Current WWE

[(BP)]

I guess Brock/Cena doesn't need the belt at Summerslam, but Brock as champ would be great and whoever he eventually dropped it to would be a made man. Reigns as champ would probably lead to an Orton match at Summerslam, then they could still do the HHH match at Night of Champions. After that, maybe they could tread water until Cena's ready to put him over clean.

[Loss]

I still think Cena is dropping the belt to Brock at Summerslam and Brock is holding it all the way to WM and rarely appearing on TV before dropping it to Roman Reigns. Giving Reigns his big moment in a forgettable four-way seems silly.

[sek69]

Cena-Brock doesn't need the belt to make it a big match, but it does in the sense that it seems silly to bring Brock back and never give him the title match he demanded the last time he was around.

[cm funk]

To try and stay as "PWO" as possible:

 

I already said that the political aspects of Rusev and Lana's act were awful and regressive a few pages back, but it's worth re-iterating: the pro-Putin crap is awful, regressive, and needlessly risky, specifically because of situations like this. The cheap heat isn't worth having the M80 blow up in the palm of your hand.

 

I didn't bring up the sanctions to try and declare some false equivalence with MH17 (which, yes, is obviously tragic and on a whole other level). I brought them up to illustrate that there have already been events in direct proximity to Rusev's push and that they've sent Rusev and Lana out there anyway. Maybe I should have just said to search for "kiev" and "february 20" instead, since that was a little over a month before Rusev's debut match on Raw.

 

The point wasn't that they should rethink or repackage Rusev NOW; the point was that they should have done it in the first place, long before MH17 became a question.

 

It's wrestling. It's fake. If smart people are writing/booking they'll tone down their act for a bit, but the act is good. Of course they shouldn't go out on the next show and salute Putin and troll America, give it some breathing room, but it's not like they need to scrap the act

 

I could go into more specific political talk, but it's pwo, and as a wrestling angle/act Lana & Rusev are perfectly fine. I would recommend treading lightly on it for now though

[cm funk]

I think Jericho wins but by DQ

 

I think they should do a non-finish, but I'm expecting them to do the same thing in Ambrose-Rollins, and you don't want to have multiple scmozzes on the same show

 

If it was me, I have Ambrose win clean, and the Jericho match turn into a brawl where they're beating the crap out of each other and it falls into the stands, and Harper and Rowan get involved.....and the Usos get involved too (who have lost the tag belts to the Wyatts earlier in the show). Just make it a wild out of control situation that pulls the 6 of them together and sets up a big 6 man at the next show. I think that would be best for all involved

[sek69]

 

To try and stay as "PWO" as possible:

 

I already said that the political aspects of Rusev and Lana's act were awful and regressive a few pages back, but it's worth re-iterating: the pro-Putin crap is awful, regressive, and needlessly risky, specifically because of situations like this. The cheap heat isn't worth having the M80 blow up in the palm of your hand.

 

I didn't bring up the sanctions to try and declare some false equivalence with MH17 (which, yes, is obviously tragic and on a whole other level). I brought them up to illustrate that there have already been events in direct proximity to Rusev's push and that they've sent Rusev and Lana out there anyway. Maybe I should have just said to search for "kiev" and "february 20" instead, since that was a little over a month before Rusev's debut match on Raw.

 

The point wasn't that they should rethink or repackage Rusev NOW; the point was that they should have done it in the first place, long before MH17 became a question.

 

It's wrestling. It's fake. If smart people are writing/booking they'll tone down their act for a bit, but the act is good. Of course they shouldn't go out on the next show and salute Putin and troll America, give it some breathing room, but it's not like they need to scrap the act

 

I could go into more specific political talk, but it's pwo, and as a wrestling angle/act Lana & Rusev are perfectly fine. I would recommend treading lightly on it for now though

 

 

 

I'll let the obvious joke about smart people writing pass, but my concern is when has WWE been known to tread lightly on something they think could get them publicity?

[Fantastic]

I still think Cena is dropping the belt to Brock at Summerslam and Brock is holding it all the way to WM and rarely appearing on TV before dropping it to Roman Reigns. Giving Reigns his big moment in a forgettable four-way seems silly.

 

Well, it's probably going to happen, lest Rollins cashes in between now and then.

 

On one hand, I'm very intrigued by the possibility of the WWE Championship being rarely defended or featured for the several months until WM. Such infrequency could lend a hell of a lot of prestige to a title that hasn't seen really been treated with "all that" acclaim on some occasions in recent years.

 

Also, the man who finally defeats Brock for the title (Roman Reigns presumably) will recieve a huge rub which could potentially elevate them past Cena if all other factors are configured appropriately.

[BillThompson]

I think that tonight's show is an example of why WWE needs to move away from the current PPV a month model. Skim back to maybe 6 PPV type events a year, while tossing in two big Network exclusive events a year. It's clear that the influence of Trips is bleeding through in how long some of these feuds are going. I love long form booking, but the current PPV model suffocates long term booking because people are still conditioned to think that each four week cycle is building to feuds ending and whatnot. I doubt this change will ever take place while Dunn/Vince are still around, and may not even come to fruition with Trips, but it would be for the better if WWE were to scale back and condition their audience to expect longer feuds.

[El Boricua]

I think part of the problem is not so much the long feuds themselves, its the way they burn up the matchups (usually the same matchup straight up with not much variety) to fill up the large hours of airtime with the Raws and Smackdowns in between the monthly special events.

[shoe]

I'm viewing the ppv model as like a 1980 MSG show they 'd run monthly . The key isn't burning the feud out with matches on Raw and Smackdown. They also need to build the feud up to make sense . I don't think their creative can think in this way.

[Guest Eduardo James]

I think that tonight's show is an example of why WWE needs to move away from the current PPV a month model. Skim back to maybe 6 PPV type events a year, while tossing in two big Network exclusive events a year. It's clear that the influence of Trips is bleeding through in how long some of these feuds are going. I love long form booking, but the current PPV model suffocates long term booking because people are still conditioned to think that each four week cycle is building to feuds ending and whatnot. I doubt this change will ever take place while Dunn/Vince are still around, and may not even come to fruition with Trips, but it would be for the better if WWE were to scale back and condition their audience to expect longer feuds.

 

I don't think the # of PPVs are the problem. They've been doing 12 a year for two decades at this point. They just have too much TV in general to fill. There's been a ton of discussion between people who know far more than I do, but it seems like TV is more important than PPV at this point yet they still book around PPV as the destination point.

 

Scale back RAW to two hours and turn Main Event into the showcase/jobber show completely and burn out would appear less frequently. One of the reasons NXT is good is because they only have 1 hour vs the rest of the company's 6 hours of original programming.

[Strummer]

I think pushing RAW back to 2 hours would help a lot. At least things would seem a bit fresher

[BillThompson]

Shortening Raw and making it where not every wrestler has to have something to do every week would help. I still think there's a place for big events, but the problem is that there are so many of them now that they don't have much meaning. Remove a bunch of the unnecessary PPVs and go with Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, SummerSlam, Halloween Havoc, and Survivor Series as your only PPVs. Take the Clash of the Champions idea but reproduce it with Night of Champions twice a year. That's seven events a year (not including any events for NXT) and it makes those events mean more. Streamlined TV and streamlined events would make for a better product with recurring match-ups making more sense as they would be spaced out more. This is all a pipe dream, I realize this, but with us being in the age of the Network there's no reason to stick with the PPV event model.

[shoe]

You have to keep all the ppv's. That is the main selling point of the network .

[goodhelmet]

I think we are also seeing the results of combining the two brands. It is one thing if Wrestler A and Wrestler B fight once a week on SD! It is another thing entirely when they fight every RAW, SD! Main Event and PPV. I am actually missing the brand-split.

[JaymeFuture]

I think we are also seeing the results of combining the two brands. It is one thing if Wrestler A and Wrestler B fight once a week on SD! It is another thing entirely when they fight every RAW, SD! Main Event and PPV. I am actually missing the brand-split.

 

Great point. Both WWF and WCW got this much TV time back when the business was red-hot and depth was better in terms of star power. Strip those away, and we still have the same amount of time to fill. Brand extension shielded us from that for a while, when they were strict about the divide anyway.

[BillThompson]

You have to keep all the ppv's. That is the main selling point of the network .

 

The number of PPVs doesn't matter as far as that selling point goes, simply that they will get however many PPVs that are on the Network with their subscription.

[cowboy hats]

Silly questions to follow, but there was some talk of the Authority's Plans A through C during the ppv chatter last night, and since I don't watch, it doesn't make much sense (though I'm guessing even watching doesn't help that much):

 

The Authority's Plans

 

Plan C - Lesnar

Plan B - Rollins

Plan A - Still Orton??

 

Is there a reason da authority doesn't view Cena as best for business? When they put Kane in title matches, is it with the express intent that he not win? How could Kane be B4B (just in storyline here)? Why was Reigns in the title match? The viewer could understand how Bryan hijacking Raw and taunting HHH led him to his WM setup. If the authority hates the Shield so much, why given Reigns a shot?

[shoe]

 

You have to keep all the ppv's. That is the main selling point of the network .

 

The number of PPVs doesn't matter as far as that selling point goes, simply that they will get however many PPVs that are on the Network with their subscription.

Except one major flaw on your idea. When you are use to getting 12 shows and now we get 5 and 2 specials under your business model the consumer will feel screwed and wonder where there other 5 shows are. If they switched to this 2 years ago the consumer wouldn't feel screwed. Now you are taking away content, and the main revenue stream of the network.

[sek69]

Anyone else notice they are pushing the Network as the way to see every PPV "this year"? Seems like they may be setting the stage to make certain shows PPV only next year, but I think those bridges are already burnt with the providers that already dropped them.

[Strummer]

Cena will not be on Raw tonight as he's already flown to NY to shoot scenes for "Trainwreck".

 

Brock is scheduled to appear

[Matt D]

Hopefully he destroys a Cena midget.

[Petey]

Does WWE do a lot of PPV buys internationally? If so, that might be a reason why they won't cut back.

 

I don't think 12 PPV's are as much a problem as the amount of TV time they have to fill which leads to tons of rematches that by the time you reach the PPV match, you're likely to have seen the match a lot on free TV already.

 

Ideally, Raw would be two hours and every other show would only have squash matches or be a recap show.

[Loss]

Anyone else notice they are pushing the Network as the way to see every PPV "this year"? Seems like they may be setting the stage to make certain shows PPV only next year, but I think those bridges are already burnt with the providers that already dropped them.

 

I think their point was that a six-month commitment for new sign-ups now will result in getting every show the rest of the year. I don't think there was anything to it beyond that.

[Coffey]

I am actually missing the brand-split.

 

Goddamn, I'm not. I HATED the brand split. The whole false-premise that it was like two different companies & shit. Smackdown still always felt like the jobber show with B-PPVs that a lot of people didn't care about. The "big" stars would all be on RAW & getting sent to Smackdown felt like a demotion. Not to mention the whole two world champions crap, which made the mid-card belts even worse by default. I think the negatives far outweighed the positives. Sure, we would have fresher matches every now & then...but you can still have that now by just not throwing everything out there on free TV. Stop giving away matches on RAW. Build up the physical confrontations. Stop having contenders beat the champs clean to earn a title shot.

 

This is why I think Brock Lesnar would be a great WWE World Heavyweight Champion right now. He's not over exposed & still feels special BECAUSE he's on that part-time contract & not on every damn show. It's crazy to me reading on other forums people not wanting him to get the belt because he's part-time. If anything, that feels like a positive to me. If John Cena wasn't on every show under the sun, that might freshen him up too. But a brand split isn't the way to go about that. I would rather they just cancel Smackdown entirely. That show is worthless.