RIP Brian Pillman - 20 years

[BomberPat]

1 hour ago, tiger_rick said:

I think you've named three examples of what I mean.

Yeah, I think we're just sort of approaching it from different angles. I'm not as bothered by the charity stuff, and so on, and am more interested in how they can use the likes of Twitter, Total Divas and Ride Along or whatever to further storylines - I'm thinking of the aborted Ambrose/Foley feud from FCW, that was almost entirely carried out over Twitter.

They're getting there with NXT - instead of backstage segments where the camera crew just happens to be there to catch, and film perfectly for TV, a conversation between two wrestlers, it tends to be a, "our cameras caught up with so-and-so at the Performance Center this week", which - even though it's pre-recorded - feels so much more spontaneous and real. They did a similar thing with Ambrose and Lesnar, where they put a video on social media of Lesnar attacking Ambrose in the car park about half an hour before RAW.

I love stuff like that, because one of the biggest problems with the suspension of disbelief required to buy into wrestling is that we're expected to believe two people are in a blood feud, can't wait to tear each other limb from limb, but they'll wait until Monday evening every week to do it. Between WWE's YouTube account, the Network, social media, and the insane amount of TV hours they have, they have so many ways to tell stories outside of that convention, and with those aspects like social media and Total Divas that are ostensibly more "real", so many ways to work people without them realising they're getting worked.

I'm a firm believer in two things in wrestling - number one is that it's emotional investment that makes money; convincing people that what they're seeing is "real" isn't the only way to get that investment, but it's a big one. Number two is that boom periods in wrestling come when wrestling embraces changes in media and presentation - and WWE have followed the same format for 15-20 years for their flagship TV shows, and it looks stale and staid, that's half the battle.

The WWF in the '80s worked because they were bigger and glitzier than anywhere else, in the Attitude Era because they were grittier and in tune with the zeitgeist, WCCW and Memphis embraced music videos in their presentation, WCCW and Mid-South took advantage of editing and cutting footage to create more exciting TV than the static single camera presentation that came before them, ECW took its low budget and made it a positive in terms of presentation, and so on and so on - WWE make a song and dance about social media and, with the Network, have the most amazing tool available to them, but they're still producing TV with the same formats, the same camera angles, and so on, as they were a decade ago. If you tune in today, it's too easy to just think "same old shit" before even giving them a chance.

[Supremo]

I completely agree about social media. They wank themselves dry about it all the time, yet don't utilise it anywhere near enough. I still think one of the best things they did during the Summer of Punk was when CM Punk invaded that panel they had at Comic Con. With everyone having mobile phones it went viral and felt way more real than their usual storylines. Totally the type of thing Pillman would've done, too. Clever, out of the box stuff.