This could potentially be safely merged into the card review and discussion, but I hope it can be a discussion more largely on the WWE's booking problems right now, so I'm presenting it as an independent thread.
The more I reflect on it, the WWE tried really hard last night to execute a core concept, and they almost got it right. In some ways, they got it all right up until the main event. But they failed to deliver what they could have because of what you could call generously a lack of talent but what I would call more realistically a totally lack of concern for the nature of their core audience.
WrestleMania 32 had one, singular purpose - to give Roman Reigns the biggest night of his life and make him a superstar forever. But the core audience, which is overwhelmingly over the age 18 (indeed, the single largest chunk is actually over 50), could not and did not respond for a character relentlessly targeted toward children, and whose greatest merit as a sports entertainer is that he sells T-shirts.
The WWE came up to the plate last night and took a mighty hack, and they missed by both a razor thin margin and by a mile, in different ways. I say they missed by a razor thin margin because with someone, anyone else in Roman Reigns' shoes, they would have produced perhaps one of the greatest moment in wrestling history. But I also say they missed by a mile because the Roman Reigns 2016 campaign has been on in full force for years, doing so much more harm to itself than good.
If you're like me, today, you feel dejected, beaten, and hopeless. How could so many fan favorites lose last night? After getting our hopes up with Ryder, they dashed them quite expertly with heels and the status quo going over and over and over. AJ did the job to Chris Jericho. The New Day lost to the League. Lesnar beat Ambrose emphatically, giving Ambrose no room to shine. Charlotte retained over two fan favorites. Undertaker maintained the status quo and Shane nearly died. NXT's biggest heel won the battle royal. The Rock sapped the crowd's energy and time and then buried a team that should be on the brink of stardom.
Four hours of this. Four hours of emotional loss after loss after loss. I know I, and I bet many of you, were crying out for a hero.
Instead, we got Roman Reigns.
I just wrote another post where I pointed out that today's wrestlers' real job isn't to spike ratings or sell Network subscriptions, it's to move T-shirts, because it's the only real way they can move the WWE's bottom line in the modern era. That's why Roman Reigns is on top - he moves T-shirts like nobody's business. But Mr. T-Shirt isn't exactly the most compelling gimmick in the world, and his lack of interesting or compelling gimmick beyond "I have several catchphrases, and my T-shirts are 19.99 at the merch stand" has caused a serious problem. It's my sincere belief that the movement of these T-shirts is flowing to what I would describe as the bottom (or top?) 20% of the WWE's audience - people under 18. So, while the top (bottom?) 80% of the audience revolts against Roman by booing him, the other 20% props him up by moving massive amount of fabric with the phrase "One versus All" on it.
Now, I don't mean to say the lines are completely clear here. Certainly there's people in all demographics that like Reigns. But it's certainly clear that whomever is buying these T-shirts is in the minority and is also not well represented at WWE live events, at least recently. And I don't think it's a stretch to suggest most people who dig Roman Reigns and are buying these T-shirts are the younger 20% of the audience, who would also logically not be at Raw or PPV in large numbers, given that they take place late in the evening on school nights, hence the live reaction.
And this brings me to my title - what the WWE put on with WrestleMania 32 was not wrestling for the older generation. It was aimed squarely at selling the all time T-shirt hero of the world to an audience that's ready, willing, and Gable to buy more of his T-shirts today. The WWE built a WrestleMania card systematically designed to sap the energy and hope of its audience by putting over the heels and the status quo wherever possible, dragging it along with a few nostalgia pops, and then, for 20% of the audience, delivering the prophesied hero, and for the other 80%, delivering the final blow to their hopes and dreams.
The end result, I'm sure, is that the WWE is selling a metric fuckton of Roman Reigns shirts today, but that they delivered one of the least compelling WrestleManias from a creative standpoint of all time. And they made this choice quite consciously - they made every choice along the way to book WrestleMania this way, to book Reigns this way, to send a message. "This show is not for you, anymore," they've said to me and to many of you. "Start buying T-shirts like an eight year old and maybe we'll listen to you." This is not wrasslin' for old men anymore. It's sports entertainment for the young people who get their parents to open their wallets and buy Roman Reign's latest T-shirt for them, and who get them to do it again next month with the new design.
This is the story of how the WWE missed out on delivering a WrestleMania that appealed to the majority of their fans and instead delivered one squarely focused on moving merchandise to a minority with very generous parents.
Now, this is the story of how they could fix it.
The WWE had their first shot with the main event, but it was doomed from the start, in some ways. Of course Reigns had to go over. Now, arguably, Reigns turning heel would have fixed everything. But, actually, it's hard to imagine how to do that well. One invariably thinks back to Austin turning heel at Mania to beat the Rock, but, well, that didn't actually work very well. Where was the angle to turn Reigns heel? Someone ringside could have helped him turn, but who? There are no mammoth heels in the WWE like Vince McMahon was at the time for Austin, other than HHH and Stephanie herself. Who makes sense for Roman, mid match? Almost no one. So perhaps it's post match. Perhaps someone comes out to congratulate Roman, and he attacks them. But, post-match? It seems some kind of promo or explanation would be in order. And at that point, the crowd was already leaving and burned out. Not only would they not have cared about a promo, they probably wouldn't have reacted.
So, benefit of the doubt given or not, the WWE still swung and missed at delivering something creatively compelling to the majority of their audience last night. Maybe you give them the benefit of the doubt and say it would have been hard to execute. Maybe you don't and point out their slavish obsession with Mr. T-Shirt for years put them in that spot anyway.
On Raw, tonight, they have an audience that I suspect the majority feels somewhere between indifference ("That was a decent but not good Mania") and hopelessness ("That was terrible"). This is an audience in front of whom something, anything different will be received like a lightning rod, but the window is small, and I think it may only exist for tonight. The most critical thing to execute on is to break up the status quo. Add NXT talent. Put someone other than Owens up as the challenger for the IC title. Let AJ do something crazy. And most critically, acknowledge what you have in Roman Reigns and, you know what, you don't even have to "turn him heel". His character is already as mammoth of a heel as you can get. But give him a face challenger. Forget the HHH rematch, or save it for later, because it's so predictable. Set him up against literally any face on the roster and give the audience the hero it needed last night. Let someone step up to the plate and be, for the majority of the audience, the deliverer they needed. If Reigns can sell T-shirts like hot cakes in face of the boos he's already getting, how could it possibly get any worse? Set him up against a real face, someone the audience can engage with, and give people hope again.
I believe the WWE will have a singular three hours tonight to really dictate the future course of the WWE, and I think they will do serious damage to the long term investment that their core audience has in their product if they don't take steps to ameliorate the situation. I think their current strategy has been to add NXT guys to the undercard in hopes that will get people excited. I don't think it's going to work in the Mr. T-Shirts era. We'll see how much they still believe wrestling can be for old men.
I don't have a lot of hope, but, heck, that's kind of exactly the point. The WWE needs to produce the deliverer tonight, somehow. I don't know who it is and I don't even know how, but to make WrestleMania worth it, they need to find him - someone who the majority of the audience can engage with in a meaningful way as a hero. Otherwise, we're just living in the T-Shirt era, and sooner or later I think we'll come around to understanding that the T-shirt era isn't for us.
The more I reflect on it, the WWE tried really hard last night to execute a core concept, and they almost got it right. In some ways, they got it all right up until the main event. But they failed to deliver what they could have because of what you could call generously a lack of talent but what I would call more realistically a totally lack of concern for the nature of their core audience.
WrestleMania 32 had one, singular purpose - to give Roman Reigns the biggest night of his life and make him a superstar forever. But the core audience, which is overwhelmingly over the age 18 (indeed, the single largest chunk is actually over 50), could not and did not respond for a character relentlessly targeted toward children, and whose greatest merit as a sports entertainer is that he sells T-shirts.
The WWE came up to the plate last night and took a mighty hack, and they missed by both a razor thin margin and by a mile, in different ways. I say they missed by a razor thin margin because with someone, anyone else in Roman Reigns' shoes, they would have produced perhaps one of the greatest moment in wrestling history. But I also say they missed by a mile because the Roman Reigns 2016 campaign has been on in full force for years, doing so much more harm to itself than good.
If you're like me, today, you feel dejected, beaten, and hopeless. How could so many fan favorites lose last night? After getting our hopes up with Ryder, they dashed them quite expertly with heels and the status quo going over and over and over. AJ did the job to Chris Jericho. The New Day lost to the League. Lesnar beat Ambrose emphatically, giving Ambrose no room to shine. Charlotte retained over two fan favorites. Undertaker maintained the status quo and Shane nearly died. NXT's biggest heel won the battle royal. The Rock sapped the crowd's energy and time and then buried a team that should be on the brink of stardom.
Four hours of this. Four hours of emotional loss after loss after loss. I know I, and I bet many of you, were crying out for a hero.
Instead, we got Roman Reigns.
I just wrote another post where I pointed out that today's wrestlers' real job isn't to spike ratings or sell Network subscriptions, it's to move T-shirts, because it's the only real way they can move the WWE's bottom line in the modern era. That's why Roman Reigns is on top - he moves T-shirts like nobody's business. But Mr. T-Shirt isn't exactly the most compelling gimmick in the world, and his lack of interesting or compelling gimmick beyond "I have several catchphrases, and my T-shirts are 19.99 at the merch stand" has caused a serious problem. It's my sincere belief that the movement of these T-shirts is flowing to what I would describe as the bottom (or top?) 20% of the WWE's audience - people under 18. So, while the top (bottom?) 80% of the audience revolts against Roman by booing him, the other 20% props him up by moving massive amount of fabric with the phrase "One versus All" on it.
Now, I don't mean to say the lines are completely clear here. Certainly there's people in all demographics that like Reigns. But it's certainly clear that whomever is buying these T-shirts is in the minority and is also not well represented at WWE live events, at least recently. And I don't think it's a stretch to suggest most people who dig Roman Reigns and are buying these T-shirts are the younger 20% of the audience, who would also logically not be at Raw or PPV in large numbers, given that they take place late in the evening on school nights, hence the live reaction.
And this brings me to my title - what the WWE put on with WrestleMania 32 was not wrestling for the older generation. It was aimed squarely at selling the all time T-shirt hero of the world to an audience that's ready, willing, and Gable to buy more of his T-shirts today. The WWE built a WrestleMania card systematically designed to sap the energy and hope of its audience by putting over the heels and the status quo wherever possible, dragging it along with a few nostalgia pops, and then, for 20% of the audience, delivering the prophesied hero, and for the other 80%, delivering the final blow to their hopes and dreams.
The end result, I'm sure, is that the WWE is selling a metric fuckton of Roman Reigns shirts today, but that they delivered one of the least compelling WrestleManias from a creative standpoint of all time. And they made this choice quite consciously - they made every choice along the way to book WrestleMania this way, to book Reigns this way, to send a message. "This show is not for you, anymore," they've said to me and to many of you. "Start buying T-shirts like an eight year old and maybe we'll listen to you." This is not wrasslin' for old men anymore. It's sports entertainment for the young people who get their parents to open their wallets and buy Roman Reign's latest T-shirt for them, and who get them to do it again next month with the new design.
This is the story of how the WWE missed out on delivering a WrestleMania that appealed to the majority of their fans and instead delivered one squarely focused on moving merchandise to a minority with very generous parents.
Now, this is the story of how they could fix it.
The WWE had their first shot with the main event, but it was doomed from the start, in some ways. Of course Reigns had to go over. Now, arguably, Reigns turning heel would have fixed everything. But, actually, it's hard to imagine how to do that well. One invariably thinks back to Austin turning heel at Mania to beat the Rock, but, well, that didn't actually work very well. Where was the angle to turn Reigns heel? Someone ringside could have helped him turn, but who? There are no mammoth heels in the WWE like Vince McMahon was at the time for Austin, other than HHH and Stephanie herself. Who makes sense for Roman, mid match? Almost no one. So perhaps it's post match. Perhaps someone comes out to congratulate Roman, and he attacks them. But, post-match? It seems some kind of promo or explanation would be in order. And at that point, the crowd was already leaving and burned out. Not only would they not have cared about a promo, they probably wouldn't have reacted.
So, benefit of the doubt given or not, the WWE still swung and missed at delivering something creatively compelling to the majority of their audience last night. Maybe you give them the benefit of the doubt and say it would have been hard to execute. Maybe you don't and point out their slavish obsession with Mr. T-Shirt for years put them in that spot anyway.
On Raw, tonight, they have an audience that I suspect the majority feels somewhere between indifference ("That was a decent but not good Mania") and hopelessness ("That was terrible"). This is an audience in front of whom something, anything different will be received like a lightning rod, but the window is small, and I think it may only exist for tonight. The most critical thing to execute on is to break up the status quo. Add NXT talent. Put someone other than Owens up as the challenger for the IC title. Let AJ do something crazy. And most critically, acknowledge what you have in Roman Reigns and, you know what, you don't even have to "turn him heel". His character is already as mammoth of a heel as you can get. But give him a face challenger. Forget the HHH rematch, or save it for later, because it's so predictable. Set him up against literally any face on the roster and give the audience the hero it needed last night. Let someone step up to the plate and be, for the majority of the audience, the deliverer they needed. If Reigns can sell T-shirts like hot cakes in face of the boos he's already getting, how could it possibly get any worse? Set him up against a real face, someone the audience can engage with, and give people hope again.
I believe the WWE will have a singular three hours tonight to really dictate the future course of the WWE, and I think they will do serious damage to the long term investment that their core audience has in their product if they don't take steps to ameliorate the situation. I think their current strategy has been to add NXT guys to the undercard in hopes that will get people excited. I don't think it's going to work in the Mr. T-Shirts era. We'll see how much they still believe wrestling can be for old men.
I don't have a lot of hope, but, heck, that's kind of exactly the point. The WWE needs to produce the deliverer tonight, somehow. I don't know who it is and I don't even know how, but to make WrestleMania worth it, they need to find him - someone who the majority of the audience can engage with in a meaningful way as a hero. Otherwise, we're just living in the T-Shirt era, and sooner or later I think we'll come around to understanding that the T-shirt era isn't for us.
