JohnnyJ

During all of the recent craziness I've spent far more time perusing the network than I have in the past. While I can always find something to watch, it is hard to comprehend how six (6) years into the network so much classic content is still missing. Why is there only a year or two of WCW Saturday Night or Superstars? Where is the rest of Primetime? Where are the syndicated shows?

Jericho has had exactly the type of career he should've had. He's one of the rare types who every once in a while gets a hot hand and knows exactly how to run with it.

WWE has done a poor job of developing draws post-Cena while simultaneously signing anyone with a lick of talent. The result is a roster that is interchangeable and replaceable. All they need is wrestlers to fill slots on the roster. For example, they need people with some credibility at the top of the card. It's already a given the top of the card performers wont draw in any measurable way but if you take them away the house of cards collapses. In the WWE machine the Drew Gulaks of the world are a dime a dozen. He could and will be replaced tomorrow with another talented performer desperate for a shot. In a time when WWE is cutting costs, these types of performers just don't have a lot of leverage when demanding competitive salaries. The market doesn't support it. If Gulak lands with a competitor, he probably will not be making the salary he was requesting from WWE.

I just can't imagine someone hitting a breaking point where they would turn down a mid to high six figure salary to step into the unknown. It seems bonkers.

I had a similar experience around 7 years ago. We were on vacation in Yosemite when there was a forest fire in an area of the park away from the touristy area. (Yosemite is the size of Rhode Island) The news stations and major networks were reporting around the clock and making it seem like Yosemite Valley was ablaze. Meanwhile, we're in the heart of where all of this is supposedly taking place and the day was no different than any other. It was surreal.

What is the purpose of setting up performance centers around the world if they can't put on a decent show? It seems like their answer for everything is expand, get more wrestlers under contract, produce more content and it will all work out.

I still subscribe to the network and enjoy it as background noise. However, the issue with the network is you can't be everywhere. There is a cause and effect. If you expand tv programming and water everything down, there is going to be less of a demand for additional programming on the network. How much attention is being paid to producing programming which people actually want to pay for on the network? While I enjoy John Morrison rambling about his return for an hour as much as the next person (I particularly enjoyed him thinking he was re-debuting in the rumble and planning out his big move only to come back on Smackdown and get tossed by Brock) what is there to watch outside of the old ppvs?

In order to have a successful movie or wrestling company it needs to be built around attractions. WWE has stopped paying attention to the interests of the audience (low engagement, ratings, attendance, etc,) and figured out how to make money anyway. Remember a few years ago when movie studios tried to position Armie Hammer and Taylor Kitsch as the next big things? The movies flopped, the audience rejected it and studios moved on to other stars. The way WWE operates is once it is decided a wrestler is the next star nothing else matters. They will lose money to prove they are right. Which is why we’re watching Lone Ranger 7.

Lesnar being booked as an unstoppable monster for so long has taken away the credibility of anyone else who calls himself champion and has caused a logjam beneath him.

Anecdotally, I’ve had a handful of people in my real life I talk wrestling with for the past 20 years or so. They’re not the types who watch the shows every week, but keep up with what’s going on and watch the big shows. For the first time, they’re all completely out. Something different has happened over the last few years.

The business side of sports stuff is so prevalent because there are so many mediums devoted to the sports talk format and people need to talk about something. It's one of the same reasons our politics are such mess. There's such a need for a content and the same points just get regurgitated over and over again. The result of this is mainstream stories tend to get overreported and everything else gets underreported. Because of this constant reporting of player's salaries and collective bargaining agreements, it gives rise to the perception that the worker's rights of people making large salaries are of concern to the average person. They're not the most sympathetic figures. In most industries, workers barely have any rights and are paid like crap. People encounter far far far worse abuses in everyday life than what WWE pulls, even if we all know it's a bunch of b.s. Yes, it's ridiculous that WWE doesn't provide health insurance, but at least wrestlers are compensated halfway decent and can afford their own health insurance. This is the reason nobody has taken on the machine in court. What's the end game of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney fees? To be at odds with the company who is paying you many more times than what you would make anywhere else? At the end of the day, it's a business.

For something that has been in the works months, there was definitely a 1992 Bill Watts vibe to Punks return.

Anyone have an idea what a lower card act makes from being on the road vs. the downside guarantee?

...and speaking of innocent children stuck in cages and living in their own filth.... MeUndies will come right to your door or cage with the most comfortable set of underwear. Use promo code NOSHAME for 20% off.

Rollins isn't over now because despite being consistently pushed for years, he was really never that over. He's a product of a change in philosophy in the company that took place a few years back. Traditionally, in order to earn a sustained push you need to be drawing. At some point drawing power no longer mattered. The same players would be pushed and featured no matter what. This left WWE with a generation of performers at the top of the card nobody asked for. Now that Rollins is in the role of top guy for the promotion, he was destined to fall on his face.

I think about this a lot and how it flies in the face of how WWE does things. A generational talent could get signed tomorrow and he/she would spend the next 6 months to a year sitting in developmental waiting to debut on NXT. Then the next 1-2 years in NXT waiting to get the call. If the fans take to him/her add a year so NXT has someone to headline Takeovers. When they do move up to the main roster, unless the office sees you as a top talent you're lucky to get stuck in 50/50 midcard hell. It's a process that is pointless and actually hurts the chances that the generational talent will ever become anything. Meanwhile, AEW comes out of the gate with a Darby Allin type and with a simple message; he's young, he's exciting, and you should care about him. He jumped through 3 years of b.s. and if by unlikely chance he is that generational talent he has the opportunity to get noticed as one.

Without going through the laundry list of reasons, I put a lot of thought into whether or not WWE has effectively killed the town. Whether a series of band aids have disguised just how bad it is and what, if anything, would engage the audience. Putting blame on Vince is certainly valid, but simply getting rid of him wont magically make good television. So, what needs to happen?

What is surprising to me about Fox Smackdown is the sameyness of it all. The deal was announced over a year ago. Plenty of money has been thrown around (Fury, Velazquez, and a rumored Punk) and yet it feels like they put lipstick on a pig. The tired format is the same.

Is polo shirt Jack Swagger cool? Like, in a I’m so cool, I buy my gear in the Kohl’s men’s section sorta way?

Without really even getting into issues with the product, what really drove me away was the increase in programming. It was not that long ago that Raw was a two-hour show that with a DVR you could get through in an hour. Smackdown was b-level content with replays of the highlights from Raw that was largely skippable unless there was a match with a little buzz. Monthly ppvs were usually a pass for me unless something big was happening (who was coming up with $60 to pay for these things?). So even when things were lousy (and they usually were), the time commitment of a fan to follow everything that was going on was 1 to 2 hours per week. That seems like a reasonable amount of time to expect a fan to follow a tv show. Now it seems like the requirements to follow everything have perhaps tripled or even quadrupled. It's quicksand. It can feel completely overwhelming to keep up with everything. And it's not like you are rewarded. It's the same lazy content with a little magic mixed in it always was except now you need to treat it like a job. So, while I still watch highlights and will continue to do so, unless WWE starts cutting down on content, I will never be a full-time watcher again.

The dynamic between Reigns and the office never made any sense. You have to examine the essence of why the authority figure is evil. They are evil because they have an objective which differs from the fans. Traditionally, they are profit motivated and will rail against someone unconventional who is risky on the top of the card. Reigns was an entirely conventional choice and it was common knowledge that WWE wanted Roman as the face of the company. If that is the case, why are they against him succeeding? Don't they want him to get over and headline all of their shows?

Eventually you have to reap what you sow. The Reigns/Rollins/Brock era came about at a time where WWE started making more money than ever before even though classic indicators for success (ppv revenue, house show attendance, ratings) were going down. Fans did everything in their power to voice that the crop of stars WWE stubbornly kept on trying to market were not clicking. They basically stopped showing up outside of the major shows. So now you have a generation of top guys who nobody wants to pay to see and have limited mainstream appeal.

I would take Jilted Lover Jericho any day over Segue into Commercial Jericho.

I wonder what is causing all of this now. Vince is the same as he always was. Is it simply AEW?

The reason Bryan v. Reigns still gets talked about so much is it was an indicator of what a post-Cena world was going to look like. Forget the discussion of Bryan's marketability, it was really a question of whether WWE would go with what was actually connecting vs. what they wanted. Cena spoiled WWE. He could drum up a program with just about anyone on the roster in a segment and whether people liked him or hated him he always connected. They took for granted that other performers were going to connect in the same way. That has not happened. We're now several years into the post-Cena WWE. They've spent years pushing Lesnar, Reigns and Rollins on the audience. There is almost no interest in the main event programs.