It was the title that had an interesting John Cena. His feud with Rene Dupree was great and drew a lot in

The Intercontinental again a very prestige title. Jarrettt, Ramon and HHH made that title great in teh 90's. Of course Y2J made that title an amazing championship end of the 90's and throughout early 2000. It slumped until Christian and Booker really picked it up. RVD and Shelton again made that the title match to watch. When Ziggler won it, nothing got done at all with him, no challengers, he was wasted, then it spiraled down with Big Zeke winning it. Rhodes won it and it got forgotten about yet again.

Tag Team Division: Such a wonderful division killed of by continually putting main event stars in the main event match in a tag match. Also by John Cena winning the title constantly to feud with his partner, who was usually the WM opponent. The title was forgotten about when Evan Bourne was sidelined due to injury. Kofi can work well in th division, but he needs a solid partner. R-Truth has this Little Jimmy Gimmick and it has worn thin. Charlie Haas and Rico, now that was a hilarious team. But teams like Los guerreros, The Bashams, Hardy Boyz, Dudleyz, E&C, MNM, Miz n Morrison, fantastic teams. Daniel Bryan and Kane are bringing life to the division. PTP need some reworking but are a decent team. Usos need more time. Kidd & Gabriel need some push, Ascension, get them on RAW, they work well, so well.

Cruiserweight division - Bring this back. TNA has it and it works so well. Chavo Guerrero was the best Cruiserweight champion as he was entertaining all the time he was champion, Helms as well was a great champion. When Hornswaggle won it. A steak was stabbed in the division. Hunico, Sin Cara, Mysterio, we need more

Divas Division - This has some hype on it now. But back in the day. Trish, Lita, Ivory, Molly Holly, Mickie. These were superb divas, they looked good and could wrestle. WWE go to America's next top model with a net and grab whoever they can. Kaitlyn attacker and Eve are decent divas now. They need to keep this up, and whatever they do, keep Kelly out of the ring, have her as a manager, go for it, but keep her out of the ring.

 

[Matt]

Smackdown is just a glorified superstars :finger:


thats the problem with humans. when they feel safe they become complacent. vince knows wwe is the top company in wrestling so he doesnt need to put as much effort into it as he did during monday night wars

 

[Rysenberg]

Very good thread and I agree with most, if not all of what has been said.

For me, this whole lazy booking thing is epitomized with these dreadful tag team matches that we see every week at some point. I'm not on about genuine teams, but when we see two heels that have absolutely nothing to do with each other, and don't merge well as a team at all, against faces who inevitably are the victors via their overused finishing move. It's grown so tedious and I severely doubt that whenever one of these matches is announced a fan reacts when anything other than apathy.

I honestly think TNA could compete if they just improved on the non-show side of things. I mean, for fuck's sake they were actually ahead of Raw when it came to viewership in the UK not long ago and yet they find themselves stuck on Bravo which is a pretty mediocre TV channel. If they could strike a deal with Sky then I see no reason why they couldn't become legitimate competition. All the extra advertising that would come with it would help them ridiculously. TNA still have the potential to become big and, contrary to what I've heard many smarks say, I think one day they can be a threat to WWE. The product is there, the big names are there, the talent is there, they just need to improve on marketing and they can do it.

And yeah, for WWE, they could easily achieve monster ratings and produce an awesome product, but we all know that as long as they're making money, they don't care.