What is stopping former fans from watching WWE?

[Niners Fan in CT]

In football the names (characters) change more frequently. You will have your Peyton Mannings and Tom Bradys but for the most part careers are short... the same team does not always win (Cena) and there is little reason to believe that a game is predetermined. There is always the added drama of "anything can happen"

 

..and actually..  all of that applies to shows like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones. They are continually keeping the audience guessing but not in a Russo swerve because swerves kind of way. These shows are very well written and thought out.

 

Obviously the WWE can't *BE* one of these shows because of things like injuries and such but could they be better written? Probably. Could they produce "anything can happen" television? They could... we've seen it before in earlier eras.

 

These motherfuckers are on cruise control. The wrestling is GREAT..  but for many people I feel the wrestling is not quite enough for the shows to be Must-watch.

[OGpistolpete]

I think much of it is attributed to the fact that they are a business just like any other business, and are probably saying to themselves: this formula works and it works because we are a profitable company. There is no reason for them to change what they are doing to a dramatic effect, unless they were in dire financial straits, which they never will be bar some extraordinary occurrence. I feel like I remember some famous wrestler saying that the biggest moment in reality for the WWE is when they became a pubicily traded company, and I think it has some credibility because when they did this, the company literally monopolized the nationally available market of pro wrestling, and the business minded shift with entertainment at the forefront came to mind, as opposed to the classic wrestling "promoting" way of things.

[Hooker]

In football the names (characters) change more frequently. You will have your Peyton Mannings and Tom Bradys but for the most part careers are short... the same team does not always win (Cena) and there is little reason to believe that a game is predetermined. There is always the added drama of "anything can happen"

Sure.  For all that stuff, being a legitimate sport is a huge advantage.  The disadvantage is that sports are not about anything.  They can re-contextualized and re-framed by writers and commentator to derive meaning, but they are ultimately about themselves.  Fiction, meanwhile, can (and should) be an expressive medium of an author/artist that can work as metaphor, comedy, or tragedy to bring out a much wider range of meaning and emotion than sports can.  The WWE doesn't seem to have any interest in any of that, though.

 

Also, I would point out that sports generally work better when there is a single dominate athlete or dynasty to root for or against.  The biggest periods in basketball have been the Chicago Bulls dynasties of the 90s and the Heat dynasty of right now.  Similarly, baseball has seen its best results during the Yankees dynasties, football is doing great under the Patriots massive success, and hockey has been suffering since the last dynasty, the Oilers, fell apart.  I think it's a mistake to say that having some people around for an extended period of time is harmful.  Hogan was around forever.  Austin was the face of the WWE for four years and when they turned him, fans rejected it because they still wanted him to be the main babyface.  The problem is that Cena has never had a character arc over the 8-10 years he's been the face of the company.  He's been exactly the same and never had to change anything.  The two periods where his character has faced a legitimate challenge (Punk at MITB and Rock at WM28) and in any other narrative medium would have become a different person, he stayed exactly the same.  The WWE is a Never Never Land where he continually acts like a child, blissfully unharmed by any threats to him and oblivious to the protective bubble his parents (Vince) afford him.  On a storytelling level, it is hard to think of a less compelling character.  Tom Brady, LeBron James, and Alex Rodrigues, love them or hate them, have faced hardship, criticism, and failure that have defined the players they are today.  Would Cena be any different if he hadn't triumphed over The Nexus, Lesnar, Bradshaw, or failed against The Rock?

 

As for Dylan, I wholeheartedly agree that the gross amount of television the WWE puts out is a serious detriment to them putting out a quality product.

[_MJ_]

I doubt they'll ever do it, but I think a WWE offseason might be a good idea.  Especially back when they took the brand split semi-seriously.  Nice break for the wrestlers, writers, and even viewers. Build up intrigue with cliffhangers.  Etc.

 

I'm obviously not thinking about the money side of things here, which is why it won't happen.

[Spontaneous]

I wish they would go back to the brand split, or maybe keep the champions as the only real ones on both shows. Smackdown is now a complete afterthough, all the big stuff happens live on Raw. Would help to develop mid-carders too.

 

Are they going to keep the WWE championship and the World Heavyweight championship as some sort of B-level belt, with the IC and US belts as the C-List championships? Just too many titles for casual fans I think.

[John Cowheel]

In the process of reading through this, but the biggest problem to me is that they run too many shows with the same wrestlers. I hate to be that guy, but the brand split was good for the promotion. Regardless of what the numbers told them in the short term, they should've continued to have the brands split. I'd argue for a even harder split than they did.  None of that garbage where guys start showing up on both shows around Wrestlemania and they should have kept the split PPVs outside of the big ones. A brand split would've kept the talent fresh and allowed them to use more guys. Outside of Cena, we see the same dudes on every show and the same matches over and over. It's to a point where it doesn't even matter if the matches and feuds between certain guys are good, you've just seen the pairings too often. Anyway a hard brand split could've created something of a second promotion. TNA is not actually competition, so maybe WWE could've found competition within itself.

[Victator]

They don't have a strong enough roster for it to work now and the split brand PPV's were dying. If anything they need to unify the World and WWE belts and stop all pretense of a split. 

[John Cowheel]

I'd rather watch JTG and Jinder Mahal feud than see the 364th Alberto Del Rio vs Dolph Ziggler match.

[Victator]

I rather watch my fingers get cut off than watch Jinder Mahal. 

[LooseCannon]

Did the brand split create any main eventers (not guys who may have had one title shot, but guys who became long-term fixtures at the top of the card) who wouldn't have been in that spot without the brand split?

 

From what I've read, I think USA has always been against the brand extension.  USA has also been behind the permanent expansion of Raw to three hours, which killed any pretense of a brand split because of roster depth.

 

One thing I would considering doing is find familiar faces from the Attitude era who don't look too old and put them in the spot that currently seems to be occupied by guys like Sin Cara.  In a just world, Billy Gunn would be back on WWE television and jobbing to members of 3MB.

[Hooker]

I rather watch my fingers get cut off than watch Jinder Mahal. 

Can anyone honestly say whether Jinder is any good or not?  Probably not even Jinder knows at this point.

[Go2Sleep]

Did the brand split create any main eventers (not guys who may have had one title shot, but guys who became long-term fixtures at the top of the card) who wouldn't have been in that spot without the brand split?

 

Brock Lesnar and John Cena definitely benefitted from being able to rise to the top of card without running into the HHH/Evolution show that was in full force at the time. Eddie and Rey were getting a ton of tv time and drawing latino viewers in pretty significant numbers before Eddie's untimely death.

 

To a lesser extent, CM Punk and Jeff Hardy reaped the benefits of the soft split towards the end.

[Matt D]

Edge? JBL? Even Orton.

[JRGoldman]

Does anyone think that the WWE would benefit and get back casual fans in some regard by embracing the netflix binge stream model for one of their shows? Let's say NXT, three times a year or so, puts out 13 hour long episodes at once that compromise an entire season, leading up to a final episode that settles all open storylines and serves as a finale. People can watch these at their leisure. Would not having to sit down at specific times, remembering to DVR, and having clear beginning, middle and end points help casual fans get attached to characters and tune in for the live shows once again?

[DylanWaco]

I'm actually surprised that Vic doesn't like Mahal.  I actually think he's looked pretty decent at times

[Domino_Not_Deuce]

Did the brand split create any main eventers (not guys who may have had one title shot, but guys who became long-term fixtures at the top of the card) who wouldn't have been in that spot without the brand split?

 

From what I've read, I think USA has always been against the brand extension.  USA has also been behind the permanent expansion of Raw to three hours, which killed any pretense of a brand split because of roster depth.

 

One thing I would considering doing is find familiar faces from the Attitude era who don't look too old and put them in the spot that currently seems to be occupied by guys like Sin Cara.  In a just world, Billy Gunn would be back on WWE television and jobbing to members of 3MB.

 

In my fair and just world, it's Chris Hamrick working 10 minute Superstars matches every week. I agree with that idea though, for a while, Bob Holly was around and was always good for a decent TV match. Wasn't there talk of a New Age Outlaws reunion and brief run for a while?

[JonnyLaw]

The biggest problem with the brand split PPVs is that instead of using two months to build feuds for the PPVs, they spent the first month as mostly filler and then rushed the build in the second month.

[truename]

Maybe I'm joining the nostalgia-fest, but every PPV feels like a "Greatest hits" CD. Remember when the cruiserweights, the tag team division and even the divas had 10-20 minutes to work? And this was back in 06, I really feels like the PPVs lost the appeal. Maybe it wasn't the way to go, paying every month for a PPV of one brand to see mid carders, but I can't helpo but feel it was better, like a normal CD: you have your top hit, a couple of singles and maybe some filler. But because it was all you had, it made you care about the filler. i dunno, every PPV sounds like a greatest hits, where the world title is defended in the beginning. That killed WWE for me (and probably growing up too).

[Zakk_Sabbath]

 

Did the brand split create any main eventers (not guys who may have had one title shot, but guys who became long-term fixtures at the top of the card) who wouldn't have been in that spot without the brand split?

 

From what I've read, I think USA has always been against the brand extension.  USA has also been behind the permanent expansion of Raw to three hours, which killed any pretense of a brand split because of roster depth.

 

One thing I would considering doing is find familiar faces from the Attitude era who don't look too old and put them in the spot that currently seems to be occupied by guys like Sin Cara.  In a just world, Billy Gunn would be back on WWE television and jobbing to members of 3MB.

 

In my fair and just world, it's Chris Hamrick working 10 minute Superstars matches every week. I agree with that idea though, for a while, Bob Holly was around and was always good for a decent TV match. Wasn't there talk of a New Age Outlaws reunion and brief run for a while?

 

 

I remember reading about the NAO comeback as well, but it was parlayed into Gunn training guys down at NXT and Road Dogg doing "Are You Serious?" on YouTube. I think they did some house show matches though. I want to say their most recent was at MSG a few months back. I agree wholeheartedly, though. The undercard is so neglected anyway right now, so why not throw in some guys who casual fans might recognize? There's something to be said for someone turning off a particularly boring MNF game and stumbling across Goldust, or Tommy Dreamer and thinking, Hey, I remember that guy. I mean, even if you forget the Attitude era for a minute and just think back to the earlydays of the brand split: I loved watching guys like MVP, Shelton, Helms, the Mexicools, Rhino, etc. Miles ahead of watching Ryback squash someone no one gives a shit about

[Yo-Yo's Roomie]

The thing is, instead of the split brand ppvs making the lower card guys seem important by putting them on ppv, it just made the ppvs look weak for having a bunch of jobbers on them.

[Brian Fowler]

The split-brand ppvs were awesome, especially the Smackdown ones.

[Newb82]

The problem with the split-brand PPVs is that the early Smackdown continually getting pillaged of their top talents until the "brand" meant nothing.

They couldn't handle the "Smackdown Six" owning everything else, then the first Smackdown PPV (Vengeance 2003) destroying the first Raw PPV (Bad Blood 2003).

[LooseCannon]

 I mean, even if you forget the Attitude era for a minute and just think back to the earlydays of the brand split: I loved watching guys like MVP, Shelton, Helms, the Mexicools, Rhino, etc. Miles ahead of watching Ryback squash someone no one gives a shit about

 

They should bring back some of those guys so they can be squashed by Ryback, giving you the best of both worlds.

[_MJ_]

The brand-split only PPVs might have been awesome for hardcore fans, but I doubt casual fans cared for them.

[Petey]

Smackdown moving to Fridays killed it as a top tier brand and eventually killed the single brand PPV's. Having separate Raw and Smackdown PPV's in the same month didn't help because it wound up oversaturating the PPV market with 14-15 PPV's a year. If they just kept it to where each brand ran four PPV's and then you had the four big joint events, it could have worked.

 

But it's all a moot point because the move to Fridays kinda ruined everything anyway.