Why is WWE losing its appeal?
Recently I came across this article, and honestly I could not agree more with the author.
WWE has turned out to be a business – friendly and family-like. Who calls it a wrestling industry? Ever remember the Attitude Era? And watch WWE today – it has come down to the level of Cartoon Network comics, with all kinds of nonsense story-lines that are far from appealing, wrestlers who are no longer of the standard of the legends, and a crazy General Manager on top of all. In short, everything that could have appealed to a viewer is long lost by this business, which, naturally enough, accounted for an all-time low rating in recent times.
There are four distinct factors that any viewer who has followed WWE closely enough for the last decade can point out, which admittedly has led to this all-time low rating:
1) Old story lines being repeated: Vickie Guerrero turns out as Raw Managing Supervisor yet again! How many times had WWE used this in the past? Do we not really know how TERRIBLE she was? And that had a huge negative impact on the viewers – we wanted to watch impartial wrestling, and not a ‘Excuse Me’ yelling bloke. Earlier it was for Edge and she would again manipulate her powers as she did against Undertaker, Batista and Randy Orton – now obviously for her client Dolph Ziggler. WWE repeating old story lines clearly shows they are at a loss for new ones and somehow they feel the general managers of the show hold the real key – they came up with special guest hosts at first, then to an anonymous GM, sometime later came HHH followed by John Hodger Laurinaitis, and now with Vickie – out of all, again Vickie!
2) Old action missing: The old legends are missing. The action over-the-top-rope stuff is just a myth in the current WWE. Legends of the type of Rock, Steve Austin or Hulk Hogan are not to be found among the likes of CM Punk, Dolph Ziggler or Alberto Del Rio, and that’s the main reason that they have to bring in the big names for their Wrestlemania sales like the Undertaker and Rock. The wrestlers nowadays are kind-of fun-loving, leaping and dancing around as if that’s all that matters. Precisely that is a major problem – the WWE universe seek to support these fun-loving guys more than true wrestlers. Could anyone ever think of someone like Santino Maurella in the Attitude Era? Like an oasis, Ryback looks to be a good and decent inspiration. There’s a serious dearth of true potential wrestlers. Kofi Kingston, R-Truth (with Little Jimmy foolery), John Morrison have little to do with boosting WWE ratings even with their jumping, smiling or kissing babies.
3) Superstars like Edge, Batista and Jeff Hardy leaving the company has done no good either. Like them or not, they were crowd pullers and sadly but truly, WWE has not yet found their replacements. Ryback is a very new pick, I think he has got some more work to do before we can compare him with Dave, and who can forget the Rated R Superstar? Is there any high-risk flyer like Jeff Hardy in the industry today – no need to hold your breath, the answer is a resounding ‘No’.
4) Superstars like the Big Red Monster Kane and the Great Khali deserve better than what they really receive at WWE. The person who ran terror in the business once he debuted is no more than a joke now, doing anger-management classes and with his stupid tagline – ‘I am the Tag-Team champion’. When Kane is called a ‘Red Monster’, there’s a reason for that, let us remember all that he has really done – let’s recollect him burning his brother alive – which in the end, led to Taker having to deliver three consecutive tombstone Piledrivers to put him off at Wrestlemania. Who can forget the epic Inferno Matches with his half-brother and later with MVP, add to it that he eliminated eleven superstars at a single Royal Rumble along with the fact that he used to be the monster who could feel no pain! We all remember him in a different light – a man for whom no beating was really ‘enough’. We all remember him ripping apart the Satan’s structure just to demolish his own brother – wait a minute, isn’t this the same man who was playing a waiter’s role in a hotel? Hell yeah, he is!
A couple of years back we saw the old Kane, when he became the Heavyweight Champion by putting his brother in a vegetative state. Even the likes of Orton or Big Show could not stop him, (only to lose out to another silly story-line of Edge abducting Bearer to win against the monster) – WWE PLEASE CONSIDER BRINGING HIM BACK!
A very similar pattern follows for the Great Khali.
Was not he the same person who humbled the great Undertaker at Judgement Day PPV of 2006? He literally looked unstoppable taking out the likes of the all-powerful Animal Dave Batista, followed by the Nature Boy, Ric Flair, Rey Mysterio and Kane. His championship reign was one of the most dominating reigns, he was one to literally force Taker to go back to his old submission – the Triangle-Choke or Hell’s Gate, or whatever they call it besides the fact that he almost defeated HHH. But it’s been quite some time that we have seen the Great Khali in his true colors, well, what good does it really do in making him lose to wrestlers like Ziggler at a time, when Ziggler was considered to be one of the very juniors of the company? I think it’s high time that WWE goes back and get some ‘original’ stuff coming out – some true wrestling more than fitting arbitrary story-lines; we want the old action back, bring back the greats like Rock and Lesnar and have them performing more regularly at main events – bring back the old Khali, the old monster and above all, the old WWE!