How happy are you with WWE right now?

[JCM]

Probably because Cena beat the shit out of most of them and sent them back to midcard purgatory.

[Cristobal]

No offense, but how the fuck would you know?

How would anyone know until they push SOMEONE like they did Cena. In ten years, they finally did it once, so while we can say that Roman Reigns doesn't equal one Cena, we don't know WHAT the fuck else we have as far as potential goes.

[SirSmUgly]

I agree with what MORELOCK said up above in terms of match layout. Speaking of match layout/booking, I just watched Tully/Magnum I Quit again a few minutes ago, and it reminds me of another thing; just book winners and losers in a way that the loser doesn't necessarily lose cred for being tough. I compare how Tully/Magnum ended to how Cena/Rusev I Quit ended earlier this year (and another match that I recently re-watched since I'm trying to finalize my best of WWE matchlist for this year). Of course, I don't expect lots of blood or eye stabbings with shaved off chair legs in 2015 WWE, but Tully straight up lost, totally agreed to give up, but because of the punishment that he took, he came off like a tough bastard anyway. As an audience member, there is no judging Tully for quitting when he was getting stabbed in the eye; you just have begrudging respect for him.

 

On the other hand, Cena/Rusev had cute booking to try to protect both guys with Cena winning and Rusev maybe quitting, maybe not in another language, but it just came off as a weak cop-out. If Cena lost via passout like it seemed he would when that spot happened, he still comes off as tough and Rusev comes off like a killer with a death submission move. Hell, if Cena forces Rusev to pass out somehow after a number of brutal attacks, that would work too. They need to just have winners and losers without all the cute shit they like to do at the end of these big matches to pseudo-protect the losers. You can have winners and losers and just have the loser go down after massive punishment. 

 

To make this work, they'd have to cut back on finisher spamming matches, though. Make kicking out of finishers mean something again. They need guys to have multiple finishers, one of which is treated like death, and others which are not (something I've gone on about before) and they need to have guys avoid more finishers rather than absorb them and kick out. 

 

RE: OCM's comment. I assume that you're being sarcastic, but just in case...Cena didn't equal Cena either until he got put over Big Show at WM XX and didn't lose a straight-up one-on-one match for the next year barring massive interference (and even then, that was rare) leading to him becoming the WWE Champ.

 

I'm still in disbelief that Cena's U.S. Championship Challenge angle ended with a fucking loss to Alberto del FUCKING Rio when they had at least ten better, viable options on the roster for that spot in terms of using it to make a star. 

[Overly Critical Man]

In the end, Cena's U.S. Championship Challenge was used to put over Jon Stewart and Alberto Del Rio. And I'm not sure which is worse.

[Cristobal]

Cena got his heat back from Stewart.

[Craig H]

No offense, but how the fuck would you know?

How would anyone know until they push SOMEONE like they did Cena. In ten years, they finally did it once, so while we can say that Roman Reigns doesn't equal one Cena, we don't know WHAT the fuck else we have as far as potential goes.

 

DAMMIT. I reached my quota for "Likes."

 

Every bit of this and your comment before this one, along with JCM's comment.

 

Who is to say Owens isn't massively popular if he owns Cena instead of getting the Bray Rusev treatment? Same goes for Bray and Rusev.

 

Who is to say Neville wouldn't be more popular if his gimmick were something other than "guy with a cape?"

 

Same goes for the Horsewomen and the sad as hell "Divas Revolution."

 

Notice a theme with any of this? Each of these guys or girls built themselves up into something big and something ready for the main roster at NXT, and then they're cannibalized by the main roster because god forbid someone put half as much effort into getting them over as they do Reigns and Cena.

 

They can't even fucking push Reigns right. Twice now they've cut the legs out from underneath him wasting all the time that was spent building him up to be a champion. Just fucking commit. Look at Ryback. What is that guy's career like if they actually committed to making him into something special. Instead he has a weak as hell loss to Mark Henry at a Wrestlemania, gets buried for a while, manages to get himself over in a tag team with Axel, gets hurt, comes back and is massively popular, and then right back down to the mid-card.

 

We're now nearly 13 years removed from when the glass ceiling should have been broken by Eddie, Jericho and Benoit. Then Vince got scared shitless at the draft coming through and the glass ceiling was rebuilt stronger than ever. It is insane. I've said it before, but if this were any other show, it would have been long cancelled for how boring and bland it is. 

[Craig H]

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. I forgot all about the Jon Stewart thing. I sure am glad that Stewart and ADR both got the rub from getting one over on John Cena. They'll both surely lead the company to higher heights.

[Go2Sleep]

Don't forget the rub from Lesnar breaking Taker's streak going to, uh, the Undertaker.

[Burgundy LaRue]

The Cena/Rollins SummerSlam match/outcome was maddening.  The idea of Mr. Bought In battling Ol' Hustle, Loyalty, and Respect is a good one.  But why not save it for Night of Champions?  Champ vs Champ would have given that PPV a boost. To have Cena drop the belt over Jon Stewart half-swinging a chair--for crying out loud.  It was stupid.

[SorceressKnight]

 

No offense, but how the fuck would you know?

How would anyone know until they push SOMEONE like they did Cena. In ten years, they finally did it once, so while we can say that Roman Reigns doesn't equal one Cena, we don't know WHAT the fuck else we have as far as potential goes.

 

DAMMIT. I reached my quota for "Likes."

 

Every bit of this and your comment before this one, along with JCM's comment.

 

Who is to say Owens isn't massively popular if he owns Cena instead of getting the Bray Rusev treatment? Same goes for Bray and Rusev.

 

Who is to say Neville wouldn't be more popular if his gimmick were something other than "guy with a cape?"

 

Same goes for the Horsewomen and the sad as hell "Divas Revolution."

 

Notice a theme with any of this? Each of these guys or girls built themselves up into something big and something ready for the main roster at NXT, and then they're cannibalized by the main roster because god forbid someone put half as much effort into getting them over as they do Reigns and Cena.

 

They can't even fucking push Reigns right. Twice now they've cut the legs out from underneath him wasting all the time that was spent building him up to be a champion. Just fucking commit. Look at Ryback. What is that guy's career like if they actually committed to making him into something special. Instead he has a weak as hell loss to Mark Henry at a Wrestlemania, gets buried for a while, manages to get himself over in a tag team with Axel, gets hurt, comes back and is massively popular, and then right back down to the mid-card.

 

We're now nearly 13 years removed from when the glass ceiling should have been broken by Eddie, Jericho and Benoit. Then Vince got scared shitless at the draft coming through and the glass ceiling was rebuilt stronger than ever. It is insane. I've said it before, but if this were any other show, it would have been long cancelled for how boring and bland it is. 

 

 

That ties into the other problem with indy wrestlers- and since NXT has so much cred, even NXT homegrowns are starting to get the same brush; 

 

Smark darlings will always be "kind of over"- never really over enough to get to the top, or even be a bonafide main eventer, solely on the smarks' love- but just over enough so they are over and a popular midcarder you can put anywhere on the card and it'll work. 

 

By contrast, non-smark darlings need to be pushed harder and given more booking TLC in order to make them over with the crowd- but that would never get them to the top either. 

 

The only problem is that, even with proof from people like CM Punk or Daniel Bryan where "if you take the people who have that connection, and give them the booking TLC of a homegrown, you could have a lynchpin main eventer until someone catches fire to be a mainstream star", they never go that far to do it,

[joseph2112]

So many good comments in this thread I agree with, I will add;

 

The company is so stale and there really is no quick fix. The analogy of turning around a cruise ship vs a jet ski is a good one. Nothing they can do in the next six months will change much of anything. The problem lies in that in six months they will still be in exactly the same place they are now. When they went to three hours they had a chance to change things up, reformat stuff or even try new things but instead they just added an hour of the same ol shit.

 

An example--45 minutes out of every raw that features smaller athletic guys, contained in their own universe(which would pack other acts into a smaller window). Or, as mentioned earlier, personality driven stuff they do on youtube or the network. Or something.  And I always heard in the past they would say that people wouldn't watch stuff like that, but ummm, ratings.

 

And I saw yesterday that Raw was up 200,000 viewers and the NFL game was down 4 mil. So there goes that crossover thing.

[bink_winkleman]

I enjoyed the Stewart/SummerSlam thing and don't think that it was at all part of the current symptoms.

 

And Alberto del Rio was so white-hot in LU that I can possibly see where they thought it would be a good idea to book him over Cena.  That match had the best announcing from Cole that I've heard in years, with him playing up the stakes and discussing how del Rio knew Cena's weaknesses and caught him off-guard.  But then they threw him right back into the 50/50 booking and kept on with the stupid MexAmerica thing. Now he's in some mid-card stable with a bunch of Europeans.  So yeah, not sure why ADL himself gets so much shit when he's the perfect example of how shitty creative is. 

[Technico Support]

The whole Reigns situation is amazing.  So they decided not to put the belt on him yet because they were afraid he'd be booed.

 

If you are afraid your chosen top babyface is going to be booed, maybe he's not cut out to be your top babyface.

 

Remember when Vince shoved Luger down our throats but then changed course because he wasn't getting "top babyface" reactions?  What happened to that Vince?

[Jenalysis]

So many good comments in this thread I agree with, I will add;

 

The company is so stale and there really is no quick fix. The analogy of turning around a cruise ship vs a jet ski is a good one. Nothing they can do in the next six months will change much of anything. The problem lies in that in six months they will still be in exactly the same place they are now. When they went to three hours they had a chance to change things up, reformat stuff or even try new things but instead they just added an hour of the same ol shit.

 

An example--45 minutes out of every raw that features smaller athletic guys, contained in their own universe(which would pack other acts into a smaller window). Or, as mentioned earlier, personality driven stuff they do on youtube or the network. Or something.  And I always heard in the past they would say that people wouldn't watch stuff like that, but ummm, ratings.

 

And I saw yesterday that Raw was up 200,000 viewers and the NFL game was down 4 mil. So there goes that crossover thing.

 

That 45 minutes for smaller guys- why not just bring back the Cruiserweight belt?   I think that would be a great division if it was kept in its own universe, with guys like Balor, Breeze, Ziggler, Neville (who should be the focus of it)- being the mainstays.   Would also keep them healthier as they'd have to pinball less for guys 50-75 lbs heavier.

[Brysynner]

The whole Reigns situation is amazing.  So they decided not to put the belt on him yet because they were afraid he'd be booed.

 

If you are afraid your chosen top babyface is going to be booed, maybe he's not cut out to be your top babyface.

 

Remember when Vince shoved Luger down our throats but then changed course because he wasn't getting "top babyface" reactions?  What happened to that Vince?

 

I thought the urban legend was Luger was spending the night before SummerSlam telling everyone he was winning the title and that's why Vince didn't put the title on him and then came Rumble 94' where Bret was inadvertently being built up which lead to Bret getting a better reaction than Lex for the ending of Rumble 94'.

 

The problem for WWE is there's no one being built up alongside Roman, not even inadvertently. That saved Mania 30 to many. WWE never resolved Daniel Bryan's story which allowed for WWE to quickly rewrite Mania to have Daniel Bryan overcome the odds.

[JohnnyJ]

One of the things that doesn't get talked about with nxt is how great the atmosphere is. The fans, while small in number are highly engaged. This makes a giant difference in the presentation when you are watching at home. It makes you care about the characters. It makes you care about the angles. The nxt crowd is not perfect and a lot of the criticism is certainly fair, but they do an excellent job of making things feel important.

 

Raw can draw great houses all over the country but that highly engaged crowd from the attitude era is gone. Once you leave the few wrestling hotbeds (chicago, nyc, phi, etc.) you get a lot of muted crowds that barely react to anything. You can certainly blame some of it on the writing. But regardless, it is not the right atmosphere to get acts over.

 

I look at something like the divas revolution. After fifteen years of not caring about women's matches, the chances of a non-engaged crowd to get excited and react accordingly to introducing three new women's stars they probably have never seen before is pretty close to zero.

 

Part of the answer is the end all be all does not have to be these hollow 15,000 seat arenas. Experiment with it.

 

If WWE created a divas-only show, shot it in full sail or a small arena in a wrestling hotbed they could have a red-hot divas division. 

 

If WWE ran a shotgun saturday night style show in NYC, which is scolding hot for wrestling right now, they could easily build up some stars who are getting slept on by the audiences on the main show. 

[Technico Support]

 

The whole Reigns situation is amazing.  So they decided not to put the belt on him yet because they were afraid he'd be booed.

 

If you are afraid your chosen top babyface is going to be booed, maybe he's not cut out to be your top babyface.

 

Remember when Vince shoved Luger down our throats but then changed course because he wasn't getting "top babyface" reactions?  What happened to that Vince?

 

I thought the urban legend was Luger was spending the night before SummerSlam telling everyone he was winning the title and that's why Vince didn't put the title on him and then came Rumble 94' where Bret was inadvertently being built up which lead to Bret getting a better reaction than Lex for the ending of Rumble 94'.

 

Just an awful Scott Keith urban legend, no truth to it at all.  Vince decided to hold off because the money was in the chase and when it was finally time to pull the trigger, fans had cooled on Luger and were more into Bret.

[Brysynner]

 

 

The whole Reigns situation is amazing.  So they decided not to put the belt on him yet because they were afraid he'd be booed.

 

If you are afraid your chosen top babyface is going to be booed, maybe he's not cut out to be your top babyface.

 

Remember when Vince shoved Luger down our throats but then changed course because he wasn't getting "top babyface" reactions?  What happened to that Vince?

 

I thought the urban legend was Luger was spending the night before SummerSlam telling everyone he was winning the title and that's why Vince didn't put the title on him and then came Rumble 94' where Bret was inadvertently being built up which lead to Bret getting a better reaction than Lex for the ending of Rumble 94'.

 

Just an awful Scott Keith urban legend, no truth to it at all.  Vince decided to hold off because the money was in the chase and when it was finally time to pull the trigger, fans had cooled on Luger and were more into Bret.

 

 

Fair enough, my second point still stands. This is really the first time in WWE history where there's no other choice to go to. After Roman Reigns who's left on the face side? Ambrose, Neville,  Ryback

[Burgundy LaRue]

Ziggler and Swagger too though Swaggy is basically a xenophobe and Ziggy is a gossipy pervert, but the point holds true--they're low on faces.

 

Never fear, though.  BA DA DA BOO, APPLE DOUGH will soon return. And some will cry about that in two months.

[Skeeball Wizard]

They need guys to have multiple finishers, one of which is treated like death, and others which are not (something I've gone on about before) and they need to have guys avoid more finishers rather than absorb them and kick out.

Problem here is, too many guys on the roster don't have one good finishing move, except Sheamus and maybe Reigns. It doesn't help that 16 different people do superkicks and most old finishes aren't believable. That's a tough spot.

My solution is to let Kevin Owens stay exactly as he is and be pushed to World Champ. Why the heck not, what do they have to lose? Insert guy of your choice for KO and it isn't any less true.

[JCM]

Zayn was the best worker in the company when he went out hurt. With the right debut angle(vs a red hot Owens) he can be rocketed near the top of the list of faces. I think Zayn has the talent, charisma, and natural likeability that can overcome the shitty booking and get over. Zayn also has the ability to take losses and make them work in getting himself sympathy. I could also see Balor getting pretty over, but he'll need to be protected more than Zayn.

[Jiji]

If Daniel Bryan never wrestles for WWE again, Zayn's the closest we'll get to his aura and type of personality. And while I think Bryan is generally better on the mic than he's credited for (particularly as a heel), Zayn's a better promo.

[JCM]

Zayn is my favorite babyface promo in WWE. Of course that's without being overproduced, and having 20 writers chime in on what he should say. Apollo Crews is another guy who could be a strong upper mid card face for them next year. Not a whole lot in the way of personality or mic skills, but just enough to get by. Plus he has a look Vince will love, and has a style that will win over the fan base(movez!) even if he isn't the most polished worker just yet.

[Technico Support]

LOL none of this shit is going to happen because neither Zayn nor Balor make Vince's dick hard the way Roman does.

[Overly Critical Man]

No fuckin' way they'd have someone cash in on Roman for a third time so soon in that scenario.