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Guest justcoz

Will they ever get rid of the backstage skits?

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Guest justcoz

Zach Gowen gets ragged on by all of you but he brought up a good point in a recent interview where he stated that the vignettes have already killed any sense of believablity to today's product.

 

I'm trying to remember when creatively everything switched over to the backstage skits? Was it after Russo? The wrestling boom was big on limos pulling up to the arena, 20 minute in ring promos and angles outside the arena - with some flirtation with backstage skits but creative wasn't built around skits and GM's like it is now.

 

Wrestling has become like porno where you want to fast forward through all the bad acting to get to the point of the matter. I've been watching old tapes of NWA Georgia Wrestling, World Wide and early WCW Saturday Night shows and the lost art of "promo time" is quite sad.

 

Why not just do more backstage interviews? Or stick Gene Okerlund, Josh Matthews or Ernest Miller out there at the top of the ramp way with a microphone and have random stars walk out and have the opportunity to cut (GASP) promos!!! They could be promos to build anticipation for a match later in the show or an upcoming ppv match. Angle development could happen during the interviews with sneak attacks, interruptions, etc and maybe the live crowd would be more lively if they weren't watching the screen all night and half the action wasn't taking place backstage.

 

Or the wrestlers can just grab mics before the bell sounds, after their introductions and cut promos on each other ECW style? This is where humor could be thrown into the mix.

 

Most of all stop the scripting just has to stop. There is a reason that veteran guys like Flair, Austin, Piper and Foley bitch about the scripting. Very seldom does someone get an opportunity to get mic time and run with it anymore. Today's writing wouldn't see Austin going to the mic after winning KOTR, with free reign to the interview's content and coining Austin 3:16. It would have be a WWE writer scripting Austin's promo that night or better yet - him doing something lame backstage skit with Goldust at the coffee pot.

 

Speaking of which, why are these athletes even drinking coffee on hot summer nights prior to competing? And do they ever have sugar and cream?

 

Interviews are pretty basic but it's more believable than trying to understand why we have cameras backstage or in their locker rooms and why the wrestlers don't seem to care. I could see if they led the viewer to believe they were watching a Real World/Big Brother type "cameras rolling at all times" thing but they've never explained it.

 

I guarantee you that most of the decent backstage skits could have had the same effect if there would have been someone there holding a microphone to their mouths. HBK/Flair from the Flair vs HHH Raw episode being an example. The only exception could possibly be the type of promos Rock and Hurricane were doing a few months back.

 

I think the main problem with Raw is that it looks just like it did in '99 - WWE is hesitant to change the look and presentation. Cameras could still go backstage to capture an altercation in the locker room or parking lot but enough of these stupid skits already!

 

Give the guys promo time instead or use Confidential style pieces on the main shows. I never understood the reason to produce these well put together pieces for the small Confidential audience. The Zach Gowen piece on Confidential would have done more to get a crowd behind him than being seduced by Sable. Brock Lesnar's Confidential feature would do more for his character in the eyes of the masses than drinking milk with Kurt Angle. Legit backgrounds can do more for a character than skits. Can't we just move forward by looking towards wrestling shows of the past?

 

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Good points. I think an announcer with wrestler promo would be more effective than a indiviual promo. The wrestler would have someone to play off of, usually a face announcer, and could get easy crowd heat, like Jericho did in WCW. WCW always did that with Mean Gene shilling his hotline and then doing a interview. Very rarely, unless it was a nWo member, did a wrestler go to the ring and cut a promo by themselves out of no where. If they did, it was because they were about to have a match. They would have promo, commercial, match. Not match, commercial, promo, skit, skit, skit, skit, commercial, match, skit, skit, skit, commercial. I hate that shit. And JJ Dillion address the cameras always around thing in a shoot interview. It was first brought into wrestling by the Horsemen who hired a camera guy to capture them beating up some guy in a parking lot and from then on, they have always been around. It wouldn't be bad if they were like "Tonight...hold on. There is a fight? Backstage, LETS GO!" or something not just cameras popping up at the start of a Christian promo or a camera man taping Jericho and Booker T's conversation on the shitter.

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Guest Patorick

Whether the promos are in the ring, backstage, in the carpark or whatever doesn't really matter much to me. So long as everything is fully and completely scripted the way it has been recently, well, it may not be terrible, but it just doesn't do it for me.

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Guest Will Scarlet

I do not particularly mind backstage skits per se. I think they can be used to get people over a little more. Unfortunately, often times, the guys they use in backstage promos either do not exactly need a backstage skits to get over(Jericho, Bischoff, Austin.) or are almost never used except in backstage skits because they are entertaining in those(Goldust, Hurricane.)

 

Another problem I noticed when I watched Raw a few weeks ago was that the timing and placement of these skits are horrible. Like the week I noticed this, there was a point in Raw that went: three minute match, skit, skit, commercial, skit, commercial, skit, match. Between the first and last match a good ten or so minutes were wasted. I could only imagine what it would be like for a live crowd to have to sit on their hands for ten minutes, waiting for the show to return. Plus, the skits were mostly set up to make something seem more important, like, "Look at JR as they set up the set for his interview with Kane!" Or "The Evolution signs Jericho's petition." Not exactly compelling tv. Hell, I felt like flipping through the channels at that point and if I found something more interesting on, I might not switch back to Raw. I can't exactly fill ten minutes of time taking piss breaks and making a snack, especially when most of the earlier show was not exactly interesting enough to hold my attention as it is.

 

I just wish they would make better use of skits. Perhaps to give someone who needs it more character It seems like it could work out better in the long run, as opposed to having the announcers harp about how "Mark Jindrak is living out his dream!" or "That Gail Kim is the greatest thing since sliced bread. She's so great that she might even be the female Randy Orton!" as the crowd goes apathetic. Why should I care about half the roster if they aren't good enough of a wrestler for me to care about their ringwork, and they have no character I could perhaps find compelling?

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Guest AndrewTS

I didn't mind so much with a couple on SD this week (the Cena one, the APA one in the desert, and there was another) because many of them were VERY short--about 15 seconds.

 

When it drags on it gets annoying. When we get long, boring exposition where nothing is really being said, or even worse...

 

Bischoff or Vince or Steph say something in the backstage skit and then say the same damn thing in the middle of the ring giving a promo. WHY EVEN BOTHER WITH THE BACKSTAGE SKIT?!? Don't pretend that this is so important and dramatic it has to be repeated again and again, monkeys!

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