What is stopping former fans from watching WWE?

[Craig H]

I try and keep up, but it's tough. With my new role at my company, I salaried for 40 hours a week, but I probably put in around 50 to 55. So I'll come home and then it's the rat race of playing with my daughter and relieving my wife, doing dinner, giving my daughter a bath, and then having about 30 to 45 minutes of reading time for when I put her in bed. When all is said and done, sometimes it's around 10:30 PM and the last thing I want to do is spend 2 hours watching Raw. It's scheduled to record on the DVR each week, but with the way our schedules work, my wife and rarely watch anything live as it airs. So if we're not cleaning, reading, or working on a project, we're typically watching TV from the week. Missing programming becomes a snowball effect where I could start out falling asleep for the last hour and then I'll give up for an entire month. It's tough to watch consistently because there is so much that is completely unappealing and it's a slog to get through that many hours of programming each week. It's even tougher when you consider the fact that weekly cable TV shows have never been better. There's so much to watch there, and now on Netflix, that I find myself watching that quality programming and not even really caring much to tune into Raw.

[mco543]

I'm watching the Nitros they put up on WWE Classics On Demand and these Nitros from late '97 are fucking horrible. No amount of great lucha and cruiser matches on the undercard can make up for the NWO overload that includes 3 long winded IN RING promos from Hogan and Bischoff. These shows are a chore to get through, every show does end with an NWO promo or beatdown and you have to hear Zybysko put himself over and no one else. I love watching a lot of the guys who made TV on every Nitro but these shows fucking suck.

[MORELOCK]

 

The current WWE gets guys over. Guys like Hardy, Edge, Punk and Bryan now have had moments where they've about been as over as anyone in the history of the company. It's just a matter of going from over with WWE fans to over with the general public who aren't true wrestling fans to get them interested. No amount of Crash TV or great booking in the midcard or 4+ matches is going to change that. It's not a problem with bad booking or a "stagnant creative process". It's just a lack of larger than live moments, but ultimately those have the be at least semi-organic and have alot to do with luck cause otherwise people will just shit on them. That's why they try to make "classic Cena moments" almost every PPV and he still gets shitted on. Cause they never feel the least bit organic or anything more than just another wrestling. It's also why stuff like Lauper/Piper and Mr. T and Tyson/Austin saved the WWF while Rodman/Malone and Leno and every celebrity WCW ever brought in came off awful. WWF stuff came off as epic and organic, WCW stuff came off as publicity stunts that were super cheesy.

 

And why doesn't the current WWE stuff come off as organic? Do you really not think it's because of the creative team? The fact that you had to reach back over 2 years to wrestlers that no longer work for the company to find half your examples of recent wrestlers that have gotten over is pretty damning evidence. There's a reason there aren't many larger-than-life moments now as compared to the boom period: the fans no longer have any incentive to care about the wrestlers and their manufactured moments because the booking has sucked for years. If anything the two you mentioned that are still with the company got to the point they are at in spite of the creative process.

 

 Anyway, I think WCW had better booking in the midcard than WWE does if you compare '96-'97 WCW to today's WWE. Wasn't the popular thing to say about WCW was that all the shows were fantastic right up until the main events?

Mid-90's WCW was light years ahead of current WWE in regards to getting their wrestlers over and making fans care - the reason that people kept tuning in throughout 1997 was to see if the heels would get their comeuppance. When they didn't, people started tuning out.

[SirSmUgly]

Yeah, Zybysko is terrible as soon as they stick him on the first hour with Schiavone once Nitro goes to two hours in '96. I'm okay with announcer catchphrases, but there is a huge difference between using a catchphrase ("human game of chess") and making yourself the focal point each time you drop the catchphrase ("Tony, I invented the human game of chess!"). This is besides his inability to stay away from terrible puns and his ability to put himself over by complimenting how great he was in comparison to a wrestler in the ring. 

 

Mongo was terrible up until he left the booth to join the Horsemen, but at least there was an authenticity there that made it okay somehow. Zybysko is truly awful.

[Hooker]

I'm just going to come out and say it, since it's obvious: Cena.

 

To use the sports analogy, once a team has a phenomenal talent, they try to build the rest of the team around that player.  Clearly, that's what has been done with Cena.  The show is structured around the Cena style.  Every wrestler is built up primarily as a future opponent for Cena, and if they can be a legitimate upper-midcard / main eventer on their own, great.  But regardless of how fantastic you guys feel Cena is or how defiantly you will stand behind him when he's criticized, you cannot argue that, every show, there are significant portions of the crowd, that never dip below 10% and often compose the majority of the audience, that cannot stand him.  When you cannot even convince the people buying tickets to like the show, what chance do you have of broadening the audience?

 

There was a golden opportunity with Punk after the MITB '11 angle.  He emerged as a true counterpoint to Cena and represented a criticism of Cena and Cena's associated direction for the company for the past decade.  The fans that couldn't stand Cena went bugnuts crazy for Punk and the fans that liked Cena seemed to like him as well.  So what did the WWE do with the first wrestler to embody everyone's disgust with Cena?  I remember shortly after his return, he tagged with Cena, hugged him after the match, and celebrated with him in the ring.  Shortly after that, he complained about the weird OWS-style walkout angle while begging Triple H to wear his jacket.  Shortly after that, he was working in catchphrases like "snicklefrits" and "clown shoes."  All the while, he was working the sub-main event despite holding the WWE Championship.  After the majority of a year of doing everything to prove they either didn't understand the character (my guess) or didn't want it, they turn him heel.

 

So, my problem with the show, and what I think is the main problem with the show from which all other problems (lack of new stars, poor creative writing, lack of overall direction, etc.) is stubborn refusal of the people in charge of the company (Vince) to adjust to the times and instead keep trying to force the issue with Cena.

 

Ultimately, the show isn't geared towards anyone here.  My understanding is that the WWE still makes money the way they used to in the Attitude era because of a greatly expanded merchandising system built around John Cena.  The result of that is that the WWE is now a children's entertainment show.  They're happy to have adults pay for tickets and drive advertising revenue, but they're not concerned with getting back to the 6-7 shares of the Attitude era when Cena lunchboxes can make up the difference.  Cena is the establishment course for the company, Cena will continue to be the establishment force of the company, and anything that might challenge Cena as the establishment force is probably going to held back or killed altogether.  Cena, and all the things that go along with him, is the problem.

[Newb82]

I almost want to see Cena suffer a long-term or career-ending injury. Not because I hate him, but seeing what WWE would do without him as a crutch would be interesting.

[bink_winkleman]

I'm going to step in here and say come the fuck on, WCW 96-early 98 was AWESOME.  It's hard to go back and rewatch because you have the basic idea of what's going on, but at the time, no one had seen anything like this.  The NWO always winning eventually killed it, but man.  Sting on the rafters and the NWO suspense was amazing television.  It was exciting, and while the same shit kept on happening, there was still an air of unpredictability that is long gone in today's WWE.  Plus, yeah, the extremely solid mid-card.  And if you're watching it on WWE OnDemand, you're getting cheated, because you're missing all of the Horsemen feud and just about everything Flair because Benoit is edited out. 

[SirSmUgly]

Yes, the main event of NWO-era WCW does not work upon rewatch, but you are right that at the time, it was new and fast-paced, and had I never seen it before or known the results of what eventually happened, I might feel differently. I do actually like to take the position that it's a The Bad Guy Wins ending where the NWO eventually DOES kill WCW by turning the good guys of WCW into what they originally fought against, with WCW's supreme defender Sting going Wolfpac as the Point of No Return for WCW. In that light, I bet it will be much better on re-watch than it otherwise might have been.

 

On another note, the late-'95/early-'96 main event stuff is really fun and fast-paced to me, and it was even better than the NWO stuff. I'm not a hater of Hogan, but he was a drag on the face-mistrust triangle between Savage, Sting, and Luger. Add the Giant chokeslamming fools to that mix (it's amazing that he has always been really good at pro wrestling from day one in the big leagues) and include Flair and the Horsemen lurking around causing trouble for Savage and having an uneasy working relationship with the Dungeon of Doom, and it's just really, really good stuff. 

[LooseCannon]

Ultimately, the show isn't geared towards anyone here.  My understanding is that the WWE still makes money the way they used to in the Attitude era because of a greatly expanded merchandising system built around John Cena.  The result of that is that the WWE is now a children's entertainment show.  They're happy to have adults pay for tickets and drive advertising revenue, but they're not concerned with getting back to the 6-7 shares of the Attitude era when Cena lunchboxes can make up the difference.  Cena is the establishment course for the company, Cena will continue to be the establishment force of the company, and anything that might challenge Cena as the establishment force is probably going to held back or killed altogether.  Cena, and all the things that go along with him, is the problem.

 

Obviously, Punk should have been asking for lunch boxes instead of ice cream bars.

[Go2Sleep]

WCW from Memorial Day 96 to Fall Brawl 96 was some of the absolute best-booked wrestling to ever get on tv. It was very heel-centric, but that was very fresh and novel idea at the time, in addition to being well executed. That is how you get some heels over. Like others have said, the problems didn't start until the writers decided to make the faces look like buffoons except for crow Sting. Sting being made to look like a buffoon at Starrcade was the nail in the coffin. And while the Nitro quality started to drop off by the end of 1996, the ppv quality was still top notch through 1997. 

 

If you're gonna compare modern WWE to the attitude era, the biggest difference is no rotating main event quality guys. When Austin was there, he was on top, but the depth they had meant he never had to rush back from injuries. They could cycle Rock, HHH, Foley, and Taker between the main events and upper midcard programs from 99-02. Austin was more of rotational guy too after the invasion concluded. It kept everybody fresh and helped the midcarders on the rise (Angle, Jericho, Benoit) immensely because they didn't have to tread water waiting for their turn to fight "the man." There was always someone credible to feud with outside of the main event scene. 

[Petey]

 

You think TODAY'S booking is stagnant? Go back and watch WCW in 1996-97 after BATB. It's the same thing every week. Every show ends with NWO beatdown and garbage. Every last one. You may get a Lex Luger/Goldberg/Sting moment every three months tops. But other than that it's just "hey, someone new joined the NWO!" and "Dammit, the NWO ruined this great match" every Nitro. And the WWE has more creative angles than WCW did in that period. WCW never really got past absolute booking 101 99% of the time. Big stable dominates! Huge winning streak! X guy is back! But the momentum from the the original NWO formation made everything seem a big deal. Even the Austin Era, the early stuff with Kane/Taker/Vince/Austin in the main event is all pretty awful IMO, and if it happened today would get shit on by most. But the momentum Austin had made everything seem like gold.

I disagree. I thought the Kane/Taker/Vince/Austin stuff was tremendous. I loved the way all three wrestlers intertwined with each other from the spring-fall of '98. I thought the booking was creative and really interesting. I rewatched that period not too long ago via Classics on Demand and found it to be much better than I remembered watching as an 11 year old.

[Ziggy]

The Apter Mags used to refer  to ECW as  the Buffett of Wrestling styles but WCW was more of a  buffett than and any of the main promotions on TV.  Every thing is recycled today, you see PPV matches on free tv and then those same matches headline PPVs back to back. Alot of it isnt the wrestlers fault though most of the wrestling has been great for the most part,  but the office doesnt do a good job of making matches seem importaint.  Henry vs Cena seemed importaint to me, as short as the program was, and it wasnt one of the big  PPVs.  Bryan Vs Cena  sees like a big deal to me because it hasnt happened a handfull of times on free tv and the story is basic.

[kafkonia]

I'm one of three mostly-lapsed WWE viewers in this household, along with my girlfriend and our roommate. And I think, if I had to sum up why we've stopped watching, it'd be as simple as this:

 

It's boring.

 

I'm a fan of a lot of the in-ring action as far as the wrestlers go. But there's nothing to care about. You get the John Cena storyline, which is pretty much one of two angles: Cena is sneak-attacked/suckered by a heel (Ryback, Henry - in back to back months!), or Cena has tension with another face. And you always know it will end with Cena coming out on Raw to talk, with or without the belt. If the McMahon's are around, you get to watch them threaten/intimidate/emasculate, and then you get one or two secondary storylines which barely register and are often recycled without even filing the serial numbers off. For instance, I like the Wyatt Family. But "three outsiders beat up a guy" is a schtick they just did with the Shield. The two groups are very different, and their video packages/introductions were great... but their effect on the show is pretty much identical. I'm not going to get into fantasy booking, but if you write "backwoods cult" and "mercenary group" as interchangeable, you're doing something wrong.

 

It's frustrating. I want to enjoy the shows. Hell, I gave them $40 for Money in the Bank because it (and the Rumble) are really the two PPVs in the year where something interesting might happen. There's probably more folks on the roster who I enjoy than at almost any point in the last 20 years. But if I sit down and watch Raw for 3 hours, I'm going to spend a large chunk of it bored - and then they'll re-show or re-do about 40% of it on SmackDown, so there's no point in watching that. I don't demand a lot of soap opera at the expense of actual wrestling, but if you're going to base your show around narrative, it has to be good (or at least engaging) if you want to succeed.

 

The best, most consistent storytelling they've had in the last few years was when the wheels fell off the last "season" of NXT and you had the Bateman/Maxine/Curtis/Kaitlyn love triangle and Matt Striker getting kidnapped.

[JonnyLaw]

My wife hit the nail on the head a couple weeks ago:"It's not that I'm tired of John Cena, it's that I'm tired of not seeing guys who aren't John Cena..."

My wife doesn't even watch wrestling, and last week when she saw Cena she said she was sick of seeing him all the time.

[Newb82]

You think TODAY'S booking is stagnant? Go back and watch WCW in 1996-97 after BATB. It's the same thing every week. Every show ends with NWO beatdown and garbage. Every last one. You may get a Lex Luger/Goldberg/Sting moment every three months tops. But other than that it's just "hey, someone new joined the NWO!" and "Dammit, the NWO ruined this great match" every Nitro. And the WWE has more creative angles than WCW did in that period. WCW never really got past absolute booking 101 99% of the time. Big stable dominates! Huge winning streak! X guy is back! But the momentum from the the original NWO formation made everything seem a big deal. Even the Austin Era, the early stuff with Kane/Taker/Vince/Austin in the main event is all pretty awful IMO, and if it happened today would get shit on by most. But the momentum Austin had made everything seem like gold.

I disagree. I thought the Kane/Taker/Vince/Austin stuff was tremendous. I loved the way all three wrestlers intertwined with each other from the spring-fall of '98. I thought the booking was creative and really interesting. I rewatched that period not too long ago via Classics on Demand and found it to be much better than I remembered watching as an 11 year old.

The UT/Kane "are they or aren't they?" angle was awesomely booked.Probably the best-booked show of the Attitude Era, even if the in-ring action sucks for the most part, is the 1998 Survivor Series and the "Deadly Games" WWF title tournament.

[Petey]

Agreed. 1998 was just a really solid year, especially after WrestleMania 14. It kinda gets lumped in with 1999 but the two years are pretty different. They're both Attitude Era and 'Crash TV' but 1998 had more logical depth to the storylines and wasn't moving at such a breakneck pace. Things were still allowed to develop over time.

[Charlie M.]

Foley's whole storyline through '98 was very well done too.

[Patrick B.]

I almost want to see Cena suffer a long-term or career-ending injury. Not because I hate him, but seeing what WWE would do without him as a crutch would be interesting.

 

Given past history, I'm convinced that he would just regenerate like Wolverine or Cell and be back within a month.

[Death From Above]

When it's back on the first tier of satellite channels in Canada (so basically TSN again) I'll watch. Like hell I'm paying extra a month to watch bad scripted comedy just because it's on Sportsnet's #6 channel.

[LooseCannon]

 

I almost want to see Cena suffer a long-term or career-ending injury. Not because I hate him, but seeing what WWE would do without him as a crutch would be interesting.

 

Given past history, I'm convinced that he would just regenerate like Wolverine or Cell and be back within a month.

 

 

Based on precedent, it would take more than a month.  He was injured in October 2007 and returned at the Royal Rumble.  Was the expected 7-12 month recovery period a work or is he just that much of a freak?

 

How long would Cena been champ if he hadn't been injured?

[JRGoldman]

I think we are dancing around the fact that there has been a huge paradigm shift for what the WWE views as a successful performer and also how the WWE plans to make money moving forward. A few years ago, wrestlers would be punished for trying to get movie or TV work outside of the WWE. Now, doing so is a sure fire way to be featured prominently.

I'm typing this on my phone so I don't want to get long winded, but I don't think we will see effort made in the future to have moments that would get someone over with the crowd that already watches wrestling. Instead we will see moments designed to get people who watch reality tv or late night to register a charming guest as a WWE performer. It's why we are presented with John Cena as a man who has granted 300 wishes, and not John Cena as a man who has body slammed a 500 pound man.

[Patrick B.]

If he ever did go on the shelf long-term with an injury, I could see them making him Raw General Manager or something so he'd STILL be on TV every week.  He didn't even stay off TV when he was "fired" thanks to the Nexus a few years ago.

 

It just seems like they have zero confidence in ANYONE else to run with the proverbial ball.

[DylanWaco]

I don't want to make it sound like there is nothing that could be done to increase their audience because I don't believe that and there are probably things that could be done to make the tv shows something that you felt compelled to watch in real time.  But even then there would still be problems because of the sheer volume of t.v. and the nature of modern wrestling where there is effectively only one major company.  It's not just the competition thing that always (rightly) gets pointed to, it's the fact that a guy like Randy Orton is going to get stale real quick because he's on t.v. every week and there is only so many guys he can work, before he gets recycled into some old news feud again.  We can talk all we want about giving mid-card guys more meaning and I don't disagree, but I'm not sure how it helps the over exposure problem and it's not as if bringing back squash matches to protect/keep guys apart is really a viable option if the goal is increase the audience.  

 

Some people in the thread have talked about the major changes with technology being a factor and I think that is something that is hard to ignore but it goes deeper than just the existence of streaming sites, DVR, HuluPlus, and tons of channels and other wrestling alternatives (tons of older stuff on youtube, dvd sets, et). The entire nature of fandom has changed dramatically and it goes hand in hand with the changes in technology.

 

I've made this point before, but I will now make it again - for the most part, from what I can tell, virtually every "fan" of wrestling today that is middle school age or older is to some degree an internet fan/smart mark/whatever the fuck term you want to use.  No they don't all buy 80's sets, or post on wrestling message boards, or read every wrestling book that comes out, but  literally 100 percent of fans I know at this point are to some degree familiar with rumor and news sites.  This is not an exaggeration.  

 

 I've got friends and regular customers at work that most people here would identify as casual fans.  They watch semi-regularly, get amped up for the big shows/times of year, but generally aren't dedicated fans.  Every time I talk to one of these people about wrestling (and it comes up a lot because I am a completely out of the closet wrestling fan who will talk about it to anyone) they are telling me about something they read online.  Also notable is that every, single one of these people (and I'm talking over a dozen people, not one or two) tell me about ppvs they have streamed online or times they have just watched Raw segments on youtube the next day.  My point?  It's not just hardcore fans who are watching the shows through mediums that don't show up in the Nielson ratings - it's casuals.

 

Is my anecdotal evidence proof of some broad trend?  It's impossible to know, but I suspect it is.  Middle schoolers wearing Cena or Daniel Bryan shirts who are talking about angles and pushes publicly is something I have seen multiple times over the last few years at shows I have gone to.  I've talked to others about this before and they generally agree that this is the case in their own experiences too.  

 

Anyhow the point is that technology has changed wrestling viewing habits and fan culture in ways that the WWE has not fully caught up to yet.  It's entirely possible it is not possible for them to catch up to it no matter what they do.  And in that sense pushing DVD sets to hardcore fans disgruntled with their current presentation, while promoting their current product toward children is probably the smartest strategy they could possibly have

[Hooker]

I don't buy the "sheer volume" argument.  That can be applied to anything on TV, and there are still shows that do better numbers than even RAW did in 1999.  Why watch Game of Thrones or American Idol or, as a much better comparable since it's live television (the only type of TV that people haven't stopped watching in droves), Monday Night Football, if there is a sheer volume of alternatives?

[DylanWaco]

I don't buy the "sheer volume" argument.  That can be applied to anything on TV, and there are still shows that do better numbers than even RAW did in 1999.  Why watch Game of Thrones or American Idol or, as a much better comparable since it's live television (the only type of TV that people haven't stopped watching in droves), Monday Night Football, if there is a sheer volume of alternatives?

 

I wouldn't buy an argument that says sheer volume of alternatives is the sole explanation.  But I also wouldn't ever make that argument.  I actually think the sheer volume of wrestling WWE produces as a single company, with a lot of the same names in matches that pretty much have to be competitive is the "sheer volume" that is more damaging.