Promotional vignettes for new wrestlers. Everybody’s seen ’em, everybody likes ’em, at least that’s what we think. WWE, AEW, Impact Wrestling. Anyone of these promotions does it to introduce new talent to their respective rosters. In the early ’90s, WWF/E was king in this field (normal when you have little competition) but now I find that WWE has lost that spark that used to differentiate their promotional vignettes from the others.
Now, even if some of them are “encrypted” now we know with 99.9% certainty which wrestler is going to start in the promotions. The last and most successful cases of encrypted video vignettes came from Chris Jericho (WARNING: I’m talking about his return in 2012 now.) And since then, what’s the surprise effect you expect when you watch a wrestling show? If we give slight clues as WWE does, how do you want to attract people to it? How do you want people to be surprised by your new talent if you give all the keys upfront?
People are not fooled, they will search the community to find out the secret. WWE tried to fool us twice with the case of Brodus Clay (the guy had to start again as a heel and we ended up with Denver the dinosaur, dancing on top of that too, after all, switchback to his heel persona, well done WWE.) and more recently with Liv Morgan (the gimmick of the washed girl who becomes what Sonya Deville is in real life, a lesbian… sort of).
And that’s where the bottom hurts, as a major company in the industry, shouldn’t they show that they have balls and redo what they did in the 90’s with the technical means they have now? Because if I quote Chris Jericho, it’s not insignificant, it’s because I only remember those vignettes that marked me (Bray Wyatt and the Fiend, it was quite predictable, considering the unhealthy side he had installed with his previous character). And after, I don’t remember any mainstream promotional vignettes that marked me instantly.
Because for my part, AEW is doing them backward and beautifully, The Exalted One for the last example, everyone thought of Matt Hardy with the character he had created and salivated at the idea of seeing Hardy as the leader of a cult but the response AEW gave in the person of Brodie Lee was an even more pleasing cry from the heart for the fans of the promotion.
How about you? Do you think that the WWE can turn the corner and show All Elite Wrestling that it can become the number one in terms of promotional vignettes again or do you think that AEW has completely surpassed them by using the magic of social networks with brio?
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