A quick note: Right at press time The Bucks released a new episode of Being The Elite that announced not only a Double or Nothing PPV to follow up on All In, but also the AEW “All Elite Wrestling” promotion. More details are coming via a press conference a week from today in Jacksonville, near the site of SmackDown. Interestingly it had been previously reported that Tony Khan, whose family owns the Jacksonville Jaguars was involved so this appears to confirm that. If they do have a TV deal this could be a real game changer for wrestling in 2019.
It’s a new era in the WWE according to Vince McMahon, so with that I have returned with a new and probably not improved Wrestling with Mediocrity. I stopped watching WWE during the first Saudi Arabia tour back in April. Watching them shamelessly try to convince the world that the Saudi’s were now a progressive nation just left a horrible taste in my mouth. It was my first proper break from watching weekly since my fandom began back in 1991.
This article will be weekly and will focus mainly on WWE storylines. What they are doing right and suggestions on how to improve Vince’s various shitty ideas. A lot of promises were made on RAW two weeks ago but so far all we have seen is more of the McMahon’s, a few jobbers given one week pushes and promos showing that ‘Vince Guys’ are being called up from NXT ahead of the more talented and over roster members. Speaking of Vince guys and no talent, where’s all the ‘Don’t hinder Jinder’ warriors? That’s right… back in your box.
Another reason for starting to watch and write about the product is the upcoming launch of the XFL. It is scheduled to kick off in just over a year and despite Vince claiming he is going to be hands off with it this time I am banking on him not being able to help himself and if he does start to focus more on football maybe he could leave some of the wrestling responsibility to someone more competent.
So this first article is more of an introduction than anything else. The last two RAW and SmackDown episodes have been filled with mainly Christmas nonsense. Sure Rusev won the US Title but the fact that was done on a show airing on Christmas Day shows just how important Vince felt that was. Unfortunately the boat was missed big time on Rusev and the trigger should have been pulled about nine months ago.
If WWE really did want to change the product there are many ways they could tackle it. A completely new arena set up is something that has been overdue for more than a decade. The titantron/ramp combo first appeared in 1997 and has been a constant ever since. It’s time to move away from the stale asethetic and come up with something completely new.
Next; unify some of the belts. I would have one world champion, one women’s world champion, one set of tag titles and introduce one set of women’s tag titles. Alongside these newly unified belts I would keep the US title SmackDown exclusive and the IC title RAW exclusive. The four unified champions are allowed on both brands and will appear more on one show each month depending who their opponent is and you still have one brand specific title to carry each show.
This will never happen of course, it makes too much sense… but it’s nice to dream. I would also call up more NXT names to fill out both rosters. I love guys like Tyler Breeze and Apollo Crews, but these guys are beyond rehab now. They have been treated like a joke for far too long and unfortunately now need to be slotted at a low level. I would like to see WWE introduce a wrestler structure. Maybe have 5 invisible tiers of wrestlers depending on how you want to push them and that way wrestlers who have been seen at a lower level may over time build themselves back up instead of just winning some stupid multiple person match and being propelled into a title match.
Don’t have every wrestler on TV each week. Have more exhibition matches where wrestlers in say the second and third highest tier get a showcase against wrestlers in the fifth tier. Occasionally you can have an upset which would then elevate someone languishing in the fifth tier to move up to the fourth one. Again this wouldn’t be overtly mentioned, but this is how you would track each wrestlers progress behind the scenes and it would make for a better, more consistent sports like product.
So to close out this introduction the plan going forward is for this to be a weekly article, dropping on a Sunday each week so that we can take a look at that week in wrestling. I may have another entry this Sunday if I can think of enough to write about but things will properly kick off January 13th as there is little point in covering this weeks shows in too much depth. I may in time open the floor up to questions that I will answer in here, but that will require building up a reader base first. The comments section on the website is always open as is my Twitter @VizualDze where you can direct hate, love and all things in-between.
