How Confident Are You In Your Belief That WWE Can Turn Things Around?

[J.J.]

The problem are a mixture of a lot of the fans and Creative.

Fans; If their favorite wrestler(ie Cesaro and Dolph Ziggler) aren't in the main event they're automatically looking at them as being held back. Nobody seems to want to respect the mid card anymore and simply looking at it as held back territory. Personally while he is strong, I personally find Cesaro bland in other aspects especially whenever he picks up a microphone. As for Dolph - had his momentum, got hurt shortly after he cashed in. Kinda hard to convince the machine to resurge the momentum behind him.

I was a WCW/Crockett Promotions/Mid-Atlantic era guy. Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit were guys that anchored down the mid card and later on became bigger stars. It took patients with those guys. Things flowed organically.

Creative; I absolutely HATE when WWE starts hyping guys coming up from NXT. They did it with The Wyatts and 2 years later they're still the same and caught into bad booking. While I admire how unique they are - they should've went over Undertaker and Kane at SS. What did losing to Undertaker twice this year do for Bray Wyatt? Hopefully they'll get it right at TLC. If done right I believe Bray Wyatt can become a huge star but many have already complained about him not being a main eventer or having held a championship yet. So what? If he's going to continue to be put in meaningless feuds in which he doesn't go over, what's the point of putting a title or him or catspulting him into the main event? Although I personally feel he would be better suited going against The Authority than anyone else on the roster.

I'm not a big Reigns fan so instead I turn it away while he's talking; so I don't feel he's "crammed" down my throat.

The last star I saw WWE take their time with was Edge. I remember in the late 90s seeing him on Shotgun Saturday night. From there to The Brood to his time with Christian, MITB and world champ. While that took roughly a decade for him to become a permanent fixture in the main event, it was all organic to me. In the end he's arguably the most decorated wrestler in WWE in the last 15 years.

It takes solid booking on the creative end and more freedom for the wrestlers. While the fans need patients on their part to watch these wrestlers grow. But solid mid card booking is key, WCW was outstanding when it came to that on Nitro.

 

[BuriedByCena]

WWE is doomed. There is no way they can fix the product because it requires changing everything. They have to do the exact opposite of everything they are doing now.

1. Go back to being a private company with private adult investors.
2. Target adults. Kids are NOT the answer. The hottest shows on TV target adults like Walking Dead.
3. RAW needs to go back to 2 hours.
4. Drop the micromanaging. Less scripting.
5. Let talent actually wrestle. No more gimping the entire roster.
6. No more SuperMan one man show.
7. Multiple storylines for the entire roster.
8. Bring back sensationalism. OMG HE BROKE HIM IN HALF, WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT WEEK?! Leave every RAW on a cliffhanger like you used to. Give me a reason to tune in next week.
9. Hire young writers and force everyone in WWE to watch late night shows like Jimmy Kimmel, Conan and Colbert so they can learn what the heck is happening in popular culture.

Look at the RAW guest managers we had for a couple years. All were 80's has beens or D listers. Get people popular now.

Micheal Cole acting like he doesn't know who Kanye West is just shows how everyone in the company refuses to leave the WWE bubble and watch some TV.

10. Push everyone. Quit holding them down. Stop being afraid that they will get too over and leave for hollywood like the rock did. Quit Burying everyone. Create new stars and if they leave, so be it. You can brag you are the company that created X star.

You know shows like Saturday Night Live are happy and proud when their stars become bigger than the show and move on. They brag about all the talent they created. You should be doing the same.

Daniel Bryan should be the ultimate babyface. Not Roman Reigns. Accept this and deal with it.

 

[Wrestlingaholic]

I'm typing this without reading through the replies, so apologies if im just repeating things that have been said before.

First and foremost, I do believe that too much is said about television ratings, too much emphasis is placed on them. Last week's Raw was apparently the "lowest rating since 1997" - but in 1997, we had fewer tv channels, limited ways of watching. Even on the WWE network, if you don't mind watching with a month's delay, you can watch Raw, Smackdown and ppvs in cronological sequence. So ratings don't tell the full story AT ALL anymore.

Secondly, the industry has suffered peaks and valleys and WWE is still there leading the way; there's no reason to think that it won't come out of this one stronger, but there are clearly big changes that need to be made.

Vince and his inner circle need to think back to what made the Attitude Era the most popular era of wrestling: taking the leash off, allowing the wrestlers to include more of their own personalities, lack of scripting and an increase of believable characters. Let the fans decide who they want to cheer for (hence the face turns of Stone Cold, the New Age Outlaws, Triple H and the Rock to name a few) and don't shit on them by forcing certain wrestlers down their throats. And don't worry about it being a more PC-friendly WWE, you should be able to have enough faith in your talent that they will avoid profanities etc.

Thirdly, and the biggest reason why we should all have faith in WWE turning the corner: NXT. A critical hit, that has sold out the Barclays Center and next week sells out Wembley Arena (I'm lucky enough to have my ticket), and Triple H is keen to develop this further. NXT will provide 90% (at least) of the future WWE roster, and is generally regarded as being much better than WWE right now. If it really does get to a stage where investors are asking serious questions about the main franchise ,and the fact that they aren't yet tells you all you need to know about tv ratings), then surely they will refer to NXT and strongly suggest WWE reverts to an NXT-style model.

Am I worried about the future? Not at all, I watched WWE through it's creative nadir of 1994-95 and look how it came out of that, stronger than ever. There is clearly a market for wrestling, the industry won't die, and WWE will continue leading the way for many many decades to come

 

[Cats Pajamas]

I’ll admit that I don’t watch Raw, in its entirety, every week. However, I did catch Raw the night after Survivor Series aaand… well… it was not pleasant to watch. Here’s the thing: I’ve had to “explain” pro wrasslin’ to people who didn’t understand its appeal a few times, but the November 23, 2015 edition of Raw was a show that I wouldn’t be comfortable showing to anyone. For three hours I watched and the whole time it felt like someone dropped a nuke on my wrestling show.

KABOOOOOM!!!!!

Yes, Raw has been through rough patches... in fact, Raw tends to dip in quality around this time every year, however… you can’t shake the feeling that there’s something, um, different happening this year. As indicated by the “Why Don’t You Like Me?” Surveys WWE sent out recently, Raw has become self-aware that it’s terrible. It doesn’t even hide the fact that it stinks worse than McDonalds farts.

As long as every aspect of Raw continues to flow through the “Vince Filter”, the show will continue to bleed out. In the short term, Raw will pick up in January (as it always does), but long term the show will still be dying from the inside. And while the Billion Dollar Princess may be too air-headed to realize that she’s as far out-of-touch as her father, there’s still a glimmer of hope for Raw’s future:

Spoiler

Triple-fucking-H

Deep down, Hunter knows what’s happening to his Kingdom-to-be. He knows the consequences of having a single Control Freak calling all the shots. He knows first-hand that some of the best ideas come from the talent. He knows that one person alone did not create wrestling, and one person alone cannot keep it healthy. If Trips can trust his writers, if he can trust his talent, if he can loosen the show’s chain ever-so-slightly, I am confident the show will be able to evolve, even grow for the first time in a decade and a half.

 

[Blade]

In the past, Vince has always pulled out brilliance when the stakes are highest. He put all his money into Wrestlemania, forcing him to make it epic. He was a year away from going out of business in 1997, forcing him to take risks with pushing new stars and writing edgier angles.

Does Vince still have it in him to pull this stuff out of the bag when his back's up against the wall? It's hard to tell; WWE isn't there yet. But the Raw ratings show no sign of improving, so we can't be far off crisis mode.

The thing about WWE is that they're not inherently bad at what they do. We still see good matches regularly on WWE programming, particularly on their PPVs, many of which have been really solid this year, including an excellent Wrestlemania. The problem is that they're lazy. They've gone on autopilot by putting the product in the hands of writers and producers who don't care and/or don't understand. And now the autopilot has caused the plane to go into a slow but very real tailspin.

So while the wrestling output has been strong this year, the show is creatively bankrupt. Most wrestling fans don't care about wrestling, they care about drama, because, to paraphrase Max Landis, that's what people crave. When the product loses the drama, it loses the audience.

While I would be crushed if WWE went out of business, I think I would like to see Vince with his back against the wall one more time. Does he turn to Hunter for answers, or does he pull through yet again?

 

[J.J.]

I wish WWE would've never put an emphasis on ratings, every fan these days have an obsession of bringing up the ratings as if WCW is about to overtake WWE in popularity again.

Yeah the product isn't what it was in terms of quality but you're looking at a company that has no competition. It's harder for me to watch a full show nowadays not mainly because of the writing but because it's content is geared at a younger audience so instead I'll tune in to some of the older ppvs. With that I realize something The Rock said 17 years ago isn't amusing to me now. I still find parts of Raw enjoyable despite it's target audience so I take the good with the bad.

The annoying part are the fans that throw out things about the company that has little facts to support it's claim. Or the obligatory; "WWE is going bankrupt because of these ratings. Then there's always the Vince wants this or wants that as if we know his personal opinion first hand. Then fail to realize it's target audience. Naturally my 8 year old son will enjoy it more than I would.

My old man and I used to attend the old Mid-Atlantic shows and watch Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat, Jay Youngblood, Sgt. Slaughter, Don Kernodle and a host of others in their hay day. By the mid 90s the content had changed to where it wasn't enjoyable to him. He despised WWE's edgier material, language and half dressed women. While he thought WCW was too focused on NWO and promos. But I enjoyed it throughly. Ultimately he just stopped watching altogether. Now I fast forward to today and see it from his perspective now(on today's product)

I can only imagine it's tough to write fresh material weekly. Imagine if a show like Empire never had a season finale and was constantly a new show every single week - either it becomes stale or you just get tired of it. Unlike a series that has a finale, Raw doesn't. Then faces with talent that have injuries and are forced to re-write scripts or alter plans for future PPVs.

But with that being said I don't worry about the ratings because for one it's still #1 on USA network and amongst the top programming on TV every Monday. It's hard to sit and make it believable that WWE is going to go under in ratings when their ratings are still higher than well over 90% of what's on TV. DVR makes life on Monday so much easier. I can enjoy MNF or any other show and go back and watch the parts of Raw that I want.

I don't care if the product is hitting numbers similar to WCW or a Raw in 97. Considering the rise in these reality TV shows and an array of other networks that have hit cable since the late 90s I still find it amazing they're still drawing numbers in that size.

In that event I'll be patient and wait and watch the parts that I find enjoyable.

 

[AnthonyM4]

I voted for the last one. WWE has been going downhill for the last 15 years. Ever since they bought their main rival they have become complacent creatively. The ratings show it. 15 years of steady decline. I'm afraid there will never be another boom period like 84-89 and 97-00. Vince McMahon does not want to change because there will never be competition like wcw to make him.