I've really enjoyed the discussion over the last few weeks concerning the debated need for pro wrestlers to rely on excessive pain medication and extremely dangerous stunts to make it to the top of the industry. We've proposed solutions such as a mandatory off-season but I'd like to hear from the rest of you:
If you were to take over WWE what actions would you take to eliminate drug and steroid abuse, dangerous spots, and increase job security while still keeping viewers interested in the product? Can it even be done?
Yeah. In a way, that does make sense. Why? Because fighters can safely fight about 3 - 4 times a year, depending on their schedules, and all of that time in between is used for training, healing, etc. This doesn't mean that automatically these guys are clean, because they always aren't. "Smashing Machine" the documentary about Mark Kerr was disturbing in every way, it just followed him through steroid and pain killer abuse. Like watching him shoot up kind of stuff.
You also have to remember that there are strange drug laws in Japan. Marijuana is extremely frowned upon, and most fight companies will test for that, but steroids? Nope. So when you had Ken Shamrock, Mark Kerr, Mark Coleman, Phil Baroni, the list goes way on.
If you watch UFC and saw all of the PRIDE talent they brought in, you'll notice they are lacking in size, stamina, aggressiveness and killer instinct compared to PRIDE. I mean, that has to be saying something. Guys who had a chance to fight in the US after PRIDE and before UFC, like Rampage, turned out fine, while you had Cro Cop coming in looking like a fat 205lbs fighter and his signature giant thighs of pure muscle were about average size. He claimed it was nagging injuries that kept him from properly training, but he hasn't looked the same in UFC as he did in Japan, hence why he was so happy to return to Japan.
Yeah but it's not exactly true.And I'll tell you why. You see in a MMA fight you get really hurt that's why you can fight a couple of times per year.Yes but wrestling is NOT REAL!People do get hurt but mostly in the worst case it's a broken bone,something that heals for 2-3 months.So a wrestler can fight if not every week than at least once in 2 weeks. To answer Dave's question.If I took over WWE in some way,I would do tests for steroids every 3 months,just to make sure.Also I would completely remove ECW.I mean there isn't enough tallent in WWE without people having to perform in all 3 shows.Then I would really make RAW and SmackDown separate shows-so the guys can have a brake every once in a while(Without any storylines involving stars from both shows).I would probably rearange the schedule-instead of jumping from a place to place every week I'd make the shows stay in a certain city for at least 3 to 4 weeks(Or I'd do it like in TNA).Also that would be my pollitic-"If a guy is wrestling on one of the shows,he'l be cutting a promo on the next" And many many other stuff!
IMO - always keep the product fresh! That has always worked and it will never fail! Even if a wrestler is my favorite - I will get sick and tired of him eventually... Also - valdik gave probably the best idea ever - first week - match, next week - promo! So he is still fresh and we still can't wait to see him compete!
[quote][cite] spudz:[/cite]IMO - always keep the product fresh! That has always worked and it will never fail! Even if a wrestler is my favorite - I will get sick and tired of him eventually... Also - valdik gave probably the best idea ever - first week - match, next week - promo! So he is still fresh and we still can't wait to see him compete![/quote] Exactly I saw a Undertaker interview once where he commented about the brand extencion that happened back in 2003(I think) and what he said was "I think it's great that way the guys will get a brake and WON'T have to perform so much" and that kinda oppened my eyes about how the WWE "stars" are now actually being payed to be tortured in my oppinion.I mean if Batista is on SmackDown and he comes to Raw every monday to "wrestle" Shawn Michaels what was the point of the brand extension anyway?
Solid and to the point, man... There was a time when I thought these people where champions - after a couple of movies ( Beyond The Mat, even some WWE documentaries) and after some time researching - I reached a conclusion! These poor souls are trapped being something they wanted to be a long time ago and now just make big money. Now I know why their salaries are so big - you have to pay me a LOT more to do the stuff they do... No wonder The Rock quit in pursuit of a movie career - it's exactly the same amount of fame, maybe even more money but without abusing life-threatening medications and doing stuff that has killed plenty of wrestlers... These people are living on the edge - and some of them have sadly fallen over...
If there are any changes, the prowrestling industry would die.
Logically speaking, they could at least take the summer off. This would create a nice build up for Wrestlemania being it for 3-4 months, then have Summerslam be the "season premiere." In that three to four months, wrestlers could cycle off of steroids, like they do in our sports, heal, spend time with their families, and relax. Then, about a month or two before the season restarts, start training again. The reason so many wrestlers die of steroids is because they are on it ALL the time, then their bodies need it constantly. Ask any heroin addict how painful it is to not have his fix. Have a summer break would also give fans a great deal of time to get excited again. During the off-season, WWE could even run shows featuring developmental talent and mid-card talent to build them up into bigger stars. Then have a pay-per-view in Mid-June or July featuring a few bigger stars working on getting rid of ring rust. It's a great concept because it keeps people interested and the product changes.
However, if it fails, it will fail hard. If people don't want to see developmental talent wrestling, then the break months will be revenue free. This will cause the product to tank and networks to possibly reconsider airing the shows. Then, they lose their credibility.
In short, it'd be very risky, and no one will do it.
Well also it's kinda a bad idea because then the wrestlers won't be controlled like they are now.WWE controls how a wrestler works out what he eats and how he looks and if that controll is lost fo 3 or 4 months like you say some of the wrestlers will be back in real bad shape.I mean in the worst case we will be seeing a 600 lbs John Cena-If you know what I mean
To play off of Eric's point, with a brand extension, WWE itself could never have an off season, instead, each brand could have an off season. Let's say 6 months and 6 months for each brand, they work 2 TV shows a week and maybe 1 or two house shows a week, this works out to about the same, if not less shows than they run now for each brand, keeps both TV shows fresh and keeps everything in general more fresh. Wrestlemania can be Raw's big show, and Summerslam can be Smackdown's.
Keep ECW as a development thing for each brand, like Heat or whatever.
Likely what would be best is to tone down the house shows and travel. These guys are on the road 300 days a year. I'm 6'3" 325 pounds and built like a linebacker. Just being in a car for a half an hour starts to put wear and tear on my body from the positioning I have to take up to prevent my head from hitting the roof. I can only imagine what some of the bigger guys have to do.
One taping, one house show per brand per week would likely cut down on the wear and tear of travel, the emotional distress from being away from one's family, and being away from home.
Also with the two brands, I agree that an off season would work. Or even an alternating cycle of having two different rosters work shows each week. With such a system you wouldn't have storylines rushed, and you could also spread out the detail, allowing for better and more in depth middle and low card feuds.
Also I think that the WWE has too many par per views. As stands they tend to either rush feuds, or drag them out. They're either too long or too short.
An off season is also a good idea, typically the WrestleMania to SummerSlam corridor is essentially filled with crap. Backlash is more like Backwash from WrestleMania, and every year Great American Bash seems slapped together and crappy, with the full intent of carrying on WCW's legacy of shitty booking.
The Rumble to Mania corridor is usually the biggest time of year for the WWE, and about the only time they seem to get their asses in gear. Post-Mania they tend to almost immediately dive gleefully into the depth of sucktitude.
What the WWE really needs are better writers who know how to not only build up a character but also a fued so that wrestlers won't need to hit so many high spots or take a dangerous bump in order to get over with the fans.
I feel TNA is kind of weak as far as story telling goes however, the company is great at building characters. They did a great job building up Samoa Joe. Both James Storm and LAX deserve honorable mention. Also, who would have ever thought that 5'6" AJ Styles would ever be anything other than lost somewhere in the shuffle of cruiser weights someplace. They did a pretty good job with Tomko and Matt Morgan as well, both of which were serious jobbers in the WWE.
That is where I have to give guys like Paul Heyman credit. Sure, old ECW was full of insane bumps however Heyman also know how to build up a fued. Case in point, Taz v/s Sabu. Heyman used an entire year to build up this fued before he allowed these two to finally face off on PPV and it paid off big time. One of the fueds that put ECW on the map.
Jim Crocket's Mid Atlantic Wrestling (what would later evolve into WCW) was great for building and maintaining long term fueds. Ric Flair v/s Dusty Rhodes being one that lasted nearly a decade and could still pack a house at any wrestling venue that specializes in classic wrestling.
WWE hires guys with Ph.D.'s and Masters degrees in writing. I think it is easy to say that they are good writers, but just that Vince and family get in the way so often that they are completely worthless.
WWE hires guys whose previous experiences are lackluster sitcoms. I think it is easy to say that they are not particularly skilled writers, and Vince's juvenile sense of humor and inability to comprehend anything that he himself does not like or enjoy gets in the so so often as to make anything they write even more worthless.
The WWE writers and whoever is behind the scenes planning the shows with them, have Peed me off too many times to count.
Mainly its the way they'll script something into the show like when Hurricane was talking to an old woman and in the 'background' Rosey was being attacked by a dog. Instead of doing the clever thing and letting us notice it - like how they would in something like The Naked Gun - they treated us like morons and zoomed in on the background action 3 or 4 times with King telling us to look at Rosey.
Then you have the time Eric Bischoff (who i'll come to in a second) trying to sign Smackdown talent back when the brand split actually had a bit of rivalry and early legitimacy - it was rumoured he was coming for a top talent. Then we had Kurt Angle backstage on the phone to someone while someone was trying to interview him. Kurt ended up saying to the person on the other end of the phone 'Hang on Eric' and then turned to the interviewer to tell them to go away. Here they can either treat us with respect and give us a bit of suspense ... so those who were paying attention could click 'was kurt talking to eric?' and the fans start speculating themselves - or the other route which they chose to do of having the commentators spell it out for us and tell us 'oh my... Kurt just said ERIC... and that's the first name of our rival brand RAW's General manager who is coming to here to sign one of our top talent... Eric Bischoff!'
Back to Bischoff and one of the biggest F up's they've ever done and completely showed what the company was all about.
The company and wrestling world are speculating who the new RAW gm could be. We'd seen a few people put their name forward and a few people named on wwe.com who were possibilities. Then the week comes where Vince would reveal it... but before that we're going to have a quick Booker T interview. Booker T does his thing and we're just about to cut to a quick ad break as... wait... ex WCW main man ERIC BISCHOFF walks past Booker leaving Booker to say 'Tell me I didn't just see that!' complete with you guesed it JR/King telling us 'Do you Bischoff is the new GM?' 'Could be!'
Then after the ads Vince starts talking and then brings Bischoff out for a huge shock... that wasn't so huge after they just showed us him before the ads! They did the same with goldberg's debut hyping it for weeks before mania... but why not just spring him at mania as a surprise?
When Bischoff debuted i had totally missed the Booker T segment so after the break i had no idea what was coming and was marking out like crazy - yet everyone i spoke to just said 'ummm oh yeah... he was backstage with booker t just before he came out...' So i had a memorable moment while they just sat and had a 'oh right... that's nice' moment.
....If you were to take over WWE what actions would you take to eliminate drug and steroid abuse, dangerous spots, and increase job security while still keeping viewers interested in the product? Can it even be done?
I don't think they could do it my way now as they've dug themselves in too much but... if i could start it all again id start off with the UFC in mind. Try to make it seem more legit and more about competition rather than 'A hates B because B tried to steal his wife away from him while dressed as a clown, then he ran over him in a monster truck and then he stole his lucky underwear and sold it on eBay to some fat woman who then comes into the ring and dances around while oiled up' It would still be scripted and planned out so A is the top guy and B,C,D and E are the challengers. But with some more careful planning they could take something like this and drag it out for a year with the challengers fighting each other for the right to challenge the champ. Built correctly one month the main event would be B vs C in a number 1 contenders match and the fans would actually care - then the following month the champ takes on the 1 challenger.
Instead they over saturate by having the champ defend his belt here there and everywhere so by the time a ppv comes around - the fans don't really care enough to pay to watch a match they had last week on tv for free.
Having the fed run around rankings and competition would mean someone who lost or won can take a few weeks off to train/heal (with the story they're training for the next match or training to make themselves better after the loss) while the focus switches to someone else for a month say the tag division or the mid card belt. So they could run the main focus of each ppv on a 'Month 1 World title' 'month 2 tag titles' 'month 3 midcard belt' 'month 4 world title' month 5 'tag titles' focus with other matches added along - so the month where the main focus is a tag title match we would have a HHH vs HBK match where the winner goes to face the champ at the next ppv. So everyone gets a good chance to take time off with their family, heal up, train up/hit the gym and not get burnt out - we still get big matches here and there.
We'd still be watching what we see today in most of its forms - but it would be spread out over the year. It would mean the creative team aren't as pressured to keep adding in new exciting things each week, the writing team wouldn't be throwing turd after turd at the wall to see what sticks, the wrestlers get a break, the fans get to see the same wrestling but spread apart to keep interest flowing.
But there's just no way wrestling fans could accept something like that today - i think they're too used to Vince's image of wrestling. And i think Vince is too dependant on the current format to bring cash in.
[quote][cite] Raven Ankh:[/cite]WWE hires guys whose previous experiences are lackluster sitcoms. I think it is easy to say that they are not particularly skilled writers, and Vince's juvenile sense of humor and inability to comprehend anything that he himself does not like or enjoy gets in the so so often as to make anything they write even more worthless.[/quote]
Well yeah, they still have their Dave Lagana's and their past Vince Russo mistakes, but most of the writing crew is filled up with capable, talented writers. The problem comes with Stephanie, Vince and their inability to get over themselves, as well as Triple H and other wrestlers who have power.
[quote][cite] Spunk:[/cite][quote][cite] Raven Ankh:[/cite]WWE hires guys whose previous experiences are lackluster sitcoms. I think it is easy to say that they are not particularly skilled writers, and Vince's juvenile sense of humor and inability to comprehend anything that he himself does not like or enjoy gets in the so so often as to make anything they write even more worthless.[/quote]
Well yeah, they still have their Dave Lagana's and their past Vince Russo mistakes, but most of the writing crew is filled up with capable, talented writers. The problem comes with Stephanie, Vince and their inability to get over themselves, as well as Triple H and other wrestlers who have power.[/quote]
What's it like?
Sitting in the room when they have their creative meetings, what's that like?
I think the biggest thing I would do would be to re-structure the brand extension. Instead of having Raw, Smackdown, and ECW, I'd put together a Summer roster and a Winter roster. Each roster would work 7 months out of the year, meaning there would be a month of overlap on each end (the overlap months would correspond to Wrestlemania and Summerslam). The rest of the year, they'd be off; they'd be free to accept limited indy bookings to keep themselves sharp (vetted by WWE, of course; no working on anything that goes on PPV, and all that), but other than that, they're expected to spend a few months resting, rehabbing, training, and reconnecting with real life.
I think that the biggest thing the wrestlers need is an off-season; by doing this, they could have one without the WWE having to put on less shows.
Triple H was big before he married Stephanie. Triple H was the biggest thing in the WWF since The DX Army. All power he has, he has earned. And the WWE product would not be the WWE product without the McMahon family involved storywise. They've always been there. They're always gonna be there.
[quote][cite] InTheZone:[/cite][quote][cite] Spunk:[/cite][quote][cite] Raven Ankh:[/cite]WWE hires guys whose previous experiences are lackluster sitcoms. I think it is easy to say that they are not particularly skilled writers, and Vince's juvenile sense of humor and inability to comprehend anything that he himself does not like or enjoy gets in the so so often as to make anything they write even more worthless.[/quote]
Well yeah, they still have their Dave Lagana's and their past Vince Russo mistakes, but most of the writing crew is filled up with capable, talented writers. The problem comes with Stephanie, Vince and their inability to get over themselves, as well as Triple H and other wrestlers who have power.[/quote]
What's it like?
Sitting in the room when they have their creative meetings, what's that like?[/quote]
Be a [convenient carrying device for male reproductive organs] all you want, but I'm just providing a view outside of the 'VINCE JUST HIRES HOLLYWOOD REJECTS AND THEY SUCK~' internet talking point. The point is, they hire capable people and just squander them. It is the same as with wrestlers.
Easy on the name calling and general pissyness pretty please fellas.
But yeah, even HHH has stated it all begins and ends with Vince. Trust me, should the day ever come when there is trouble in the HHH/Steph marriage I believe we're going to see more than one pig slop match featuring HHH, son-in-law or not.
Back on topic. Paid off season for WWE wrestlers. Let's lobby for it. Why not?
People want to see wrestling every week. That's how they have done it for years, then all of a sudden to have an off season would piss off a lot of fans ("mark" or not)
What they need to do is either cut down on the dark shows or ban wrestlers from doing other events unless they are at the moment not doing weekly shows. At least that's what I think.
No animosity was in my response, and I'm kind of surprised at how offended you were.
It's a statement I put in place very often in wrestling discussions, because quite frankly, it applies most of the time. Fans don't know, and acting like they do just seems sort of, well, silly to me.
I think an off-season would be a good thing, because bottom-line, the wrestling world doesn't need any more Eddie Guerrero or Chris Benoit cases. As always in the business world, money stands in the way of making that decision, and as an obstacle it usually stays stuck in the way.
Yeah, I doubt anything could endear a person to McMahon unconditionally, even marrying his daughter. Obviously I don't know HHH personally but he doesn't seem like someone dumb enough to believe he can marry his way to running WWE.
I don't know, I think an off season could work after Wrestlemania. Maybe it's just me but I just don't care about the outcome of matches anymore, in WWE, RoH, or whatever. The only time I even get remotely into a match is watching Noah on TV here every few weeks. I don't know what it is. Something in the way they present the matches just makes you root for one guy or the the other. Don't know what it is but I wish I could bottle it and sell it to every other wrestling company.
But getting back to the off season idea. I would love to see a year long build up to Wrestlemania in which the only people guaranteed to return next season are the ones who walk away as champions. And when the next season starts I'd say at least 50% of the roster should be cut and replaced with either newly drafted up and comers or returning pros we haven't seen in at least a few years. Something to keep it fresh. As good as any wrestler is, the more I see them the less excited I get. I honestly think the best thing to do would be to completely take pro wrestling off the air for at least a year, nuke most of the existing fan base, and start fresh with far less free wrestling on TV. Championship PPV matches should be major events with the outcome mattering in some way, scripted or not.
Virtually every star that has returned after a lengthy absence gets a huge response from the crowd. Even someone as over-exposed and maligned as HHH is welcomed back with a roar. Why not manufacture that every damn year with the entire show? The off season doesn't have to be a total media black out either. I'd be happy to watch magazine style shows with wrestler interviews, etc. during the summer as speculation builds as to who will return and who will not. I'd still watch a wrestling themed show (hell I often find interviews more interesting than matches) over the summer and the absence of actual wrestling would make me want to tune in at the beginning of every season. Knowing that each story line would come to a solid conclusion at the end of every season would make me more likely stay tuned and the stories just might be better as a result of the finite time line.
don't forget... the WWE is public. There's no way that shareholders are going to hang on to their stock during an "off-season" when no ticket sales are coming in. The day after the "season finale", that stock would drop faster than my heart after the Stanley Cup finals game 6... oh... sorry. i digressed.
Hopefully there really is love there, or else it won't matter in the end anyway...I'm sure if Trips and Steph ever split, HHH will lose his backstage power faster than he got it.
Shane has little to no power in the company. Steph is the heir to Vince's throne, and, by proxy, Triple H is. Shane doesn't have the McMahon 'killer instinct' and has mucked up everything they've given him. That isn't saying that Steph hasn't, it is that she knows how to make little people take the fall.
[quote][cite] Spunk:[/cite]Shane has little to no power in the company. Steph is the heir to Vince's throne, and, by proxy, Triple H is. Shane doesn't have the McMahon 'killer instinct' and has mucked up everything they've given him. That isn't saying that Steph hasn't, it is that she knows how to make little people take the fall.[/quote]
They were ready to hand WCW to shane and let him run that as his own company until the XFL blew up in Vince's face. So Vince must have some faith in Shane... unless they saw that as throwing shane a bone and leaving the wwe in its entirety to steph?
[quote][cite] KRadiation:[/cite][quote][cite] Spunk:[/cite]Shane has little to no power in the company. Steph is the heir to Vince's throne, and, by proxy, Triple H is. Shane doesn't have the McMahon 'killer instinct' and has mucked up everything they've given him. That isn't saying that Steph hasn't, it is that she knows how to make little people take the fall.[/quote]
They were ready to hand WCW to shane and let him run that as his own company until the XFL blew up in Vince's face. So Vince must have some faith in Shane... unless they saw that as throwing shane a bone and leaving the wwe in its entirety to steph?[/quote]
Vince really had no plans of WCW lasting, even if they did get a TV deal for them. The sole purpose was more or less to drive WCW into the ground or just take the TV slot they won and turn it into more WWE programming. The big thing for Vince was, A) beating the competition, B) having access to WCW's talent pool and C) the tape library. He really, if you think about it, got quite a deal out of it. I mean, Dana White and Zuffa paid how much for PRIDE and it was the biggest waste of money possible, while Vince saw a return on his investment probably within a few years.
Basically, everything they had given to Shane was setting him up for failure, such as the web content director, brief creative stints, etc. The best thing he ever did was be a performer. There was also tension due to Shane's wife, but I don't remember the details.
I don't post on TUF anymore, I used to, just don't have the heart for it anymore. I do write at http://www.Total-MMA.com (as well as co-host the podcast and post on the boards) under my SHOOT NAME~!
As for the death of PRIDE, it was something that was bound to happen. PRIDE was involved with some shady-ass stuff, mainly Yakuza (like most sports in Japan), and when it surfaced, Zach Arnold who was crying Yakuza for years in pro wrestling and later MMA was validated, in a way. PRIDE losing their TV deal meant they lost the ability to compete with K-1. If anything, what is funny is that there is no doubt the Yakuza are still involved with K-1, DREAM, Sengoku, etc, the problem was PRIDE got so big, attempted to break into the U.S. and got sloppy with their business practices (ie: money laundering, etc.) and made a few key mistakes that led to them getting found out. It was arrogance on their part that led to their downfall.
Then Dana and the Ferttitas purchasing PRIDE was just a complete mindfuck. Seriously, the number was between 40 and 50 million for all of PRIDE's assets. Why would you do that? Think about this, WWE bought WCW, a worldwide pro wrestling brand, its tape library, select on- and off-air talent and management for 2 million dollars. Since a lot of the talent were AOL Timewarner employees, Vince didn't have to worry about pending lawsuits, contracts, etc. for them. He basically stole WCW.
Zuffa paid 50 million for something that more or less did not exist. They ended up with no PRIDE fighters under contract (anybody in UFC now from PRIDE had to get a brand new contract), use of the most of the tape library (TV stations in Japan generally retain rights to things they air, so anything they broadcast only is theirs), the PRIDE name, copyrights, the office, office employees and their 'assets.' The thing is, there were no assets to be found, most likely because there was no book-keeping, as the company was used as a front for the yakuza to wash money.
Seriously, due diligence is probably a term that haunts Zuffa right now.
I started to watching wrestling at the tail end of Hulkamania. I have seen basically all i can stand at this point for a few simple reasons:
The quest for ratings. Why did WCW go and kill the wrestling PPV? cause they where ran by a giant TV company who made more money off there TV deals than there PPV. Why WWE could never figure this out, i don't understand. Its sad when i see a world title match on RAW and change the channel. Why would i change the channel you might say? well because i have seen the world title defended 4 times this month and why should i care?
The WWE at this point is so over exposed its amazing. They have too much of the same on TV every week and even there "shock" stuff is not shocking. Take July 14ths RAW. When Cena walked out to the parking lot, I thought to myself: A) Cena gets jumped by JBL and left laying. B) WWE does ANOTHER car crash.
If the WWE wanted to make there PPV's and TV's seem special, there is an easy solution to this.
1. Make each brand totally different. Make RAW risky entertainment, basically WWE for the last decade. Smackdown! old school entertainment, Hulkamnia style wrestling. ECW hardcore/flashy wrestling, basically, ECW, not WWECW. Now each brand has something different. And the term brand would be removed. Do some storyline where the brands all got "bought" by different people. Make them look like different companies. WCW had the greatest idea of all time, too bad they never used it right. There idea for the nWo vs WCW thing was to make people choose between nWo and WCW, not WCW vs WWF. 2. Run it live. I don't watch taped wrestling. Its boring. 3. 11 PPV's a year. Each brand would get 3 a year plus Wrestlemania and the Rumble. Wrestlemania would be booked as the "supershow", and have a 2 month build two it(the missing month without a PPV). The rumble would be booked as the battle between the brands. 4. Make the world title mean something. World titles should 90% of the time be defended at PPV's. Of corse, there are exeptions. A 3 hour RAW would have a main event title match for example. Otherwise, keep the champion in tags and non-title matches. 5. Build a tag division. Good god why do we keep seeing make-shift teams win the title on there first outing? The Dudleys once did an interview where they said "If a team wins the title at there first chance without any build, where do they go from there?". WWE basically shoots its own tag division in the foot every week. 6. I would remove womans wrestling personally. I know this pisses a lot of people off, but next time you watch a womans match on RAW, watch the crowd. Notice how half a section get up and leave for a piss break? TNA's doing a decent job with theres, but i would still rather watch a good X-Division match than watch Awsome Kong squash Kim/ODB... again. 7. Make the 2nd tire belts the "every day belts". The way to make the IC/US/TV titles mean something would be to have the champion defend the title at every TV. These title don't fall under the special world title rules because people expect to see the lesser champion to have a match. 8. As an answer to Dave's question on how to reduce injury's... If each brand ran its own show(no dual SD!/WWECW tapings), that means that each brand could run 2 house shows a week and still draw the same amount of money. Take each worker off the road an extra day a week and your soon looking at a fresher more relaxed roster. 9. Remove the "3 strikes your out" rule. With TNA there anyways, if i was a top player anyways, i could prob care less anyway. Force workers who failed a test to be removed from house shows(hence removing there house show bonuses) and no PPV bounus as well. With the time they miss they must report to a treatment facility. 10. Remove the draft. The draft just makes the brands look stupid. When was the last time you watched TV and saw: "The Detroit Red Wings have drafted Tucker from the Toronto Maple Leafs."? Remove the draft and bring back more "roster raids".
the end result would be a fresher product with workers who might live past the age of 50. You could push new stars and make each brand seem different and have its own flair.
Currently with the WWE nothing is good. Roster sucks, matches suck, feuds and angles suck, the tag divisions suck, brands suck, championships suck and women suck. At least with the girls there used to be a time where Trish was wrestling - and nicely, too. There were nice feuds between Candice and Torrie Wilson. Now it's just eye-candy! I don't want to watch soft core pornography - I want to watch wrestling... WWE need another WCW - I hope Hogan does what he says and brings some hefty competition. Then I hope the WWE wakes up and starts doing something interesting...
What can really compete with WWE though? TNA barely registers for most people unless they bring in a celebrity from Nascar or MLB. And if wrestling action really was all that mattered then Ring of Honor would be a lot bigger than it is right now. If it was violence people wanted then CZW would be on Spike every week instead of TNA.
I don't know what the answer is, but I know it isn't purely a matter of wrestling content. Equally as important is the production style and personalities of the wrestlers themselves.
[quote][cite] PWX_Dave:[/cite]What can really compete with WWE though? TNA barely registers for most people unless they bring in a celebrity from Nascar or MLB. And if wrestling action really was all that mattered then Ring of Honor would be a lot bigger than it is right now. If it was violence people wanted then CZW would be on Spike every week instead of TNA.
I don't know what the answer is, but I know it isn't purely a matter of wrestling content. Equally as important is the production style and personalities of the wrestlers themselves.[/quote]
What is truly great about this is, you sum up, in one concise post, exactly what most of the internet cannot fathom.