Credit: WWE.com
I am a mark not unlike a lot of of you marks... unless you're one of the marks that thinks that it's better for your favorite wrestlers to get beat up by old men or Brock Lesnar, then we are not the same. I was laying in the bed, listening to clips of wrestling podcasts as I do pretty much every night. I rolled over once I got inspired to write this. I think every hardcore wrestling fan can point out all the flaws they see with how WWE does business. For me, a creative, a writer at that... I see all kinds of narrative flaws. It literally kept me up on this night, thinking about what WWE is doing, and what WWE should be doing.
Roman Reigns. Because of course. The fans did not care for his match at Mania because not only does WWE insist on trying to present him as the top babyface everyone fake hates, they went out of their way to work their fans into a shoot indifference to his opponent. I am a proponent that when a wrestler picks up a microphone, every word out their mouth should be getting you hyped to see the match. Forget telling a story. I hate storyline soap opera wrestling. All WWE needed to do was tell us: The champion was the first man to beat The Undertaker at WrestleMania. The challenger was the second. This match here... will determine who is really the man around here, and of course Roman wins that match. You know, instead of having him lose and then inexplicably get a rematch for no good storyline reason. Also... if you want people to respect Roman as some kind of badass and a top hand, it's PROBABLY not a good idea to have a heel come out to... tell the truth that Roman keeps cutting promos about being the one who can beat Brock and he keeps failing. I'm just saying.
The midcard titles. I am not a fan of midcard belts even being a thing, but, since they're not going away I say "stop playing hot potato, please." It used to be said of the Intercontinental belt, that was the workhorse title. Seth Rollins is a stallion. Ride him. Do not put the belt right back on The Miz and then have him drop it to, say, Daniel Bryan and then change it back. Let Seth carry that belt for well over a year. Maybe even break Honky Tonk's record. I want to see Rollins in every kind of gimmick match for that thing. Cage matches, ladder matches, street fights, Iron Man matches... any gimmick you can think of I want to see it. 9/10... WWE just gonna have him have yet another lame reign of a few weeks to a couple of months. The US title is the same thing. They change that joint every few weeks. Jeff Hardy could have some interesting feuds, man. Champion vs Champion against AJ Styles, for instance. My inner wrestling geek is just overflowing with positive vibes, pondering the possibilities. The inevitability of a Swanton into a RKO. They have credible people holding the straps, now they just need to let them have incredible matches.
Back to Roman Reigns. Why not let him display more of an attitude? Not a heel turn. Just let him tell the people who boo him where they can go. People think he is "John Cena 2.0" well, make him the furthest thing from John Cena. Where Cena is all "I don't care if you cheer or boo, you paid for your ticket" let Roman tell the people who hate him that he loves his fans and he hates his haters. WWE will never turn him heel as long as they want his merch to sell. They just never go all the way with anything pertaining to this dude. They have him get tossed out of the Rumble in the final four every year, have him losing championships all the time, and they won't let him be that guy who used to say "I'm not a good guy, I'm not a bad guy... I'm the guy" I am not making any argument about whether or not he should be the guy... my sanity can't deal. I am saying that the presentation is trash. Wrestling is about personality and character. What do you stand for? What would you fall for? Who are you? Why are you here? We generally can't answer those questions about these guys and gals who recite word for word scripted "shoot" promos.
"Shoot" promos. They shouldn't happen. Reason being: if you tell your audience "hey, this guy really means what he's saying on THIS occasion" then, you're also telling us all the other promos are fake. Every promo should feel like a shoot while being a work. These wrestlers should be real people. You know why Undertaker resonates with people? He knows that character, he IS that character. If they show a pretape of him in a graveyard with a tombstone engraved with his opponent's name... you accept "oh yeah this dude just hangs out in graveyards at night" because OF COURSE he would. We don't believe these promos are real, for real and that is a problem.
Everything in WWE now is so overproduced, with the scripted promos, the shaky cam with excessive cuts. All they need to do is present this stuff as a contest. Two or more participants with different motivations, trying to win. Present these characters as real in their fake environment, instead of making it fake but trying to make it real... if that makes sense. I bet business would pick up.