Why Stale Is Good.

[Dwayne_Jason]

Now before you pounce me and tell me that John Cena, baby faces, stupid kid shit, and all that jazz is the reason for WWE's staleness, I'd like to ponder something here.


Think about three things: Your mom's (or even the dinner you make everyday) dinner everyday, your favorite team, your favorite sport, aside from pro wrestling.

Everyday you need dinner, and its more or less the same. Sure you add variety every now and then. Make pasta on Thursday, make steak on Tuesday. But the overall taste, is the same. The style of preparing said food, remains the same. The same technique you've used ever since you learned how to cook the said food.

Now say, one night, you go out and have dinner at some grill, or some bar. Fact is, you'll enjoy it. A LOT. Not the same taste, not the same technique, not the same schedule, not even the same type of food.

Lets switch gears to your favorite team. You tune in every day/week to watch the said team. What do you watch them for? Performance or victory? Victory. It doesn't matter if the team has been doing the same play over and over and over again. Fact is, its winning and you're happy. Why? Because its your fucking team. Now lets say, one day, that team either made a legendary play or faced their toughest opponent yet. You'd be screaming with excitement. You'd fucking MTFO every time your team scores and scream every time the opponent scores. And then...last couple minutes, teams are tied. 30 seconds. Your team just made a LEGEDANRY play to end the game and you just...

Y'know.


Finally, your fav. sport. Why do they do what they do? Basketball, mainly comprises of running from one place to another avoiding other people. Same with Football, same with Hockey, except its skating. Most of the plays used aren't flasht, but effective. They work. They help the team score.


But what difference does it make?


Simply this: Stale is good.

If you went out for dinner every day and had fun everyday. That "fun" no longer ceases to matter. Its not fun anymore. You need some fucking order in your life and not go clubbing every night and wake up on a beach with a coked up Satan. And order, every day, doing the same thing over and over and over=Stale.

The same for your team. Your team does the same sort of plays over and over for the entire season. Most of them are the same but once in a good while the team does a KICKASS play and you MFTO. Why? Simply because you're used to watching the team make the same sort of plays. What if the team makes those flashy plays every time they play? It loses its effectiveness, it'll lose its luster. It goes from legendary to normal.

You get point, so I won't go further into it.

Simply put, WWE's stale raw week in, week out. Prepares us for storylines like Punk. Or the storyline with Orton. Or the storyline with Nexus. I'm not saying they do it on purpose, its routine. If they shell out stories like this over and over again the bar is set exceptionally high and one of them will fall flat. Fans will expect more, and WWE may not be able to provide them, simply put, the shock value, if overused diminishes the shock of the said value.

That's why stale is good. That's why instead of complaining about it, deal with it, and know, or hope that something better comes along. Because the longer the wait, the sweeter it is when they do pull the trigger on the WTF storyline of the year.


The same is true for most wrestlers. Flashy moves don't make them, its if the crowd cares about them or not. I know that this isn't a sport where effectiveness counts but fact is, the more you exhaust the audience, the less shit they will give about you. That is why Indy promotions are Indy. Shock value totally diminished because of ridiculous spots. The argument for stale, then becomes, not why Cena/babyface is bad. But why he's good. He's good BECAUSE he's stale. Because when he does something cool or does a spot, people will PAY ATTENTION.


And that, is why Stale in WWE is good. Do you find stale to be good? Do you agree with me?

Leave your responses below.

Also, for the people who speak Micheal Tarver english, please make sure we understand it.

And no spam.

 

[hollowpoint]

I agree with what your are saying, and I think I can simplify even more. Consistency is what makes great players great. The same with Superstars. You knew night in and night out what to expect from the greats: HBK, HHH, SCSA, The Rock, Taker, etc. It was a lock you would get the normal and every now and again, they would do something spectacular. When people watched Jordan in his prime, they knew he was scoring 30+ pts, 8 rebounds, 4-5 assist. That was the standard and if you were a fan, you pretty much penciled those stats in. When he dropped 69, that made it a special night, but you don't expect that every night because it's not realistic.
That's what I like about Cena. Call him "stale", I just call him consistent because night in and night out he brings it. Every now and again he turns the perfomance up a notch and makes some memorable moments (MITB v. CM Punk).

 

[H33LTurn]

Yeah, it totally makes sense. You have to save those special moments for special occasions. Wrestling fans these days know nothing about building things up. Its like they're used to seeing rivalries culminate into 4 weeks and then fade away. I didnt find the last couple of weeks before Punk's promo stale, they were just regular. When the Punk promo came it felt like such a breath of fresh air. Now its like everybody wants a new era in the WWE and they want every week to measure up to that one and it simply wont happen. Everything has its time and place.

 

[Brewski007]

I agree with you to a certain degree. I wouldnt call it "Stale" but i would call some things predictable and repetitive on a weekly basis. Poor diva matches, lame tag titles, unsurprising match ups, evan bourne losing , john cena being a big cartoon-like kids idol. These are all things that happen too often for my liking.
But on the flip-side we are getting some of the greatest stories and developments happening in the biz than in recent years;
- Obviously Punk & Cena's storyline. Punks got everyone waiting for raw tomorrow night.
- HHH "in charge" instead of vince now. This can have many outcomes. Maybe even a HHH heel turn which would be great.
- Sheamus' face turn - A great move to give this guy. He'll be an intriguing face to watch and its gonna be interesting to see how over he'll get.
- Rock & Cena @ WM28 - Obviously this is just a simmering fire at the minute, but as time goes by this will explode. The only thing is , I hope it doesnt impact CM Punk and over-shadow that guys excellent work.

I could go on, but i think you get the message. The staleness is there, but the fans are getting rewarded for being patient with all the things that make the product stale, and getting some great storylines.

Of course there will always be people who will find something to complain about, but WWE is an entertainment industry and its alot more entertaining than this time last year, which for me means its going in a good direction.

 

[LegendKiller716]

So what your saying is we should enjoy an overall mediocre product, so that we enjoy it when it's finally good?


I disagree. I think they should have three groups of creative, and cycle through them every 6 months or so to freshen up the product.

 

[richunclescrooge]

I agree with you..... in theory. The things you said make perfect sense, if something crazy happens every night it ceases to be crazy and becomes normal. One of the best examples of this was the original ECW. How much did a chairshot mean there? Nothing because it happened way too often, so as far as keeping things special I agree.

But, I don't think boring programming should become the norm. I believe for the past month and a half, TV has been great, and before that it was stale, stale meaning boring. This thread is about why stale is good and that's where I disagree. Stale is never good. Stale is boring and predictable. Stale does not equal normal. Things can be normal without being stale. Many matches have many different things happen in them though they all usually end up being similar. Same goal but different paths to get there.

Basically each week of TV should make you excited to watch the next week. Every week does not need the incredible "holy crap" moment but it should give enough to make you excited to watch again. Think of shows like Lost or Heroes among others. They had a way with their writing that once an episode was over you couldn't wait for the next to see what happens. When things are stale you already know what will happen and next week doesn't matter.

So I agree in theory, but the average show should do a great job of entertaining and make you really want to continue watching.

 

[PlayTheGameHHH]

I agree! It's like a soap opera, you have one massive storyline and then you go back to the basic stuff and then another big story comes along, it's a cycle.

 

[Rckstrtmmy]

Your entire argument is false. Sure consistency is a part of life...in certain regards. But with wrestling you have to think about it as more of a TV show. Take a sitcom for example. If you have a show and just have the same jokes, the same stories, and the same characters...the show gets boring...and axed after one season. You have to have a degree of unpredictability since it's a scripted show. I see what your saying but stale is never good for anything that's supposed to entertain you.

 

[Syborgg]

Your sports analogy is a little lame. I mean take golf for instance. The PGA guys will golf 4 rounds on the same course in a tournament. However, because there are so many other variables, even the most consistant golfer never hits to the exact same spots on the course. Or hockey, in the Cup Finals Vancouver and Boston played 7 games, but none of the games looked the same as the previous ones.

My point is, variety is the spice of life. In WWE you might see some stuff that is predictable and routine-like, but sometimes that is done to establish a character, or a wrestler's style. Obviously when someone says the word "stale" around these forums, they are usually talking about Cena. I don't always agree with it, but that's just me. The thing is, people complain about him being stale when he's constantly adding or subtracting moves from his moveset. Sure he's been dressed the same way and had the same mannerisms in his promos and what not, but I think he's just comfortable that way because that's probably close to what he's like in real life.

Anyways, I didn't want to get on a rant about Cena, but my point is that in a wrestling show that is suppose to allow us to suspend reality for awhile and escape our own real mundane lives, stale material is NOT a good thing. The WWE knows that, thus all the title changes and HHH taking over and so on. They are constantly changing things up, but the more they do, the more the people on these forums want. I think it's been said in here before, if you don't like it don't watch. Otherwise, sit back open a beer and enjoy the f'n ride.

 

[Hazardous]

Your entire argument is false. Sure consistency is a part of life...in certain regards. But with wrestling you have to think about it as more of a TV show. Take a sitcom for example. If you have a show and just have the same jokes, the same stories, and the same characters...the show gets boring...and axed after one season.

I can think of a lot of shows that do the same shit all the time, and have no "Wow factor" to them anymore, and are still around. Shall I make a list?
Family Guy, The last 4 seasons of the Simpsons, the Office, American Dad. Shall I go on? These show's are stale, to the point of almost being unwatchable.. Yet people DO still watch them. Why? Because for every person who doesn't like the,. there are 5 or 6 others who do.

You have to have a degree of unpredictability since it's a scripted show. I see what your saying but stale is never good for anything that's supposed to entertain you.

I disagree. Probably since I don't find the WWE stale at all. I sit back, watch, and enjoy. Instead of picking apart every minor thing pretending to know everything about the product. The WWE does exactly what it promises. Entertains. If people want to sit there and complain its boring, and not entertaining enough.. Go watch another show then. Watch UFC before Spike pulls it off the network, go watch Worlds Deadliest Video's, or something like that.
I've noticed that a lot of the time, the people who complain about the E being boring, and predictable, are the same people who go into another thread saying how great the Attitude days were.

 

[mrpops]

RAW is a 2 hour entertainment television show shown once a week. When i tune in i expect to be entertained. They have an entire week to write something entertaining. Jay leno, conan, stephen colbert etc have shows 5 days a week and they entertain the hell out of me.

WWE needs more writers. You cant just write an entire fucking show with 1 or 2 guys. They need more people to handle the workload and to give the new young guys some fresh interesting storys instead of generic x wrestler fighting x generic wrestler and never talking or having a cool feuds with an actual storyline.

I also expect them to give me a reason to tune in next week. For the last 5 years i havnt had that reason most of the time. I just tune in regardless, watch the same shit in hopes they finally show something good....which they have started doing the past month or so.

Im not even watching the show half the time because theirs nothing worth watching. The divas come out and im like...fuck it im getting food/pee break. I only pay attention to the TV when they show me something worth watching. R-truth and CM punk are the main reasons im tuning in. Im tired of the john cena show. Time to swtich it up.