By Ciaran James@TheCiaranJames
The way professional wrestling or sports entertainment has been presented has radically changed over the last decade, part of this reason can be attributed to the resurgence of independent wrestling in 2002 and the dominance of WWE. Wrestling, when presented correctly is a pleasure to watch, simple booking, understandable feuds, unscripted promos and well booked matches all make for a watchable product. Where WWE failed in the last decade independent promotions flourished, even NJPW capitalised on the disillusioned audience and grew their product with a mix of top home-grown and international talent. As the only national wrestling company left standing after the fall of both WCW & ECW, World Wrestling Entertainment looked towards the future. Even with many controversies along the way the company pushed to expand beyond its borders, the rest of Europe was left to conquer, as well as South America, and now most recently Asia and the Middle East. As Vince and Co pursued global dominance, the product stagnated, we went through the Cena years, bad booking, nonsensical brand splits and nepotism.
What WWE did do well since the 1980’s was conditioning their audience to their style and presentation of professional wrestling, or as Vince would later call it “Sports Entertainment”. When business was good and Steve Austin was riding high many of us ignored the bad booking and wrestling of the attitude era, WWE did a marvellous job of blinding us with DX, Mankind, Rock and Stone Cold, we the audience went along and ignored the mediocre undercard. Another plus for WWE was the two-hour offering of RAW, it was just enough for us to accept and keep us hungry until the next instalment the following week, there wasn’t that sense of overkill that you have in 2019. As big and successful as WWE’s global business is, their TV product is failing, full of mundane booking, inconsistent behaviour and continuous bad treatment of their audience, the product is facing some real dark days. WWE does so much wrong that attempting to watch RAW and SDLive is an exhausting effort, WWE’s inconsistencies are scary.
My first example of WWE’s lack of consistency comes from RAW on 24/09/2018, the first video shows Stephanie McMahon & Triple H (Paul Levesque) presenting some children from Connors Cure receiving WWE Title belts. In the below video both Stephanie & Paul are in full business mode, all smiles, exhibiting WWE’s charitable attitude.
On the same episode both Stephanie and Triple H are stopped to talk about Hunter’s upcoming match with The Undertaker at Super Show Down. Both appear in heel mode, with Stephanie acting conceited and Triple H promising the end of the Deadman! I mean really, less than an hour after presenting WWE belts to cancer survivors they are portraying themselves as dislikeable characters! See for yourselves below.
I am not against either segment, however what I do have a problem with is Stephanie and Triple H’s flaunting of the rules, I personally think when you’re on TV you portray yourself as the character you are meant to be. What you don’t do is blur the lines between reality and fiction, over time this dilutes the product, scuppers ongoing storylines and makes a number of fans turn their backs on the product. In the months that followed the two segments above, WWE plummeted content wise, the product was looking down a big black hole. For the first time in a decade, WWE didn’t have John Cena or Roman Reigns to rely on, from part time schedules to long term injury the company was without the two major acts they had built and made the audience believe were the top guys. WWE faltered in the early Autumn months, the decisions they made in the wake of the Roman Reigns departure hurt the product, the content they were producing was at its worse since the dark days of 2002. Vince’s solution to the low ratings and poor content was to reintroduce his family, and most importantly blame Baron Corbin for everything.
The McMahon’s returned, because obviously that’s what was missing, they promised change, new acts, new direction, new attitudes, I’m sure all of this sounds very familiar. Vince has lost touch, that was evidently clear in his promos on Raw and Smackdown, and why wouldn’t he be. Vince McMahon was a visionary in the 1980’s and the late 1990’s, but visionaries do not last forever, one concept can only work for so long, times change and businesses evolve, Vince in the last decade has just about kept up. Without the vision of Triple H one can only guess how WWE would look now, his talent has no doubt benefitted the on-screen product, but they have not been utilised to their full potential. The Revival, AOP, Bray Wyatt, Luke Harper, Bobby Roode, Nakamura, Finn Balor, Andrade Almas, Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose, Bayley, Sasha Banks and many more have all been misused at one point, none of the names mentioned have successfully had a long run as top acts in the company. This is what is fundamentally wrong with the company, to compare this, how good is Coca Cola if it’s not advertised in the right way? What is the point in NXT and WWE’s latest attempt at world domination if the acts aren’t treated as special commodities?
The most recent acts of inconsistency come from two recent episodes of Raw and SDLive. The first came when Braun Strowman who furious that he lost his opportunity against Brock Lesnar at Royal Rumble, randomly attacked and pushed over the Limousine of Mr McMahon. Now as mentioned, this was a random out of the blue attack, yet WWE had cameras set in pivotal positions to catch every angle they could, surely to any intelligent fan this completely takes away from the realism of the act?
The most recent acts of inconsistency come from two recent episodes of Raw and SDLive. The first came when Braun Strowman who furious that he lost his opportunity against Brock Lesnar at Royal Rumble, randomly attacked and pushed over the Limousine of Mr McMahon. Now as mentioned, this was a random out of the blue attack, yet WWE had cameras set in pivotal positions to catch every angle they could, surely to any intelligent fan this completely takes away from the realism of the act?
The second example comes from SDLive, it involves the storyline with Mandy Rose, Naomi and Jimmy Uso. As we saw Jimmy sneaks off to the hotel room, and as we all know it was revealed to be a ruse and as Mandy Rose take off her clothes a paparazzi hidden in the bathroom jumps out and takes pictures. What you then begin to realise that there is a camera and sound man in the hotel room filming what is taking place!!! I mean really, have WWE writers have zero imagination?
I often get criticised on social media for being negative where WWE is concerned, however my comments arise due to the poor content the company distributes on a weekly basis. WWE has in 2019, one of the biggest and most talented rosters in its history, and it could be the best wrestling company in the world. I comment on WWE’s product because I would love for the company to produce the best content, and be the best wrestling company in the world.
