Current WWE

[S.L.L.]

I had planned on responding to SLL's last post, but recent events have rendered a response superfluous.

 

Sure they have.

 

If you want to know what going out of your way to not protect someone looks like, look no further than Dolph Ziggler's current booking.

Really?

 

You had nearly two months to formulate a response to what I wrote, and in the end, the best you could come up with was "Cena is booked like Barry Horowitz, therefore your argument is invalid"? Really? You're really going with that? Really? Really?

 

I don't normally demand people agree with what I have to say. Usually happy just to have people hear me out. And while that's still true here, I will note that saying "you know what, SLL, you've got a point there" does leave you with more dignity than the above response. Saying "SLL, you don't have a point, but I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree" leaves you with more dignity than the above response. Simply ignoring my last post and walking away from this thread entirely leaves you with more dignity than the above response.

 

If you want to know what going out of your way to not protect someone looks like, look no further than Dolph Ziggler's current booking.

When "the grossly mismanaged company ace is presented as higher profile than the grossly mismanaged upper midcarder, therefore he isn't grossly mismanaged" is the best comeback you've got, it means it's time to pack it in, because you've got nothing left. The fact that you went ahead and posted it anyway means that you're so pathetically desperate to have your opinions validated by others that I honestly start to feel sorry for you.

 

I was having fun in this thread, shooting down dopey smark talking points while expanding upon some of my core philosophies of wrestling and their application to the business' current malaise. But this? This isn't fun. This is embarrassing.

[NintendoLogic]

What can I say? I have many vices, of which one is a tendency to procrastinate. And it's not like I'm getting paid to post here or anything, which further lowers the sense of urgency. Beyond that, I don't particularly enjoy being confrontational, at least not over something as relatively trivial as wrestling. The upshot of all this is that the passage of time combined with things getting a bit too heated meant that I was content to let sleeping dogs lie until tomk resurrected this thread. But I hate to see you disappointed, so I'll endeavor to formulate a response worthy of your immense talents.

 

In the meantime, here's something for you to chew on. We both agree that Cena has been grossly mismanaged. The point of disagreement is over how that came to be. I've argued that WWE wanted Cena to be a bigger star but undermined him with their incompetence, while you've argued that WWE deliberately tried to cut Cena off at the knees. I would submit that someone who would take such a counterintuitive (to put it mildly) stance isn't in much position to be embarrassed by someone else's views.

[S.L.L.]

In the meantime, here's something for you to chew on. We both agree that Cena has been grossly mismanaged. The point of disagreement is over how that came to be.

Ummm....no. That is not the point of disagreement. It's a point of disagreement, yes. Not at all in the way you represented it, but we do disagree over it. Still, not THE point of disagreement.

 

This was not a thread about John Cena. This is a thread about why WWE is in the mess that it's in. I used Cena to illustrate some of my points. But this was never a thread about Cena.

 

Some people who disagreed with my points chose to fixate on Cena, presumably because, as I wrote earlier in the thread....

 

What I'm getting at is that there's something about this topic that makes people squeamish. I can't put my finger on it, but for some reason, people don't want to look too hard at what's wrong with WWE in the past 5-10 years. They don't want to talk about real problems.

Bitching about Cena is the easy way out, so naturally, the people who disagreed with me did so by trying to make this a thread about Cena. I have entertained them to a degree, but I've made a point of not straying away from the core of the thread: WWE is fucked up on a far deeper level than just "CENA IS TEH SUXXORS".

 

In fact, despite the nature of his push allegedly being THE point of disagreement, my last post in this thread before Tom revived it had very little at all to do with Cena. I distinctly recall saying....

 

Forget Cena for a second. That was an idea I had in 2007, and I long ago accepted that they were never going to go anywhere with it.

....and went on to talk about Punk and Ryback instead.

 

I asked you four questions:

 

1. Are there any circumstances under which it would be advisable for WWE to make a large enough change that it would risk current audience stability, and if so, what are they?

 

2. Is a bland but stable WWE really preferable to one that runs a risk in an attempt to better itself?

 

3. Is the long-term success of WWE dependent on maintaining an adult male fanbase?

 

4. Is this really about what's best for WWE business, or is this about you?

And your answer was...to not answer any of them, declare victory due to mysterious "recent events" that "rendered a response superfluous", and then make a point about Dolph Ziggler that was so mind-blowingly stupid that it forced you to quietly retract it in your next post:

 

We both agree that Cena has been grossly mismanaged.

Then what was the point of pointing out Ziggler's gross mismanagement?

 

But you know what? I don't even really want to know the answer to that question, because it's just a dodge. It's just an excuse to focus on Cena and take the easy way out rather than taking the hard, scary route of actually looking at the real problems of current WWE and what could/should be done to affect real change. If you don't want to do that...well, like you said, no one's paying you to post here. But if you were desperate enough for validation to post that "Cena isn't booked like a less successful Mulkey brother, therefore I was right the whole time," you're probably not going to stop now.

[tomk]

Nintendo L with the run-in

 

From January 1, 2008 to Jan 1, 2013 :

 

John Cena has held the WWE belt 265 days

HHH has held the belt 280 days

Randy Orton has held the belt 334 days

CM Punk has held it for 435 days

We've already been over this. To make this argument, you picked an arbitrary starting point that omits Cena's year-plus reign and his earlier 280-day reign. Not to mention that in 2012, Cena was in the main event of every PPV where he was on the card despite holding the world title for exactly zero days during that period. Divorcing the ace from the world title doesn't constitute not protecting the ace.

 

 

 

I didn't pick January 2008-January 1, 2013 arbitrarily.

I think those five years offer a better representative of how Cena has been booked than the 25 months between June 05-Sep 07.

My argument is that they are indifferent to protecting Cena.

There are large periods of June 05-Sep 07 that better represent when jdw talks about deliberate kneecaping (when they were protecting others at Cena's expense) as opposed to indifference.

 

I mentioned 05-07 period in my post but am super willing to walk you through that period if you need.

 

The WWWF/WWF/WWE is a formula fed. They have formulas that have worked in how to protect and promote fed around ace for half century. They are ignoring those formulas.

 

WWF traditionally hasn't been an ace chases the belt fed. It has been an ace holds the belt fed. When your top guy holds the belt it helps give the top guy more value and it helps to give the belt more value.

Yes Cena has been in mainevents...but the WWE doesn't traditionally divorce the title from the mainevent. Traditional WWWF/WWF/WWE booking says divorcing them hurts both the title and the maineventer. It also makes the direction of whole fed less clear (is the fed building heels to face Cena, building opponents to face title holders, or just building up guys to be built up guys? One of the advantages of caste society is everyone has role) . That was point I'm making. One of the major ways that the WWE has traditionally protected ace is not divorcing him from world title. Ace with title is the face of fed. We can all agree that from 08-13 that hasn't been the case.

 

The WWE traditionally has been a fed built around protecting their ace, it's a formula fed that has formulas to do so. They've abondoned those formulas with Cena.

[RWOOD]

Bruno is being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame with Bob Backlund this year in Madison Square Garden.

 

Seems about right.

[JerryvonKramer]

Happened to catch Bryan vs. Jericho randomly while I was away. Looked pretty good although it was difficult for me to tell watching it, who was face and who was heel. My GUESS was that Bryan is the heel but based on crowd reaction and what he was doing, it was very tough to say.

 

Decent match between two guys who look something like how I picture wrestlers to look. Bryan's offense was pretty good, reasonably intense. Jericho sold well.

 

Was VERY surprised to see such a clean pin on a random tv match though.

[Jimmy Redman]

Nobody was supposed to be the heel, it was a babyface match. Bryan is a face who's deal is that he gets angry at the crowd and yells "NO!", but in a very loveable way.

 

And there are probably a surprising number of clean pins on TV if you're not used to it. Everybody jobs to everybody on TV these days.

[artDDP]

Nobody was supposed to be the heel, it was a babyface match. Bryan is a face who's deal is that he gets angry at the crowd and yells "NO!", but in a very loveable way.

 

And there are probably a surprising number of clean pins on TV if you're not used to it. Everybody jobs to everybody on TV these days.

I hadn't watched a full telecast in almost eight years so when I watched a few Raw shows the last month this really surprised me. It's nice to see WWE has moved away from the idea that the only time someone should job clean is when they're being buried.

[Loss]

The biggest issue that keeps me from really getting involved in WWE again is that they purposely present a lot of people on their roster as losers and nobodies. They also openly push the idea that the wrestlers of the past were better than the wrestlers today, which even if it is true is completely counterproductive. I have no desire to watch that. There are plenty of wrestlers on the WWE roster who are over, but not in a way where they are threatening to upset the apple cart. Maybe wrestling fans have changed as much as wrestling itself, but I can't remember the last time I saw fans rally behind a midcarder and really force WWE's hand on pushing them. It sort of happened with Punk, but for the most part, everyone seems to know their role. It's one reason I'm not a fan of WWE building each Wrestlemania around nostalgia acts like the Undertaker, Rock and HHH. Right now, it works, but eventually it won't, and they don't even seem to be trying to groom anyone to be a star at that level. Will they ever protect anyone in booking as much as Undertaker again? Del Rio, Ziggler, Swagger and others all seem like part of this neverending merry go round of pushing someone just below star level and then stopping. Let's see someone get an HHH level push, or an Austin level push - a smart winning winner. After they're established as smart winning winners, they can help others get over as smart winning winners. Sadly, it doesn't seem to work that way.

 

There are other things that bug me. Everyone has a painfully short memory, there's too much comedy, I think Money in the Bank devalues the value of the titles, etc. But I could live with those things if I felt like they were presenting the majority of their roster as people worth caring about, instead of getting jollies by humiliating them.

[Dylan Waco]

I am a big WWE fan, but Loss is right about the booking. Me and Exposer were talking recently about how if Cena were to get hurt the WWE would be totally fucked as there is no other full timer on the roster who has any sort of aura as a transcendent, all time, star.

[JerryvonKramer]

As someone with no interest in the current product, I thought seeing Bryan pinned clean by Jericho on free TV was tantamount to a burial. It said to me "this guy is no more than a midcarder, clearly any sort of main event or title push is behind him".

 

I don't know if that's just my oldschool mentality, or just simple logic at play.

[Dylan Waco]

As someone with no interest in the current product, I thought seeing Bryan pinned clean by Jericho on free TV was tantamount to a burial. It said to me "this guy is no more than a midcarder, clearly any sort of main event or title push is behind him".

 

I don't know if that's just my oldschool mentality, or just simple logic at play.

With the amount of tv these guys had if that was the way every loss worked the roster would be filled with zombies after week two

[JerryvonKramer]

What happened to the idea of protection?

[Dylan Waco]

Ratings

[JerryvonKramer]

Considering I've spent the past 6 months moaning about Dusty finishes and other such bullshit, I can't complain too much.

 

It's a massive shift in booking philosophy and basic wrestling wisdom though. Also, does it mean there's no current WWE equivalent of like, Hercules? Seems like everyone is a maineventer and at the same time everyone is a midcarder. Everyone is a former world champion. Just my perception of it, realise it may not be the case.

[Dylan Waco]

Considering I've spent the past 6 months moaning about Dusty finishes and other such bullshit, I can't complain too much.

 

It's a massive shift in booking philosophy and basic wrestling wisdom though. Also, does it mean there's no current WWE equivalent of like, Hercules? Seems like everyone is a maineventer and at the same time everyone is a midcarder. Everyone is a former world champion. Just my perception of it, realise it may not be the case.

I don't think it's quite as bad as you state, but it's a problem. To me it's not so much that they've spread the title around, but that they've spread the title around and made no attempt to keep former titleholders credible.

[ZThomas]

Current WWE is week to week booking, Sure the know what they want for the next PPV booking wise but in there eyes its hard to invest in anybody when you have TV to fill every week.

When Wade Barrett returned they built him up good. He established a new finisher, got wins over Orton and Shamus and now he is stuck with a mid-card title and losing to an NXT rookie. 5 months ago i felt like he'd be where Del Rio is now.

Not many guys can handle the fly by night booking of today. I dont agree they should plan every step for guys but they just need a general direction of where they want to go with guy and build towards it along the way

[Loss]

I see that, but that's been the reality of wrestling for 18 years now. Wrestling has created new stars in the last 18 years. It's just that most of them happened closer to the beginning of that time period than the end.

[Slasher]

The thing about WWE pushing the stars of the yesteryear over the current talent isn't just a wrestling thing. Look at ESPN.com where they devote absurd amount of coverage to the idea Michael Jordan at 50 is still better than anyone they got playing in NBA.

[Loss]

ESPN is a separate entity from the league itself though. I suppose it's in their best interests for current athletes to be stars, but are they as invested in that as the league itself?

[Slasher]

ESPN is a separate entity from the league itself though. I suppose it's in their best interests for current athletes to be stars, but are they as invested in that as the league itself?

I would imagine for marketing purposes they would be. The NBA is very individual driven as far as marketing goes. The only teams to be pushed as a team is Los Angeles and Boston and lately, Miami.

[Kevin Ridge]

ESPN is a separate entity from the league itself though. I suppose it's in their best interests for current athletes to be stars, but are they as invested in that as the league itself?

I would say very much so. Look how much they don't give a crap about the NHL as they don't have a television contract with them. NHL has some really top level players right now.

 

But Jordan is a special athlete and I don't think ESPN is pushing him over current NBA players. It's his 50th birthday so it's a talking point reminding everyone how great he is and the big what if whether he could play in today's NBA. But after this it will be back to Lebron, Kobe, Durant, etc.

[Kostka]

Who would be the WWE top 10 workers at the moment?

 

I'd go

 

1. Antonio Cesaro

2. Sheamus

3. Mark Henry

4. The Shield (as a unit)

5. Big Show

6. CM Punk

7. John Cena

8. Alberto Del Rio

9. Rey Mysterio

10. Dolph Ziggler

 

You could switch Cena and Punk easily without much complaint. Cena was better in that six man than any Punk performance in a long time IMO.

[Log]

So...who wins Cena/Rock?

[Loss]

Cena, no doubt.