Too many clean wins, not enough cheap finishes.

[JerryvonKramer]

How can you use NXT guys at JTTS? You're supposed to be grooming them as your next main eventers, you can't do that by starting them out losing to everyone.

 

You can't just say "well they used to do that" because they also used to go away for 2-3 years in between their JTTS period and getting brought in for a real push.

Bret Hart. Kawada. Shawn Michaels. Kobashi.

 

Climbing up the ladder should mean something.

 

So Owens gets his first feud with a lower midcarder not straight in with Cena.

 

The whole thinking of the company is ass backwards because it's become too divorced from the wrestling basics and ABCs. Ratings be damned, it's not like the current formula has worked out brilliantly.

 

And wrestling fans tuned in to see wrestling shows with jtts guys on them for years and years, why is the 2015 fan so different.

 

There's value in seeing a star showcase all their offense against a job guy.

 

There's value in seeing what he can do against a marginally bigger threat.

 

Then when he faces the big star, it's a real what if.

[goc]

 

How can you use NXT guys at JTTS? You're supposed to be grooming them as your next main eventers, you can't do that by starting them out losing to everyone.

 

You can't just say "well they used to do that" because they also used to go away for 2-3 years in between their JTTS period and getting brought in for a real push.

Bret Hart. Kawada. Shawn Michaels. Kobashi.

 

Climbing up the ladder should mean something.

 

So Owens gets his first feud with a lower midcarder not straight in with Cena.

 

The whole thinking of the company is ass backwards because it's become too divorced from the wrestling basics and ABCs. Ratings be damned, it's not like the current formula has worked out brilliantly.

 

And wrestling fans tuned in to see wrestling shows with jtts guys on them for years and years, why is the 2015 fan so different.

 

There's value in seeing a star showcase all their offense against a job guy.

 

There's value in seeing what he can do against a marginally bigger threat.

 

Then when he faces the big star, it's a real what if.

 

They never debut anyone like they did with Kevin Owens, it's not like that's their standard way.

 

Also, it's not like they NEVER push people like that any more Parv. That is exactly what they did with Rusev.

[Coffey]

Another bonus of jobber squashes? The job guys don't kick out of thirty fucking finishes.

[JerryvonKramer]

Oh fuck this. I don't even care about modern WWE. Going back to watching NWA classics and 70s Japan stuff.

[goc]

I just think that the current landscape is way too different from 70s & 80s that you can't just go "well make everything like it was back then and everything will be fixed"

 

It's a lot more complicated than that.

[overbooked]

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of how many hours TV a month there were for various promotions in the past compared to current WWE. The current product is bound to seem rushed and accelerated when they have so much time to fill, and when that time is so vital to the bottom line. And with a completely different business model things can't just go back to how they were, although I don't think the current way works either.

 

I do think they are trying to avoid an over-reliance on stars. In the past, your big star gets injured or walks out, you just bring in someone else from somewhere else. That just isn't viable anymore. Wrestlemania, and perhaps the Royal Rumble, will always do well because those brands are so strong. The card and the stars don't matter as much. I think the WWE just want everything to head in that direction as it is far more secure and less prone to fluctuation. Which is pretty important with shareholders. They can't just build in downtimes as easily as they might have the past.

 

Saying that, it would be good to see more countouts and DQs provided they are heated and not hokey. They seem the natural stepping stones to gimmick matches and would give workers another tool in every match, if people start to buy in to the danger that a guy might get counted out, for example.

 

As for the parity booking, I agree, but if they went back to more hierarchical booking everyone would start moaning that their favourite wrestler was being held down...

[Grimmas]

I agree with most of what Parv is saying. All this talk of the landscape changing and things are different is that really true? How are the ratings now?

Adding job guys, six man tags, etc.. would really help special events actually feel special.

[Coffey]

It's a lot more complicated than that.

 

I agree but I also think that's a big part of the problem. Everything doesn't have to be complicated, they just make it that way. Micromanaging everything down to the minute, being publicly traded, asking for so much money for TV renewal, leaving PPV & starting the Network, starting their own farm league like baseball franchises, having to appease network executives, etc.

 

And WWE is the big fish in pro-wrestling, so when they do stuff, other people try to follow in their footsteps. Now NJPW is going public? Why? They have their own version of WWE Network now. I think I read they're starting some developmental initiative too?

 

A lot of that stuff is business decisions but those decisions do effect the television product & the wrestling as well. Especially when things like TV ratings or merchandise sales factor into them writing/booking, or how WWE is seemingly so paranoid about a wrestler getting more over than the brand.

 

WWE bends over backwards for the TV and USA but at the end of the day, still can't sell any ads. I won't act like I have a clue about any of the financials or the business side of things though. So I shouldn't talk about that.

 

I just know that in 1980 or 2015, if you make a bad guy people wanna see get his ass kicked and a good guy that people wanna get behind and put them against each other, people will pay for it. I feel like we never even get THAT anymore, the most basic story. We have "cool" heels, and top babyfaces getting booed, and "shades of grey" tweeners & people with no heat trading wins on free TV and everyone just looks like a geek.

 

Brock feels like a star for a reason. He's not wrestling on TV each week either.

[LariatMMBOPPO]

 

 

They never debut anyone like they did with Kevin Owens, it's not like that's their standard way.

 

Also, it's not like they NEVER push people like that any more Parv. That is exactly what they did with Rusev.

 

Also, please stop pushing the enter button after every sentence. It turns quote trains into monsters.

[Loss]

WWE doesn't have a huge amount more TV than WCW did even when they were doing well. I find that referencing the amount of TV is an excuse to write off bad booking too often. And it's not like WWE was hitting an awesome creative peak when RAW was only two hours each week either. I'm not sure RAW has been a well-booked show week to week for any extended period of time in the last 15 years.

 

I'm fine with few clean finishes on TV, but I do think the big events should have mostly clean finishes. With all the rematches, I think it would make far more sense not to beat guys so much if they feel like that's something they have to do. Even John Cena loses too much when compared to other guys who were at that level in the past. The problem there is that Cena shouldn't be the first guy anyone faces -- he should be the last. He's not the setup guy. He's the guy others are set up for. Rusev should be able to live the rest of his career off of beating him at Fastlane, but he won't because WWE emphasizes the Monday Night Wars era more than they do their last 6-12 months of history.

[goc]

 

It's a lot more complicated than that.

 

I agree but I also think that's a big part of the problem. Everything doesn't have to be complicated, they just make it that way. Micromanaging everything down to the minute, being publicly traded, asking for so much money for TV renewal, leaving PPV & starting the Network, starting their own farm league like baseball franchises, having to appease network executives, etc.

This feels like COMPLETELY missing the forest for the trees. They are a business first. Going public, getting as much money as possible for their TV, starting their own Network, having NXT are all smart business decisions to either strengthen the company's future or just make as much money as possible. Having to appease network executives is something that EVERY television show has to do how are they supposed to avoid that?

[Matt D]

All that said, I don't think they book to create stars over the last many years, and I think it's very much a Vince(and maybe Dunn) quirk. I think it's a side effect of winning the Monday Night War and having no competition but also because Vince felt personally burned when it came to some guys (and Divas as well) who became bigger than the WWE.

[LariatMMBOPPO]

also because Vince felt personally burned when it came to some guys (and Divas as well) who became bigger than the WWE.

Off topic, but who does that entail besides the obvious names like Austin, Rock and Hogan. Lesnar was mainly known as the "fake wrestling guy" in UFC and despite his recent film success, Batista isn't really a large name yet. Every one of those names eventually came back and made nice, sometimes more than once. Only exception I can think of is Savage.

 

Maven appearing on infomercials and the Surreal Life and Stacy Keibler being the arm candy of Clooney for few years before promptly disappearing after breaking up aren't people I would say became bigger than the company.

[goc]

It's Lesnar. Whether or not Lesnar was known for being in the WWE first he became a star all on his own in UFC and meant more for UFC PPV business than anyone in WWE meant for their PPVs.

 

That's besides the fact that the whole stop-start push thing started when Lesnar quit after they'd spent about 2 years giving him the biggest debut push of anyone ever.

[Coffey]

I feel like I explain myself poorly. Let me try again:

 

I miss when pro-wrestling was about the world of pro-wrestling - the matches, the angles, the stories & the characters. Everything was built around that. Most of the business decisions that WWE make now, seem to be trying to take them away to being anything other than pro-wrestling just to attempt to show how popular they are; to try to look more appealing to people that don't give a fuck (nor will they ever). I don't feel like they care about being pro-wrestling anymore. They care about ratings, merch sales, Network subscriptions, shareholders, App downloads, trends on Twitter, views on YouTube, video game sales, Susan G. Komen month, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Be-A-Star Campaigns & other shit instead so they can point to it and say "look at me, look at me!" It might as well be Lassie on the screen and their whole show would be exactly the same.

 

Of course it's a business & they're trying to make money. That was never my intention to say that it wasn't. WWE will always be perceived by everyone else as a wrestling show. WWE is doing everything in their power to not be perceived that way when they should be embracing it instead.

[Blehschmidt]

Haven't they actually said "we are not a wrestling company, we are an entertainment company" multiple times.

[BillThompson]

This conversation has morphed into something else. But, as for the original point I think a middle ground is the preferred route. You can't have all clean finishes, but you can't have too many chap finishes either. A lot of it comes back to the way they do their feuds these days. Most WWE feuds are about 3 PPVs long, if that. It wouldn't be hard then to build those feuds as a series of cheap finishes leading to one decisive finish or as a mixture of clean and cheap leading to one decisive clean finish. WWE doesn't think they can do this, and realistically they can't, because of the star rule that Matt brought up, but more because they don't believe the feuds are good enough that people come away strong unless they have a series of clean finishes.

[Coffey]

Haven't they actually said "we are not a wrestling company, we are an entertainment company" multiple times.

 

I'm not sure. I know on the Stone Cold Podcast with Vince McMahon, Vince said "wrestling is what my daddy did." Like it was a bad thing.

 

Wrestlers have been re-branded to "superstars" or "sports entertainers." They don't even refer to the crowd as fans anymore.

 

I can't imagine if the NBA were to act like it wasn't basketball anymore.

[El-P]

Haven't they actually said "we are not a wrestling company, we are an entertainment company" multiple times.

 

That's the whole problem. Since the very beginning, that's been Vince's dream, to be something else than just pro-rassling. When infact, his success only comes from being pro-rassling. He sucked at anything else he ever tried. And if we're supposed to look at WWE as "an entertainment company", then the product they deliver is just godawful in term of production, storytelling, acting and then some. It's beneath B-level reality TV. When people talk about Stephy being this really good "wrestling promo", I just cringe. No, she's not a good "wrestling promo", because she doesn't cut promos. She "acts". And truthfully, the level of acting in WWE programming in sub-90's porn movie level. The idiotic soap operas we had in the 90's in France produced by AB production, infamous for their stupidity and bad acting, are like a Bergman movies compared to WWE's "storytelling & acting". Why I have zero faith in Trip and Stephy is simple : Trip is a "student of the game", but judging by his own performances and insecurity, he's a shitty student, and he idolizes body-builders like the old man did; and the rise to power of Stephy in the "creative department" coincides with the time WWE became corporate-looking, dull and soap-operaish to a ridiculous degree.

 

So yeah, clean wins and losses or not really don't matter much at this point. The issue is much broader.

[JAC]

When people talk about Stephy being this really good "wrestling promo", I just cringe. No, she's not a good "wrestling promo", because she doesn't cut promos. She "acts". And truthfully, the level of acting in WWE programming in sub-90's porn movie level.

 

I know it's off the main topic, but thank you for saying that. This business about her being a great non-wrestling performer kills me. She's beyond awful as a character, not just in content but also in delivery.

[JAC]

Is there any long-term planning anymore? Do they ever sit back and chart out where people are going to be in a year's time and how they're going to get there? For wins and losses to matter, or to make effective use of screwy finishes, you have to be building towards something--to have an actual plan.

 

Right now, they mostly seem to be in a perpetual state of drift. Whenever they do deliver a focused push to someone, like Roman Reigns, they seem to hand the planning over to King Midas' idiot brother, who turns all that he touches into shit.

[Loss]

Haven't they actually said "we are not a wrestling company, we are an entertainment company" multiple times.

 

This has always struck me as nothing more than marketing language and yet another crutch for bad creative. If they weren't a wrestling company, why would they care about taking it to a wrestling show on Destination America that draws 80,000 viewers a week?

[Hollinger.]

I've tried to work this out before, but I think the key to booking like they do and still getting people over is to adopt something similar to the old All Japan system, where you have loosely organized groups of guys with a hard kept hierarchy. 2/3 top level faces, 2/3 top level heels. Underneath each is a US title tier guy and/or an IC title tier guy, a tag team, and maybe a low card/job guy. You don't present them as a group, the way WWE usually tends to, but for tv you run lots of tags and six mans, etc, and this is where your pairings come from. You enforce the strict hierarchy in that you keep apart your 1 vs 1 and maybe even 1 vs 2 matches on tv. Same with 2 vs 2, 3 vs 3, etc. You build those rivalries through tag matches, etc, and save the equal matches for something with a payoff. When you establish this order, you can effectively build guys by booking the upsets. The upsets need to have meaningful changes to the depth chart, though. Guys moved up, guys moved down.

 

I have no idea if this makes sense. I'm at work, and have written this in several intervals. I'm trying to put together a depth chart, but the current roster makes it hard.

[Bierschwale]

One cheap finish that I actually like is seeing the babyface get DQ'd. It fits with the Bill Watts philosophy of having the babyface beat himself. It's great for building to a rematch, as the babyface has to control his temper to gain a victory, and it doesn't require the heel to look weak by angling for a cheap win.

 

What was the last really good babyface DQ loss of theirs, Judgment Day '04?

[Cap]

To me - and I realize i am echoing some of what has already been implicitly and explicitly said here - the original question about clean finishes is really a question about creative, cohesive, and long term storytelling that taps into more of the available wrestling tropes. While I think the abundance of TV hours, lack of jobbers, and lack of clearly developed stars are all problems, they seem like byproducts of a wresting product that ultimately seems disinterested in creating wrestling theater. In some ways "smart fans" (I include myself in this) got our wish because the match quality on the whole has gone way up, but those matches more or less exist in a vacuum for the most part. There just seems to be a lack of coherent and creative storytelling and part of the problem is the company is working with a small fraction of the tools wrestling companies have worked with before. It is like they picked 2-3 tools you might need to build a house, made sure they had the absolute top of the line and didn’t bother getting the rest.

 

I have thought for a while that the WWE doesn’t care about wrestling because it doesn’t have to. The world of wrestling produces enough talent to fill their roster with ease. Their media model (especially since the network) and their corner on the market mean they don’t have to extend themselves to produce good wrestling, just maintain buzz and every once in a while deliver on creating “experiences”. Finally, their final realization of creating an entertainment universe allows them to extend the storytelling wrestling does into different areas (Total divas, Tough, Twitter, WWE app, etc). The unfortunate thing is that seems to be where all the focus is to the detriment of writing and creating. The company focuses on media and WWE cultural expansion and reduces the storytelling to simple ideas that will maintain merch sales and never hurt the overall bottom-line TOO much (Keep Roman Strong).

 

In some ways it has been nice because it has brought the absolute creative cream to the top. Dragon got over for his in ring creativity. Punk and KO have gotten over for being completely different, creative characters (and talented in ring). Cena has remained on his game not just because he has the E behind him but because his overall understanding of his character and of storytelling in general is off the charts. The same can really be said for the Brock/Heyman combo I think. Unfortunately, this also means that otherwise exceptional talents such as Cesaro, Ziggler, Wyatt and so on (really lots to list) have trouble gaining any momentum because of a combination of bad luck, lack of creative support, lack of clearly defined stories to work within, and so on. That isn’t even to say that we are looking at a difference in talent, because some creativity seems to be thwarted a lot by the lack of direction and effort put into the actual wrestling theater part of the company.

 

Sorry… ramble ramble… In short, I just think the WWE has tied one of its hands behind its back by not using all the tools at their disposal (or using them poorly). When we do get count outs and the like they seem sloppy and directionless, the product of a lack of desire to write more than a clearly thought out plan. So, yes, I agree there should be more DQs, count outs, time limit draws, but they have to be part of a larger, more overarching change that retrains fans to expect a variety of thins at a wrestling show and they need to be used with purpose. They need to demonstrate over an extended period that they can and will produce cohesive storytelling.