The Official UKFF RAW Thread...

[scotswizard]

Oh I agree with you there. Chris Benoit going loopy changed everything. Now don't get me wrong. I didn't care about Benoit one bit, I was not a fan at all but you are right, that caused a lot of changes and they were good changes. You're right a lot of guys were roided up and that's not always a good thing. I can't argue with that at all. All i meant was wrestling was always built on guys being larger than life. When I said that I didn't mean muscle mass, I just meant people with big personalities, people that walked and talked and acted different. They were like cartoon characters. Like Enzo in WWE, he's not a big guy but I would say he's larger than life. That's what I meant. People that you wouldn't normally see in everyday life.

 

And the thing is with the steroids, wrestling is a show. It's not a real sport so it's not like any wrestlers are benefitting from it. It really is just for show so I'm not against guys looking that way because it's a work. There's no real competition involved.

 

 

I look at Smackdown getting less than 5,000 paying fans for their TV tapings in arenas setup for 10,000 and 15,000 fans. I see house shows drawing as little as 3 and 4,000 fans. I see less than 3 million people watching Raw in America when 15 years ago we had around 10 million watching WWF and WCW on the same night at the same time. I see live sports in America regularly drawing over 10 million viewers, Walking Dead drew 17 million viewers for it's premiere, so it's not like people are watching TV on their phones like Triple H wants you to believe, no no  Americans are more than capable of sitting in front of their big screen TVs when they can be arsed to. My opinion is only my opinion, all the numbers back me up. Wrestling viewers have fallen off a cliff. All that backs me up.

 

 

Do you want to know why that is? Because out of all the millions of people in this world only a tiny amount will sit and watch fake scripted wrestling matches for longer than 5 minutes. But here's the thing, when you start giving them characters, and larger than life personalities and a REASON to fight, in other words they do a bit of acting, guess what? Now you have people interested. It's like the cinema. Many people don't believe in aliens or ghosts or monsters under the bed and time travel and science fiction and mobsters and gangsters but....if you give them good actors and a good storyline and you dress it up well? Millions of people will not only be interested in watching it but they will PAY MONEY to go watch it. Wrestling is the same way. When you dress it up with wrestlers with personality and they can talk and act and they have all these storylines making them all interact with each other and they're against each other and backstabbing and taking sides it makes the whole thing more interesting, all of a sudden people wanna see that match, see who wins, see what happens to the loser of the match cause they're so interested in these people that it doesn't matter if the match isn't real, they want to know what's gonna happen when they get in the ring. That's what wrestling was always about.

 

And the WWE has stripped that away and when you strip all that away what are you left with? Just regular looking guys that have mostly realistic sounding names, in speedos and boots in a scripted match. Nothing dressing it up. Who's gonna watch that? Wrestling fans. How many wrestling fans are there in the world? Not very many that's how many. But it's just like the movies and any other TV show, you take a story that is completely fictional and you have good actors and you open the whole thing up to everyone. But just don't basic 1970s wrestling? The only people that will watch are wrestling fans and they are few and far between but you all know that right? Most of you work right? You have family right? You know that. Do they talk to you about wrestling? What names do they throw at you? Rock? Austin? McMahon? The last time wrestling was really good? Yeah I thought so. No Kevin Owens or Nevilles no? Didn't think so. Facts are facts guys.

 

 

It's already a niche product and some of you are holding it back further, you are killing it. Do you know that? Do any of you even realise that? You are literally killing and ruining a business that millions of people loved watched. Millions of us loved watching wrestling and you've watered it right down to acrobatics and encouraged, how it happened I don't know but somehow Vince McMahon has allowed that indy style onto his main programming and less and less people are watching. Wrestling used to be enjoyed by many many people and it saddens me to see where it is now. It's like you have to ruin a good thing. Like the NXT crowd wanting to keep NXT to themselves, that's what it's like. It's like all the wrestling fans wanting to keep wrestling for themselves and no else can enjoy it, no one else is allowed to enjoy it or watch it. Shawn Michaels was spot on. There's a reason why you don't see him on WWE TV anymore or Steve Austin or the Undertaker or many other legends, they know the score, they know how far it's fallen. It's not wrestling. It's acrobatics. They're well away from it.

[Guest]

The Attitude Era had a target audience of 18-34 yr olds.

So they say. The kids, like everyone else, were watching that stuff more than ever, taking notes on everything for usage on the playground. I reckon their real target audience for the whole attitude era product was about 12-26. Everyone was a cool rebel who swore and liked South Park, no doubt they wanted to especially excite the pubescent side of the audience

[Guest]

See the thing with Enzo is, he's obviously not an "everyday" sort of character but a big part of the appeal to me has been that reminds me of a local "character" in my town. He's a late 30's, possibly in his 40's now, old white hip-hop head (real hip hop, yo, like Public Enemy, not none of that Little Wayne shit), and can be really cringey, but is harmless, charismatic and funny as fuck. So when I cheer on Enzo, part of me is actually cheering my boy Jono from Stowmarket. It's not that different to how somebody might live vicariously through a Sami Zayn or a Bayley cos they see themselves in them

[Rosler28]

I agree with the characters aspect, WWE's gone too close to being realistic like mma with normal sized men with normal sounding names. That's why Matt Hardy with his gimmick is a fresh breathe of air. He hardly wrestles, but his character gets you hooked in with what hes doing.

[Zaheer]

 

With less and less people watching in America and the Sky Sports ratings being down significantly from last year, I really think that wrestling's time has been and gone.

 

Hahahahahha. Please tell me this is a joke?

People clearly don't know how business works... Or how companies adapt in line with current trends. People judging ratings from 15 or so years ago like the world hasn't changed boggles the mind. Things change.

 

It's like saying because Blockbuster went out of business that must mean no one watches movies anymore.

 

A major factor also seems to be there's too much TV to fill. For the business, yes, but we are not obligated to watch every single minute of TV. I've not watched a single episode of the new smackdown live, however it's not stopped me from enjoying every single Smackdown only pay per view so far

 

.

[Guest]

There's hardly a bad word I can say about Smackdown Live that isn't "Mojo" tbh, it's a really good show

 

btw have they stopped doing the Slammys now? thought that was a December thing. not a complaint, they were normally fairly shite

[Jazzy G]

I think lower ratings may be in part to do with how media is consumed nowadays. Why watch Raw live when you can watch a streamlined, edited version on Hulu the day after? By 2020 RV as we know it might be dead, and it may just be that what you want to watch is available to be watched on demand from that time on that day. Let the TV deals expire and stick Raw & Smackdown on the Network. I don't think it's just the Wrestling, but most TV shows. On Demand viewing fits in better with most people's lives nowadays. As nice as it is to be able to channel hop, I  can see a time when new stuff gets stuck online, then the TV channels themselves become even more of a cycle of repeats, with the possible exception of sports and news channels.

[DavidB6937]

I hate how much I have to scroll because of scotswizard.

[Wrasslin]

I don't even think he's a real wizard.

[Jazzy G]

At least stick a tl:dr at the end?

[tiger_rick]

Like his massive posts in the other thread, scotswizard actually makes some good points. But he's not going to win any friends by pretending that he's somehow intellectual and everyone else watching is a muppet. Or making his fucking stupid sweeping statements. The legitimate problems he points out have been discused on here for most of the past 15 years time and time again.

 

No one is blind to the flaws. But people still watching get enough out of it to make it worthwhile. Maybe it's those really good matches that no one has ever re-watched.

 

What I do know is that scotswizard must watch a hell of a lot to pick out all these flaws. Can't understand why he's so stupid as to still be watching.

[Sphinx]

It's already a niche product and some of you are holding it back further, you are killing it. Do you know that? Do any of you even realise that? You are literally killing and ruining a business that millions of people loved watched.

I know some of you on here obviously take wrestling very seriously.

[Merzbow]

The boy needs to take some lessons from his pal Russo, stop watching the product and he'll feel so much better.

[Onyx2]

Blimey, Zaheer is still around!

 

Raw is much more palatable if you watch that clever half hour version someone on YouTube makes. Like Smackdown at the moment just belts along.

[King Pitcos]

I think lower ratings may be in part to do with how media is consumed nowadays. Why watch Raw live when you can watch a streamlined, edited version on Hulu the day after? By 2020 RV as we know it might be dead, and it may just be that what you want to watch is available to be watched on demand from that time on that day. Let the TV deals expire and stick Raw & Smackdown on the Network. I don't think it's just the Wrestling, but most TV shows. On Demand viewing fits in better with most people's lives nowadays. As nice as it is to be able to channel hop, I can see a time when new stuff gets stuck online, then the TV channels themselves become even more of a cycle of repeats, with the possible exception of sports and news channels.

The TV rights are the biggest revenue stream they've got. The network subscriptions would never remotely compensate for losing that, especially when lack of TV exposure would mean fewer influx of new fans than at any other time since the national expansion decades ago.