RAW Used To Be War, Part II…
I still hate the verbiage "Sports Entertainment." It is and always will be Professional Wrestling... I am still overly critical of the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) for the way it presents its product to us. I still feel its way tooooooooooooooooooo much RealityTV and not enough Professional Wrestling...
I have timed RAW a few times to see how much actual product we get for 3 hours and 5 minute with commercial interruptions. In most cases, it is a hair under 2 hours of a show skipping TV Spots. In that 2 hours, we might actually get an hour of actual professional wrestling in the ring. The show has way too much talking about nothing in and how many times they will rehash what happened movements before or a week before, its constant. It's like they just phone the show in weekly...
The in-ring work is still very good. I am never going to have a problem with these athletes going after it for the best fan reaction period. I know enough about the business to know that in WWE most of these guys and gals have little control outside of the actual in-ring-action. That is still pushing it. FYI, the ladies of the WWE are killing it. I am actually never bored with the lady matches. If this was 2010 I'd go do laundry the old fashion way and come back. I am glad WWE was able to identify that having models that cannot wrestle or look like they can wrestle was gonna cut it. I do not want to be all name-calling on my blog, but there were Diva's that absolutely had no business being in professional wrestling outside of being a full-time valet/manager.
Glad that is sorted...
I still feel that Smackdown (The B Show) is still just that. I do not know if it is the PG feel I get from WWE or what, but Smackdown hasn't been worth watching in years... The fans every week on RAW & Smackdown speak directly to WWE and WWE does not listen. Every week they chant what they love about the show and what they hate about it and rather than Vince/Shane/Stephanie recognizing this and trying to do more creative things they just keep forcing storylines and characters most of us cannot stand. We love our Superstars, but the fans really hate how they are portrayed and how the stories go. Since WWF changed their name to WWE, went PG, did the Split brand is where, for me, personally, it has been very hard to watch. What TripleH has done with NXT is great, but what is starting to happen is the NXT talent is better at Professional Wrestling than the current WWE talent. Not just in the ring, but story-wise as well.
Even Randy Orton is boring as hell. We get it, dude. You hear Voices lol... Storylines like that are so predictable. I have sat there many of hours and called out what was gonna happen next. WWE Creative lacks that most important thing, Creativity... I get it... Vince will Veto anything he doesn't like even if said idea could be great for the shows. History in sports tends to repeat themselves. Al Davis and Ralph Wilson both owned their NFL teams into their 80's, Ralph was 90... They made allllllllllll the decisions till their deaths. How did that all workout for the Raiders and Buffalo Bills? It's only now that both franchises are getting out of the gutter and started to become forces in football again. How much of Vince's madness do we have to tolerate before his choices hurt the product? Well, its already too late, it hurts.
Now though, we have a choice...
It's called AEW... AEW... AEW... ALL ELITE WRESTLING...
This is the product we have wanted for a decade now. It took them almost NO time to make the names on their roster household names. On an episode on the WWE Network, Ruthless Aggression Episode 1, they talk about the WCW invades WWE angle and used all the B-Team Talent because all the A-Lister's were under contract and couldn't wrestle till the contracts ended. So WWE pressed forward with this angle and it killed nearly all these guys' careers. WWE claims we didn't know these guys nor cared. Parts of that are true. I am bringing it up because in AEW... No one cares. The fans love these guys. Most of them did work in Mexico, Japan and the US Indi Circuits. By the 2nd PPV for AEW all these guys, face and heel alike, got-the-fuck-over with the fans.
So if WWE has this attitude towards AEW they may very well lose this new war in the dominance of professional wrestling. AEW brought back the ATTITUDE in professional wrestling. It’s a throwback to the old days of NWA/WCW before it was in decline. No Hogan/Nash to make bad business decisions. Even though I am a huge fan of both guys as wrestlers. As bookers and runners of a wrestling business, not so much. They had a huge hand in how WCW started to decline. TNA was doing well until they put those 2 guys in charge. This really isn't my opinion about this. I am just rehashing what is widely accepted by fans as to why's and how's of this happening.
AEW has money... Purchased by Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan, who made his son Tony Khan president and CEO. Tony and Cody Rhodes are friends of sorts and that is how AEW was born. Cody has a lot of inside information on how to run a wrestling business, has his own ideas, leans on the fans for support and has connections to talent. Cody runs most of AEW operations, but when you watch the show you see how many people he has close to him from years past... WRESTLEMANIA approaches and WWE Raw and Smackdown have been the worst I have seen it. I am not even watching. I get the 5-minute version on YouTube now. I only watch the 4 major events of Summerslam, Survivor Series, Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania.
I have to be honest here. This year's events have been really bad. Just god awful. It if wasn't for my friends coming over and us drinking the whole entire time I probably wouldn't have watched at all. We are approaching WRESTLEMANIA 36... These are the weeks it’s supposed to be GREAT... It’s Terrible... WTF... Same problems. Poor Character Development. Poor Booking... Poor Storytelling... Poor and/or Unsatisfied Finishes. WWE network at $9.99 is the only reason I still watch it or have any interest at all. Another thing that has been bothering me is the deal with Saudi Arabia. I like that we get to see matches we normally wouldn't see and such but these events are a huge problem... The wrestlers in most cases do not want to go. John Cena refuses to go because of how Anti-America Saudi Arabia is. The US Gov't has told WWE not to go but they do it anyway. There has been drama and issues with pretty much each show. Again... WWE doesn't listen, not even close... Do you notice they will say the name of the show but won't say it is in Saudi Arabia... MMMMMmmmm...
As we approach Wrestlemania 36 we now have to prepare ourselves for an almost 8-hour show. This is crazy. 8 hours... I get it... It’s the biggest show of the year. WWE makes a considerable amount of their yearly profits from this one show. The ticket prices are so insane one has to pay for them as a payment plan in most cases. Really, do we really need all that? I remember when a mere 4-hour show was considered obscene. Wrestlemania IV was over 4 hours, the 1st one that was and I remember as a kid being, whoaaaaaaaaaa, really...
RAW used to be the highlight of Wrestling and now it is just a footnote. WWE creative has shown it can make a great show but it only happens a few nights a year. Why The Fuck Can’t EVERY RAW be good every Monday??? Anyways… One more thing I wanna touch on… The Fans… I hate the term WWE Universe to describe ALL PRO WRESTLING Fans. That is complete horse shit. To US it will always be Professional Wrestling. Not Sports Entertainment. To US it will always be the WWF, not the WWE. To US we are Wrestling Fans, not the WWE Universe. FK right off with that Shit... Hey, don't even have to gripe anymore about WWE when there is AEW that is catching up and perhaps passing up WWE as we speak... The fans have been dictating what they want from WWE and WWE keeps under-delivering to a point its sick. If fans are chanting "this sucks." WWE should listen. The Wrestling Fans do not care about the WWE’s Creative Political Process of who gets “over,” who’s a “face” or “heel” or “The Champ” or what angle they want to press.” The Fans do care but FK their process... All WWE has to do is LISTEN... Ratings Problem, Solved…