Should Vince start looking into MMA?

[Dwayne_Jason]

This question has been raised upon specifically due to the fact that more interest has gone into MMA than wrestling. People now have a choice--no more smarks, no more angles this is just one man vs another man. Serious fight. Now, MMA's PPVs destroy WWE, why? don't know. Fact is last wrestlermania's buy rate was significantly lower as opposed to UFC's buyrate for thier PPV's. This question has been asked to Heyman, and Cornette. Both agree MMA's on the rise. Some time ago, Vinny said he doesn't consider that as competition, well his two best superstars went to MMA, maybe he should look into it and maybe step their game up. All this talk of TNA vs WWE and we forgot the tide bigger then both on the horizon--UFC.

So, should Vince start looking into MMA either adopt some of thier styles or step thier game up to attract viewers? (No, not go back to Attitude Era if that is what you consider stepping game up; I mean not being lazy with angles using people right, letting some moves fly(Dangerous piledrivers, chops, etc) in the interest of entertainment.

Thoughts?

 

[manstis1804]

Lesnar = big loss
Lashley = not a big loss

Vince shouldn't look into MMA because he doesn't know how to promote it. UFC is to MMA what WWE is to pro wrestling. He's not going to "go to war" with Dana White and try to conquer that sport. Better to be number 1 in a less popular field than number 2-3 picking up UFC's scraps.

 

[Dwayne_Jason]

Actually, both are combat sports, one is just less respected than the other, what I'm trying to say is Vinny Mac needs to acknowledge that UFC is a major player and they ARE beating him in buy rates. This started happening very recently and Vince needs some to tweak his machine that is WWE in order to keep with UFC b/c the bigger UFC become the more Vince loses his ratings.

Their complicated storylines are good, but many of them don't really make sense. What he needs is a slow transition to one guy vs another guy. As opposed to "I'm your son's father and I'll fight you over the kid in a ladder match" (Even though that had great promos and great matches but a weak feud).

Oh and you forgot about Batista. ;D

 

[Brother Love]

If you have listened to interviews with Paul Heyman, MMA and the way they produce their product has been mentioned to Vince in the past (Shane has brought it up to pops as well), but I don't think Vince is interested. I enjoy watching UFC and think switching or adopting their format of doing things would help the WWE alot.

Having the wrestlers be more themselves instead of giving them some cheesy gimmicks for a cheap pop. UFC has a more realistic feeling to it for the fact that they are the guys real feelings. We all know wrestling is fake (scripted), but that doesn't mean it has to look and feel fake. Maybe if they added a real feeling to their product, they would get some of their old viewers back and generate some new ones from MMA.

 

[Ruthless-RKO]

Why...WWE is pro wrestling..everyone should know how it works..MMA is more like Boxing..2 fighters, real feud, going out there and giving each other everything they got for real...

Like someone else above has said..UFC = MMA and WWE = Pro Wrestling...2 very different things...

Unless your saying Vince should start his own MMA promotion like he did with XFL..which was a failure...VKM focuses on WWE and nothing else..why should he...WWE is big...

WWE and MMA..they are different!!

 

[shogunsrampage]

simply put.... no

1. vince would bring tons of negative feed back to the sport... the sport doesnt need any sort of "fake" reputation.. strikeforce made themselves look bad by signing both lashley and batista.atleast lashley had a background, batista only trained slightly b4 signing. the future fight of lashley vs batista has the whole mma community going.. R U KIDDING ME...STRIKEFORCE IS A JOKE.... NOW imagine if vince tried to do it, all the negative feedback..

2. even if he did, where would he get his talent.... ufc is the place to be, every fighter dreams of going there and they have all the top talent aside from a few here n there which are in strikeforce.... it would be very much a 3rd string promotion and look what happened with every other promotion that tried to become big...ufc buried them and then bought them.....ifl, affliction all tried and failed....dana went after them... strikeforce is only around because dana doesnt view them as a threat and him and coker are friendly with one another. the other big promotion(dream) isnt viewed as a threat as they only do overseas work in asia which ufc cant go. vince simply would have c-d level fighters and would get buried by the big 2.

3. VINCE HAS NO INTEREST IN MMA. shane and the undertaker tried to get vince to buy pride when it went down, vince said no. if there was ever a chance for vince to run a legit threat to ufc that would of been it..pride was HUGE and he didnt take that oppurtunity. whenever vince is currently asked about mma he goes out of his way to bash it, but then when asked about why there crushing him in ppv he responds oh they dont compete its 2 different things...

 

[Dave]

Absolutely not!

Why the fuck should he? Is it just because Dana White and the UFC are having quite a bit of success with it? If that is the only reasoning behind possibly pulling off something like this, then I clearly gave Vince McMahon too much credit in the business world.

Let’s get this straight. Vince McMahon owns the WWE (for the most part), one of the most successful wrestling promotions in the world, if not the most successful. The UFC and MMA are completely separate and give viewers a different aspect of seeing wrestling. Should Vince incorporate that any more into his product than he already has? I say not at all.

Let’s face it, MMA can be disappointing at time and that is what puts people off of MMA. You could build up a match for 6 months and then it could be over in the time it takes to land a strike to the jaw. When you tune into wrestling, you are looking to get value for your money and that is where the strength of professional wrestling lies. Look at tonight’s event for example. You know that when you buy the event, you will get at least 3 hours of quality television.

Vince McMahon is doing absolutely fine with his current endeavours and if history has taught us anything, it is that Vince McMahon is basically a failure outside of what he knows best and that is wrestling. Be it WWE films or the XFL, they have failed! Going up against the UFC and other MMA organisations is just bound to fail again.

Keep them separate, I say.

 

[johnbragg]

I think a lot of people misunderstood the OP.

Vince McMahon, pro wrestling and WWF are a taint that MMA did a lot of work to escape. When the XFL was first announced, a lot of people thought that the games would be fixed/scripted.

A McMahon-run MMA promotion would face constant questions as to its legitimacy.

What the OP is getting at is--should WWE introduce more MMA-like elements? Is a more realistic, MMA-like product the next evolution of pro wrestling?

If anyone is watching TNA ReAction, that's kind of the idea. Watching ReAction, half to two-thirds of the show could be a show about a legitimate sport, pro wrestling's answer to HBO/NFL Hard Knocks or an ESPN pregame show for a big college matchup. (The other third has to focus on something like Abyss beating RVD with a nail-bat.)

Is it that implausible that, to hype Miz vs Daniel Bryan, you could have Todd Grisham spend ten minutes talking with each guy in a locker room or weight room, with each guy telling their story--Miz working his way up WWE from Real World to Tough Enough to ECW, Bryan from whatever his first indy show was to ROH, to Japan and Mexico and helping ROH grow? How each guy doesn't really respect the accomplishments of the other, feeding their rivalry?

Wouldn't that be a fresher way of hyping their NOC matchup than, say, Bryan interfering in a Miz vs Primo squash, followed by Miz interfering in a Bryan vs Zach Ryder match the next week?

 

[Dwayne_Jason]

Yeah a lot of people misunderstood my thread lol, my thread is should WWE introduce MMA elements such as simple rivalries, more move sets and a literal destruction of weight class discrimination (OMG MYSTERIO BEAT BIG SHOW!!!!!) They need some realism into the fake b/c by the time Kids grow up to be 11 thier intelligence will be insulted.

 

[Dave]

Yeah a lot of people misunderstood my thread lol, my thread is should WWE introduce MMA elements such as simple rivalries, more move sets and a literal destruction of weight class discrimination (OMG MYSTERIO BEAT BIG SHOW!!!!!) They need some realism into the fake b/c by the time Kids grow up to be 11 thier intelligence will be insulted.

Ah! I see!

In any case, I still think it is a bad idea.

Let us look at the scenario you have posed to us. Yes, Rey Mysterio has managed to pull off a win against The Big Show. However, that is all a part of the story that the WWE likes to tell from time to time. They like an underdog’s story as much as the next man and the character of Rey Mysterio would not be able to thrive without it. Rey Mysterio is the man who can slay the giants and it just works for the WWE to keep going with that.

You have to remember that the weight classes in MMA are their to stabilise the product. It wouldn’t make any sense to have Rey Mysterio take on The Big Show in an actual fight, However, the WWE would go in the other direction if these changes were implemented. It would actually destabilise the product as the smaller guys on the rosters were shoved down the card, Their wouldn’t be the excitement of a Rey Mysterio tale or Evan Bourne going over Sheamus.

The story part of the product is vitally important to the success of the company and by implementing these changes, we are likely to lose some of that.

 

[Syborgg]

honestly, WWE should NOT consider MMA their competition. WWE is all things entertainment, not just a "wrasslin' show". Vince and Co. have acknowledged the fact that a huge portion of his former demographic has switched to MMA and they have adjusted their programming accordingly. Thus the PG/family-friendly programming you see today.

Sure MMA beats WWE in PPV buyrates, but lets look at it for a minute. MMA is mainstream, which means even people that don't always follow it will still go to the sports bar to watch the odd fight. WWE WAS mainstream when they had mainstream stars like The Rock and SCSA. No matter how hard they try with Cena, Orton or HHH they will never duplicate what they had with The Rock and Austin.

I for one can't stand MMA, even though pro wrestling has pre-determined outcomes, I guess it's the story that keeps me interested. I'd rather see a match with good back and forth action then watch 2 guys roll around trying to put various submission holds on each other. I once saw an MMA match where the whole match was one guy basically headlocking the other guy until he finally tapped out. It bored the crap out of me.

I think WWE has taken the right approach. Besides UFC doesn't have a live show every Monday night or 6 hours of action on T.V. every week. With WWE buyrates are important, but so is sponsorship, and with a more family-friendly program the sponsors are alot more receptive.

 

[omphenom]

you guys really are taking it in a different way here .


i wanted to say the as johnbagg here but he beat me to it...to me mma fights are boring not all of them are fun for me except for a few but i always enjoy watching the segments and stuff like that...and i always felt that i would enjoy wwe more if the do the segments the same way make it feel real

tthe other day i was watching raw with some guests(im still 17 and the guests are adults who never think of wathing wwe) and i was embaresed when they told me its fake its stupid you're too old for that and i watched ufc with some other guests and it was okay...
i dont know about other fans but i wold really like it if the wwe felt real and not have segments where the miz yells im awsome like an idiot

and by the way this is my first post so go easy on me

 

[Dwayne_Jason]

Though I do agree with many of you, I think a what WWE's main problem is how to push people and how to find the right people. The problem with this is...they are not real people. Fantastic talents have been pushed down and/or released because they could not do their gimmicks properly. Now I do understand some people play their gimmicks VERY well (Jericho, Cena, Orton, HHH, Miz, etc) but some others do not. Does this have to do with promo skills? Somewhat. The main problem with promo skills is that they're promo skills and not actual lines. For example, many of you deserve an Oscar. Why? Because you play your part beautifully. What is your part? Yourself. There are no lines to memorize when you're yourself. Build angles around yourself, talk how you would in that situation and act accordingly. Bourne might not be such a wonderful man in real life. Is he not? Great, garner heat. The onus is on the wrestler to sway millions to like him/ to hate him. Instead if the fans CHOOSE to like or to hate people maybe the heel/face thing would become quite simpler: If you're an asshole in real life you'll be a heel, id not you won't. And if people like assholes he's a tweener. That's really how MMA works, even though I don't follow it. It's not about "Shaman of Sexy" it's simply, either he's an asshole or he's a likable guy. You put a draw likable guy against a draw asshole you got yourself an ME.

 

[Dwayne_Jason]

Combat sports cannot be handled through bureaucracy but mediocracy; merits. Whoever is good goes far, the good wrestler due to the fact that he can take bumps and and set up spots will entertain people this will turn into a fan base and merch sales that remain permanent. For example, Cena is a good athelete (it's debateable but for the sake of the argument) instead of booking him to ALWAYS do five moves of doom let him entertain people in the way he wants. If he wants to win the match by a roll up surprise win after a missed turnbuckle leg drop...let him instead of a decisive FU. This will achieve two things: Give Cena a victory put him over and if the feud needs to be continued, make sure the opponent isn't buries so he still looks strong. Daniel Bryan has the LaBell Lock and people like to see it. I think he knows that too but if Daniel Bryan wants to give the Miz a pile driver for that extra "Oh shit" let him. Creation thrives when the parameters of perfection are broken.

 

[El Rev sXe]

First of all I love both pro-wrestling and MMA. I think that if you like technical wrestling MMA might like you.

Now I see your point Dwayne Jason, I really do, at first it was confusing, but now it's clear, and I share some of your thoughts. I mean, I don't mind that wrestling is scripted, I don't have a problem either with promos. But I do have a problem with things like Kane and The Undertaker. I hate when they do this things of "vegetative state". I hate when they fight over the custody of a kid, I hate when they fake the death of a person, THE DEATH of a person for crying out loud!

I mean something that I don't understand is that if someone is going to retire or going to leave the company, that person is going to lose his/her last match. It is impossible for him to win his/her last match.
I share your point of view that some talents are lost because they don't have charisma and all that crap. But you need to take in mind the fact that VKM loves soap operas. I mean he loves the fight between guys over a wonam and that kind of bs.

 

[Honkey_Kong]

Vince SHOULD see UFC as competition though.

Fact of the matter is quite a lot of WRASSLIN fans also watch MMA. Another fact is the average fan has a limited budget for entertainment. Ergo, if we have say $50 to spend this month on a pay per view, we're going to give our money for what we feel will give us the best value. So the fan choosing between TOC and the UFC ppv has make that choice of where he's going to spend his money if he's going to spend it on a PPV that month. So UFC very much is a competition for WWE.

They also compete for advertising revenue (I know they're not in direct competition) but say you have the WIDGET company who's product is geared towards 18-35 year olds. They don't have an unlimited advertising budget either, so they're going to spend more of they money to advertise on the shows that draw the most ratings. With the rise in UFC's ratings, they're going to take more of their advertising revenue and put it on UFC's television shows. So again WWE is having to compete with UFC.

Could incorporating more MMA style in to their show make it better? I have no idea, (didn't TNA attempt this with Samoa Joe and Angle?) but they DO have to recognize any company that can take revenue from them as competition.