Should Wrestling Have More Of A "season?"

[Guest KANE]

So me and a buddy were talking about how the KOTR title doesn't mean much anymore (despite the fact that the winner gets a Summerslam shot this year), and we got to talking about how the gimmicked matches from KOTR and Survivor Series are important to make one PPV feel different from another, yet they don't accomplish anything.

 

So here's the chat I had earlier; I'm too lazy to write it out in paragraph form, but I'll clean up spelling errors and add/edit for clarity/redundancy. I am FLOW311.

 

FLOW311: I'm going to watch KOTR tonight, and there's nothing that makes me want to.

 

MetalKat98: hmm...you need something else to do in that three hour span other than watch KOTR?

 

FLOW311: The Smarks website has all the archived KOTR rants up, and they're definitely not getting me excited about tonight's show, either. it looks like KOTR just has a history of being bad

 

MetalKat98: it's never been able to rebound after Mabel won it...then it rebounded with Austin and HHH, but then Billy Gunn won it...

 

FLOW311: The only winners who became major stars were Bret, Austin, HHH, and Angle.

 

MetalKat98: the tournament idea is a good one for wrestling...however it's lacking when it's used for King of the Ring.

 

FLOW311: Especially when it's not a one night tourney as originally conceived. The 1st one was awesome because you believed that Bret was exhausted from going through Razor and Mr. Perfect, and having to fight Bam Bam, who had a bye earlier on.

 

MetalKat98: exactly. Now it's just "oh, someone has to fight two matches in one night...don't they do that on RAW sometimes?" It doesn't feel hard to do, important, or anything like an accomplishment when all the matches aren't fought in one night.

 

FLOW311: right. The point of gimmicked PPVs (KOTR, Royal Rumble, Survivor Series) is that the PPV is built around the gimmicked match to make it seem fresh and different from other PPVs, which they need because all the other ones seem generic and useless. But the KOTR title is an afterthought anymore.

 

MetalKat98: and they barely do Survivor Series matches anymore.

they should do something with the Survivor Series matches...like the surviving members of the team get a better Royal Rumble number or something.

 

FLOW311: Yeah, but the fundamental problem with having a card full of Survivor Series matches is that there's no reason for them, unlike the Rumble where the winner goes on to Wrestlemania.

 

FLOW311: I think they should bring back the "Final Survivors" match they had from that one year, and get down to one guy who automatically becomes # 30 in the Rumble.

 

MetalKat98: yeah, after all the survivor series matches, the survivors have a battle royale to see who gets to be #30. and with that idea, anyone could be the Final Survivor 'cause even if you're #30 in the Rumble, you can still lose. you could have Funaki as your final survivor and have him be #30 and it doesn't screw anything up.

 

FLOW311: That's good, because it makes you think anyone could win Survivor Series, whereas Rumbles aren't always that good because you can narrow the winner down to about 2 or 3 people.

 

FLOW311: I really like this idea, because you can follow one guy's quest for the championship from the day after Summerslam all the way to Wrestlemania, by winning the Survivor Series, winning the Rumble, and going to Wrestlemania. And if that doesn't work, he signs himself up for KOTR to get himself a Summerslam shot.

 

MetalKat98: yeah, there's a natural progression. It's almost like a season. From Survivor Series to Wrestlemania. Then there's a second season of KOTR to SummerSlam.

 

FLOW311: And it would give the writers more of a storyline to flow from, since the only time when they have a direction to follow is from the Rumble to Wrestemania. That's the only period where they have their shit together.

 

FLOW311: And it's because they can see where they're going; they can write while keeping the ending in mind, because the rules of the WWF season plotted it out for them!

 

MetalKat98: sometimes it's good to have rules in the universe. Plus that means the writers don't have to come up with ridiculous reasons for people to feud...like Jericho running over HHH's dog.

 

MetalKat98: because it's called sports entertainment...and sports have some sort of structure to them.

 

(end chat)

 

Well, what do you guys think? Should there be more of a "season" in the WWE than just that period between the Rumble and Wrestlemania? Would keeping the KOTR and Survivor Series based around their gimmicked matches make the other PPVs seem less generic? Would keeping the rules of the season in mind help the writers to stay on topic and write storylines with less plot-holes and stupid filler angles?

[Guest The Son of Sting]

I have always thought a season is a good idea, it would stop wrestlers from getting burnt out. A month of after Backlash and a month of after Survivor Series.

[Guest Hogan Made Wrestling]

The problems with doing a season are twofold. First, WWE is a television show moreso than other pro sports are. It's episodic TV in that each episode builds off the ones before it, whereas in pro sports each event is essentially self contained. So, if they did do a "season" they would have to use rerun programming in between. Now this brings up another problem, wrestling TV shows do not make for good rerun programming. Sure, great matches can be watched over and over again, but replaying a full episode of RAW wouldn't work nearly as well. It's the same reason a show like Law&Order is better on reruns/syndication than a show like ER.

[Guest KANE]

bump

[Guest buffybeast]

It doesn't make good business sense to have "seasons". The company would lose millions upon millions of advertising dollars. And no, please don't think that more people would watch the program thereby generating a higher viewership and increased ad dollars. Television is unpredictable and one cannot guarantee such results.

[Guest KANE]

By "seasons," I never meant that wrestling should stop or go off the air for a couple months. I just meant that it should have more rules and structrure, instead of floundering for the first couple months in the fall, and after Wrestlemania. I think that can make better television.

[Guest J*ingus]

Lots of people wish that wrestling would have an off-season, including an awful lot of wrestlers. I know one poor guy who keeps putting off getting some knee surgery that he really needs, just because he'd be gone for at least six months and really can't afford to be missing for that long.

[Guest Rob Edwards]

Not really a proper answer but I think Survivor series would be better served having a wargames main event (if Vince will use Dusty's idea)

[Guest Goodear]

By "seasons," I never meant that wrestling should stop or go off the air for a couple months. I just meant that it should have more rules and structrure, instead of floundering for the first couple months in the fall, and after Wrestlemania. I think that can make better television.

The problem with that KANE, is that it closes down a whole lot of on-the-fly options. Now I know "on-the-fly" is a dirty word in the wrestling world and all, but still you really cannot lock yourself into a angle for an entire 8 months. Think about it, you invest that amount of time in, lets say, Brock Lesnar and he gets hurt, or worse, doesn't get the least bit over. You've already set the push in stone to the point where changing things would require a whole lot of crazy moves to fix.

 

It would just be easier to plan things out ahead of time in booking meatingings but but leave the fans out of the match making loop. That way, you desing your angles so that the fans can see the logical progession to your final goal, without giving everything "I get a title shot in 3 months" rigidity.

[Guest Razor Roman]

The problem with wrestling right now is the same problem that lots of long-running sitcoms have... they just run out of new ideas.

 

The reason the Simpsons has been able to go so long is because as a cartoon, they have a lot of leeway that live action shows like WWE just don't have.

 

The Simpsons could do a "Homer on Mars" episode, and no one would care as long as it was funny. The WWE can't get out of the ring, as much as it tries to, the bottom line is everything must be settled in (or at least near!) the ring.

 

This problem should be taken care of simply through the creation of new stars and new characters, moving fluidly through the ranks. Maybe its UT-HHH in the Main Event now... but next month it could be UT-Jericho (one that we've NEVER seen) and HHH could work with someone lower on the card, say Lance Storm... then when he's ready he can feud with Benoit, ad so on. Unfortunately, the old guard won't non-main event a PPV or TV show.. EVER.

 

The business doesn't seem to be centered on main-events anymore anyway. For Judgement Day, for example, I saw commercials selling the PPV based on the HHH-Jericho match, the Hogan-UT match, AND the Angle-Edge match. They shouldn't think of not feuding over the title as not being in the main event anymore. None of these guys are the main attraction, but the group as a whole are.