Where does current WWE rank in the history of the WWE/F?

[Grimmas]

I can't bring myself to watch the TV, because when I tried the booking was shit. The pvs have some good matches, but the booking is awful. Nobody is that over. The WWE is not holding any interest for me right now, but where does it rank in the history of the WWE/F?

Clearly 1999 was worse, but there has to be worse periods as well.

[Gregor]

If you're including things like booking and how over the wrestlers are, I'm not sure that 1999 is worse. There was a lot of awful stuff then, but the first three months of the year had Austin-McMahon and Rock-Mankind. The crowd heat from the Attitude Era is kind of overrated (for undercard PPV matches, the crowd was generally silent between the entrances and the finishing stretch), but it beats now for sure. Commentary was better. More wrestlers felt important, and the top guys felt more important than today's. Even pay-per-views like No Mercy and Armageddon were must-see shows. Match quality was at an all-time low, and a lot of the matches felt unimportant because they were just filler until the angle advancement. Is that better or worse than 50-50 booking? Oh, of course there's the fact that wrestling was a lot cooler then, too.

 

RAW from after SummerSlam 1994 until about midway through 1995 is really hard to watch. It got better, but it didn't become a good TV show until late 1996.

 

I've never seen any of it, but the guest host era sounded like it had to have been unbearable. Was it?

[Ricky Jackson]

Yeah, I think 09 and 10 was much worse than now, at least as far as Raw is concerned. You also didn't have the alternative of NXT (not counting the early days of that show, but I guess there was ECW and good matches on Superstars, although I missed that stuff) and the general feeling that indy darlings could get pushed at that time. It was a nadir in company history that I'd put up with 95 IMO

[Exposer]

Since I've been watching in Jan. 2000:

 

Sep. 02-Feb. 04 Raw was pretty bad. Smackdown is considered great during that period mostly but Chattanooga didn't have a UPN affiliate as early as 2001 or so. The local Fox affiliate aired SD at either 6 PM or 11:35 PM off and on for years. They eventually did it every week until the transition to My Network TV. That means all I knew was Raw and the Smackdown matches on PPVs from 02-08. I did catch a lot of the Saturday airings in the mid 00s though which had a lot of great stuff. I digress though.

 

Once the Benoit push simmered Raw turned into trash again pretty quickly. I watched more MNF than Raw in the falls of 04, 05, and 06 probably. It wasn't until Trips tore his quad a second time and the build to Mania 23 that WWE got awesome again like it was when I was a kid in 00-01. That lasted until the Benoit stuff.

 

I'd say the worst period though probably was late 09-early 11. The Miz's initial push and Punk's SES are things I really enjoyed at the time, but the Nexus angle fell off the rails quickly. This isn't to mention ECW ending as brand, 90% of the Raw guest host shows being terrible, the return of DX AGAIN, and some of the least interesting mid-carders of all-time like uninspired Matt Hardy, post-Matt Hardy feud MVP, Carlito, and DH Smith. Smackdown had a bunch of great matches and Superstars was a gift from the C-show Gods, but this period sucked.

 

However, is 02-04 Raw, and late 09-early 11 worse than mid 14-present WWE? Raw in both periods was, but overall as a product this is the worst WWE I've ever seen.

 

EDIT: To put a bit of a positive spin on it, I still think there are a bunch of good to great matches in WWE every year and there's still stuff even storyline wise that I enjoy. Not a lot with the latter, but it's there.

[jcmmnx]

I'd put the booking near the bottom, the top to bottom in ring talent pretty high(despite the lack of many true main eventers), and the promo work with the scripted garbage promos near the bottom. It kinda bums me out because there's so many talented people that the WWE basically refuses to let me enjoy with it's shitty booking. I see Luke Harper take out Reigns and Brock on Raw with some great looking offense, and it frustrates the hell out of me how he's been treated like a sack of shit over the past year.

[joeg]

Its not as bad as when I was a kid an WWF had the Gobbledy Gooker and WCW had the Black Scorpion. Parts of the late 90s were pretty bad, but honestly two of my favorite WWF/E fueds all time are Mandkind vs Rock and Foley vs HHH.

[Death From Above]

The booking is not good but I think plenty of the workers are fine and I'd rank the period well ahead of the mid-90's Nadir.

 

The Rumble will go a long way to clarifying just where it falls for me I think. I need them to show me something special but I do feel like it will be quite predictable.

[El Dragon]

This little stretch (I'd basically say the point things changed can be looked at as when the SHIELD broke up and Wyatt out right lost the Cena feud) has been pretty dire overall, if you discount NXT. The talent is very much there to put on some really freaking cool stuff, but the writing isn't, the booking isn't, and in terms of from the company, the hunger isn't. This era from WWE just screams of "Playing it safe because we have no competition so we don't have to do anything but holding steady", which is a problem when it just puts them in a holding pattern of keeping certain people over at the expense of absolutely everyone else.

[joeg]

The thing is though, they do have competition. NFL playoffs, Monday Night Football, college basketball, NBA, Sunday night shows on AMC, HBO, and Showtime, CMLL, Lucha Underground, etc. All of those are WWE's competition for my personal viewership. They all air at the same time as PPVs, Raw, Smackdown or NXT in my area, and all of those are better than WWE usually.

[Eduardo]

1995 was at least easy to watch, for me anyways. A prefer that period to current day WWE, which just is so difficult to sit through. Also, the build-ups to Bret Hart vs Diesel and Bret Hart vs Davey Boy Smith were really good pro wrestling. Jim Ross had some shining moments on the WWF Mania breaking down the matches, and the promos from all the parties involved were rock solid.

[Alucard]

I feel like 2009-2011 had a ton of really memorable stuff that sticks out to me as being a real fun period. Compared to the last few years which kind of all runs together for me and feels really 'same' week to week.

[Parties]

The roster is genuinely the best that it's been since about '97. The writing/booking (outside NXT) is as bad as it's ever been.

 

2007 had some lame workers on top and RAW often sucked, but it was generally more exciting and felt higher stakes than what they do now.

2008 was regressive, but often redeemed by guys like Rey, Bourne, Hardy, Henry, Mayweather, Punk, Finlay, etc.

2009 was bad, as HHH burying Legacy was the year's big storyline and there were no great feuds aside from Rey trying to save every show and Christian-Swagger on ECW. Rey-Jericho was actually excellent. And Jeff Hardy-Punk if that was your thing.

2010-2012 was actually more boring from a booking perspective.

 

But today's TV is more frustrating because it feels like a much more pivotal moment in company history, and that they're shooting themselves in the foot during a real make-or-break moment of figuring out whether the first NXT generation will succeed or fail.

[WingedEagle]

The added hour of Raw also makes a huge difference when creative is lacking. Much tougher to sit through.

[funkdoc]

i think the period with punk & bryan & the shield was WWE's all-time peak of in-ring work, in a vacuum anyway. most people get more into matches when they have strong heat, so the "in a vacuum" part is key there.

 

but that time did seem to bring back a fair number of lapsed smart fans...

[BigBadMick]

Doesn't anyone else ruthlessly cherry pick at raw? Makes for a pleasant 50 minutes or so for me every Tuesday.

[Loss]

From an in-ring perspective, they have a great roster. It's hard to say if they have a roster of talented talkers or not since promo skills are less the issue than the creative structure. I think crowd reactions are at an all-time low, and the number of people who people care about is also at an all-time low. From a creative perspective, they've definitely been better than they are now, and they've likely been worse. Business comparisons don't quite tell the story in this case because of how times have changed. But I feel like if their revenue model was still built around the ability to draw on the road where the storyline was key and they visited most towns more often, they'd be headed for extinction. If their survival was still based on a main event scene that excited people, they'd be headed for extinction too.

 

Lucky for them, unlucky for us that they aren't nearly as accountable to their fanbase as they were in a time long gone.

[goodhelmet]

The biggest indictment now is that they are boring, predictable and uninteresting. Besides Roman, there isn't one guy on that roster they want you to care about. For me, I haven't cared about anyone since Rusev and Cesaro went down. I just don't care and that is a bigger crime than being bad but interesting.

[Coffey]

I think the worst I remember RAW being was when Michael Cole was a heel, doing the "Cole Miner" crap and they had the anonymous GM (laptop) running the show.

 

Right now would be better if so many people weren't hurt too. There's a lot of the roster right now that's out with injury, which makes the roster look a lot more thin than it really is. Cena & Rollins were two of their most used guys and they're out. Cesaro & Kidd are both out and Cesaro was in the "go give us twelve good minutes with anyone" slot, so that hurts the TV. Wade Barrett is always hurt, but he's usually a low card guy they throw out there to eat up some TV time. Orton was a guy, despite boring me personally, they could legitimately slot into the main event whenever they wanted because he's always credible. Bryan is out, of course, still. Sin Cara is hurt, which stopped the ability of using Lucha Dragons in the tag team spot. Sting will probably never wrestle again. Sasha & Nikki are both hurt, which stalls some women's development.

 

How different is the current show if even half of those people are back?

 

So due to all of the injuries, we have New Day getting more segments, Stardust & Titus O'Neil doing stuff that probably otherwise wouldn't make TV, the Alberto Del Rio Vs. Kalisto stuff, the Social Outcasts stuff, etc.

 

Nikki & Sasha were two of my favorite female workers on the roster. Cena & Rollins always brought it. Cesaro always brought it. So yeah, the injuries make the show worse for me because a lot of my favorites are the people that went out.

[Migs]

Related - does anyone have a suggestion for following the product other than watching 3 hours of Raw? Is Superstars a decent recap show with matches that have non-terrible announcers? Is the "This Week in WWE" thing on the Network any good?

[Loss]

Nitro going to three hours had an adverse effect as well, but it still seems like even at their worst, WCW never struggled in the same way to fill the time. It's a silly question to ask in so many ways, but is the difference that WCW had such a superior talent roster to today's WWE?

[Parties]

Nitro also did a lot from a presentation standpoint to mix it up and come off like a live, semi-spontaneous sporting event. People don't object to watching a three hour baseball/basketball/football/hockey game. Aside from having true variety in their roster and matches, (at it's best) Nitro's mix of different announce teams, live promos, backstage segments, remotes, recaps, and previews for future shows did a lot to pass the time and make tuning in the following week seem appealing. RAW is incredibly repetitive in its format and has been for about a decade. It's a show that at once feels too rigid and yet somehow also too arbitrary: it never strays from a certain lazy status quo.

[The Chief]

On Nitro, there was no reason that someone like Lex Luger wouldn't wrestle somebody at the Sick Boy level. WCW elevating guys out of their assigned tiers is a different story, but mixing stuff up like that is always fun.

 

On Raw, Randy Orton only wrestles guys at his tier that he's feuding with in endless variations of tag matches. There's only so many times you can watch the same match.

 

Raw did an R-Truth vs. Bo Dallas match a few weeks ago and the first thing that came to my mind was that there's no way this will be an actual match and not background noise for an angle. And sure enough, Vince came out in two minutes and told both guys to leave the ring. They use the same pairings so often now that if I see Fandango in the ring I'm immediately waiting for Brock Lesnars music to hit or something along those lines.

[Coffey]

They had a better format for the 3-hours, I think. They had dedicated time for each "group" of wrestlers. You still started each Nitro with the 15-20 minute run-on dialogue, but you had time on the show for the Cruisers, the tag stuff, the U.S. title stuff (Raven's flock stuff or whatever), TV title stuff, some non-main event nWo stuff and then the ending with nWo/Sting or whatever.

 

I don't know if just having the Cruisers gave them more options or what but the Nitro show never felt to me like it dragged as much as RAW does now. Granted I'm also a lot older & sitting & watching for three hours straight isn't as easy as it used to be. Especially if there was a PPV the night before.

[Death From Above]

I do think the complete uncreative level of the scripted promos is hurting a lot. I can't remember seeing a genuinely interesting backstage segment on RAW in the last two months because they are all exactly the same. You either get:

 

- People standing at a 90 degree angle to a monitor, watching a match like some kind of owl (this is never interesting, and is on every single show)

- A backstage promo where the reporter asks them questions

- Two buddies talking

 

This covers 95% of those in the last 2-3 months on RAW.

 

The in-ring openers haven't been good either. Frankly The Miz has had more interesting in-ring promo segments than The Authority in the last 2-3 months because there's more of a chance of SOMETHING WEIRD happening in a Miz segment.

 

The best promo segment on the whole have been New Day, and there's no way they aren't writing most of their own material.

 

I'd also agree that, considering how relatively large their roster is, they pair the same guys too often. Why not do some really basic wrestling stuff, have Titus wrestle people that AREN'T STARDUST, and have Stardust cost him a couple matches by interference? Can we really not find a fifth tag team in the company for guys to wrestle outside of the Dudleys, Usos, New Day, Lucha Dragons (who are out as a unit), and the Wyatts (who are more of a special attraction act than part of the tag division)? You have the Ascension but I haven't seen them win a single match. I have no idea what their finisher is.

 

I don't know. I feel like they have all the parts. Just put it together.

[jackwebb]

I think this is the worst era. Mainly because the talent is there to put on a great show. Alberto Del Rio is my favorite example. He has a great look, good talker, a credible background, and really strong in the ring. He's not a case like Cesaro where they are just blind to the talent. They've actively tried with Del Rio. Every step of the way they have failed due to their own incompetence. Del Rio leaves and projects star everywhere the goes. Comes back and almost instantly they call his momentum. When you can't get someone over with all those tools, when you're actually trying, things don't have much hope.