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Post by jblcenafan on Nov 6, 2006 22:54:05 GMT -5
I hate the throw away shows where every match is a gimmick and the whole "evil manager/owner/president" gimmick gets run into the ground. Edge/Orton/Cena should be pushed to the moon and they make us feel like idiots for cheering legends cause' they always get the crap beat out of em'. Imagine if Jim Crockett played evil boss all those years on tv!
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Post by sittingstill on Nov 7, 2006 0:01:37 GMT -5
I dunno - with the combination of last nights PPV and tonights RAW, I think WWE have really outdone themselves. This is just a double-whammy of awfulness....is bizarre - its like their booking is so beyond lame....now WWE has generally been really bad for the last 5 years, but they generally got away with the con. Now its actually reaching a dangerous point - they have been so lame for so long that even the fans live aren't buying ANYTHING. The crowd was completely dead for everything bar one or two ring entrances, and a couple of phrases of John Cena's promo. Bad booking ideas and pushes/gimmicks/scenarios that don't click are monotonously followed up on for no reason, executed with ZERO energy (just so the bad booking can't be saved by talent), and continuously rammed down people's throats in the lamest, most see-through/uninspiring and obvious way possible. The last two nights, its like it finally got to the wrestlers. They look uninspired, angry, embarassed to be out there. None of the matches clicked, likely because the step-by-step, move-to-move scripting of the matches was a step behind even the most unsmart fans understanding of acceptable/good wrestling. Yep - its been bad for a long time, but I think the last two days it actually got worse than its ever been. Do they even bother to sit back the next day and watch these shows and critique them? Even from a production standpoint tonights RAW was just ridiculous and unprofessional: for each segment, some wrestlers come out to no reaction, feebly run through a bad impression of some obviously highly scripted wrestling moves, or half-assedly try to convey some lame issue/feud that no-one is buying, whilst the commentators mutter over each like they're embarassed and you can't even really hear what they're saying. Every segment had the same gimmick, like you said, and its been done a million times before, plus once you've realised what's happening on each match (that some heel-benefitting stip is instigated making it impossible for the face to win) when it happens on the subsequent four matches everybody has worked it out and you can actually hear people groan.... Its nothing to do with T'n'A or wrestlers saying the odd swear-word: WWE needs to COMPLETELY rethink the actual fundamentals of how it puts on wrestling: for the production, presentation, in-ring performances, the wrestlers it hires, how it portrays them/wants the wrestlers to be seen, and how the product is written. It needs a complete wholesale change of operations and thinking, more dramatic that the birth of the Attitude era. They'll likely get another get out of jail free card with Mania 23 and the WMIII Hogan vs Andre / Hogan vs Big Show nostalgia trip, but after that unless they ever do Hogan/Austin there is no draw left in ''legends'' matches (because its always disprespected and done so badly so often). Also with a lot of players leaving soon (Big Show, Kane, Lita for example), and others at the top so stale that their time as draws is virtually over, at least without mjor hiatus/repackaging (HHH, Shawn, Taker) and no one on the under or mid card that has been booked to mean anything, or even been allowed to shine, the WWE - due to their own fault - basically has to create wrestlers....an entire industry full of wrestlers. Even wrestlers like Cena, Orton, Edge, Batista....they just haven't been pushed well enough to point that people see them as fully-fledged headliners who could draw without having McMahon's, DX, Hell In The Cell, the Undertaker, eight foot tall wrestlers etc on the card, the WWE hasn't even had the guts or the ability to put them over to the extent that they're seen that way.... There is no doubt that WWE has big problems ahead.... P.S - why on earth did John Cena wait for Umaga to begin destroying Maria before he came out?  |
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Post by chitokmcmahon on Nov 7, 2006 11:05:54 GMT -5
That's what I wondered too! I turned it off after that, the whole thing with Umaga and Maria just made me sick to my stomach.
I just don't get why we need to have men beating up women? I mean, it would've been one thing if it was someone like Chyna or Victoria, one of the more "manly" women, that had a fighting chance, but why Maria? I'm sure Umaga took good care not to hurt her, but still, just the thought of it made my stomach turn.
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Post by bobbyryates on Nov 7, 2006 17:45:15 GMT -5
WWE is on the way out. you heard it here first. might take a few years, but just know you heard it here first.
and when it does, i want to be able to buy the MACW film library myself.
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Post by GarvinStomp on Nov 7, 2006 17:51:35 GMT -5
Raw is always horrible. Why the hell would anyone care whether or not Kevin Federline gets involved with wrestling? WWE is nothing more than a pop culture show. They ought to put it on MTV. It is a complete joke. There is no wrestling. John Cena is an entertainer, but he's no wrestler.
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Post by bobbyryates on Nov 7, 2006 17:57:17 GMT -5
amen, but when i ask why people watch, they get defensive, so i didn't say it...
9pm comes, i go take a shower or watch andy griffith again...at least that show makes sense.
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Post by chitokmcmahon on Nov 7, 2006 18:17:14 GMT -5
I usually watch it, I don't know why...there's plenty of times where, when it's over, I'm left scratching my head, wondering why I just wasted 2 hours of my life, but then come next week, it's on again! I guess I just can't help myself...
But seriously, this week completely turned me off of it, like I said earlier, after what Umaga did to Maria, I don't care if it's just "entertainment" or not, I couldn't watch anymore of it. I keep thinking, there must have been a better way to set up a match between Cena and Umaga, and that Armando Armadillo or whatever his name is, smiling through the whole thing like a jacka$$...
I dunno, just my take on it all.
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Post by sittingstill on Nov 8, 2006 2:19:15 GMT -5
And what really got me is....once Cena started speaking it looked like they weren't even attempting to set up an Umaga vs Cena feud, but rather were looking for an unthoughout excuse to do a fired up promo on....Kevin Federline....actually I wasn't even sure if that was the focal point...Cena was just talking heavily scripted gibberish and went from subject to subject for no reason.
Bobby - when you buy that Mid Atlantic tape library off Vince in backruptcy court I'll come over to your house, we'll have a fish fry / BBQ, invite everyone (maybe even Brunogod!!), and watch the entire library, no matter how many months it takes....
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Post by bluedevil71 on Nov 8, 2006 8:48:42 GMT -5
You know, 9 p.m. came Monday night and went and I didn't see Raw. Of course, maybe it was because the cable was out. LOL. OK, seriously, if the cable had been on, I wouldn't have watched anyway. I'd been watching Heroes, as I did anyway (Thanks to UHF, yes, it still works from time to time, go figure) or the Monday Night game, which was lousy by it's own standards, but at least I might've been entertained for a few hours.
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Post by dmtdj on Nov 8, 2006 14:37:53 GMT -5
To be honest, I doubt that the Cena run-in will even lead to a one-on-one match with Umaga. Gotta ask yourself what will last longer, the storyline or the actual run-in.
Whether we like it or not, WWE and their lackluster product isn't going anywhere for one simple reason...the fans. The mainstream fans are going to keep watching and buying just because they don't see how awful it is and if they do, they just don't care.
Look at the advertising. The spots are filled with toys and video games for the kids and sex, energy drinks, cover up the B.O. sprays, and supplements for the 18-25 yr. old hormone-raging male.
Most fans aren't like us. They don't remember when it was rasslin'. To them, the current product is the status quo. When you mention it to them, they don't care. It's like talking with a person who has been blind all of their life. When you ask them about their affliction, they usually offer the same reply..."I don't know any different." Sadly, wrestling fans today just don't know any different. IMHO
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Post by sittingstill on Nov 8, 2006 19:26:39 GMT -5
Well I'd certainly agree that there is a major element of that. That's why when fans go....they're gone - like the WCW fans that didn't just start watching RAW the week WCW ended, because if WWE sucks....then wrestling sucks, as they are unaware of an alternative, and their sensibility of what wrestling is is defined by the WWE product....
That being said: whether you've seen other wrestling before or not, I think ANYONE understands something's wrong when you sit in an arena at a live tv show, the crowd is completely silent through the whole thing, and lame bullshit identical to what you've seen in previous months (incl 'wrestling' that doesn't really come close to being actual wrestling) is presented to you as the evening's entertainment....
No doubt there is an audience that will tune in every Monday night no matter what....WWE currently averages the low end of that, because they've just got nothing going on. But there is no doubt that the PPV & attendence numbers go down / become less stable each year....
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Post by chitokmcmahon on Nov 8, 2006 21:49:06 GMT -5
The thing that's starting to bother me with all the WWE bashing is that, it seems like some people WANT them to go out of business. That's A LOT of people that are going to be left without jobs, I don't know why people would wish that on them, believe me, having just recently got laid off from my job, it kinda sucks not having a paycheck coming in.
You may not like the wrestling, fine, don't watch it, but try to think about the thousands of people that will lose their jobs if they go out of business.
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Post by sittingstill on Nov 8, 2006 23:32:47 GMT -5
I agree - a lot of old-school fans don't like that wrestling changed and left them behind. The WWE 'attitude' era was really entertaining and phenomenally successful from 98 to 2001. That direction is not necessarily the problem. There were some things I didn't care about - focusing on women with fake breasts etc - but I just took that as the 'trimmings' and didn't pay much attention. Also they always had a problem with long term booking, they seemingly didn't care much about their under/mid-card etc so they rarely had solid top-to-bottom cards. Now they appear to be focusing on all the bad stuff, with Vince stoic in thinking that that is the formula that got him to the dance, so he's not gonna mess with it. But the titilation was not the formula: its that they put on hot, innovative TV shows with an interesting array of fresh characters and scenarios that caught peoples imagination.
My position is that its frustrating with WWE as the only show in town (TNA have not shown themselves to be any kind of an alternative in terms of commercial success) that they keep making so many mistakes and putting on so many bad shows, and the PPV numbers dwindle. Further mistake after mistake is made. I always applaud them when they do something right, and I continue to watch occasionally in some form when they put on something interesting. But when I choose to watch WWE I usually end up thinking I made a mistake, and the item of interest that caused me to watch ends up something being botched, or that they don't follow through on, or obese male strippers show up or something....
This year I've enjoyed the Cena/Edge feud (even more surprising considering it featured Cena), I enjoyed how they handled the HHH/Cena match at MANIA, I enjoyed the first 'ECW' PPV last year, and I was pleasantly surprised by one of the Smackdown PPV's - that looked like one of the worst shows in history on paper - turning out to be a really good, hot wrestling show. This accounts for about 4 or 5 shows. Everything else was bad. And then after all these years, you just think 'why should I bother if they just shoot themselves in the foot each time?'. It would be so easy to turn around - just clear pushes and good booking to start off with, and there is a lot of talent on that roster, plus a lot of even better talent out there that they could sign and use correctly. But we are basically back to the original adage from 10 or 20 years ago, that Vince isn't interested unless your 8 ft tall or 450lbs....except you can add to that ''or have big fake breasts, no charisma, no wrestling talent or even acting talent''. The fact that even I have 80% turned off - ME, once the hardest of hardcore wrestling fans, the person who would even watch the weekend recap shows for TV shows I'd already seen - shows that they are perhaps in long term trouble, of which we are only just seeing the tip of the iceberg....
So I don't want them to go out of business - I want them to make a product good enough that there business is maximised (look at all the money they still make - even with dwindling attendance and buyrates - imagine if they had GOOD booking and had hot feuds and made new stars with good merchandise etc), and also one that I want to watch....just so I have some good wrestling to watch each week....
How bad do you have to mess up when you have such a strong roster of talent (both behind the scenes and in-ring) but you still have trouble just putting on a good wrestling show??
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Post by thegreatbolo on Nov 9, 2006 9:10:34 GMT -5
I just watched this week's RAW via TIVO (that way it takes only fifteen minutes).
An absolute horrible show, even for RAW.
As happy as I am that they have given Flair / Piper the tag titles (although it can't be for long), I actually believe it would have been better to team Ric with Dusty (yes, I actually said that) for the brief run as they have more history between them, and Dusty can work better than Hot Rod (yes, I said that, too). Poor Roddy took a bump in their match, and it took him forever to just fall down (with hip replacements as he has), I wouldn't step into any ring.
Opinions?
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Post by HardcoreHeroes on Nov 9, 2006 12:46:15 GMT -5
I just watched this week's RAW via TIVO (that way it takes only fifteen minutes). TIVO is the ONLY way to watch RAW! They have some great talent there (both old and new,) but they seem so out of place the way everything is scripted. Too bad the ones that do have talent have to share time with the likes of Bischoff, Coachman, Crime Time, and others. What crap. |
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