It’s been a few weeks since I have last blogged. I am sure some of you want me to talk about your Politics or your Religion. Hell… I am sure some of you want me to talk about your Fitness Life, but I am not going to do that. No… I am going to about Sports Entertainment… UGH… Fuck that phrase. I hate that they now refer to PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING as “Sports Entertainment.” I have heavily criticized the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) for years since they went PG and started hiring Reality TV writers and production staff to make the programming more reality/soap based. Since they have done this the product has utterly sucked.
Let’s rewind to the late 90’s and very early 00’s. Professional Wrestling then was awesome. The characters were the extremes of most of our current personalities. The industry was more interested in talent than trying to make a star out of someone. All that would come if the fans were on board. Come back to the present. Is that what we see now? No. We see almost every week on both RAW and Smackdown (The B Show), the fans taking over the show with their chants and signs. The fans are speaking directly to WWE and WWE is not listening. They kind of sort of used to but now they take it personal and just continue with their bad ideas and push their talent, when it’s clear what fans want to see…
One would think an industry that depends on the fans to make its profits would see the bigger picture. It’s clear they do not. Now the PG era officially started in 2006-2007, I believe. To me though about a year after WWE absorbed WCW it was changed to me. Once the brand splitting started and all the older WCW stars were WWE headliners it was killed off to me. Probably 2004ish is when I got really board by it. I’d watch Wrestlemania every year, but outside of that. I’d watch snippets of RAW and never watched “The B Show.”
Once CM Punk started becoming, “the guy.” I kind of got back into it and when the NXT people started becoming Every week talent that also sparked my interest. What really killed for me “AGAIN” was Wrestlemania XXX and 31… Both events seemed very forced on all fronts. The booking during these 24 months was so bad I had lost complete interest to a point that I was only willing to sit and watch the 4 main Pay Per View Events; SummerSlam, Survivor Series, Royal Rumble & Wrestlemania. Now that we have the WWE Network that only costs $9.99 a month it’s easy to do this at little or no real cost. If we were still doing PPV buys for 2 events a month, every month at $60 a pop, do the math. Now this way, it’s cheaper to the fans and I am sure WWE pulls all the profits rather than having to pay the cable providers.
I pretty much quit watching RAW all together. I just really didn’t care about any of the characters, like at all. The writing of these characters is so poor that the ring action, which is still very good, makes no sense to me at all. So I just quit watching.
So now we have Wrestlemania 33. The event, again, hyped all over the place, failed to deliver for at least the 4th year in a row. Some of the matches were rather good but the finishes were so poor I feel bad for the 75,000+ people that paid for their tickets. I watched from 5pm Sunday to 12:30am Monday…
Really do we really need all that? I remember when a mere 4 hour show was considered obscene. Did we really need an 80 yard ramp with all those effects? Was it cool, sure, but did we need it. I would have been fine with just Pro Wrestling at its badassery finest moment of WRESTLEMANIA. So much good talent didn’t make the card. Once we got to the final 4 matches, main card matches I was falling asleep. We get 2 heavyweight title matches. Then a woman’s match then I suppose the main event is Roman Reins vs The Undertaker??? Title matches are the main event, what changed? Taker’s retirement match wasn’t the worst but not really of main event quality. None of them were. Taker looses. Taker puts over Reins. We get a neat send off to the Undertaker. We get one glimpse of a Kayfabe moment when Taker kisses his wife before walking up the ramp. The End… Till Monday…
It’s been a thing for a few years now that the 1st RAW show after Wrestlemania is the best one of the year. Last night. I was very impressed from start to finish. It was the best RAW show I have seen since the attitude era and all I can say is…………….
Why The Fuck Can’t EVERY RAW be that good???
It’s obvious that the people in WWE Creative have the ability to make great shows, but it only happens a few times a year. That is a huge problem for me. If RAW was good like that every week. I’d watch. We got a great Cruiserweight Match. 3 respectable tag team matches. Great (funny) promos. The ladies were sharp. FYI… I’d like to ad that the Ladies are killing it on both shows. A few years back it was terrible to watch. They simply couldn’t wrestle and all the Lady Professional Wrestlers were leaving so they wouldn’t get hurt from the Diva’s. Notice they hardly even use the word Diva anymore when describing the Lady Performers. I think that is a huge step in the right direction. Vince Showed Up and at first had a nice, “Real,” moment with the fans before he stepped back into character. It was just a stellar show from beginning to end. I will watch again next week but if they go back to usual format I will probably vanish again.
Smackdown is tonight and I will watch it on TiVo after the RAY’s game. I am not happy at all with Smackdown. It’s totally a B-Rated Show. The writing even more dummied down. I used to be a real Shane fan, but I think he is part of the problem. I just think as a behind the scenes boss he doesn’t get it. He just does what Vince says. I think Triple H is just a yes man and we might see changes when Vince actually passes away, but until then you won’t see much. Hunter will not take any real chances. He has in the last 2 years come into Wrestlemania looking rock hard in shape though. He looks great. Even his legs looked good, but his ability to run the WWE in a way fans love the product. Yeah… Noooooo…
Big… NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO on that one…
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…
The fans have been dictating what they want and WWE keeps under-delivering to a point its almost sick. Last night it was nice to see the fans COMPLETELY take over the show. I mean did anyone else notice the FK U Roman Chants that were clearly heard and not bleeped out or drowned out with fake audio? They were ruthless last night and not cause it was the Raw after Mania show. The fans had just had enough of the terrible storytelling, poor character development and horrible booking calls from Creative. If fans are saying this sucks. WWE should listen. I guess as long as they make money, which they are, even though the RAW ratings continue to drop; will the USA Network even resign with WWE in 2019?
It just shows that no matter what Creative pushes on us, the fans will not submit to it. The fans decide, not the company. I think that is why in the early years of TNA that product worked so well. I remember in the middle 00’s watching TNA and being blown away with the product they had and new talent they were developing. Then they hired Nash/Hogan and they ran that right into the ground just like they did WCW. Not an accident that TNA is really struggling these days. The fans just want super talented people wrestling other talented people.
The Family of 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.” How many championships there are? WWE has overcomplicated itself with Vince allowing Shane & Stephanie trying to outdo one another and Vince over the years. Back when things were simple the product was much better. You can even see Paul, the advocate, not believing him when he was talking about Reins. But the crowd went ape shit when Broan came out and went face to face with Brock. That’s the kind of shit people wanna see, every week… Not just one Monday after Wrestlemania. Let’s face it. RAW on this day was better than any of the last 3 Wrestlemania’s put together. Like I said… The inside ring action makes no sense with the kind of stories and pushes they keep trying to tell. Something needs to change. Granted on the outside the product looks successful but I think they are losing their audience and it could get ugly before it gets better… “It’s True… It’s Damn True…”