As Requested by You: The Perfect Company?
Wrestling in the 1980s was great.
A statement that I make frequently, that I'll defend until the day I can't speak or write a blog ever again. Comparatively with the ticket sales, pay-per-view buy rates, fan interest and storyline quality of this day and age, it was leaps and bounds more productive. I know, you're going to tell me that Wrestling is a business, and wrestling must move in cycles as it has done for years upon years upon years ever since wrestling was created by the Romans. I'll give you that, Wrestling goes in cycles, but the cycle only changes when it needs to change. Right now, I believe it needs to change.
The 1980s was a time filled with big characters; Clowns, Warriors, overweight men, a Million Dollar Man, a very rowdy Scotsman, a Real American... hell, we even had a Rodeo gimmick (Tito Santana). The 1980s was a time where wrestling companies had very few pay-per-views, but the pay-per-views they had were given enough time to build up to the point where they became completely unmissable. You got so embroiled by the story between two men having a rivalry that you didn't miss a pay-per-view no matter how strapped for cash you were.
Then, the late 1990s came along, and it was time to drop the characters as such and produce a much more edgy, cut throat and insanely unpredictable product which everyone who watched it thought was “cool”. And it was, back then. This was known as the “Attitude Era”. Between the ridiculous number of title changes, the dumbest move in pay-per-view history (extending it to one a month) and the “on edge” promos, people only remember the stars that were born and the business that boomed. Which is fine. Yes, pay-per-view buy rates sky-rocketed, TV ratings reached unimaginable heights and the business was transformed by a Monday Night War that will never be forgotten. The pay-per-views were still unmissable, though.
Now we're stuck in a twilight period in Professional Wrestling. You have one company (TNA) who is more 80s than the 80s, but are really trying to recapture the magic of the 90s. With wrestlers screaming down the camera lens at us... and Hulk Hogan wanting to shill his book and stroke his ego. And you have another company (WWE) who have moved on to wanting to be in Pop Culture so bad, and give celebrities more of a blowjob than ever that it's devalued the overall product to us who actually happened to be a fan of the wrestling portion of the show. The pay-per-views, now, aren't so unmissable. Amidst both of these two companies, we have a smaller company, Ring of Honor, which produces more main event level guys and better in-ring action than both of these two larger companies combined. The shows are unmissable to those who know about them.
In laymens terms, this is the business as it stands:
TNA – the Attitude Era 9 years too late.
WWE – the Celebrity Era where everything is about celebrity and mainstream media attention instead of wrestling.
ROH – an older school product, similar to the 80s. Who give their wrestlers a chance to shine, who produce more main event level stars than both of the aforementioned companies combined and are given less credit than they deserve. But don't make enough money to compete with WWE or TNA.
If you ask me, when you talk about shaking up the business once again, the perfect company would be somewhere between the three of these companies. A company with a bit of an edge to it but not too over the top to the point of recreating a bygone era, where celebrities do mingle in the storylines but aren't the main feature, and where building new stars is the most important priority on the creative agenda. Everyone takes after Vince McMahon. Why wouldn't they? He's the industry leader, let's follow him. Sure, he's the industry leader, but by speeding up or even slowing down a second-rate version of his show (TNA), you're proving that actually, no-one makes money in the wrestling business if your last name isn't McMahon!
TNA could make money, if they stopped wanting to be Vince McMahon and the WWE and they started wanting to be TNA. If they stopped hanging on what Vince Russo was pulling out of his ass, and actually hired someone who could book a wrestling show and build matches for pay-per-view (*cough* Jim Cornette), they might make some money. TNA want to be number one, well you can't be number one by presenting a carbon copy of what number one is doing.
ROH could make money, but it's because they are the Internet Wrestling Communities little darling that they don't make enough of it. Besides, not enough people know about them. Most don't know that CM Punk, Samoa Joe, AJ Styles, Chris Daniels, Bryan Danielson, Nigel McGuiness were ALL made in Ring of Honor and were taken by WWE and TNA. Unless you read dirtsheets. Future stars like Austin Aries, Jimmy Jacobs and The Briscoe Brothers are eventually going to be snatched up by WWE and TNA, but most people won't know their grass roots, either. Unless you read dirtsheets.
I do think the business needs a shake up again. I do think that we need to go back to the days where pay-per-views meant something, titles meant something, every match was relevant and had a purpose (whether jobs or highly entertaining quality matches), and new stars were made and cared about on a weekly basis. But with the current formula being all the suits in the “big 2” can stick to, and don't dare venture out of the box a little bit, and while ROH is, in my opinion, another Vince McMahon investment waiting to be made, we're going to be sticking with the formula we got.
Thanks for reading,
Charles Matthew
|