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How happy are you with WWE right now?


Adam

What do you think of WWE in 2015?  

151 members have voted

  1. 1. Happiness level:

    • Very happy - I wouldn't change a thing.
      1
    • Happy - A few hiccups but I think they're going in the right direction.
      8
    • Hit/Miss - I'm not too dissatisfied or bothered with the product.
      36
    • Unhappy - I skip through certain segments and shows.
      53
    • Very unhappy - I'm fed up with how WWE is right now. Changes needed!
      53


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Honestly, how happy I am with WWE is irrelevant. It's the business side of things that counts.

 

And the ratings are in the tank, so....

 

 

I wonder how much that really matters to WWE in 2015. With general TV viewing down and more people DVRing shows, watching them the next day on Hulu and/or just watching clips on YouTube is there a major downswing in WWE interest? How is attendance at shows, that's the key indicator of WWE's business model. USA's been down this path with WWE before where ratings were low and stuck with them so I can't imagine they're in any danger of being off TV

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I've seen an awful lot of cheating in the last few weeks. Rope chokes from Sasha and Stardust, eye rakes from Harper, etc. Wonder if they've come around on that subject.

They said on the Austin pod that Paige blatantly pulled the tights to win on raw, but the announcers never mentioned it.

 

 

It was Sasha/Becky.  Then Austin had a fit about how Becky couldn't get any heat off of it because the announcers ignored it and then Becky was blowing off the loss "shuckin' and jivin'" backstage with New Day in a YouTube segment.

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I've seen an awful lot of cheating in the last few weeks. Rope chokes from Sasha and Stardust, eye rakes from Harper, etc. Wonder if they've come around on that subject.

They said on the Austin pod that Paige blatantly pulled the tights to win on raw, but the announcers never mentioned it.

 

 

It was Sasha/Becky.  Then Austin had a fit about how Becky couldn't get any heat off of it because the announcers ignored it and then Becky was blowing off the loss "shuckin' and jivin'" backstage with New Day in a YouTube segment.

 

 

Part of Becky's "shuckin' and jivin'" with Big E is important because the New Day are allied with Team BAD which means Becky is playing a mindgame with Team BAD by stealing their allies from them. I'd like to think Becky was the one who introduced Eurotrash to New Day for their Survivor Series match.

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I wonder what a WWE or a wrestling company booked by Austin would look like. One where he's a Bill Watts type (only occasionally trotted out for the huge angles). He's obviously got some good common sense ideas. I mean it's just the small stuff like having an announcer point out that Paige hooked the tights would go a long way with character development. Cole saying say pulled the tights. JBL saying no she didn't because he's a heel and he protects the heels as a heel should.

 

Later Paige is confronted and denies. Someone throws the old "You know Denial isn't just a river in Egypt line".

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One of the biggest problems WWE faces is they now cater to two different fanbases:  the casuals who watch programming when there's someone/something popular or controversial onscreen, and the 'smarties' who follow the dirtsheets and understand what happens behind the scenes.

 

Complaining about kayfabe in 2015 is a lost cause.  It's dead and gone.  And for all the complaining some of us in our group does, the smarties helped finish it off (it was dying anyway, we just quickened the pace).  So it becomes a question of how can WWE and wrestling in general work over the diehards again.  They seem to have some concept of that in NXT with the Eva Marie saga.  Can they develop a similar formula for the main roster?  I have no issue with there being guidelines to all this, but seeing as how much WWE itself has drawn back the curtain, why does anyone expect more from the talent?  It doesn't seem fair.

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I think it's time for WWE to just start treating itself like any other TV show and just finally kill kayfabe. Accuse me of "not understanding the business" or whatever but it looks silly to have guys doing media appearances in character. In essence, I'd like to see Joe Anoai on a talk show talking about the "Roman Reigns" character, just as any other actor would do. The height of this silliness was the whole Lana/Paige tweet saga where Paige accused Lana of trying to get a storyline via Twitter. Maybe if Twitter wasn't used by "characters," that wouldn't be an issue. We certainly didn't see Walter White tweeting between episodes of Breaking Bad and we don't see characters in other shows doing it either. 

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NXT is booked for smarks, and is 10 times better at traditional pro wrestling storylines than the main roster. We all want to be worked we all want to get behind the faces and boo the heels. If you give even the smarkiest of smarks a great story like Zayn or Bayley's chase for the belts they are going to jump up out of their seats and be in the moment with the talent. The main roster getting away from traditional pro wrestling angles and storytelling is why the show is in a rut.

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If you're doing kayfabe on Twitter, it has to be made clear that it's an account for the character and not for the wrestler. That's where WWE fails and why we end up with a bunch of "is this a work or shoot?" type deals or things like Wade Barrett using his real name on his Twitter that might possibly also have character tweets. 

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NXT is booked for smarks, and is 10 times better at traditional pro wrestling storylines than the main roster. We all want to be worked we all want to get behind the faces and boo the heels. If you give even the smarkiest of smarks a great story like Zayn or Bayley's chase for the belts they are going to jump up out of their seats and be in the moment with the talent. The main roster getting away from traditional pro wrestling angles and storytelling is why the show is in a rut.

 

The big problem with that rut is that the smarks have also played their card- it's not just "get behind the faces and boo the heels", but also "We'll get behind the faces...as long as the faces are OUR GUYS. We'll boo heels...if heels are YOUR GUYS."

 

The issue is not that smarks will jump out of their seats and be in the moment with the talent for people like Zayn and Bayley's chase for the belts...but that inherent knowledge that, if NXT did the same exact run, the same exact way, for Tyler Breeze or Alexa Bliss having a rise to the top like that, the smarks wouldn't have cared about those chases nearly as much. Even though Zayn/Bayley are the two best pure babyfaces in WWE right now, there is still a sense that more of the connection they have with the fans is the connection indy mega-star El Generico (NOT! Sami Zayn!) and SHIMMER performer Davina Rose (NOT! Bayley!) have with the performers.

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I disagree.

If Breeze had 'snapped', turned face and finally broke through to 'win the big one' in NXT then I think the crowd would have been with him all the way.

Then he could turn heel on all the uggos and claim he made it to the top all by himself and they would boo him for being a dick.

They are going with Joe's heel turn. They love Enzo and Cass. I dont think either of them have long indy careers. They hated Carmella because she was acting like a bitch and looked like she was going to turn on them. Now they go right along with her because she has earned their trust.

The NXT crowd boo'd Owens. They boo Dash and Dawson. They boo'd heel Vaudevillains. The boo BAMF... They were totally accepting of a well booked double turn from Bull Dempsey and Baron Corbin and have reacted to the face/heel switches of both characters.

I dont buy the line of thinking that NXT crowds only love the indy darlings. They love well booked, logical wrestling.

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I'm gonna have to disagree strongly with you on that one. Zayn and Bayley are just such lovable babyfaces that most wrestling fans will support regardless of previous knowledge or not. I didn't even know Bayley worked the indies and was a huge fan of hers the first time I saw her on NXT. I watched ROH occasionally but Zayn's ability to deliver believable babyface promos and sell with his face (so well for a guy who's wrestled with a mask for so long!) are tops in the company. 

 

Full Sail rejected the Baron Corbin baby-ish push and have taken to booing the shit out of him as a heel because he seems like a genuinely douchey person. With twitter, youtube, and all the behind scenes stuff we get glimpses at with the Network and elsewhere, the idea that your gimmick ought to be your personality turned up to 11 has never been truer. People can sniff out insincerity and false faces, hence the lukewarm reaction to Roman Reigns: the rebel.

 

I wasn't watching NXT from the start, but wasn't Big E getting pretty good reactions from the crowd down there? He's a product of the WWE's system. They've taken to other people coming straight from the Performance Center, like Enzo, Gable, and even Nia Jax to a lesser extent. I don't think it has anything to do with people clinging on to indy darlings but more finding something special in their favourites. Enzo is a great motormouth and has a hilarious physical presence. Gable's a guy who talks and acts like he's bigger than Jason Jordan and has really impressed in his short time working in front of cameras.

 

Fans will reject people they think are being pushed purely on looks: Eva Marie and Dana Brooke (until she improved) are the two obvious examples, but there are male exemplars too. Mojo Rawley was rejected because he was a big football goof. He's slowly winning over the crowd with his charisma and effort. I'm okay with wrestlers having to earn fan support and fans rejecting workers being forced down their throats. 

 

Edit: lol, pretty much what LWP said.

Edited by Oyaji
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Faces are supposed to be "OUR GUYS" though.  If you can't become one of those guys, you're a crappy face (for that promotion at that time)

 

I'd say 20 years of Authority storylines has conditioned fans that YOUR GUYS=heels, OUR GUYS= faces.   Best thing WWE could do is turn HHH into a pure neutral "best for business", phase out Steph for 2-3 years, and let faces and heels develop organically.

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Even though Sheamus robbed Roman Reigns of the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at Survivor Series last week, The Big Dog is riding a wave of momentum leading up to his Tables, Ladders & Chairs Match with The Celtic Warrior at WWE TLC. Will Reigns once again deliver some steel justice to Sheamus and his allies, Rusev and King Barrett? 

 

I feel like this is part of the problem.  Less than 2 hours before RAW, and THIS is all that's been announced.  What motivation do I have to tune in when I have literally nothing to look forward to? 

 

The whole booked on the fly mentality of these shows is so played out and stupid.  Give me a few competitive matches to look forward to, some sort of interesting interview, a debut/return/new gimmick/whatever.  Just anything other than bad chair puns.

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NXT is booked for smarks, and is 10 times better at traditional pro wrestling storylines than the main roster. We all want to be worked we all want to get behind the faces and boo the heels. If you give even the smarkiest of smarks a great story like Zayn or Bayley's chase for the belts they are going to jump up out of their seats and be in the moment with the talent. The main roster getting away from traditional pro wrestling angles and storytelling is why the show is in a rut.

 

The big problem with that rut is that the smarks have also played their card- it's not just "get behind the faces and boo the heels", but also "We'll get behind the faces...as long as the faces are OUR GUYS. We'll boo heels...if heels are YOUR GUYS."

 

The issue is not that smarks will jump out of their seats and be in the moment with the talent for people like Zayn and Bayley's chase for the belts...but that inherent knowledge that, if NXT did the same exact run, the same exact way, for Tyler Breeze or Alexa Bliss having a rise to the top like that, the smarks wouldn't have cared about those chases nearly as much. Even though Zayn/Bayley are the two best pure babyfaces in WWE right now, there is still a sense that more of the connection they have with the fans is the connection indy mega-star El Generico (NOT! Sami Zayn!) and SHIMMER performer Davina Rose (NOT! Bayley!) have with the performers.

 

Well now I know what Bayley's pre NXT name was because that's the first time I've heard it, and she's one of if not my favorite wrestler in NXT. Sami Zayn is awesome at pro wrestling so who cares what his background was? Do the fans love Jordan and Gable for their indy backgrounds? How many times does this myth have to be debunked?

 

Breeze and Bliss aren't as good as Zayn and Bayley so they may not have got huge reactions in those roles. Pushing Bliss to the top would be completely tone def, but it's something that would happen on the main roster which is why NXT is the better product. Neville drew heel heat going up against Zayn so the fans will boo people that aren't company favorites. Joe is drawing heel heat against Balor, and he's one of the most accomplished indy workers of the last 15 years.

 

My response to NXT fans only like indy guys is just going to be two words(Salomon Crowe) from now on.

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NXT is booked for smarks, and is 10 times better at traditional pro wrestling storylines than the main roster. We all want to be worked we all want to get behind the faces and boo the heels. If you give even the smarkiest of smarks a great story like Zayn or Bayley's chase for the belts they are going to jump up out of their seats and be in the moment with the talent. The main roster getting away from traditional pro wrestling angles and storytelling is why the show is in a rut.

 

The big problem with that rut is that the smarks have also played their card- it's not just "get behind the faces and boo the heels", but also "We'll get behind the faces...as long as the faces are OUR GUYS. We'll boo heels...if heels are YOUR GUYS."

 

The issue is not that smarks will jump out of their seats and be in the moment with the talent for people like Zayn and Bayley's chase for the belts...but that inherent knowledge that, if NXT did the same exact run, the same exact way, for Tyler Breeze or Alexa Bliss having a rise to the top like that, the smarks wouldn't have cared about those chases nearly as much. Even though Zayn/Bayley are the two best pure babyfaces in WWE right now, there is still a sense that more of the connection they have with the fans is the connection indy mega-star El Generico (NOT! Sami Zayn!) and SHIMMER performer Davina Rose (NOT! Bayley!) have with the performers.

 

 

The crowd was all in on both Sasha and Bayley who both were never really names on the indies. I had no idea Bayley was even in Shimmer till like 4 months ago, and I am a Shimmer fan.

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