Why I think NXT is stronger than WWE and what that means

[Grimmas]

I think the problem is basically, the USA Network wants three hours of RAW, with stars like John Cena, Daniel Bryan, Randy Orton, Triple H, and the like, on every single hour. Not two hours of "real" RAW, and an hour in the WWE studio.

 

I think a change like that would be as well received in the USA Network's home office as much as if the 1st quarter of an NBA game suddenly became a pre-game show.

Fine throw out that idea, but a threw out a bunch more with seconds of thought. There is lots to do to mix things up.

 

The first hour of every Raw could be a 4 man tournament to determine who faces the US Champion in the main event of the show? No interviews or anything, just 3 matches to determine who is in the main event? That is just one idea that would freshen up the show. There is a million things they could do, without turning the first hour into a WWE studio show.

[Badlittlekitten]

Is there a reason why they don't use skits, on location promos or any of the cool stuff they film for their website/youtube? More of that sorta thing would make raw a more tolerable slog. Last thing that show needs is more wrestling.

[Wade Garrett]

Monday Nights wouldn't be a problem if they didn't have Thursday Nights too. They get paid to produce both obviously. To bad they aren't in a position to cancel Thursday Nights and still keep the contract in place.

 

This would allow them to produce more for the Network and have Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays off too.

[Matt D]

A three hour raw would be a problem whether or not they had Thursday. I think a two hour Raw and a two hour Smackdown would be better than a three-hour Raw and no Smackdown.

[Sean Liska]

I just don't think you can put on a 3-hour TV show every week, year after year, and keep people engaged all the time. I'm a big apologist of the current product, but you have to be realistic about what it is. DVR that thing and start about 90 minutes in so you can skip the Truth-Miz match 140 minutes into the show and not lose your mind.

 

It is interesting, though. Almost everyone considers 2000 to be WWE's TV peak. But if you go back and look at results, it's amazing how many shows only had one match longer than 4 minutes. We've gotten spoiled with the amount of great wrestling matches on TV. But you have to fight to get it.

[sek69]

The opening 20 minute promo of doom seems to be a vestigial holdover from the Monday Night Wars when they would be afraid people would change over to Nitro. Now it just seems like they're stuck in This Is How We Do Things mode, despite no one outside of the writers' room being a fan of it.

[Loss]

 

I feel like with the amount of talent on their roster and the amount of TV time they have to fill, not getting a 20 minute+ match between good workers every single week is pretty baffling.

Wrestling doesn't sell. Nobody wants to watch a match without a story.

 

At least that is what Vince said on Austin's podcast.

 

 

In recent years, long matches have shown more ratings growth than talking segments generally speaking. And the type of matches I'm thinking are main eventer vs midcarder matches that they wouldn't put on PPV anyway. No reason Seth Rollins can't go 20 defending the title against Titus O'Neill, for example.

[Loss]

I just don't think you can put on a 3-hour TV show every week, year after year, and keep people engaged all the time. I'm a big apologist of the current product, but you have to be realistic about what it is. DVR that thing and start about 90 minutes in so you can skip the Truth-Miz match 140 minutes into the show and not lose your mind.

 

It is interesting, though. Almost everyone considers 2000 to be WWE's TV peak. But if you go back and look at results, it's amazing how many shows only had one match longer than 4 minutes. We've gotten spoiled with the amount of great wrestling matches on TV. But you have to fight to get it.

 

I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone argue 2000 as the peak because of all the great TV matches. It's usually pay-per-view matches that people like, and the booking was also solid to great most of the time. Now, instead of one or the other, we have neither.

[Grimmas]

 

 

I feel like with the amount of talent on their roster and the amount of TV time they have to fill, not getting a 20 minute+ match between good workers every single week is pretty baffling.

Wrestling doesn't sell. Nobody wants to watch a match without a story.

 

At least that is what Vince said on Austin's podcast.

 

 

In recent years, long matches have shown more ratings growth than talking segments generally speaking. And the type of matches I'm thinking are main eventer vs midcarder matches that they wouldn't put on PPV anyway. No reason Seth Rollins can't go 20 defending the title against Titus O'Neill, for example.

 

I agree 100%, Vince McMahon does not see it though.

[Loss]

Also, I hate to say it, but the new model has all pay-per-views free except for three of them. So do they still have to feel as special as they did before?

[goc]

They are not free. You are paying for them with your Network subscription.

[Parties]

I disagree with the idea that NXT’s booking is “smark” hardcore stuff that can't work on main roster TV. TNA is “smark” booking. NXT is a territory. Full Sail audience is a bunch of chanting online geeks. Fair enough. But applying Dusty Rhodes booking to RAW would still vastly improve RAW. NXT is built on concepts which drew casual fans in 1978, 1988, 1998. Some people think Russo killed those concepts and that you can’t put the genie back in the bottle, but NXT disproves that thinking.

 

8 hours a week of WWE is rough, but it’s not impossible to remain entertaining. Superstars and Main Event are RAW recaps + 2 short matches apiece. NXT solves itself. RAW and SD are the problems, largely because the McMahons have no faith in SD, which ended the brand extension. Repetitive booking post-unification suggests they were better off with unique stars on each show. Imagine if Cena/Rusev had happened exclusively on SD. Or SD was able to give guys like Slater, Samoa Joe, Titus, and Harper more purpose. No reason they couldn’t subtlety move back in that direction.

 

You're starting to see less saturation of certain guys. Reigns is out of the spotlight and better for it. Orton skips the last PPV. Wyatt/Lesnar/Jericho come in and out as needed. The problem right now isn’t just overexposure (though guys like Ziggler and the Divas def. suffer from it) as much as its repeating the same matches over and over. Barrett-Neville being done to death for no reason before they even have a chance to get any heat. The pace of RAW, SD, and the PPVs still needs to be considerably slowed down, with more variance in the matches booked. Some say it's Vince constantly changing his mind and refusing to book longterm. There's no "two months from now" for anyone save the top 3-5 stars. The writers don't get to book things at a thoughtful pace, and it becomes easier to rehash decent matches to death. This ignores how bad most of their writers are, but that’s another story.

 

For years, there have been almost no storylines or angles for anyone below the main event. Everyone else is thrown into random, meaningless matches. Has Barrett had a memorable feud since his very first as Nexus leader five years ago? Can you recall from memory what Kofi or Big Show were doing this time last year, or the year before that? Despite a huge roster and huge writing staff, none of these guys are ever given character development, storylines, genuine feuds, or any sense of finality to anything onscreen. They don’t even have personas to screw up, and on the rare occasions when they develop one (Barrett’s “bad news” as an example), it’s quickly watered-down and killed.

 

We don't often discuss the degree to which the McMahons don't want individual workers to get over. They want the brand to be over. They want vague corporate concepts that mean nothing to get over. That Eisenhower fellowship that Steph did is infinitely more important to what they value than whether or not Cesaro draws crowds, or even who's holding the world title this time next year. All of that bland "WWE Universe" rhetoric is more engrained than we think when we have message board conversations about who should be pushed and what should be booked.

[Sean Liska]

 

I just don't think you can put on a 3-hour TV show every week, year after year, and keep people engaged all the time. I'm a big apologist of the current product, but you have to be realistic about what it is. DVR that thing and start about 90 minutes in so you can skip the Truth-Miz match 140 minutes into the show and not lose your mind.

 

It is interesting, though. Almost everyone considers 2000 to be WWE's TV peak. But if you go back and look at results, it's amazing how many shows only had one match longer than 4 minutes. We've gotten spoiled with the amount of great wrestling matches on TV. But you have to fight to get it.

 

I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone argue 2000 as the peak because of all the great TV matches. It's usually pay-per-view matches that people like, and the booking was also solid to great most of the time. Now, instead of one or the other, we have neither.

 

 

We don't get great PPV matches anymore? I would have to disagree on that. Lesnar/Reigns, Lesnar/Rollins/Cena, Bryan/Reigns, Cena/Owens, etc.

 

My point was just that as brutal as the 3-hour format is in a lot of ways, we have gotten spoiled with the amount of good wrestling available. There was not a RAW in 2000 that had two matches as good as the Montreal RAW with Ambrose/Rollins and Zayn/Cena. Cena/Cesaro last year was a throwaway match only hardcores remember and it was better than anything from 98-2000 on TV.

[goodhelmet]

I think he was talking about great angles OR great matches... not great TV OR great PPV.

[Loss]

Yes.

[Jesse Ewiak]

On the topic of the size of the writing team, is there any evidence out there showing whether or not Triple H is in favor of the 20 man writing team? I mean, I'm not on the "Triple H will fix WWE once Vince kicks the bucket" brigade, but I can see him downsizing the writing team down to say, six or eight people and be more in favor of less scripting of guys in the long run.

[kjh]

 

It's a lot easier to have a coherent narrative that builds from week to week when you tape four one hour shows in one night and you have maybe one or two people writing the scripts. Will Triple H have the same level of discipline when he's running a creative team with two dozen people on it and overseeing two four hour television tapings a week? We'll only know for sure when he takes over for good. I don't think it's a sure bet that Triple H runs the company better than Vince does, although he's done enough things right with NXT that we shouldn't be horrified at the prospect.

 

I agree completely with everything that you said... however the rewriting of scripts the day of the show and the giant "creative teams" filled with people who didn't make it in Hollywood by all accounts seem to be Vince trademarks. Has Hunter ever gone public with his thoughts on the entire process? I don't think so but I am curious. Who knows if one of his first moves in a post-Vince world will be to downsize the teams and to stick to longer term plans.

 

 

On the ESPN NXT special, we saw him leading his production meeting with about two dozen people involved, taking suggestions from everybody. So I doubt he'd downsize the creative team (which was more of a Stephanie trademark than it was Vince's, as before she became head of creative, Vince tended to work closely with a handful of people). I think he'll likely have more wrestling minds involved and won't be as impulsive/whimsical as Vince, but whether that will translate to greater business success and a hotter product, who knows? The programming may very well be more in tune with the tastes of hardcore fans, but whether he has the vision and creativity to heat up WWE outside of its loyal base remains to be seen.