The Official UKFF RAW Thread...

[Guest]

shitty-arsed Raw is the precise reason I never bothered to get into Breaking Bad or anything like that. Fool to myself really but ah well.

Edited October 15, 2015 by sj5522

[HarmonicGenerator]

I'd ride the superhero trend if I were them, while it's still a moneymaker. I'm not saying go full on ALIENS! GODS AMONG US! GIANT EXPLOSIONS! but there is plenty of inspiration they could take from the MCU. They've got the talent, just brighten them up and make them full on characters rather than 'bloke who wrestles'.

[Undefeated Steak]

Bring colour back. We've seen the Hogan/Warrior pictures from back in the day and they're fucking beautiful. It's what kids believe in, and what we want to believe in too. The likes of Daniel Bryan and CM Punk would've been great if they were supporting proper stars but they're never gonna carry the company on their own. It's the same as Edge, Eddie and the rest of them. We suspend our disbelief when Austin, Rock, Lesnar, and Savage are on TV. Because they're larger than life.

 

Cena's awesome and could've been one of the best if Orton pulled his weight and Batista stuck around, but we're flogging a dead horse, waiting for the Rumble each year. I watched a random Raven/Sandman match the other night and the characters blew me away. Because they had personalities. The wrestling was shite but you rooted for the action.

 

Raw's been the same game for over a decade now. None of us watch Smackdown anymore and we're the hardcore internet fans. We cling to the next hopeful, praying that a Finn Balor or Samoa Joe will echo in the next great ero. But it's a bigger case than that. The internet's awash with people complaining about their product. Ratings are in the drain. The internet isn't what it was in 2004. 90% of fans these days have a voice on the net. If China or India put some money into a fed then Vince would be fucked. Thankfully for him, he's only competing with JJ, Dixie and the rest of the regression crew.

 

It's been said countless times but they need competition. Non of the wrestlers have any confidence these days .In the 70's, 80's, and 90's, you had guys doing the most mental things imaginable on the road but now a wrestler's spare time is spent in front of a green screen, promoting a YouTube channel and hoping he doesn't get sacked,

Secondary competition is the quickest way to improving WWE's product. Scarcity is shit for any market. 

[UK Kat Von D]

How the fuck do you practically make carny wrestling into nuanced, intricate Breaking Bad/GOT style episodic television and keep everyone on board? This always gets mentioned and I just don't think its possible.

 

The market they're aiming at is kids and adult morons anyway, and I doubt they'd be into such a thing. I (being one of those adult morons) definitely wouldn't!

Well I did finish on the note that I don't think it's possible, that's just the what WWE would have to do to keep up. To put out three hours a week with that level attention to detail and thought process would be a huge huge task.

 

Their best bet would be a massive writing team, split into pairs where everyone is given the role of planning stories for a small group of wrestlers. So you have some people working on the main stories, some on the tag division, women's and so forth. If you are only booking for a few people more time can be spent working on them. Send two blokes off to spend all week working on just Reigns and Ambrose vs The Wyatts. If that is their only focus there is no reason why they shouldn't come up with something far more interesting than what we have.

One guy at the top acting as editor sifting through the shit and collecting it all into one show. At the moment it seems like they have a kitchen where 20 chefs crowd around making one dish. Just delegate different wrestlers to different writers. Would create competition within the writing team and make everyone pull their finger out. Set the brass ring of "if you book something awesome between R-Truth and Sandow, maybe one day you will be booking for Cena and Lesnar."

 

Right now they appeal to the easiest markets. Kids who will always like wrestling and life long fans who will put up with anything. If they want to push numbers up they need to bring in more people, not cater to the ones who aren't going anywhere.

 

Obviously main stream shows that are popular have a lot less content to put out, so they can cram a lot in. On the other hand WWE have very little story spread out over a huge amount of TV time. Lucha Underground was able to do it in my opinion, but they had 40 minutes over 40 episodes to work with.

Edited October 15, 2015 by UK Kat Von D

[King Pitcos]

Now people watch stuff like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones but wrestling doesn't reflect that. People love superheros again, but the closest we have is Neville wearing a cape and Stardust acting like a nutter.

We live in a time where everyone binge watches series, it's the norm to stick on a TV show and just watch several series in a month. Getting people to watch 3 hours or Raw every week shouldn't be that hard.

 

There's something in that -- Raw has been the same for about 18 years now. The levels of lighting and obscenity have changed, but the format hasn't really. And in that time, the TV landscape has changed massively.

 

But as someone above said, wrestling isn't necessarily the same audience as Breaking Bad. Wrestling is always tawdry shite, and lucked into tawdry shite being the big thing for a bit. But if WWE brass sat down and tried to figure out a long story arc, it's plagued with problems. You've got the thing that Dirty Eddie mentioned, where sticking to plans means fucking over new things that come up. Wrestling is a unique thing, in the sense that it's a weekly live panto. That means the instant feedback is a bit different, and it means that it's always going to be laughable to an adult with sense.

 

If they plotted a year-long intricate story arc with nuance and depth, it's more likely to turn off the three million Billy-Joe Hicktards currently watching than it is to gain three million Guardian reader Tarquins. Obviously, you're not suggesting it has to be on the same level of those shows in terms of sophistication, but it would have to be a lot more sophisticated than it is now. And Vince would lose his bottle the week before the story's endgame anyway and abandon the plan because some cunt boos the person he wants them to cheer.

 

I'm sure one of the ex-writers mentioned pitching these kind of ideas in an interview once, and it was just impossible because you'd get into work the second week and find they've decided to drop it.

[UK Kat Von D]

Sadly I don't think it's an achievable goal. People want shows that need to see every episode of to understand. They want can't miss drama. I hardly ever watch Raw and I know I'm not missing anything. Miss two episodes of orange is the new black and I won't have a clue what is going on.

 

If WWE can't provide that they are best off riding it out for a few years until pop culture moves onto the next thing, which will hopefully be something they can latch onto and ride into another boom period.

Edited October 15, 2015 by UK Kat Von D

[Dirty Eddie]

Sadly I don't think it's an achievable goal. People want shows that need to see every episode of to understand. They want can't miss drama. I hardly ever watch Raw and I know I'm not missing anything. Miss two episodes of orange is the new black and I won't have a clue what is going on.

 

I actually think that is possible, but it doesn't necessarily have to be super intricate or clever. They just need to start doing things that actually create change.

 

Take the example of the Batista/Evolution/HHH split. It wasn't all that clever or intricate - there were no deeply hidden messages that the fans had to closely scrutinize to see what was going on, as it all played out like a panto; Batista was slowly getting wise to the idea that Triple H was scared of him and was doing everything he could (along with Flair) to keep him on side. We had super obvious shots of Batista hiding outside a locker-room overhearing their snide plans with a little knowing smile on his face. Everyone with half a brain knew what was going on, but we enjoyed it all the same and it built anticipation for the moment when Dave finally said "fuck you guys, I'm coming for YOUR belt". It was hardly Shakespeare, but it created a new, layered character from the once one-dimensional enforcer of Evolution. The splitting of the group led to a new babyface superstar and we were tuning in each week hoping for the moment when it was all going to kick-off.

 

The problem they've had for years now is that almost no-one and nothing leads to any real change. Look at Bray Wyatt - for all his talk about brainwashing the masses and altering people's destiny, he's achieved fuck all and his character is the same nonsense-spouting weirdo he was the day he debuted. Not one of his opponents has been altered by their conflict and the only change in Bray is a new silly hat to walk out with.

 

Cena is also a big part of it, with his mantra of "Rising above hate" meaning that essentially whatever happens to him, he'll be the exact same bloke the week later; big smile on his face, hustle, loyalty, respect and "aren't the WWE Universe a great bunch of lads". If you can't do anything to piss the bloke off, rile him up or get under his skin - what's the bloody point! If they edited in a generic Cena interview from 2009 to this week's RAW broadcast I bet half the audience at home would barely notice. Rock, Austin, Michaels, Flair, Hogan, Luger, Angle and Hart all had top runs as both face and heel, with often very different characters at play, this meant they didn't feel so samey and dull all the time and even gave a different vibe to matches we'd seen before where the face/heel dynamic has changed around. I understand the business reasons for keeping Cena babyface, but creatively it's a massive wasted opportunity for both him and any other face characters that they want at the very top.

 

We've had GM's and Authority figures in charge for what feels like an eternity, and when they try to "shake things up" and the Big Bad Evil gets booted from power, it's a matter of weeks or (if we're lucky) months before there's another Big Bad Evil in charge doing the exact same thing. The Anonymous GM was about the only time they tried something different and they couldn't even be bothered to think of a fucking payoff for the whole boring thing!

 

People and things need to change and evolve. We need fun stories with payoffs that will actually lead somewhere, rather than endless series of matches until they get bored of it. They need to shake the presentation up; give me a RAW that starts abruptly with a brawl taking place in the car park, or have the show go off the air with people fighting through the stands while the announcers lose their minds, rather than having every week end with either heels posing after a generic in-ring beatdown or with two people staring at each other while Michael Cole pretends to be excited.

[Guest]

This conversation reminds me of my experience dipping into LU with Ultima Lucha. There was some really cool action on the show and everything, but when it came to the segments, they felt all intricate and different I didn't know what the fuck to make of em - like who the fuck's that spooky bloke, why aren't the lights turned on. I watch Raw most weeks, but if I don't for a couple months or even years like I have done, the spoon-fed format of the show would get me back on track easily.

 

Great point about the Batista turn. Everyone and their dog saw it coming, but we all wanted to see it too. Nowadays you have like that Sting promo "Rollins will never be half the man Triple H is!" out of nowhere and it's like, oh that's gonna happen i suppose.

Never been a subtle business but it could do simple things right most of the time.

Edited October 15, 2015 by sj5522

[DraxSpago]

Bring colour back

Yeah that's about it, disagree with a lot of what you said but that bit stands

[Daaaaaad!]

 

Bring colour back

Yeah that's about it, disagree with a lot of what you said but that bit stands

?

[DraxSpago]

 

 

Bring colour back

Yeah that's about it, disagree with a lot of what you said but that bit stands

?

 

 

Ha it's not a bad idea taking it that way, get The Rock back, being on Raw every week would actually be a step up from being in that hideous Ballers

[DJM]

People and things need to change and evolve. We need fun stories with payoffs that will actually lead somewhere, rather than endless series of matches until they get bored of it. They need to shake the presentation up; give me a RAW that starts abruptly with a brawl taking place in the car park, or have the show go off the air with people fighting through the stands while the announcers lose their minds, rather than having every week end with either heels posing after a generic in-ring beatdown or with two people staring at each other while Michael Cole pretends to be excited.

 

They did change it up a bit as few weeks back with the Reign/Wyatt brawl and both ending up going through a table to end the show, but I do agree that having something different to start and end the show would be great.

[air_raid]

 

Bring colour back

Yeah that's about it, disagree with a lot of what you said but that bit stands

 

 

What's that? Disagree with you lot? Bit racist.

[handspants]

 

Ha it's not a bad idea taking it that way, get The Rock back, being on Raw every week would actually be a step up from being in that hideous Ballers

 

I don't think you got the joke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqvye4yaHAI

[simonworden]

Someone made a point here a few months back when ambrose was hot in his feud with Rollins that they should have put a sign up saying "ambrose always wins" meaning they often look strong in some capacity not necessarily winning which is definitely what they need to do with a few of the guys they want to or could get to main event level

 

However it would be nice if next to that sign there was a "if segment one or last segment are the same 2 weeks running then Vince fires you". Back in the day my dad used to joke when I would wat smack down Saturday mornings on sky 1 that it was always 30 minutes of talking. Now I see his point. How often does raw open with a hot match. Hell they could even have it started and show a reply of a hit dive or something that happened during the credits. Cole can say how the fans were to excited to wait any longer or something. Endings should always give you a reason to tune into the next show they want you to. It should almost always be an EastEnders style thud thud thud that goes off in your head most weeks and happy endings should be saved for ppv and the very occasional raw