Joey Joe Joe Jr Posted December 20, 2012 Share Posted December 20, 2012 I was looking at something like Chikara which is very bright and colourful, but with very intricate and inventive storylines, and was wondering if WWE would adopt something similar or in that tone. Not that you would go way over the top with the mystic, sci-fi storylines, but I remember Court Bauer saying that Sci Fi originally wanted WWECW to be wrestling-meets-sci-fi, with Kane, Taker and the Zombie wondering around. I mean, Spongebob, Pokemon, comicbook characters and kiddy stuff in a similar vein is also gobbled up by young adult males, whether ironically or out of some genuine joy they get from it. To some extent, us adults all watch wrestling after so long due to some regression complex probably (but who doesn't wish for simpler times?). I look at something like Saturday Morning Slam and think that it's not widely off the mark in the production choices. Incorporate some anime graphics here and there too if that's still relevant. Cabana was interviewing Chris Sabin a few weeks ago, and it came up that the Machine Guns were like little Japanese, video game characters; doing all this crazy stuff that gets the live and TV crowd excited, with "edgy" haircuts and ring gear. Â Just a lot of ideas I've thrown out here and not sure where I was going with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Butternut Squash Posted December 20, 2012 Share Posted December 20, 2012 I was just about to post that - the general consensus over the last few pages is absolutely spot on. Wrestling is for kids - Cena is as great for them as Hogan was for kids in the 80s/90s. Cena's character isn't my cup of tea, but then I'm a 30-something male who really should have grown out of this now. If the WWE were catering their product to get money out of people like me, they'd go bankrupt in 6 months. Â Â Genuine question, is there any proof of this? I mean I'm sure I've heard that the majority of their audience are still in the 16-35 range. There needs to be a middle ground. There's no reason that they can't put a bit more thought in to what they're doing whilst maintaining the kid demographic. Give me Dr Who not the Tweeenies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members IANdrewDiceClay Posted December 20, 2012 Paid Members Share Posted December 20, 2012 I was looking at something like Chikara which is very bright and colourful, but with very intricate and inventive storylines, and was wondering if WWE would adopt something similar or in that tone. Of course not. Chikara is a joke federation designed to attract the minimum audience they can. No national promotion would expose themselves with storylines as niche as mental as lose. What intricate and inventive storylines do Chikara do that would draw money in the mainstream? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joey Joe Joe Jr Posted December 20, 2012 Share Posted December 20, 2012 (edited) Well I clearly didn't mean go they should go so off-the-wall as Chikara (that's obvious) but in terms of the detailed storylines which make are illogically logical, so to speak. I've been told from people who watch Chikara that they stick to consistent story arcs over a year, having different seasons with a different theme or "plotline" that runs through the promotion. Probably not a direction, but more the kind of qualities that WWE ought to return to. There was an anime-style pic that someone had posted here and on reddit which featured a bunch of wrestlers, and it felt 10 times "cooler" than 95% of WWE's creative output. It's hard because we've had the goofy 80s era, and the other end of the spectrum with the adult-orientated Attitude in the 90s. Is it just a case of jumping between the two extremes, or are there other directions to go in? Edited December 20, 2012 by dharmabear Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Astro Hollywood Posted December 20, 2012 Moderators Share Posted December 20, 2012 I was looking at something like Chikara which is very bright and colourful, but with very intricate and inventive storylines, and was wondering if WWE would adopt something similar or in that tone. Â Maybe the storytelling part is where things need to change, rather than gimmicks or PG vs Attitude, or any other type of wrestling thinking. In years since the Attitude era, we've had The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and all these other shows that turned television into the storytelling medium. That's the thing that's really become the 'fad' of the last ten years. Everyone nerds out over Walter White or the Stark family, and love-to-hates King Joffrey or whoever the villain is in the show they watch every single week. People expect better from their television now, and just because wrestling is carny and low-rent, there's no reason for the writing to be that way. Â The Summer of Punk was exciting, not because "ooh, he's shooting!" but because it was an intriguing story, and we were interested in seeing how it would unfold. That's what wrestling needs to get good again, and to be popular. Long-form storytelling, taking advantage of the hours of television, every single week, and characters who are compelling because we've watched them evolve and develop, rather than rebooting every two weeks when their current kinda-feud is scrapped. This week to week booking shit doesn't cut it in 2012 when Boardwalk Empire or even the Walking Dead is on the other channel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirty Eddie Posted December 20, 2012 Share Posted December 20, 2012 I was looking at something like Chikara which is very bright and colourful, but with very intricate and inventive storylines, and was wondering if WWE would adopt something similar or in that tone. Â Â Â The Summer of Punk was exciting, not because "ooh, he's shooting!" but because it was an intriguing story, and we were interested in seeing how it would unfold. That's what wrestling needs to get good again, and to be popular. Long-form storytelling, taking advantage of the hours of television, every single week, and characters who are compelling because we've watched them evolve and develop, rather than rebooting every two weeks when their current kinda-feud is scrapped. This week to week booking shit doesn't cut it in 2012 when Boardwalk Empire or even the Walking Dead is on the other channel. Â Â That's all spot on. Well-crafted stories that have clearly been planned out properly has got to be better than winging it like they do. There is more high-quality drama on telly than ever before, and WWE is absolutely in competition with it all. Regardless of their pandering to younger fans, most WWE fans are over 18 and so it's "proper telly" that they are competing with, not just kids shows. WWE Corporate site states that only 24% of their TV viewers are under 18, so while they absolutely need to market to the younger fans (as that's where the Ad money and merch sales often come from), they should never be ignoring older fans, or insulting their intelligence. Â It's also worth noting that there are perhaps even more "anti-hero" types in mainstream popular TV now than there were during the Attitude Era. The likes of Nucky Thompson, Walter White, The Sons of Anarchy, Dexter, Kenny Powers, the lead characters in Justified, Hell On Wheels etc... I imagine the people who'd get behind those types of characters would see the squeaky-clean image of Cena as rather lame and child-like in comparison. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Pitcos Posted December 20, 2012 Share Posted December 20, 2012 Genuine question, is there any proof of this? Yes. If people of our age and our bent were still pumping money into wrestling like we were when we were younger, they wouldn't have had to go family-friendly palatable and make up falling profits with sponsorship deals etc in the first place. All the "it's too childish now, PG sux" hatred is done by exactly the same people who have been hating something-or-other since 2001. "I used to love wrestling back when Undertaker and Edge had their TLC match in June 2008, it was brilliant in those days. But it was completely shit when they had their cell match two months later because it had gone PG by then." Nobody thinks that. Wrestling going family-friendly didn't make anyone stop liking it. People who already didn't like it anymore for years before that just latched onto that as the latest scapegoat. There's no pleasing us, and they're never going to gain any new normal adult fans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members IANdrewDiceClay Posted December 20, 2012 Paid Members Share Posted December 20, 2012 (edited) Wrestling is a business in a 12 year decline. The Attitude era was a fad based on what the people wanted at the time (it was the era of South Park, Celebrity Death Match, Howard Stern and Marilyn Manson) and there were far more fans around at the time before they hit big. WWF had a load of new fans and they fucked off when something cooler like The Osbournes or Jackass got hot. Even though wrestling was doing poor business in 1995, there was this underbelly of supporters who wanted to see it be good again. They'd either watch WCW or ECW or FMW or All Japan or All Japan Women. I dont know if those fans are there anymore. In fact I know they aren't based on the last decade. What are people watching now as an alternative? Everyone is struggling. How many people do you know that say stuff like "Warrior was class, Mankind falling off the cell was mint" but call wrestling shite now? A lot of people see wrestling as something they watched years ago that will never be as good as it was. In 1995, wrestling was cycle. At that time it was a dead Mitre footy that wanted some air in it. Right now, the business is in the middle of a continual downturn. Even the CM Punk thing 18 months ago didn't do anything in terms of buyrates, house show attendance or viewership and that was a pretty hot storyline. Viewership is down to a massively low level. The worst its been in 15 years on a Monday Night. When WWF's hot period started going down in late 2000, they said they'd improve eventually. When it went down again in 2002 they said it would go back up eventually. They kept saying this for years and years to the point that now if the WWE scored a 3.2 rating on Monday, they would be dancing in the street. People can blame NFL, but there was a point where WWE used to be able to retain a lot of their audience no matter how hot the game was. Now they can't. People blame the three hours as well, but does anyone expect people to just jump back into it when they get rid of the three hours? Â Wrestling will always draw as a one off, as WrestleMania proves. But how it will ever get out of the current slum it is in is beyond me. The audience has been trained to accept that storylines will not be progressed, wrestlers who they are getting into will have their legs cut off and plans will change. I'm remember when I was a kid, nobody would admit to being a wrestling fan. Now everyone admits they were a wrestling fan, but not anymore. Its such a different business now. The wrestlers are only a step above us typing on this on here. The wrestlers are marks who like putting their fake belts on the wall after Arn Anderson tells them someone failed a drug test and he has to have the title for a fortnight. Who wants to grow up to be them? Edited December 20, 2012 by IANdrewDiceClay Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Pitcos Posted December 20, 2012 Share Posted December 20, 2012 Maybe the storytelling part is where things need to change, rather than gimmicks or PG vs Attitude, or any other type of wrestling thinking. In years since the Attitude era, we've had The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and all these other shows that turned television into the storytelling medium. That's the thing that's really become the 'fad' of the last ten years. Everyone nerds out over Walter White or the Stark family, and love-to-hates King Joffrey or whoever the villain is in the show they watch every single week. People expect better from their television now, and just because wrestling is carny and low-rent, there's no reason for the writing to be that way. The Summer of Punk was exciting, not because "ooh, he's shooting!" but because it was an intriguing story, and we were interested in seeing how it would unfold. That's what wrestling needs to get good again, and to be popular. Long-form storytelling, taking advantage of the hours of television, every single week, and characters who are compelling because we've watched them evolve and develop, rather than rebooting every two weeks when their current kinda-feud is scrapped. This week to week booking shit doesn't cut it in 2012 when Boardwalk Empire or even the Walking Dead is on the other channel. How do you balance that, though, with having to sell a pay-per-view every month and doing stuff every week that makes five thousand hicks of all ages boo or cheer? Those are the fundamental differences that wrestling has from everything else, and what makes it so hard to do. Plus, y'know, how many six-year-olds love Breaking Bad? All of those shows you mentioned are very specifically for "mature" audiences, and are full of subtlety and nuance that wrestling will never have. And, conversely, massive amounts of sex, blood and violence that wrestling couldn't have got away with even in 1999. I definitely think wrestling having a decent go at proper serial storytelling is the way to go, I just don't know how it could manage it. Even the schedule renders it nigh-on impossible to do properly. Any other TV show gets months of hiatus to plot the next season's arcs and intricacies. And that's good writers. Wrestling writers are either writers who can't get a job anywhere else or seventy year old white ex-wrestlers who wish they were black. And they don't get the time off to plot the following season's layout. Even if it was half-arsed though, it'd still be worth a shot.  Anyway, a lot of the appeal of the CM Punk storyline last summer was "ooh, he's shooting!" Without all the "wrestling's crap now, I might go to ROH with the belt, hi Colt Cabana" stuff, people wouldn't have been half as intrigued in how a leaving-with-the-title story unfolded. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loki Posted December 20, 2012 Share Posted December 20, 2012 Also, the Boardwalk Empire team don't put out 6 or 7 hours of content a week. The more hours that WWE have added to their output, the worse it's got. How can you write enough interesting story to pad out that many hours? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members garynysmon Posted December 20, 2012 Paid Members Share Posted December 20, 2012 (edited) I was just about to post that - the general consensus over the last few pages is absolutely spot on. Wrestling is for kids - Cena is as great for them as Hogan was for kids in the 80s/90s. Cena's character isn't my cup of tea, but then I'm a 30-something male who really should have grown out of this now. If the WWE were catering their product to get money out of people like me, they'd go bankrupt in 6 months. Â That is very true. Â It just strikes me that Wrestling falls between two stools at the moment. Apart from the obvious like John Cena etc, the characters (i'm talking generally now) aren't outrageous enough to be larger than life, but aren't gritty enough to have an edge either. The two most popular periods in Wrestling have featured one or the other. What we have now is a mish mash of both. I do think that it's the death of the territories has to shoulder a large part of the blame though. Even in the late 90's you still had guys who had come through the USWA, Smokey Mountain etc, and found their niche. Now, even if you make a name for yourself in ROH or whatever, Vince will just give you a shit name and send you out there to generic rock music and black trunks. Edited December 20, 2012 by garynysmon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
300 Posted December 20, 2012 Share Posted December 20, 2012 I was looking at something like Chikara which is very bright and colourful, but with very intricate and inventive storylines, and was wondering if WWE would adopt something similar or in that tone. Â Â Â The Summer of Punk was exciting, not because "ooh, he's shooting!" but because it was an intriguing story, and we were interested in seeing how it would unfold. That's what wrestling needs to get good again, and to be popular. Long-form storytelling, taking advantage of the hours of television, every single week, and characters who are compelling because we've watched them evolve and develop, rather than rebooting every two weeks when their current kinda-feud is scrapped. This week to week booking shit doesn't cut it in 2012 when Boardwalk Empire or even the Walking Dead is on the other channel. Â Â That's all spot on. Well-crafted stories that have clearly been planned out properly has got to be better than winging it like they do. There is more high-quality drama on telly than ever before, and WWE is absolutely in competition with it all. Regardless of their pandering to younger fans, most WWE fans are over 18 and so it's "proper telly" that they are competing with, not just kids shows. WWE Corporate site states that only 24% of their TV viewers are under 18, so while they absolutely need to market to the younger fans (as that's where the Ad money and merch sales often come from), they should never be ignoring older fans, or insulting their intelligence. Â It's also worth noting that there are perhaps even more "anti-hero" types in mainstream popular TV now than there were during the Attitude Era. The likes of Nucky Thompson, Walter White, The Sons of Anarchy, Dexter, Kenny Powers, the lead characters in Justified, Hell On Wheels etc... I imagine the people who'd get behind those types of characters would see the squeaky-clean image of Cena as rather lame and child-like in comparison. Â The WWE is such a unique show, there really isn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joey Joe Joe Jr Posted December 20, 2012 Share Posted December 20, 2012 The WWE is such a unique show, there really isn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members ShortOrderCook Posted December 20, 2012 Paid Members Share Posted December 20, 2012 It definitely is its entirely own unique species. The very fact it's called and described as pro wrestling I think is a confusing and misleading representation of what it actually is. And why I think the move away from calling it wrestling and the development of the term WWE Universe was actually a wise move. Although that has now evolved into a generic term for the audience, rather than WWEs crazy, unique world. I've said this many, many times but I believe wrestling is best represented as a sort of live action comic book. Superhero come to life. The two boom periods were exactly that. And some of the guys are as close to superhuman as you're going to get. Â The point of making the TV more storyline driven like TV show series' is something I've long thought should be experimented and developed on too. I'd definitely like to see that idea experimented with and developed, even if it's not WWE. I thought that Wrestling Revolution Project deal may have been going down such a route and with their promotional pics thought it may be something right up my alley with comic book style characters. I definitely think the tv needs to be episodic in the way it's presented and written. The reason why the Punk angle and elements of the attitude era appealed to me were because, I saw the potential in a long storyline with Punk, I understand why it didn't happen that way, I still don't agree with it. In the attitude era the Sting transforming into Crow Sting was awesome, in WWE the 1998 Highway to Hell story that ended encompassing much of the roster was fantastic telly. Both were pure comic book. Big blockbusters today and since forever like The Dark Knight and popular TV shows like Lost are totally pro-wrestling. A wrestling organisation presenting itself in season/series formula or a comic book, with the writing having a clear end point of each and being episodic and consistent in reaching that goal point is something I'd love to see experimented with. Â Frankly, wrestling needs an off-season. For several reasons. It's something I think one day, maybe long from now may be forced to occur. If it was to have that, it would make such a format more practical to apply. I'd certainly welcome it being given a shot anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators PowerButchi Posted December 20, 2012 Moderators Share Posted December 20, 2012 I still maintain that the greatest pro wrestling TV show of all time was Oz. That drama was pro wrestling at it's utterl best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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