Welcome to a special edition of Top Ten Things, here at Enuffa.com!
It's no secret that WWE's product is in tatters these days, with disorganization at an all time high, ratings and morale nearing all-time lows, storylines with no endgame being thrown at the wall willy-nilly in the hopes that something, anything, sticks, no current roster members getting over (except maybe one), old-timer appearances yielding inevitably diminishing returns, young audiences walking away in droves, etc. Creatively the company is resembling WCW in its dying days more and more, and were it not for the exorbitant fees they're getting from Fox, USA and Saudi Arabia we'd likely be witnessing the death throes of Vince McMahon's juggernaut. Inexplicably virtually everyone in the industry seems to recognize some of the fundamental mistakes Vince has been making for the last fifteen years except Vince himself. Ever the fragile ego, Vince has long surrounded himself with sycophantic yes-men too terrified to challenge him on his creative decisions, and the result is a product that's hopelessly out of touch with what wrestling fans in 2019 want to see.
But I'm here with some constructive suggestions, most of them pretty simple, to fix WWE's creative process and return the product to its former glory. Before you call me a "WWE hater," know that I've been watching this company's product since 1986. I've been a Network subscriber since Week One. I don't hate WWE. I want WWE to put on compelling television again. I've seen them do it and I know they're capable of brilliance, they just need to find it again. So let's get started. Vince, if you're reading (you're not, I know), please take these suggestions to heart...
1. No Scripted Promos
First and foremost, this, this, a thousand times this. Scripted promos are maybe the most counterproductive creative policy in wrestling history. Literally every major star in the history of the business who got over even partially by cutting promos (which is almost all of them) did so because they had the freedom to develop their character and speak in a way that sounded spontaneous and heartfelt. You hired these people because you saw in them something compelling, yes? Presumably they know better than a team of hack writers how their character would speak - after all, the best wrestling characters across the board were simply extensions or exaggerations of the person underneath. Imagine someone like Steve Austin or The Rock or Ric Flair or Dusty Rhodes trying to get over in this climate. We'd never have "Austin 3:16," that promo was a spur-of-the-moment idea in response to something Jake Roberts said earlier on that show. We'd never have smelled what The Rock was cooking, that's just a fun catchphrase he came up with off the cuff. We'd never hear from the "limousine riding, jet flying son of a gun," who was given as much mic time as he needed, or the "son of a plumber," whose promo philosophy was all about selling his upcoming match, not himself. The art of cutting a promo is one of the most vital parts of making a wrestling product successful, and WWE lost that art a long time ago thanks to stilted, forced, unnatural-sounding dialogue, where two people wait for their turn to recite rather than have a conversation. Maybe the worst part of all this is that Vince McMahon for a long time hasn't understood what makes a babyface likable, and therefore every babyface is written as either a shriveling coward or a jerk. Get back to real promos again and you'd see probably 90% of WWE's creative woes go away. A good talker like the former Dean Ambrose would be able to connect with the audience AND hype his big match with Seth Rollins, thus making the fans genuinely care about seeing the former friends duke it out. Ratings and buyrates would go up, thus getting more eyes on the other talent as other natural talkers organically rose to the top like so much cream. We as the audience would believe in these characters and their feuds, and the live audience would actually seem excited to be there. Emotion and excitement are contagious, and a good promo generates both.
2. Stop "Producing" Matches and Commentary
Along those same lines, the practice of "producing" everything else on WWE television, from the corporate buzzword-infested commentary to the matches themselves, needs to end.
No one wants to see a show full of essentially the same match over and over. This philosophy about how WWE has its own "style" of wrestling is pure nonsense. WWE doesn't have a "style," it has a corporate policy wherein nearly all the in-ring creativity of its wildly talented roster is sucked out of nearly every match, resulting in every match feeling meticulously planned out and identical to the last. Compare for example the AJ Styles-Daniel Bryan matches from this past year with their mid-2000s work in Ring of Honor. Yes I get that there's an age difference factor, but their indie matches felt urgent and organic, like they were actually involved in a real fight. They listened to the crowd and proceeded based on what was connecting and what wasn't. Wrestlers need to be able to improvise in response to the audience so they don't lose them over the course of the match. Now look at the Styles-Bryan match from the Royal Rumble, which was already facing an uphill battle because it had to follow Becky Lynch's Rumble win. The bout was slow, overly methodical, lacking any urgency, and too long for a slot following a 72-minute Rumble. These two guys needed the freedom to change the planned bout (like Bret and Owen did in 1994 when Bret realized Owen's aerial tactics would've hurt his effectiveness as a heel) and get the crowd invested, but in 2019 WWE that sort of free-thinking is a no-no.
As for the wretched banter that passes for commentary in this company, WWE needs to remember that the commentators are the de facto hosts of the show. We as the audience need to actually like spending time with our hosts. The play-by-play announcer needs to be someone we trust to guide us through the stories being told and enhance them, not a corporate shill we think is trying to sell us more shit. Michael Cole, for as good as he is at navigating Vince's barrage of order-barking through the headset, comes off as the latter. I don't feel anything genuine from Cole as an announcer and he's not someone I'd ever want to hang out with. He's a company man who's there to further a mandated narrative and parrot idiotic buzzwords like "sports entertainer" and "WWE Universe," or cringe-inducing phrases like "controlled frenzy" to describe Kofi Kingston, or "real-life superhero" for Ricochet. He doesn't talk like a real person and he's almost never given a chance to enrich the story in the ring. The color commentator (and there should almost always be one, not two), needs to have an easy chemistry with the PBP announcer, whether from a babyface/neutral position or a heel position (Jesse Ventura and Bobby Heenan were masters at being heel color-men). If both announcers are babyfaces we need to get the sense that they really like hanging out together (JR and Tony Schiavone anyone?). If the color man (or woman) is a heel, they need to disagree with the lead announcer without it coming off as bickering. Gorilla Monsoon and Ventura/Heenan could argue in a way that was amusing. Michael Cole and Corey Graves don't; instead it comes off like petty squabbling and it's like listening to your parents have a fight. If we don't like the people hosting the show, why would we want to spend three hours watching it?
