The beginning of the end of the glory days of big-time wrestling was the late 90s when Vince Russo took over the book at WCW, leading to the most preposterous television shows that had ever aired on national television up to that point in time. The end of that era, and to me the beginning of the modern age of wrestling, was right around 2001 when WCW died. The last ten years, at least on a major league level between TNA and WWE, have been a progressively-expanding logical disaster, and unfortunately, when your average person thinks of pro-wrestling in 2011, they think of those two companies, not ROH or DGUSA or Chikara or mid-’00s Ohio Valley Wrestling where the bookers still did their best to have their storylines make some sort of sense.
I use the term "storyline" all the time, but that term is preposterous nowadays when used in reference to pro-wrestling. Unless a guy like Shawn Michaels or Chris Jericho is put in charge of creating their own storylines, storylines don't really exist anymore. A true storyline has a beginning, a middle and an end. I literally cannot think of a single storyline in TNA in the last ten years that really had a beginning, a middle and an end. Often they have a beginning and sometimes a middle. They never have an ending. If there is an ending, there was no beginning or middle. WWE is a little better, but only because nowadays people compare them to TNA. If you compared WWE booking today to the booking of any major promotion prior to about 1997 WWE would look completely inept. But the standards have dropped so far with their "competition" that when only 10 percent of their angles make sense, well, that's still about 10 percent better than TNA is doing. So it's kind of ridiculous to reference a "storyline" on Raw, Smackdown or Impact in 2011. You're better off referencing "shit that happened." A guy turned. Someone beat up someone else. Someone won a belt. A promo was cut. Shit just happened.
Wrestling used to be considered "mindless entertainment." The funny thing is, when I go to Cauliflower Alley or other get-togethers and I see older, long-time fans, they're some of the smartest people I know. When I think of guys who have been around forever, like Dave Meltzer, Kurt Brown, Steve Sims, Bruce Mitchell, Steve Yohe and so on and so forth, these are smart fucking people. These are not people who would be fans for decades of something where when they watched it, it made no sense and they felt stupid for doing so. But that's exactly what is happening to wrestling.
TNA can do all the rebranding they want, but it's a lost cause. The storylines make absolutely no sense, the characters act completely illogically, you are never rewarded for thinking during the show, and, in fact, it is actually to your detriment if you try to think about it or make sense of things. Every week I write the Impact report and I'm just blown away by how stupid everything is. If you want to be nice and say some of the matches are good or sometimes you'll get a good promo, that's all fine and dandy, but the complete absence of logic up and down the show is overwhelming. There is literally no hope for this promotion in its current state.
WWE is not quite as bad, but again, we're grading on a curve in 2011. There is, however, still hope. Every now and then you'll get something resembling a storyline that pays off, although, to be honest, that's usually only during the "WrestleMania season." The rest of the year is a crapshoot, and more often than not angles will be dropped (remember Drew and Kelly? just as a single example of many), plans will be changed, and if you pay any sort of attention you'll get pissed off. But it's not nearly the lost cause that TNA has become, and because WWE is far and away the biggest and most popular wrestling company worldwide they've got a fanbase that will give them more chances than they will anyone else.
Ironically, the anti-intellectualism that we see with WWE today is probably tied to Vince McMahon's growing anti-wrestling stance. He got rid of wrestling bookers, people who had great minds for wrestling, and brought in writers. Granted, some of the writers in the last decade had good minds for wrestling, but many did not, largely because Vince wanted people who were, essentially, only casual fans. Being a hardcore wrestling fan was actually a DETRIMENT to you if you were trying to get hired to work for WWE, a concept that would be mind-boggling to your average person. "If you know the subject matter," Vince McMahon essentially said, "you are unqualified for the job." So instead of people who understand wrestling writing wrestling, the majority of them don't understand wrestling and so they're creating a product that is quite alien to fans who have followed wrestling for years.
Vince McMahon never used to be embarrassed to be labeled a wrestling promoter. Sure, he wanted to do other things and be known for more, and he was trying to introduce "sports entertainment" as a term over a decade ago, but it wasn't until fairly recently that he got really weird about all sorts of wrestling-related terms, including the word "wrestling" itself. And what's funny is that the reason the wrestling business is viewed the way it is today, outside of real-life things like wrestlers getting busted for drugs and dying, is not because of the actual in-ring wrestling that happens bell-to-bell, but because of stupid storyline stuff like Trish Stratus barking like a dog, Vince pulling down his pants and having people kiss his ass, heels making fun of dead people, people humping corpses, and terrorist angles the week of a London bombing.
WWE is never going to be Cirque du Soleil. But you know what Cirque du Soleil is? It's a glorified circus with super high production values. Nobody looks at Cirque as an anti-intellectual endeavor attended only by the dregs of society. It's a pretty fucking big deal, especially in Vegas, they travel all over the world touring, men and women of all ages love it, and it's THE CIRCUS.
WWE has a lot of similar characteristics outside it's carnival roots. Good-looking bodies, super high production values, colorful characters and athleticism. They also have something Cirque doesn't have, the ability to be more than a touring company. They have national TV, a platform to get people to sit at home every single month if they'd like, get involved in interesting storylines, and pay money to sit at home and watch those storylines play out every month in high-def. When you really sit and think about what WWE has the potential to be, and then you think about what they are today and what the results of that poll tell you about what has happened to their audience over the years, it's actually really sad. And the indications certainly are that it's only going to stray farther away from its own potential ideal, further towards a product that even many of its most hardcore fans don't really like to watch anymore.
I use the term "storyline" all the time, but that term is preposterous nowadays when used in reference to pro-wrestling. Unless a guy like Shawn Michaels or Chris Jericho is put in charge of creating their own storylines, storylines don't really exist anymore. A true storyline has a beginning, a middle and an end. I literally cannot think of a single storyline in TNA in the last ten years that really had a beginning, a middle and an end. Often they have a beginning and sometimes a middle. They never have an ending. If there is an ending, there was no beginning or middle. WWE is a little better, but only because nowadays people compare them to TNA. If you compared WWE booking today to the booking of any major promotion prior to about 1997 WWE would look completely inept. But the standards have dropped so far with their "competition" that when only 10 percent of their angles make sense, well, that's still about 10 percent better than TNA is doing. So it's kind of ridiculous to reference a "storyline" on Raw, Smackdown or Impact in 2011. You're better off referencing "shit that happened." A guy turned. Someone beat up someone else. Someone won a belt. A promo was cut. Shit just happened.
Wrestling used to be considered "mindless entertainment." The funny thing is, when I go to Cauliflower Alley or other get-togethers and I see older, long-time fans, they're some of the smartest people I know. When I think of guys who have been around forever, like Dave Meltzer, Kurt Brown, Steve Sims, Bruce Mitchell, Steve Yohe and so on and so forth, these are smart fucking people. These are not people who would be fans for decades of something where when they watched it, it made no sense and they felt stupid for doing so. But that's exactly what is happening to wrestling.
TNA can do all the rebranding they want, but it's a lost cause. The storylines make absolutely no sense, the characters act completely illogically, you are never rewarded for thinking during the show, and, in fact, it is actually to your detriment if you try to think about it or make sense of things. Every week I write the Impact report and I'm just blown away by how stupid everything is. If you want to be nice and say some of the matches are good or sometimes you'll get a good promo, that's all fine and dandy, but the complete absence of logic up and down the show is overwhelming. There is literally no hope for this promotion in its current state.
WWE is not quite as bad, but again, we're grading on a curve in 2011. There is, however, still hope. Every now and then you'll get something resembling a storyline that pays off, although, to be honest, that's usually only during the "WrestleMania season." The rest of the year is a crapshoot, and more often than not angles will be dropped (remember Drew and Kelly? just as a single example of many), plans will be changed, and if you pay any sort of attention you'll get pissed off. But it's not nearly the lost cause that TNA has become, and because WWE is far and away the biggest and most popular wrestling company worldwide they've got a fanbase that will give them more chances than they will anyone else.
Ironically, the anti-intellectualism that we see with WWE today is probably tied to Vince McMahon's growing anti-wrestling stance. He got rid of wrestling bookers, people who had great minds for wrestling, and brought in writers. Granted, some of the writers in the last decade had good minds for wrestling, but many did not, largely because Vince wanted people who were, essentially, only casual fans. Being a hardcore wrestling fan was actually a DETRIMENT to you if you were trying to get hired to work for WWE, a concept that would be mind-boggling to your average person. "If you know the subject matter," Vince McMahon essentially said, "you are unqualified for the job." So instead of people who understand wrestling writing wrestling, the majority of them don't understand wrestling and so they're creating a product that is quite alien to fans who have followed wrestling for years.
Vince McMahon never used to be embarrassed to be labeled a wrestling promoter. Sure, he wanted to do other things and be known for more, and he was trying to introduce "sports entertainment" as a term over a decade ago, but it wasn't until fairly recently that he got really weird about all sorts of wrestling-related terms, including the word "wrestling" itself. And what's funny is that the reason the wrestling business is viewed the way it is today, outside of real-life things like wrestlers getting busted for drugs and dying, is not because of the actual in-ring wrestling that happens bell-to-bell, but because of stupid storyline stuff like Trish Stratus barking like a dog, Vince pulling down his pants and having people kiss his ass, heels making fun of dead people, people humping corpses, and terrorist angles the week of a London bombing.
WWE is never going to be Cirque du Soleil. But you know what Cirque du Soleil is? It's a glorified circus with super high production values. Nobody looks at Cirque as an anti-intellectual endeavor attended only by the dregs of society. It's a pretty fucking big deal, especially in Vegas, they travel all over the world touring, men and women of all ages love it, and it's THE CIRCUS.
WWE has a lot of similar characteristics outside it's carnival roots. Good-looking bodies, super high production values, colorful characters and athleticism. They also have something Cirque doesn't have, the ability to be more than a touring company. They have national TV, a platform to get people to sit at home every single month if they'd like, get involved in interesting storylines, and pay money to sit at home and watch those storylines play out every month in high-def. When you really sit and think about what WWE has the potential to be, and then you think about what they are today and what the results of that poll tell you about what has happened to their audience over the years, it's actually really sad. And the indications certainly are that it's only going to stray farther away from its own potential ideal, further towards a product that even many of its most hardcore fans don't really like to watch anymore.
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