I have tried, unsuccessfully, since my teen years, to get into the WWE style of presentation of pro wrestling.
And we’re talking, now, nearly 40 years, dating back to Hulk Hogan and the first WrestleMania, through the Attitude Era and the PG Era, to the $9 billion corporate valuation era of today.
The money is several multiples what it was 40 years ago, but the audience is a fraction of what it was, and you can tell from the repeated callbacks to the stars of the past that WWE is still trying to figure out how to get back to its heyday in terms of audience, if only because, if you think they’re making money now, imagine how much better it could be if they could get the relapsed fans back.
I write about wrestling a good bit as a sportswriter, which requires me to keep up with what WWE is up to, but I’ll tell you here, it’s work.
I came of age as a wrestling fan during the height of the Jim Crockett Promotions era in the 1980s, where the focus was on in-ring action and believable feuds between wrestlers who had what appeared to be real-life reasons to not like each other.
Nobody in the wrestling business today does what Crockett did in the Carolinas and Virginia, what Jerry Jarrett and Eddie Marlin did in Memphis, what Bill Watts did in Mid-South, what Eddie Graham (no relation) did in Florida, back in the good ol’ days.
Vince McMahon, who has ties to my hometown, Waynesboro – he graduated from the local military school here in the 1960s – took things in a dramatically different direction, and won the wrestling wars of the 1980s and 1990s, though I’d argue it was more because of his business acumen than his read of what fans of pro wrestling really want.
I’m not sure I have my finger on the pulse of what the average wrestling fan of today wants, but I know what I want, and for what it’s worth, it ain’t what WWE has to offer.
The six things that bother me the most about WWE
The Dominick Mysterio-Rhea Ripley thing
I get it that pro wrestling is so much pretense, but it’s hard to get into a story involving two people who are maybe, maybe not in a romance, when we all know that Rhea Ripley, probably now, with Becky Lynch, for the moment, at least, retired, the best women’s wrestler in the business, just got married to Buddy Matthews, the AEW mid-carder.
I know that not everybody in the WWE fan base reads about wrestling news on the interwebs, but a lot of us do.
The Ripley-Matthews thing isn’t even news; they’ve been a couple for a good while now.
This is but one of many examples of WWE not valuing any sense of reality in its presentation.
The what? chant thing
It’s hard to pin this one on WWE, because I can only imagine that Paul Levesque and everybody else involved in the production wish that “Stone Cold” Steve Austin’s enduring legacy in the business is the annoying “what?” chant that fans use to interrupt practically every live TV promo.
My rule when turning on “Raw” or “Smackdown” is, the first time the fans “what?” one of the wrestlers, I change the channel.
That’s how damned annoying it is to have to sit through.
And no, I don’t get too far into shows as a result.
The lack of wrestling on the TV shows thing
“Raw” is three hours each week, “Smackdown” is two, and if you’re lucky, you get 45 minutes of actual wrestling on a three-hour “Raw,” and 30 or so minutes out of a two-hour “Smackdown.”
The rest of the shows is wrestlers featured as singles, teams or factions in vignettes, backstage interviews and in-ring promos written by Hollywood writers and memorized and clumsily (and often unemotionally) recited for us live or on tape.
NBC’s prime-time Olympics coverage is starting to feel like this, with the actual competition playing second fiddle to an endless run of personality profiles.
I don’t watch the prime-time Olympics coverage, either; the daytime coverage gives us the actual races, games and what-have-you, without the schmaltz.
The Pat McAfee thing
Dude is a cancer. I don’t watch ESPN except when absolutely necessary (i.e. games) because of Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith.
Those guys are a lot of people’s cup of tea. Not mine.
Give me Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby “The Brain” Heenan, and Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann, any day of the week.
The whatever the deal is with the Wyatt Sicks thing
I was a huge fan of the original iteration of the Bray Wyatt phenomenon, when Wyatt, who died in 2023 from complications from COVID, was presented as a backwoods cult-like figure.
By the time Wyatt had altered his course into the supernatural, the lack of any touch to reality made segments and matches involving Wyatt the best time to get some popcorn, top off the drink and address any pressing bathroom needs.
The Wyatt Sicks faction has upped the ante in that respect. It’s so slapdash that it’s a reason to change the channel along the lines of my “what?” rule.
The too many champs, not enough contenders thing
AEW does this, too, but it seems like everybody walking around has a damn belt, which makes it hard to get a feel for who the challengers are, or should be, because when you have 15 or so different champions, who do you shoot for, and why does any of it matter?
Wrestling is a work, obviously, but at its best, it’s a work off the idea that it’s a real sport.
Boxing and MMA suffer from the same self-inflicted problem.
We used to know who the champ was – Ric Flair, Harley Race, Hulk Hogan, Bruno Sammartino.
WWE has two “world” champions, just at the top of the ladder, in addition to the various and sundry second-tier and tag champs.
Maybe the participation-trophy set likes seeing people with shiny items on their shoulders, I dunno.
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Chris Graham
