If I was in charge of WWE right now I would....

After about two years of losing interest in wrestling i've suddenly become hooked on it again. Like many other I started watching WWE again due to the comeback of the rock. He was my idol when growing up and I was lucky enough to see him compete when I watched the rebellion tour in 2001 at the MEN, where the main event was Stone cold vs the rock. EPIC.

However, I believe although PG is hampering the development of WWE, they have had to do it. WWE has lost allot of older viewers after the rock and austin left and they thought it was time to begin inviting the next generation of fans, and I respect that. However, there are many things wrong with WWE which I really cannot stand.

1) Pay-per views named after matches

This really winds me up. Hell in a cell for instance, only the two matches of the whole night are inside a hell in a cell. Hell in a cell was always reserved for Armeggedon so to speak, as an act revenge or vengence, hence the Vengence PPV. It looses its effect and intimidation factor for me. Lets bring back the traditional ppv's like backlash, Armaggedon etc and get rid of these ridiculous ppv's.

2) push the talent, not the image

Randy orton is a prime example (I won't talk about cena i'll be here all night). When at evolution he was actually a talented WRESTLER. He had a nice drop kick and was quite enjoyable to watch. Now, he does that stupid hitting the mat thing which really get's me peed off, like whats all that about?. He does that stupid ddt thing which when he first did it to RVD I believe correct me if I am wrong, it was like the head punt, now it just looks like he gently pats their head down on the mat. Dolph Ziggler, the miz, jack swagger and cm punk are all good wrestlers. I like how they have brought back the conventional moves side as the russian leg sweep and actually perform moves and don't just punch the hell out of each other. I like del rio for the martial arts aspect to it, I always enjoyed steve blackman (I think thats his name) with the candle stick, CM punk you can add to a lesser extent. Dolph Ziggler and The miz have been built up quite nicely I think but they are being held back so badly its unbelievable. Chris masters is another wrestler I enjoyed watching. Good moves, had the look and was pretty good as a heel and on the mic, and yet he's been moved on.

3) Move out the untalented

Sort of the opposite to my last point. People like Christian, a guy who is out of shape and delivers the worst spear in history, although I do like his mic skills he has always been a tag team specialist back in the day, and nothing more. And someone needs to sort out his tights no offence but you can see his bridget jones pants showing through like there's no tomorrow. Kofi Kingston. although very athletic with his Jamiacan, African what ever you call it gimmick is quite impressive at times. But the boom boom thing should be reserved to old Basil and is nothing more than a high flyer that hasn't much to give in the long run. Old timers such as Kane and Big show need to retire now their in ring ability was never the best but now they can barely make a match watchable.

4) Big Show, lose the stupid punch

My god this really has made me boil over in the past, the way the commentators are like "Oh God here we go" when he's punched the other guy several times in the match, but this one is the one which will knock him out for sure. The whole build up is ridiculous, the whole staring at the hand then the clench. Does this all stem back to the Mayweather fight and now all of a sudden he's developed this knock out blow. Please give me a break will you.

5) Tag team main events

Stop making them main events every night on raw, its just plain boring

6) Commentators

Unlike some people I find Michael cole funny and a breath of fresh air. His banter with Booker T is superb and he actually calls a good match. The king on the other hand just doesn't seem to care anymore, sort of accepts his pay check and leaves, not good enough anymore i'm afraid.

7) Keep hold of your stars, you never know how much you miss them until their gone.

Y2J, Goldberg, Jeff Hardy, RVD, Kurt Angle, The Rock(his choice but still) and the biggest in my view was Brock Lesnar. The guy was an animal and had so much talent as a heel and face, what a mistake they made in letting him leave, he was going to be the face of the company for years and once again they let it slip away, and now all we have is a nutter smacking the mat like a misbehaving child and a philosopher who has three moves John Cena, by philosopher I mean his stupid codes he lives by, load of bull that is.

8) Fake crowd noises

Just don't, they go through me, just let the crowd be themselves if they aren't booing when they are supposed to then don't worry let it play out, that sort of high pitched thing for booing that goes on is just so annoying.

9) Finally-Everyone get's to puch Jon Laurenitis everytime he says "I'm john Laurenitis, executive vice president of talent relations"

SHUT UP!!!! every night I here you say it, I know it doesn't make you sound any more important you suck full stop.

I get some of what you are saying but not all of it

1) Agree with this, I wouldn't reserve the Hell in a Cell match for any PPV though, my main problem with the themed PPV's are that gimmicks should be used when a feud requires them, not just for the sake of it

2) Disagree with your views on Randy Orton, he is an excellent wrestler and one of the stand out performers of 2012, the agressive ringstyle he debuted at the start of the year has done wonders for him and he finally found his groove as a babyface (all be it with a slight edge) in his feud with Christian, I find exactly what point you are trying to make here a bit muddled but I agree that all the other wrestlers you have listed are good in the ring

3) Couldn't disagree more with your views on Christian, this guy has been argubly the most consistant performer in WWE since his return 3-4 years ago, he is perfect for an upper-mid card gate keeper/occasional main eventer, Kingston all though not main event material for me has formed an entertaing tag team with Bourne and is a handy guy to have in the mid card, though I agree I would be content to see the back of Kane and Show

4) I get what your saying I don't care for the punch myself either, or Show in general

5) To be fair I don't think this is a criticism that can be leveled at Raw so much as Smackdown, but with 52 tv shows a year to fufil and 12-14 PPV's to make attractive with such a thin main event roster it would be difficult for WWE to give big 1 v 1 matches every week and still keep PPV's attractive

6) While Cole has certainally improved, his scizophrenic heel/face tendancies and a tendancy to bury talent rather than put them over can be counter productive and I think he would be better utilised as a manger, King is past it and I'm not a huge fan of Booker, he just seems out of his depth. JR is still the king of play-by-play and with the return of Foley and Regal's impresive work on NXT and FCW, hopefully they could come up with a better colour guy.

7) It's harsh to blame WWE for any of these guys leaving as WWE did there best to keep them, to their credit they were able to keep Punk and I have no idea how this summer would have played out without him. It was a great stroke of fortune for WWE that they didn't retain Jeff Hardy following his drugs bust and Kurt Angle, despite his brilliance, is an accident waiting to happen and although he seems to be holding it together in TNA, just, WWE's more greulling ringstyle would probably have been the death of him.

8) Tbh Im rather indifferent to wheater WWE sweeten the crowd in the short term but it is indicative of a lot of WWE's problems that they adjust the crowd to suit there whims rather than give them what they want

9) Ace is a heel, him saying that clearly annoys you, job done

The whole deal with Show's punch is that when he left the E a few years ago he trained to become a boxer, I prefer it to the generic chokeslam and at least it's legitimately believeable

I don't agree with much of the OPbut agree with almost everything the good doc said in his response.

I'm also not a fan of naming PPV's after certain match types bug it didn't do The Royal Rumble, Survivor Series and King of the Ring any harm, while I don't agree with the current trend, you have to admit it's obvious Vince felt he was using a tried ans tested formula

Dr Gregory is absolutely spot on in all points imo. Great post.

was thinking if Cole loses to JR on raw, and 'walks away from the desk'
maybe he will hook up with vicky as the new love interest, he has the history with swagger and ziggler is on a hot run. would ease him in as a manager

Vicky draws heat, Cole draws heat. A perfect combo?

Lex that would go nuclear and could be a good comedy bit and even a stable, then they could split and row etc.

Would overshadow 2 quality wrestlers IMO though

Johnny Ace fired JR, who gives Cole the authority to give JR the opportunity to get his job back

Didn't Johnny Ace give him his job back a week later?

I completely and utterly agree with Gregory House. I think the OP shows a lack of understanding about the industry.

''If i was in charge of WWE right now i would....''

Sell the company.

Pro-wrestling on a whole is a sinking ship. It will never reach the dizzy heights of the 90s. Society in general has evolved so much that there is no innocence in the modern generation of children. Its not cool anymore to like the whole 'fantasy world' of wrestling, its not cool to buy into the characters, and i think kids these days are aware that wrestling isnt real at a much younger age. Alot of my generation still werent sure if wrestling was fake or not up until we were nearing our teen years, i doubt the curiosity lasts that long anymore.

However, all hope is not lost.

If the WWE want to attract new viewers they need to create a new megastar. They need a 'Rock', an 'Austin' or a 'Cena'. Someone to go out there and tear the house down. An edgy, controversial character who can shake things up a bit. They've got someone right under their noses in CM Punk who if they pushed correctly could be that guy, but they'd need to cut out the shoot element of his promos because the majority of the audience have no idea what he's talking about when he says things like 'whoops im breaking the 4th wall'. He's capable of cutting cool, edgy promos without the insider references, and given the right material he has the aura and charisma to make wrestling 'cool' again. He could be a megastar, he could be the next big thing. The key word being 'could'. He cant do it on his own, he needs the full backing of the company to be the number one guy and ironically he is right that the WWE needs change. They do need change, not in the way Punk intends to bring change but change in terms of giving the ball to someone else and letting them run with it as apposed to playing it safe with Cena and HHH as their go-to guys. If you dont shake things up, it will get stale, people will get bored, and lose interest, thats life.

Do i have faith in the WWE to push CM Punk and make him the next big thing? Absolutely not. I hope i'm pleasantly suprised, but my head tells my heart that this time next year not alot will have changed.

I agree with everything H except that I don't think wrestling's rut is anything to do with society. I think it's entirely down to years and years of bad business practices.

I got into wrestling in the spring of 1991. In the summer of 1991, I discovered it was fake. 20 years later, I still watch. I don't think this is unusual, and I also think it's naive to believe that people didn't know it was fake in the past. People knew wrestling was fake in the 50s! They've always known it, but they suspended their disbelief. Of course, it's easier to find out these days, but so what?

It goes back to that standard we've all used when defending wrestling's "fakeness": TV and movies are fake, but that doesn't mean they can't entertain and thrill us and it doesn't mean we're stupid for getting emotionally invested in them.

I genuinely believe that if WWE or TNA put politics and egos and insecurities about wrestling's reputation aside, and simply wrote a compelling story where each character has a constitution and everything is consistent with the overall narrative and the big storylines have a pay-off, they could quite quickly get the viewers back. Especially if the major characters also happen to be young, cool, fresh, entertaining and athletic, and able to tell a story within the context of a wrestling match. CM Punk is a great example of this.

The two major wrestling promotions in America have got things so wrong for such a long time that what should be obvious (and was obvious for decades, with great success) is now seen as outdated. Basic fundamental storytelling is no more outdated in wrestling than it is in movies.

It goes back to that standard we've all used when defending wrestling's "fakeness": TV and movies are fake, but that doesn't mean they can't entertain and thrill us and it doesn't mean we're stupid for getting emotionally invested in them.

Very good point crips. I cant argue with anything you said to be honest. Apart from i probably didnt explain properly when i said about thinking whether wrestling was 'fake' up until a certain age. Of course it was obvious that wrestling on a whole was fake but its the finer details which made you curious. Blading for example. I had no idea as a kid that blading is how wrestlers drew blood. I genuinely thought a steel chair shot or a title belt shot would open you up. I remember Jeff Jarrett smashing his guitar over heads and it exploding into millions of pieces, i didnt know then that it wasnt a REAL guitar. I think these are the kind of details that kids these days suss out long before it took us to suss out back in the day.

You are on such downers - it's a good product at the moment.

Look at TNA to see how a bad product looks - Jay-Sus.

''If i was in charge of WWE right now i would....''
get the sack

Explain what makes it a good product at the moment Demon?

WWE and TNA arent worlds apart in terms of creative/booking/storylines at the moment. Also TNA gets hammered for their screwy finishes, what about the WWE?

Summerslam main event - screwy finish
Night of Champions main event - screwy finish
Hell in a Cell main event - screwy finish
Vengeance main event - screwy finish

It's entertaining. I'm feeling entertained, and at the end of the two hours I feel satisifed that I hadn't wasted my time. That's what makes it good.

As for the screwy finishes - the WWE are going through a chaos crisis, it's what Triple H was "fired" for. The screwy finishes are to serve this storyline's purpose. It's not just because it's fun - which seems to be TNA's policy

So how is it recoverable now for Laryngitis to say why he text Kevin Nash to 'stick the winner' of the Summerslam main event? Thats water under the bridge now surely, its all about HHH and Nash now.

Laurinitis did that to create chaos, and ultimately get Triple H fired.

[quote="Electric Demon"]It's entertaining. I'm feeling entertained, and at the end of the two hours I feel satisifed that I hadn't wasted my time. That's what makes it good.

to be fair tho ED, you are also entertained by Heath Slater, and that say it all right there

Yeah - but if Heath Slater was around 15 years ago, you would have loved him.

That's my point

Electric Demon wrote:Yeah - but if Heath Slater was around 15 years ago, you would have loved him.

That's my point

To be honest, if Heath was around then he would have played Mideon's fanny pack.

You see - there are a lot of accusations flying around that people on this board don't "understand the business" (as if any of us do) - but the people who don't see the potential in Heath Slater really don't "understand the business"

In that case i hold my hands up and declare that i dont understand the business!