I truly don't understand people's gripe with the PG Era. It seems that while we were younger our minds became over saturated with weapons, blood, sex, and crude violence. Wrestling existed way before the attitude era and it didn't need outlandish stunts to get the wrestlers over or to draw crowds.
Are you guys really telling me that because a wrestler has to use "beat up" instead of "ass kicking" that it RUINS wrestling? I'm sorry, to me wrestling is what happens between the ropes and if you need a blade job to enjoy the match than I question your knowledge of sound psychology and wrestling in general.
Shawn Michaels once said he believes cutting a promo in the WWE is harder than anywhere else becase you're not allowed to say anything you want. But why do we bitch about that? If a wrestler has to use profanity in order to manipulate emotions then you should questions said wrestlers charismatic ability as a whole. It's the same as these wrestlers that think the only way they can show anger and strength is by yelling. Jake Roberts never once had to raise his voice in order to relay his emotions. Jake was one of the best on the mic of all time, one of the most underrated as well... and he doesn't need stupid rape jokes or four letter words to evoke emotions. He has intelligence and creativity to get there.
That's my main point, is that we're all clamoring for the end of the PG... demanding it's death like a mob trying to burn a witch at the stake. We blame the PG era for everything from bad ratings to bad matches to bad gimmicks and characters. When do we start blaming the writers and the wrestlers... and not a damn rating? All this is doing is making it a little tougher for people to be creative simply because everyone's creative mind is stuck in the mindset they had 10 years ago AW himself even admitted it. That's his fault.
CM Punk cut a promo last year that changed his life. He cut a promo that the IWC blew up over. He did that because he is talented, and creative. PG Ratings will not quiet the great minds of wrestling... instead it will just purge those that rely on cheap tricks to get a reaction.
i agree and disagree with what you said. its partially creative and talents fault but its also other things. Its talent and creatives job to come up with things that work around the pg thing
but the key thing is, its 2012. you cant compare what happened in hogan-savage,warrior era to now. the 80's were MUCH different in a society sense. times have changed and you must go WITH that, and thats why there losing their audience. you cant say what worked in the 80s will work now, times are different things have happened over those 20 years. you have to cater to what the audience demands. you cant go from all out attitude era and then fully scale it back your going to lose fans. now adult audiences are looking at realism, mma is popular as ever and even though dana and vince sayt here not in competetion, in reality they are as the demographics are pit against one another, and the 18-35 want something real. Will wrestling ever be real, no but atleast add bits and peices of realism not make it cartoonish like the 80s were, it wont work times are diff.
As i said you cant fully blame the wrestlers and creative because they are indeed held back by the pg era as your limited to what you can do. why do you think big names who left wont return. Austin,rock,batista have all bashed the pg era and said they wouldnt come back in it. The rock only came back because vince caved in on his demands and let him use his rock persona. Prior to that the rock said no way he would return as "the rock" wasnt a pg character and he could no way pull it off being pg. Vince would do the exact same with austin as again hes not a character that would work in pg.
punks promo was brilliant, but do you not think vince gave him more liberties with that promo than anyone else? theres only so much you can do being pg and its hurting the product as its a limitation. yes there getting the kids but what happens when those kids get older ? there going to do the same as most, and turn away when they see other realisms.
people talk about how laurenities hasnt created a star..while true its also not entirely his fault. Again times have changed, under jr , jr recruited real atheltes to join wwe. During this time wrestling was the only option for college wrestlers and olympic guys who wanted to make money. brock,angle and some others have talked about it. they would of NEVER joined WWE if mma was where its at today. WWE now has to share that talent pool with mma and more n more are going to mma because it will make them more money(dont give me the brock thing, brock made more money per fight than his deal now). this is also hurting wwe.
will losing the pg rating instantly skyrocket ratings and product......no... it will be a slow process for the better though as they need to reel back in the 18-35 year old group. vince tries to do everything to shrug this off saying ufc ratings are horrible but to anyone with knowledge they know hes playing a game to people who are unaware. Vince is spitting out flat ratings which when u compare what raw does to ufc on fx. You cant look at it that way however and this is commonly talked about in mma.
You have to compare the percentage of total viewership aloowed on channel to how many watched. An example of this is when UFC and sf were not under the same umbrella. Strikeforce had fedor vs rogers on cbs while ufc pitted a rerun of a ppv on spike. strikeforce drew 5.2 million viewers and spike drew 1.4.... to the common person SF looked to of killed the ufc(this is what vince is trying to do), but when networks look at this this is not what they look at. CBS reachs 99 percent of homes while spike is something like 40. when you break down the viewership the ufc actually beat strikeforce desipite having almost 4 million less views. so while vince is getting more views its also because more people have that network... also, with mma it depends on night, and whos fighting. Alot of the FX fights are rather unknowns so people wont tune in, they save all their headlineers for ppv where the money is.
This is another reason why TNA is doing bad in rating, they have a ceiling and can only go so high. i doubt theyll ever reach raw numbers, and its because spike doesnt reach near the people USA network does
