Making Raw exciting again

[niff]

I miss the days of Nexus.

[King Pitcos]

It's just something that I feel could help people to feel more connected to the brand and thus maintain an interest.

 

Pat - if you admit that you don't know whether or not they use focus groups now then surely that shows that their use doesn't make the fanbase feel more involved, since no-body knows about it.

 

It is okay to just say you don't know, you know?

[ShortOrderCook]

I'm sure there's reasons why it's not a viable option but with Raw going to 3 hours on a permanent basis i would personally love to see the PPV calender reduced back to 4 or 5 big shows a year again. The low-level 3 hour PPVs are surely going to suffer somewhat with Raw being 3 hours on the regular unless there's some big hook for the show (e.g- Rumble, Chamber, big star returning etc - only there's only so many of those you can do without diluting the appeal).

 

Wrestling fans are spoilt really, there's nothing else like it that doesn't have an off-season and even give you the opportunity to miss it a bit and want more. Except maybe soap operas but i don't know why people don't get bored of them. We get given so much, so regularly.

[King Pitcos]

Wrestling fans are spoilt really, there's nothing else like it that doesn't have an off-season and even give you the opportunity to miss it a bit and want more. Except maybe soap operas but i don't know why people don't get bored of them.

 

Ultimately, because the writing and performances in soaps are better, and the genre allows for a lot more resonance and scope in the stories it can tell. Wrestling is limited by its nature. They payoff for nearly every storyline is two men fighting each other in a wrestling ring. It's pretty mental that they've kept it as interesting as they have for so long on this schedule.

[IANdrewDiceClay]

Konnan said a few weeks ago on his podcast "I can't think of another television show that I would continue to watch if it had as much shit on it as wrestling does". Essentially, there are hundreds of thousands of fans only watching for a few things. Some watch for big stars like John Cena and then turn it off because the rest of the show isn't worth watching, some watch out of loyalty, some watch casually. That's why ratings patterns are so weird for wrestling shows. You could take 75% of the roster and replace them with someone else, and people aren't to bothered.

 

Wrestling is such a odd form of entertainment. If you are a regular Eastenders or Corrie viewer or another type of show like Benidorm or Episodes, the people watching will watch it and be entertained because that's their show. They watch it and they love it. Then there are shows like the Shield where people were clawing their eyes out desperate for the following week to come. Then there's wrestling, where you can take or leave most of it in the hope you get something good at the end of it. Even if it goes weeks on end without anything interesting you. Its been like that for years.

 

Wrestling is pretty dead at the minute. There's no buzz about anything. Nothing seems to make a difference either.

[ShortOrderCook]

People definitely have a valid point with the everybody looks the same, guys are interchangeable, they look like normal guys etc, etc. Wrestling, for my money, has alway worked best when it feels like it's a live action superhero comic book. That's completely what it was in the 80's and the Attitude Era. I love actual technical wrestling too, when all the elements combine together right it's magic.

 

I think it would be interesting to see wrestling tv presented in a different format. I reckon someone, somewhere might strike gold with it at some point. WSX tried something different but got it very wrong, and there's that other thing going on with MVP , Masters, Festus and others on it that sounds like a relatively interesting experiment.

[Arch Stanton]

I thought WSX was a great experiment to be honest. It was just a shame that MTV didn't seem to want to back it. It was good to see wrestling on TV being presented in a different format. I think there were aspects of WSX that WWE could look at- perhaps for the new NXT shows.

[Forrest]

I've always wanted to give WSX a try, what was you liked about it, Arch?

[Arch Stanton]

It was just a fun hour-long show with a lot of the top independent talent of the time on the roster. The action was faced paced and spotty as fuck and they had some ridiculous gimmick matches but it all worked with the theme of the show, which was presented as a kind of underground alternative to mainstream wrestling. A lot of the charm was of the so-bad-it's-good nature, but on the whole I thought it was a fun little show. It also gave a TV platform to a lot of guys that would never ever get signed up by one of the big two.

[IANdrewDiceClay]

Wrestling Society X was only on half an hour. And if you take out the commercial breaks, not even half an hour. I liked the arena set up and how it was presented, and the roster was quite good. But there was some horrible things in it as well. Like how they cut out the selling of moves. It was literally move, move, move. Another thing I hated was the ring announcer. What a dick head he was.

 

I do think they had the basis for a good promotion though. It was just to short and had a lot of really bad stuff holding it down. I loved the lighting. It was a beautifully shot show. I loved how they would intercut little bios and promos of the wrestlers on their way to the ring to familiarize us with them. Kevin Kleinrock said they had a budget of only (ONLY!!!) $600,000 per show, which MTV told them as if the producers would be disappointed. They obviously almost shit themselves with excitement. It made me think, though - imagine if MTV really was interested in a wrestling promotion? If they strongly backed a product they had no interest in like this so strongly, just think of what they could do with something they actually liked? They would be able to get music clearance pretty easily, they would instantly have their wrestling show in every country if they so wished, they would have top class production. And with the giant name of MTV in the world of television, you could have had some big name players jumping on board who wouldn't give TNA a second thought. If MTV was interested, this Wrestling Society X thing could have been huge.

 

Shame when you think about it.

[Arch Stanton]

Shit, was it only half-an-hour a show? My memory is shocking. I watched it all on the DVD in a block so didn't really notice.

[CiderBag]

WWE post Extreme Rules has been pretty awful. There is no buzz around anything and everything seems tired. I find myself not caring about anything (sans HHH / Lesnar possibilities but that hardly counts as they haven't been on TV in weeks).

 

I've said it before and people shrug it off, but the big problem is a lack of real star power. It's dire at the moment. It really hasn't been this thin in years.

 

The odd thing is that the current roster has potential if they were to bother doing things with it. Kofi could be such a talent, yet he is in a throw together tag team in a division which is worth less than shit in 2012. Swagger and Dolph are very entertaining for me but again they're treading water not really doing anything. Something was teased on the last Raw so here's hoping it goes somewhere.

 

Punk vs Bryan could be an epic feud spawning great matches, especially with a fruit loop AJ thrown into the mix. However following their great match at Over the Limit, Kane is now in the feud. Fucking brilliant. Instead of people getting sucked into the feud and a buzz being created around the matches, people will now likely be turned off. I'd consider buying a PPV with Punk vs Bryan, throw Kane into the mix and it's a big no from me.

 

Christian has proven he is only effective in a heel role. Prior to surgery in his feud with Orton he was brilliant in it. But now he's babyface which has never really clicked.

 

Jericho, Orton and Rey are all out for a little while. That's a big chunk of star power right there.

 

Big Jonny started of fun in his role, but with more TV time came more boredom. They should think about bringing Foley into the mix to counter-act him in a power share. He's proven to be great in the role in the past. Foley's WWE return has been perhaps the biggest waste of time ever.

 

Raw for three hours is looking pretty frightening if they don't shake things up.

 

All in my opinion of course.

[Vamp]

If MTV was interested, this Wrestling Society X thing could have been huge.

 

Shame when you think about it.

 

It's interesting that they tried wrestling again, not long afterwards really, with Lucha Libre USA and that actually made it to a second series, albeit didn't reach the end of it. I've never seen any of it, all the videos on YouTube of it seem to be blocked in this country, but I'd imagine that's also fairly different to WWE's product. They also had, in the build up to Lucha Libre USA, a hype episode with footage from AAA which makes me wonder if they were contemplating broadcasting their shows at one stage. That seems like it would be a good partnership, MTV seem interested in giving this wrestling thing a go, AAA's been around for a while so they wouldn't have to fund it from scratch, and AAA often talk about expanding into America again. Although AAA's probably a bit too far behind popular culture now.

 

MTV really do seem to want an alternative wrestling product. I'm nust not sure how it gets it's current audience to accept it. They seemed to make the effort with WSX to do that and it just didn't work. It's obviously a cheap show to run though.