WWE now Vs. WWE Past

[foxhound101]

So i was watching the macho man DVD and i started thinking. Wrestling back then was ALOT different then than it is now.

For instance....

COMMENTARY

Back then- The commentary was Good! Always showcasing the excitement level that the matches deserved. They called the entire match without getting off on other subjects. The commentary was also two sided, differences of opinions, one "good" and one "bad" if you will. By doing this they were better able to describe the wrestlers strengths, and weaknesses. This was a key part in building SUPERSTARS!!! Half of a wrestler's reputation is built of hype anyways. If a new wrestler came out you never heard of, and the announcers told you he was the best of the best, or a complete monster, given said performer acted his part, you'd believe it. Thats just the way it was back then.

Now- Commentary is not bad. However, I do think it could be improved upon. The level of excitement is nowhere close to where it used to be. To me the biggest problem with the commentary is the focus level of matches. I see it every week on RAW and Smackdown, even ECW. There will be an awesome match going on in the ring, but yet the announce team will be too busy talking about last week or what HHH or Randy Orton did. To me this seems very disrespectful to the wrestlers in the ring...thats their time, why now showcase them. This is one of the reasons why they're having a hard time building Main Event calibur stars. If the announcers don't give them the time of day, then how are fans supposed to respect them?

CHARACTERS

Back Then- Characters took their Roles and went with them and played their parts to the better end! We've had Indians, Repo men, Tugboats, and Hillbilly Jims, and Ultimate Warriors!. Giants were feared and seemingly Un-Beatable. And the fans cheered and booed. Macho Man....look at his backstage interviews. Perfectly acted and always brought props to help tell the point of his interview. Hogan...Always excited and always the shiny...lol. They had interviewers that meant something too like mean gene.

Now- Aside from a few, They just play amped up versions of theirselves, which is not bad, but The originality is not there like it used to be. The backstage interviews are almost as stale as the one doing the interviewing.

What are your thoughts? Am I just going on, or does anyone else feel the same? Whats your opinions some of the ways it has changed in which it would be better off if done like in the past???

 

[sports_fan_2007]

I agree with you. I have quite a few of the WWE DVDS like the HHH, HBK, Stone Colds, Undertakers, and History of the HIAC matches. And I agree the commentators arent as excited as they used to be when calling a match and I solely place the blame on Vince and him constantly telling the commentators how to commentate. I believe JR has even gotten angry at it as well as Taz. I just dont believe that they can commentate they way they want if they have someone in their ears always telling them what to say. That though is just my opinion

As for the characters, I blame creative. It just doesnt seem they can pick something for someone and go with it. Like TBK he went from cocky I am the best to looking for a perfect partner to jobbing to Lawler. Than you have Hass i dont even want to go there. But back in the day you get a character or a gimmick and you run with it until it gets over done or you retire.

But thats just what i feel

 

[People's Elbow]

Commentary has always been a MAJOR factor when it came to wrestling with me. I thought Good Ol' JR/King to be gold. Their styles meshed so perfectly. JR being the face and King although he was heel, if a heel "took it too far" he would quick to admonish them. Their back and fourth bickering provided me with good humor.

However now with King/Cole I am almost tempted to watch RAW with my TV muted. I'm not sure if my ears weren't functioning yesterday but did Cole say "Boom-Shaq-A-Lacka?" I guess I'd be ignorant to not blame it on Vince for constantly shouting in their ears spoon feeding them lines which is one of the main reasons Foley& Tazz left. Another peeve I have these days are the periods of silence. Some people may argue it's better to let whats going on in the ring develop on it's own but I have my eyes for that. I miss the commentary that went hand in hand with the in ring action.

 

[sports_fan_2007]

Here the guy who WWE should have keot as the announcer he is Joey Styles....my opininon probably the BEST announcer there was but he was too eccentric and wanted to call the wrestling and not be so focused on stories. Vince not such a fan on actually calling wrestling.

 

[THE SWAG]

yeah i have all the dvd's and if it is not jim ross doing the annoucing for the match forget about it, and i am talking since the attitude era, vince was good at announcing, as for the characters, the one i truly love now is jericho everybody else dull and you could see right through them

 

[BernacK6]

You can't compare WWE of now to WWF of old. I was evaluating alot of information last night and I came to the following conclusion: the ONLY problem with the WWE right now is MICHAEL FUCKING COLE. At 9:00 Central Time, as hour two of Raw is beginning, is it not like clockwork that Michael Cole will say "You are watching the longest running weekly episodic televsion show in history, Monday Night Raw." And he says it in the middle of HHH's entrance. He has the best music and his mouth is running during it. Then he'll call every match and the words "vintage (insert superstar here)" comes up. Take last week...Jerry Lawler punches Brian Kendrick and Cole screams out "Vintage Jerry Lawler." A punch to the mouth is "vintage?" Please.

Today's in-ring product is different from that of yesteryear. They are not comparable. You may have enjoyed wrestling in the past, but those guys couldn't work half as well as today's superstars. Kofi Kingston is a better wrestler than 4/5 of the roster from the late 1980's. I'm not saying he's a better "performer", but I am saying he's a better athlete and pure wrestler. The product has evolved and it is not comparable.

 

[Ambiguous Turd]

You can't compare WWE of now to WWF of old. I was evaluating alot of information last night and I came to the following conclusion: the ONLY problem with the WWE right now is MICHAEL FUCKING COLE. At 9:00 Central Time, as hour two of Raw is beginning, is it not like clockwork that Michael Cole will say "You are watching the longest running weekly episodic televsion show in history, Monday Night Raw." And he says it in the middle of HHH's entrance. He has the best music and his mouth is running during it. Then he'll call every match and the words "vintage (insert superstar here)" comes up. Take last week...Jerry Lawler punches Brian Kendrick and Cole screams out "Vintage Jerry Lawler." A punch to the mouth is "vintage?" Please.

Today's in-ring product is different from that of yesteryear. They are not comparable. You may have enjoyed wrestling in the past, but those guys couldn't work half as well as today's superstars. Kofi Kingston is a better wrestler than 4/5 of the roster from the late 1980's. I'm not saying he's a better "performer", but I am saying he's a better athlete and pure wrestler. The product has evolved and it is not comparable.

Ah, but who says the in-ring product is really all that important in the big scheme of things? Who says that this determines the entire success of the whole WWE product?

Does it really matter whether or not someone can produce a 2 star match, compared to a 3 star match? Does that really make a huge difference in the big scheme of things? So you can say that the product has "evolved", but that is really up for debate on whether it has evolved for the better or for the worse.

The wrestling is better today, unquestionably. But that doesn't mean a lick if the fans don't care about the feuds or the performers involved. Shelton Benjamin does some great things in the ring. Is he over a lick? No. The wrestling alone and by itself, is simply not enough.

As far as Commentators, I do disagree with Foxhound in that today's announcers talk more about the action than the announcers of yesterday. We don't really have storylines anymore, thanks to WWE adopting the ROH approach to eliminating storylines, but the Color Commentator tries to give some background into the person and how the feud got started, or what the titles are supposed to mean to the wrestlers. All generic stuff, because Vince doesn't want his commentators bickering with each other, or getting "too excited" anymore.

The commentators of yesterday put over the action too, but would often get sidetracked with bickering back and forth between Heenan and Monsoon or Vince and Jesse. Was that necessarily "disrespectful" to the performers in the ring? It isn't a real sport, so I would say "No". As long as they put over the action, the bickering simply added to the overall entertainment package the product presented. And it didn't make me enjoy the match any less.

Michael Cole isn't the problem on Raw, and I am glad to see more people on here acknowledging this. If you have a problem with Michael Cole's style today, compared to what it used to be on Smackdown, you need to blame Vince McMahon since he is the one responsible for having it changed.

 

[foxhound101]

The wrestling of old was more entertaining. Not because of wrestling abilities, but by pure entertainment surrounding the matches. I have been watching wrestling since i was old enough to watch a TV. I remember watching andre the giant...and hulk hogan, and the macho man. While they were not nesessarily as technically sound in the ring as todays competitors...what they had was an understanding of how to tell their story. I'm sure the writing staff wasn't even as "good" (and i use that term very loosely) as they are these days. My fear is that the current days of wrestling is based more on the almighty dollar, and selling PPV's than the actual entertainment value of their regular television shows. Somehow when i watch RAW, i feel like what i'm actually watching is a glorified infomercial for their next PPV... It shouldn't be that way.

Oh and i used to love the bickering between Vince, Jessy, monsoon and heenan


Another thing IMO is that there are tooo many wwe shows. Its on dang near everyday. That creates a burnout factor. What was wrong with having to wait a whole week to watch wrestling...gave ya something to look forward to

 

[The Instant Classic]

i think the wwe today REALLY needs to fix something. whether it be going back to just having one show (and making it like smackdown is now because it is phenomenal, way better than raw or ecw), grooming young talent better than they are, or studying how they used to do it in the good old days and mimicking it. i just know they have to fix something if they wanna keep any of the old fans. because at this rate with the annoying as hell pg rating, its just gonna be little kids and women watching wwe.

i used to get pumped up to watch raw and just ready to watch smackdown as short as a few years ago. now in that short time, my feelings have completely reversed. i loooove watching smackdown and cant stand raw. too campy and not funny at all (which they shouldnt be trying to do).

i think wwe should fix something and soon or else they are gonna lose a lot of hardcore old time fans. who am i kidding, no matter how bad it gets we are still always gonna watch just for the small "what if something huge happens tonight" factor. im close though

 

[Spaceman Spif]

The WWE doesn't need to fix anything perse, in truth we IWC and wrestling fans in general need to learn to adapt to a changing environment. We want the WWE to adapt to everyone of us, which is impossible, it can't happen, they can't adapt to each individual person, they can't please us all and they won't even try. So we need to learn to adapt, because just like the "Attitude" era, this is another era, apparently the "PG" era. Era's and ways things are done will change, and if we don't change with it, then we think it is broken when in reality it's not, which is obvious as we still watch it, and it's still the number one company.

Now onto what I prefer, I prefer the past WWE, more specfically the Attitude era, I loved it more than any other time in wrestling. The Rock, Stone Cold, Mick Foley, D-X, The Corporation, The Brood, The Ministry, all the classic feuds and historic moments that came from this era are some of the greatest we will ever see. Some of the matches we will never see again, it was a wild time for the WWE and wrestling in general, the Attitude forever changed the way we looked at wrestling... and that's the problem, we still want it, we won't get it, but we want it and we can't move on from it, so we blame the WWE for not giving us something we want, but they can't give us. It's the one I prefer though.

However I do like the WWE now and I still enjoy watching it and I am trying to adapt to the "PG" Era, so I can enjoy it even more. Give it time and give it a chance, grow with it and adapt with it and you might be pleasently surprised.