Bringing back the Attitude era

[garynysmon]

Its more than introducing more interviews and promos isn't it. Back then they were more organic and weren't scripted pretty much word for word. 

[Sergio Mendacious]

You boring sod, Gary. You've killed this thread, you have.

 

There would definitely be a wrestler who teabags people in the back and takes a pic, but no-one can tell who it is.

[King Pitcos]

This is years out of date. The audience cares more about the current roster than they have for years. No one was hijacking Raw to get Kenzo Suzuki into the WrestleMania main event, nor was there ever a chance that the crowd would organically start holding up their phones in unison during Mordecai's entrance every week. Of course there are exceptions but for the most part all of the key players on the current roster connect with the audience.

You're comparing main event apples with lowercard comedy apples, when the problem cases are the ones in between. The issue isn't with Cena, Bryan, The Shield etc or with Damien Sandow, Hornswoggle, Heath Slater etc. The issue is with the likes of Kofi Kingston, Cesaro, Ziggler, Big E, Sheamus etc. All of whom do pretty much nothing but wrestle matches that nobody cares about. These are the guys you need to build up enough as interesting characters to be your TV opponents for Cena, Reigns, Wyatt etc so that the big names aren't burning out every combination week after week. Occasionally, you need wrestlers at that lower level to headline your B tour as well, like Ziggler had to do a couple of weeks back.

[PowerButchi]

Always felt the missed the boat on Sheamus. When he was first turned face it looked good, shit before he even turned face properly the crowd went mad for him interrupting a (great) Mark Henry promo. I think the crowd were ready to buy him as arough and ready Irish brawler. I'd have had him enjoying a pint too. Instead of the bloke that tells stories off Jakers! The Adventures of Piggly Winks before 15 minute second hour throwaway hell.

[Liam O'Rourke]

I think the Sheamus thing touches on the real issue. It's not the amount of promo time, it's not how vulgar the content is or isn't - everybody is on the show feels like they're acting to try fit into something they're not. Sheamus feels like the most one-dimensional guy in the world, that if you seen one match or promo you've seen and heard everything he has. The only exception to this is Lesnar, and it stands out like a neon light on a dog's asshole.

 

They need to loosen the reigns and let guys be themselves a bit more. The one dimensional vision for these character will never, ever come across as cool, and one of the biggest underrated things about wrestling being successful in the modern era is when the main stars are actually fucking cool. Who's cool in WWE? The closest you have is Ambrose, and he's standing out like crazy lately and getting crowd reactions above his push because of it.

[Chest Rockwell]

Acting coaches and a bigger writing staff, I reckon... better plan than just letting them walk out there and say any old bollocks which will be awful and massively amateurish.

 

I really do think the hardest problem they have in this is getting the right balance in the writing, which has become more evident as the sheer volume of content they are producing has gone up. They want to treat it more like normal episodical TV, but it all has to be underpinned by pro-wrestling rules and logic and they just haven't quite been able to hit that balance.

 

They seem to need someone with some creative vision they can trust.

[Undefeated Steak]

If they can't do attitude then they need to go colourful. There's no point sitting in this faux reality rut that they're in. Give Miz a hard hat and a tool box. Give Ziggler face paint and some juggling balls. Get Batista wearing some Warrior tassels. Bring Boogeyman back. The mid carders these days are more talented wrestling wise than probably any generation before them but I can't remember a time when the mid card was so bland and indistinguishable.

 

A colour era would look great on HD.

 

We've got Lesnar on top. How much more real do you need on your show?

[King Pitcos]

Apparently the writing staff now is massive, or was until the layoffs a couple of weeks back. I think it is more a case of nobody really having much of a vision for the product in general, it's just "what have we got for Cena/Reigns/Rollins/Wyatt this week?" and everybody else gets their names picked out of a hat for matches. I reckon they should have two writers who only concentrate on that midcard/upper midcard level of guys, and to be fair, they have had a bit of a go at making a feud for Ziggler and Miz. It's not great, but it's a start.

[Vamp]

They simply have way, way, way too many hours to fill. 

[King Pitcos]

They have six hours a week of programming, and ten times the writing staff that WCW had when they were doing five. Considering that a fair bit of that time is wrestling matches as well, and then a substantial part is spent on replays and commentators bickering/plugging, the writers don't have to come up with all that much content. They certainly don't seem to operate like a standard writing team, cracking stories and outlines and whatnot. This year probably hasn't been as bad as last year for the bland filler, but a lot of the time it's hard to see anything in the shows that justifies twenty odd people working a seventy hour week or whatever stupid hours they're on.

[Undefeated Steak]

They simply have way, way, way too many hours to fill. 

 

Definitely. They wouldn't have got half the 1999 roster over with this amount of weekly programming.

 

I always thought two hours was too long for a weekly show. 90 minutes is about perfect. Three hours is just way, way too much and that's before Smackdown, NXT, Superstars and Main Event.

 

Oversaturation is easily the biggest problem creatively now.

[King Pitcos]

They had almost the same amount of hours in (the second half of) 1999. Two hours Raw, two hours Smackdown, one hour Heat, and if you're counting Superstars now, might as well count the hour of Shotgun Challenge Metal Jakked in the attitude era. And in those days, Heat probably had more going on than Smackdown does now. And that was with a much smaller writing crew.

 

NXT isn't written by the WWE creative team, it has its own writers.

[Undefeated Steak]

They had almost the same amount of hours in (the second half of) 1999. Two hours Raw, two hours Smackdown, one hour Heat, and if you're counting Superstars now, might as well count the hour of Shotgun Challenge Metal Jakked in the attitude era. And in those days, Heat probably had more going on than Smackdown does now.

 

NXT isn't written by the WWE creative team, it has its own writers.

 

I did wonder halfway through typing my post actually whether there really is that much more programming now or whether it just feels like there is. You confirmed my suspicion. It doesn't feel that way though.