Hello and welcome, one and all.
Because I insist on gobbing off on a weekly basis and since WWE are adamant on having 9999 hours of wrestling per week (Raw being 95% of that), my usual shower of bazooka rounds has been replaced with a rather nifty sniper rifle that I’ll be using to highlight the strongest and weakest parts of the show……….or at least just my personal favourite and worst moments.
Unfurl the sails and hoist the anchor as blunt, yet constructive criticism is surely on the horizon!
It’s…….
#OneHitOneShit
Despite my better judgement demanding a bathtub-sized, hit of scotch AS SOON AS FUCKING POSSIBLE, I’m giving Bray Wyatt (and Finn Balor to an extent) a chance.
They’ve run the feud between Balor and Bray into the ground already and not a great deal of it has made any sense; this screams to me that it’s time for things to evolve or perish.
Bray informed us that Sister Abigail somehow survived Randy Orton’s attempt at destroying her remains earlier in the year and that she’s now alive.
No additional information was given other than Bray showing us a smoky glimpse of his/Abigail’s power by transforming into an undead version of himself.
I’m all for this! I’m assuming this is Bray at full power and this is the form he’ll adopt in his next encounter with Finn. I said after No Mercy that I would like to see Bray recruit Balor in some manner and this may finally be the start of something interesting for them both.
Fingers crossed that Bray gets the better of Finn and they move onto recruiting other creatures into their family. I would fucking love to see him pay interest in a Broken Hardy Boy that’s been left to babysit Kurt Angle’s pretend love-child whilst rapidly reducing the number of bumps he has left in him. It wouldn’t take long to assess that he’s somewhat damaged.
Bray has the potential to be one of the best (or at least memorable) characters in wrestling history and should be submerged into more interesting/obscure/entertaining storylines. WWE has consistently booked him to waffle on for an hour, win on TV, lose on PPV and this hasn’t done anything for him in the long run.
Last week Enzo Amore and the Cruiserweights were at the epicentre of my praise, but now, everything has turned to shit after being left out on the side all week. Enzo wittered on way too long for my liking and I can imagine many viewers skipping forward until other people showed up on the screen.
I understand that he’s trying to generate heat, but twenty minutes of the same old shit is just going to make people tune/zone/space out and not properly engage in the show.
If WWE wants Enzo in one-hundred percent heat-seeking heel mode, they need to drop all the silly catchphrases…….at least just for a little while.
The current problem is that WWE and Enzo are dealing with crowds that (in general) would rather make the show about them by singing/shouting along with ANYTHING (see: people joining in Paul Heyman stating his own name) whilst playing with beach-balls or watching through/looking at their cameras and not the real-life action mere inches in front of them.
I know it seems like a drastic measure, but I think Enzo just marching down to the ring and freestyling some smack-talk without the five-minute song and dance beforehand would work wonders in helping everyone achieve what they set out to.
Turning the Usos heel, stripping down their colours and eliminating any element of audience participation has been very successful for them and I think that with a little more work, Enzo could follow suit in being a change for the better.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the masked cherry atop this mountain of faeces.
Kalisto finally jumped over onto the 205 Live roster and dropped Enzo. This isn’t the worst news ever, it actually makes a lot of sense and I wondered why WWE hadn’t moved him before.
My problem is simply that Kalisto doesn’t get excited to be the pinnacle of the show and the live crowd pretty much felt the same way.
Luckily, this wasn’t the final image shown before Raw faded out.
The rest of Raw consisted of a fragmented teaser trailer for the 2017 reboot of The Shield.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m confident that I’ll enjoy the ride once The Shield start smashing the shit out of stuff again, I just don’t think it’s entirely necessary to force their rebirth at the moment.
I’m still barking on from last week about this all being to help Roman and not the others. WWE will be praying that Seth and Dean will generate enough positive top babyface energy for Roman to leech off of for a while and they’ll be hoping it doesn’t bite them in the arse down the road.
I think it will all be smooth sailing until the time comes to split up The Shield again and Roman stays in the main event scene and Ambrollins get lost in the shuffle on Superstars or something.
Digest and discuss! Feel free to do so in the comments or via any of the means listed below.
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I disagree that WWE’s problems are with crowds that want to make it about themselves. They pay for a ticket to see a wrestling show and then are bored to tears by shitty writing and acting and have nothing else better to do than act like that. The chanting along with catchphrases is nothing new. I’ve been hearing it for over 20 years. Before smart phones there were film cameras and it was normal to see a fan look down to change film or get a new disposable camera to take photos. People like taking photos of live events they attend. And before they were goofing off on phones they were leafing through programs, pointing at stupid looking fans, whispering to each other and more. Shit, I can remember when they used to look down to light a fucking cigarette in the arena. Fans being fans is nothing new. Why can’t they sing along? Why can’t they have fun with catchphrases?
What’s new is WWE ignoring what they want because, with no real competition, they can. Attendance has been the shits for TV tapings and this doesn’t help the fans that are there take the show seriously. What also doesn’t help fans take the show seriously is when WWE doesn’t give a fuck about being serious either! When WWE stops booking for India (who doesn’t give a festered fuck about WWE), for instance, and starts booking for us again the shows will get mildly better. You said it, the fans want to watch action and EVERYBODY has a mic and EVERYBODY runs their mouth to fill time that in a perfect world they wouldn’t need to fill. Throwing fans under the bus is just terrible. They wouldn’t need beach balls to keep them happy if the product was worth paying attention to. WWE isn’t infallible. The shows suck HARD right now, with the lone exception of NXT.
Apologies for not seeing this sooner!
You’re right in that there have always been distractions, but I feel like people’s attention spans in general is shorter in this day and a-
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Sorry, I’m back. My cat came in the room!
Anyway, going to shows and stuff when I was a kid. Yeah, you had a camera with you, but chances were that you only had the one film/disposable camera and you’d have to choose your photo opportunities carefully. Now folk will just stand there and film a whole three hour show and watch it through their phone.
I also agree that WWE don’t listen anyway, but this has spawned an issue with tourist fans and people trying too hard that end up going to the shows instead of the die-hards because their voices weren’t even acknowledged.
I believe a compromise needs to be made by both sides. WWE certainly do need to listen to their long-serving fans that continually feel let down and we as a society need to learn to behave a bit better in public and try and slow things down a bit.
We should put our phones on silent and forget about everything else for a few hours, let escapism overwhelm us instead of needing to “first” a comment section, join a hash-tag trend or gloat to people on social media that we’re somewhere they’re not.
Cheers for the feedback!
😀
I think there is something to your point about wanting to seen and liked for doing things. I agree with that 100% about the phones and all. I can’t stand a phone anywhere near the supper table, for crying out loud!
All things considered, I’m not sure there is a compromise that can be reached. There isn’t anything WWE can do (or any other form of entertainment) that can get those kinds of people to drop everything and pay attention for three hours (or ten straight minutes) to anything. WWE can get as wacky and crazy as they want to try and draw these fans away from the digital playground but what does that mean for the fans who don’t live in that world and are there for the wrestling (at home and live)? A see-saw product can’t work.
It may just be case of WWE not knowing what the casual fans want and the casuals not knowing what they really want. In that environment I’m not at all certain a compromise can be reached. We may just end up waiting for those fans to become bored and walk away. WWE are masters of conditioning an audience; they’ve done it before and they’ll do it again. Booking to the casuals to try and find that one break out star isn’t working for them right now. That may be the first thing that needs to change.
Thanks for taking the time to reply, I appreciate it. Keep up the great work! I may not always agree with your POV (which is why I read) but I love the articles and always get a good laugh. Cheers!