Who or what is stopping the evolution?

[Crush1]

Since the making of main eventers like John Cena and Randy Orton, you'd think that the WWE would have made some more main event superstars. But in 2008 there are still those old veterans that support the main event card because there arent any other main event calibur superstars on the WWE roster.

The product isnt refreshing anymore, many things are predictable and most fans have grown tired of the ''same old shit''.

Now think about it. What is the cause of that, what is the cause of the slow progress of young main eventers the lack of good feuds , storylines and good wrestling? Who is responsible for the situation of the WWE right now, who is responsible for the lack of a refreshing product?

Here are some of my thoughts.

1:The creative team.

Yes i've said it, the cliché term that is used by almost any IWF, the creative team. They are the bookers of the biggest wrestling company in the world and yet they think they offer us the best product there is, these people have obviously lost their magic.

These are the people that are suposed to make and break young superstars. But in recent years we have only seen broken or above avarage young superstars. What is the cause of that?

I think its because they dont want to take anymore risks. And that they have run out of idea's. They want to play it safe and let things go slowly. While the WWE makes a good profit, the product just isnt the entertaining powerhouse it once was. And the creative team are partialy to blame.

2:The wrestlers.

I think that the wrestlers of today lack in effort and passion. Even though they are given gimmicks, which they need to perform at their best despite booked good or bad most of them dont make it. The wrestlers are the ones who are suposed to make themselves go over with the crowd. If they can wrestle or talk they can make it big time.

But instead of improving, the young wrestlers of today rather play games and act like a bunch of frat boys. I think they need to want to learn how the business works out. These wrestlers are for a part responsible for what happens to them, most of them fail to entertain the mainstream crowd. Because of lack of overall skills. Why wont they watch a tapes of the old school wrestling and take acting classes? why wont they try to improve? Some wrestlers just dont have the passion to make it big.


3:Vince Mcmahon

And of course how could we miss him, good o'll Vince Mcmahon. He's one of the smartest and most powerfull men in the world. But he has some issues.

I think Vince still thinks that he knows whats right for us, but the fact is that he lives in the old era of wrestling and his thoughts of entertainement isnt what the mainstream crowd likes.

Everybody knows that Vince's desire is, to give us the fans the best damn wrestling product there is. But in recent years he's proven to have lost his magic.

He's come up and agreed with stupid storylines, pushed the wrong wrestlers made mistakes, and wont accept that someone else knows it better than him.
I think Paul Heyman is right and that Vince needs a wake up call. He's getting old and he doesnt really know what the young fans want anymore.

I'm not saying that all Vince does are bad things, Vince made his empire solely on his own brilliant mind and strategic knowledge. look at his accomplishments. He bought out the two biggest wrestling promotions in the world with the money he made with a fantastic product he gave us. But his influence on the wrestling world needs to end the sooner the better.

So what do you think is wrong with the evolution of wrestling, what do you think needs to happen. What kind of changes need to take place?

 

[scsu01]

It's all three you said. Great job on this!!!

I think Vince and most of the creative team honestly think we don't want to see wrestling anymore, which is why they're called Superstars or Entertainers now. But you can see it in the little amount of wrestling and the quality of wrestling in both the men and women. The veteran wrestlers I also blame for this. there are alot of young guys who have the ability to carry the company for decades, yet the minute they say or do something that rubs someone the wrong way they get dogged, case in point MVP. He hasn't failed tests like Hardy, but says something funny and is now in a 3 month long losing streak. The fans are getting excited by real wrestling again thanks to CM Punk, Bourne, Rhodes, DiBiase, Matt Hardy, and thel ist goes on. Yet, they are pushed to mid card status or when they get the chance to get to main event status, theyre put into weak storylines with the weaker main eventers and then forgotten.

Vince knows we want to be entertained. I think he forgot that wrestling itself is entertaining too, but it should be for how good it is, not how bad and botchy.

I think what needs to change is these veteran guys need to get into storylines with the up and comers, like Randy is with Priceless. HHH really needs to let the belt go and help push these guys who will be the stars of the comapny he'll eventually run. I know alot of people probably aren't huge fans of the Divas but I am. For me, either make them valets, managers and bikini girls, or actually let them wrestle for longer than two minutes.

 

[The Mark of Zur-En-Arrh]

Having new talent in with the vets is a good idea imo. Both Batista and Randy have reached ME level in like 2 years, by simply being associated with HHH and Flair. Orton has always had the skills, Batista has not, and being so heavily involved with the champ and a legend helped him rise through the ranks a LOT faster than he probably would have if he hadn't.

Cena's first televised match was against Kurt Angle and he nearly beat the guy!!!! A rookie came ridiculously close to beating an Olympic Gold Medalist in his 1st match. That made people stand up and take notice, then he got the gimmick going and the creative team thought, 'ok let him keep using the mic, push him slowly and we'll see where he gets'. Again, within 2 years, he's a ME player and is never likely to sink down from that level.

Let's go back a bit further. Now i know Glen Jacobs had a bunch of gimmicks before becoming Kane, but when he re-debuted with that gimmick he was champion within the year!!!! Sure he lost it a day later, but that's not the point.

Go even further back, Undertaker debuted in 1990, by the end of 1991 he became the champ as well.

What links these competitors? Creative came up with a means to get them over and then ran with it like their lives depended on it. They simply kept going with these guys, until the fans loved them regardless of what they do.

Look at guys like Carlito, Kennedy, Morrisson, Shelton and Haas etc. They got similar pushes and then creative just gave up on them. Carlito became US champ in his 1st match, had a little run and then nothing. Won the IC championship in his first Raw match, then nothing but tag angles. Kennedy beat 7 former WHC in his debut year, and even had 2 World Title matches in as many months, went to Raw and then nothing. Came back to Smackdown and then nothing. Shelton and Haas hook up with the champ, become tag champs in weeks, Shelton gets mid-card titles thrown on him and nothing of interest ever happens for him, he's just the guy with the belt, and Haas gets fired and rehired repeatedly. Morrisson becomes a top dog on ECW but can't escape being a tag team guy. Why hasn't this guy been given any better angles?

What's going to happen after Koslov gets his inevitable title match with HHH? is he just going to sink away into obscurity immediately afterward like Umaga has? Why push these aforementioned guys to the moon for a year and then just give up on all of them? Some of these guys have had attitude problems and suspensions etc but why is Jeff Hardy the only guy who can get suspended twice and still get uber pushes? Regal is the KOTR and they do NOTHING with him. It makes no sense.

 

[BooCocky]

Why aren't we seeing new main eventers?

It's pretty easy, Paul and Michael. Paul is approaching 40 and he is still on top of the world destroying everything that comes in his way. Paul just got out of a feud with everyones favorite druggy, and he beat him cleanly several times, making him look weaker and weaker. Jeff is supposed to be the future of the WWE, he's still in his early thirties but his own stupidity and Pauls approach to not put him over are holding him back. Paul was burying MVP, one of Smackdowns brightest stars. Paul's unwillingness to get out of the spotlight is holding the product down.

Now onto everyone's favorite receding hairline Michael, he's already into his early 40's. Michael isn't as bad as Paul, but he's still pretty bad. His inability to pass the torch and his inability to recognize future stars is messing up the product we all love and enjoy. Michael still loves the spotlight, but he loves burying everything that comes in his way. He still enjoys main eventing even though he's nothing more than an upper mid-carder.

Also Mcmahon isn't doing anything to help the cause, he's lost his touch, his stories are boring, and he tries to relive the past, and it isn't working. Some of his characters are regurgitated characters from years past, and he tries his hardest to push stars, but in the end they fuck up. I don't know who to blame, but i usually blame Paul, Michael, McMahon and the fans.

Damn fans always boing faces and cheering heels, way to mess up the product.

 

[Joker ' Ferreira]

In the beggining of 2006, I though that we were seeing the beggining of a new era on WWE. It was New Years Revolution and the main event had two new top superstars, it was John Cena defending his belt against Kurt Angle, Shawn Michaels, Kane, Carlito and Masters.

At that time I hoped to see the last two guys I listed to become main-eventers, one of them didn't make it 'cause of his stupidity, but the another one, if he was pushed correctly at that time he would become a main-event star, no doubt about it.

Carlito had the talent, he still has it, he had the charisma, and he had a "cool" gimmick with it, now is tag team champion and all we know is that he doesn't like being in the company he works for... 3/4 years...

On the same night, Edge cashed in his Money in The Bank briefcase and won the first of four World Championship reigns, he now is a true main-eventer, so, I think the problem with the current product of WWE it's the creative team, if they pushed Carlito as hard as they pushed Edge, he would be a main-eventer by now.

The same applies with Kennedy and all the McMahon illegitimate son storyline, he would main-event Wrestlemania against Triple H for all we know.

Elijah Burke was the true heel of ECW back on the days of the New Breed, now he is out for months, I doubt he wouldn't be bigger than Edge at this time if he was pushed as an heel main-eventer, and in fact beated CM Punk for the gold at Judgment Day of last year.

WWE has the talent, but they don't use it properly, and all I blame is the booking team.

 

[Afro-Ameri-Spawn]

First of all, let me just say that this is a very well stated post. Now with that said, let me correct you somewhat.

In order to analyze why the revolution that was supposed to lead us into the next era of WWE success isn't happening, you have to look at what was working to begin with that has lead to this massive failure in the renewal of talent for the immediate and foreseeable future of the roster. You have to look at the past and see what was the main factor that was going on when this evolution that sprung such stars as Randy Orton, John Cena, and Batista came forth to find the problem.

One area where the problem lies is that the WWE is very reluctant to take people that other organizations have made into major stars and utilize their "overness" to mesh with their own stars. WWE doesn't even want to recognize these people as having been stars prior to involvement with the WWE. Take for instance Chris Jericho and Paul Wight. Both men were very over in WCW. Both men had accomplished things in WCW. Both men were champions in WCW. Both both men were underutilized and had fallen to the midcard area due to other emerging stars. WWE didn't really have any new talent at the time and they storylines involving the stars they had were getting overused and bland. So adding these two men and pushing them beyond what WCW had enabled WWE to lay claim that they made these men stars.

But let's explore this further. Look at the acquisitions of Booker T, Chris Benoit, and Eddie Guerrero. All three men were talented. Booker T and Benoit were former world champions and thusly would naturally be candidates for championship programs with WWE's champions. But these two men were kept back and regulated to mainly secondary storylines and pointless feuds that mainly elevated other stars into the title scene or put over WWE's mainstay champions. So what was different about Eddie? Well Eddie was never elevated in WCW. He has the same appeal that Jericho and Wight did and thusly WWE could lay claim that they made him instead of WCW. Effective, but closed minded and not progressive.

Another factor is that when WWE enjoyed a bumper crop of new talent a few years back, it was due to the fact that they had a diverse developmental system. They had both OVW and DSW training their wrestlers. And this was a great idea as you didn't have the same trainers training all of the superstars. They got a few stars from DSW, but they got alot from OVW, who was very successful in the finishing process. The far system is beneficial in developing athletes in any forum and even OVW developed their own sub organization with Derby City Wrestling.

But instead of WWE looking at this as a bonus and reformulating their farm system to make DSW the starter fed and OVW the finisher, they decided to cut costs and close DSW, thusly oversaturating OVW and putting the quality in jeopardy, which is what happened. I mean you can only have so many trainers on your payroll and you can only have so many wrestlers per trainer. It became a mad house. And let's not even get into how having to admit that James E. Cornette and Danny Davis has a better wrestling mind than Vince McMahon was something that VKM was not willing to do.

So Vince decided to pull out his money, thinking that OVW would fold just as DSW did. Unfortunately, OVW markets itself well, trains superbly, and still recruits potentially top of the line future talent. And what about the developmental territory that Vince built from the ground up? Well other than early tv problems, toilet problems, and other technical difficulties, every wrestler who has come out of FCW has had the same look and the same similar skillset. Well other than finishers. I mean teaching the basics is one thing, but if all they have is the same basic moves and one to differentiate, then the future looks low and this drought of a new infusion of talent will not end any time soon.

All in all, the central problem is that WWE has shot itself in the foot. Lack of true leadership, direction, creative, and older superstars wanting to relinquish their "spots" all culminates to one thing. Stagnant turnover. I mean can someone pleas tell me why Ric Flair passed the torch to Shawn Michaels when Shawn is only about 10 to 15 years his junior? It should have been Ted Debiase Jr. or Orton or some other young star who needed the rub. And this is the trend over and over again. Stagnation and and infestation of ego's. And this will only lead to WWE needing to pull some drastic moves in the future as it can only go so long before these older stars are exhausted or they hang it up. And then what?

 

[Shocky]

The simple answer to this question, the log jam of veterans and 40 plus year olds that are clogging up the main event spot light. Vince McMahon is terified of aging, from most reports. He refuses to acknowledge his age. Can you imagine vince McMahon watching the retirment of guys like Triple H, Taker and Michaels, that would kill him. McMahon is terrified of attempting to see what the business willb e like without these guys, and it's a shame. Kane, JBL, Batista, along with the other three I mentioned, are main event cloggers that don't allow the midcard guys to move up.

I'm pretty confident in the abilities of the guys that should be the main event players right now. Guys like Cena, Jericho, Edge, Orton, Matt Hardy, and yes even Jeff Hardy, should be the focus of the company at this point. These guys should be the six pack of wrestlers that are main eventers. If you remove Kane, Taker, Batista, Michaels, Triple H, and JBL from the roster, you shake the company to it's core. You free up huge spots and roles thata huge younger group of wrestlers.

Guys like Morrison, Miz, Punk, Kingston, Benjamin, and more and more are all on the verge of being something huge, there's just no room to go up to the top. So until McMahon hands the reigns to Shane, and Shane realizes that hte youth movement is the way to go, this business will remain stale.

 

[The Roid Rage]

I have to disagree with a lot of you on this and I might get crucified for it but I am bold, I am courageous.

I don't think there is much of anything wrong the way it is. Sure it is can be predictable, some storylines aren't the best top notch shit they've ever done, and there isn't a lot of new talent. I have answers to all this though.

1. Predictability. Once you've been a fan for a while and watched any promotion you can pretty much predict just about anything coming. That's not really a failure on their part I think that now the fans are just smarter and it's due to the fact that they have drawn back the curtain for us all to see. Think about it. Back in the day many of us didn't know about the in's and out's and politics or inner workings of the business. Now we do so we are better able to predict things on the weekly basis, but they still outsmart us at every pass, and shock us with outcomes none of us expect.

2.Storyline's. Ok, the attitude era set standards high, I get it. But it's unrealistic to think that you're going to get that kind of storyline production without major competition. That is why they has those crazy storylines. They had stiff competition from WCW and had to strike back. Now they have themselves and each brand to compete with, that's it. Argue TNA all you want, that's it. But really, I think the joke is on most of you. If they were doing such a horrible job than why would all of you be watching still??? Because they aren't doing bad and they have kept your attention. The storylines have been fine, maybe not Attitude era stuff but they have been fine, you want another Attitude era go create a new WCW and MNW other wise until any of you can do better I think the criticism can stop.

3. Talent. The classic "top guys" argument, that the top guys who have been there and coincidentally kept the company alive through the MNW's, are at the top and won't let anyone else up there. I think that's stupid to say, and the biggest falsehood I have ever heard. There is something about the business you have to understand that apparently most of you don't. You can't put people at the top that no one wants to see, and you can't make people like people they don't want to. If the people suddenly stopped paying attention to Batista, Triple H, Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, etc... they wouldn't be up at the top, but people have wanted to see them at the top as so they are. You seem to think that they can just make anyone a superstar, they can't. The WWE has taken chances on different guys and they have failed, the people didn't want them, so the guys they wanted to see are up top. I haven't seen much great new talent arise yet that can rival the top guys so far. You act like these guys are just supposed to show up and be at the top to take over, that's not how it works in this business. You have to pay your dues, and stick around for a while, and additionally prove you can get the fan support be it heel or face. There are a lot of guys that can't and as a result you have the best at the top. If anything I think that the line between the best and the mediocre has been emboldened and that's it. In order for a guy to go up he has to get the fan support and if you can't draw you aren't going big, that's just how it is. I am sorry but Ted Dibiase, Cody Rhodes, Brian Kendrick, Santino Marella, Kofi Kingston, Jack Swagger, The Miz, and a hand full of other guys aren't that interesting and haven't displayed any reason for them to be at the top yet. You all act like people should just get to be top guys without any rhyme or reason just because they supposedly need new talent. Like I said, if the current top tier was doing so terribly than they would, but the fans want the Undertaker, they want Triple H, they want Batista, and so on. The top guys are selected by the fans and I think many of you have forgotten that. And furthermore if you all have the answers than I beg you to do better.