***EDITOR’S NOTE – Grant is one of our newest writers. Make him feel welcome and follow him on Twitter @GrantCookDFC***
When an appeal went out on a well-known social network for new writers for SLTD, I thought why not give it a go? I like wrestling, I know how to write, so how hard can it be?
Three hours later, and with a whole lot of not very much on the page, it hit me. I’m not used to actually admitting in public that I like wrestling. I very seldom talk about wrestling for a couple of reasons. One, I’m slightly embarrassed to admit my little secret and two, other people feel the same way. But I wasn’t always like that.
I’ve been a wrestling fan for as long as I can remember, and that’s a long time. One family holiday, we had to leave pretty early in the morning to make our destination in time to see Big Daddy vs Giant Haystacks on TV. The matches might have only lasted for about 41 seconds, but I loved every one of them.
I remember when PPV’s were every 3 months, and every match on the card was one to look forward to. I remember the emergence of WCW, the Outsiders and the Monday Night Wars. Nowadays, I struggle to remember what happened on Raw last week. In fact, this week I got bored and gave up after about an hour.
So why have I fallen out with wrestling, or at least the WWE’s version of it? Not because it’s bad, but because it’s bland. At least TNA has the redeeming quality of being so bad that you watch just to see how bad it is, and you’re often still surprised by the levels of utter crap they can reach, but WWE?
Take any episode of Raw, and imagine something slightly different. Imagine instead of Kofi vs Miz, it was Kofi vs Ziggler. Randy Orton v Big Show? Take out Show and replace him with Khali. Cena vs anyone? Replace that with Cena vs anyone else.
The show would be the same anyway, because WWE seems determined to do away with any characteristics that make a wrestler stand out, apart from the top 2 or 3 guys in the company.
Cena has a personality, Orton has one, and Punk is clinging to his. Daniel Bryan had one, but got it without permission, so he was grounded. Goldust has one, but isn’t allowed to show it and Big Show had one for about a week before it was taken away again. Apart from that, we have a stable that are half face/half heel, and the wrestlers can come and go within that criteria.
The result is that we have no-one to associate with, apart from the 3 guys I’ve just mentioned. No plucky underdog, no overlooked genius, no lazy short-cut takers, nobody who THINKS they are great while being pish. Nobody.
They’re the people we want to see. We all know at least one of those types of people. We probably think we are one of those people. I’m probably 3 of them myself! What I am not is a clean cut, work hard, muscle bound, do the right thing all the time person. Nor am I ‘straight edge’, or in an elevated position because my boss likes me. So if I don’t connect with any of those three, who do I connect with?
Now don’t get me wrong. Ability wise, there are some great wrestlers in the WWE. I like watching some of them, but I need something more. I need a reason to watch in the first place. I need a Doink the Clown…
I realise how bad that sounds. It’s not the clown I need as much as something unique. Something a wrestler will do that gives him a personality. Once you have that personality, and it’s been established, then you have the opportunity to build feuds based on a clash of personalities.
Stone Cold hated ‘the man’. Vince was ‘the man’. Feud commences. Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler gets upset when Bret becomes King of the Ring. Feud. Someone has a title and Hogan wants it, so they feud. Eeverybody needs a good moan at Hogan!
Imagine a scenario where James Storm goes to WWE, and meets a recently turned heel CM Punk?
Now setting aside ability, imagine they’re told that they’re not allowed to have a match on Raw. Instead, Punk sneaks up on Storm in a bar, or Storm replaces Punks water with beer. Anything BUT a match. Now they’ll meet at WrestleMania, and people will want to see it. Storm finally gets his hands on Punk. The rematch will, of course, be at SummerSlam, and you’ll want to see that as well.
With the current PPV-a-month model, you have Punk v Storm’s best mate, and vice versa. Punk destroys said best made, increasing the rivalry. The matches might not be great, but you’d still want to see them. Make us want to watch them. That’s half the battle. All they’d need to do now is make the match worth watching. Make it good. If we’re not watching, it makes no difference if the match is good or not.
What we actually have right now are episodes of Raw full of heel vs face matches, and that’s all it is. They repeat those matches week in, week out. Miz vs Kofi was on about 39 weeks in a row I think, and it matters not a jot, because every heel or every face is interchangeable.
The Funkadactyls are the embodiment of that. They’ve just switched over to Truth and Xavier, kept the dinosaur name, despite the fact they’re not with the Funkasaurus any more, and nobody cared.
I know all of this sounds like I really hate wrestling, but truth be told, I want to see it return to its former glory.
I hear insiders in wrestlers saying it’s ‘cyclical’ all the time, but really, that’s just an excuse. Nobody involved claimed that wrestling was ‘cyclical’ when the business was huge. That was down to their own genius. But now it’s not as big as it was, well it’s not their fault – that’s just the way the business works.
The wrestling business needs personalities first and foremost. Look around for the most annoying people in the world, magnify what you hate about them 100 times and you’ve got yourself a heel. A face is even easier. Just make them human.
Make wrestling something I can tell people I watch, then someone else might check it out. If that happens enough, the audience will grow and I can go sit with the cool kids again.
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