I honestly don't find most of the WWE roster to be "bland"

[Clash, Never a Meter Maid]

Ok, sure I can complain about the booking all day, but I really don't like this sentiment going around with so many people saying "this WWE wrestler has no character, they have no personality." Right now, there's a ton of WWE superstars I feel are getting a raw deal from fans.

I'll admit I'm partially influenced by a thread that was recently made asking "how many people on the roster have actual characters": officialfan.proboards.com/thread/574693/people-on-roster-characters To answer that question, I think many of them DO have characters, they just aren't being given plot lines that the fans can sink their teeth into.

There was one post mentioning Catrina from Lucha Underground, and her detailed history with Mil Muertes and Fenix. But here's the thing- that's not necessarily a description of Catrina's personality, that's a storyline that Catrina is involved in.

A wrestler's personality, their style of wrestling, their appearance, the way they react to situations during the matches...that is a wrestler's gimmick in and of itself. Your personality is the first gimmick you start out with, and often it's all a wrestler truly needs. For someone like Bayley or Charlotte, I don't think it's correct to just narrow down their characters to liking inflatable tubes or calling themselves a queen.

Just as a wrestler, I find Bayley's whole aura, her demeanor in her entrance and her match style to be very distinct, as I do Charlotte and Sasha. They're not FCW clones or CAWs, all three of those wrestlers come off like stars to me. Maybe the angles they're being given week-to-week aren't too hot, but when I look at Sasha, or someone like Ember Moon on their own? Nothing bland about those two. Look at their hair and gear, the music, how different their styles of ring work are. It's the lame angles that have made Bayley look stupid as to why she hasn't had the success on Raw as she did in NXT, not because the character is bad on its own.

If you've got a significant amount of fans connecting with a wrestler, then that wrestler can't be bland. Look at Seth Rollins and Finn Balor right now. They're more or less just "wrestlers", but they have a rapport with crowds. Fans are more than happy to do Finn's pose during his entrance, and he doesn't need an elaborate thing going on outside of wrestling to accomplish that. Rollins is doing great simply being the Kingslayer and having exciting matches. If you're over, you're over IMO.

That's why I've never liked the "what's this wrestler's gimmick?" question. For one thing, it always brings to mind the old "day job wrestlers" of the mid 1990s, like the Doinks and Jeff Jarretts (I still love Double J personally, I'm just using him as an example). And I know that most fans aren't asking for those sorts of characters to return. But at the same time, I don't think a lot of modern wrestlers get enough credit for molding themselves into more defined wrestlers, without the aid of a super-elaborate angle or a bizarre gimmick. Dusty Rhodes and Mitsuharu Misawa became stars by just basically being wrestlers.

What was Randy Savage's character, really? He was a professional wrestler. I can't rack my brain trying to come up with answers beyond that, outside of "neon space cowboy". I remember when people kept asking what Cena's character was. "Is he a marine or a rapper? I don't get it!" He's a charismatic wrestler, what's not to understand? And it's the same thing with Ember Moon today. I don't need her to be a literal mystical being, or a clear-cut vampire. She's a wild and crazy looking wrestler with some badass moves, and that's good enough for me.

What the WWE roster needs are more detailed story lines that they can be creative with. But I don't see them all necessarily as blank slates. There's a big difference in personality strength between Charlotte, and say, Apollo Crews.

[Deleted]

This is pretty much bang on.

Some guys need more fleshing out for sure, but that's the fault of the stories being told more than the guys involved.

[Clash, Never a Meter Maid]

Jun 8, 2018 7:51:47 GMT -5 @returnofthestryker said:

This is pretty much bang on.

Some guys need more fleshing out for sure, but that's the fault of the stories being told more than the guys involved.

Right, because when I hear someone mention "bland wrestlers"....I don't think about the Bobby Roodes, and certainly not the Roman Reignses of the business. Because we've seen both of those guys be quite entertaining when they're given strong angles and effective match layouts. When I hear DUHN-DUN-DUHH DUHH or the open chords of Glorious, I can't help but notice these guys.

When I think of bland wrestlers with no personality, I think of jobbers, the PJ Walkers or Colin Delaneys. The Young Lions in New Japan, before they go on excursion and develop more detailed characters. The ones who clearly aren't meant to be stars. Maybe they need to give Roode more to work with, but he has things that separate him from the pack already.

[Magic knows Black Lives Matter]

Personally speaking, I don't believe the wrestlers don't have gimmicks. In fact, I'll be honest. I can point to damn near anybody on this roster and say what their character is.

The issue is that the character, through large part of booking, doesn't translate well to the medium they are taking place in. Bayley likes to hug people and is the super sweet girl. ...ok. No Way Jose likes to dance. ...ok. Baron Corbin is MEAN. ...ok. Finn Balor flexes for the hoes a lot. ...ok. Even Apollo Crews HAS a character, it's just not a very interesting one. He's a nice guy that works hard and smiles a lot. ...ok.

The f*** does that have to do with them having matches, haha? You can have the best gimmick ideas in the world but if they aren't being utlized, it means less nothing. To quote the great Childish Gambino, "yeah, you got some silverware but really, are you eating tho?" Is WWE really eating with this roster? I don't think so. There's a TON of silverware and yet, that good ass lasagna is just sitting there on the table.

Like, Braun Strowman is one of the few acts on the roster I'm invested in. His gimmick is about as basic as it gets. He's a big dude that likes to fight and catches bodies. BUT IT'S COMPELLING TO WATCH. The performer is great but the character translates well to having matches and builds with actual intrigue and friction. A literal monkey could book Braun Strowman well.

WWE is very weird in that they can't decide if they want to be an athletic competiton or a cartoon. Now, you can do either one and have it work but f***s's sake, you gotta pick one! They straddle that line so much that everything comes off like a disjointed mess, almost none of these characters come off as interesting, and the entire product falls flat on it's face.

People talk about how wrestlers need to learn from MMA. The thing is...there really ISN'T many great promo guys in MMA. WWE SHOULD be smashing UFC right now, no questions about it. "well, MMA is real." OK, then tell me which documentary drew more money than the last Star Wars movie? People don't give a f*** if it's actually real, they want the ILLUSION that it's real. They want to be sucked into that universe and the conflicts within them.

Outside of McGregor and maybe one or two other guys, MMA guys & gals (and enbies) really aren't outlandish. Notice how quiet and reserved Ronda Rousey is whenever she has to talk. Hell, even Nick Diaz, a guy who had some of the highest drawing fights of all time with Conor McGregor, talks like he's got a mouthful of marbles 95% of the time. Why did his fights draw so well then? BECAUSE HE MADE YOU CARE ABOUT THEM. He builds believeable friction with whoever he's beefing with because at the end of the day, this isn't a variety show or a 30-minute TV show. It's a fight club, for all intents and purposes. At it's core, that's what WWE is. Rasslin'. There's lots of razzle dazzle but at it's core, that's what people tune in for. To see people go at it in that squared circle. The writing is so poor that virtually none of these characters can build realistic friction with each other. And if you can't do that...what do you really have?

EDIT: My post was long and drawn out but I agree with your core point, Clash. 

[Clash, Never a Meter Maid]

Regarding comparing MMA to WWE, wrestling fans by and large are so used to broad personalities that we often don't realize what we have.

We remember Bret Hart as this down-to-earth guy, who was apparently so ordinary and humble. HAHAHAHA. Bret Hart was flamboyant as hell.

If he was an MMA fighter and he brought the Hitman gimmick to UFC, with hot pink fighter shorts, that jacket with the pink epaulets and the glasses? If he came out talking about how he was "the best there is, was and ever will be"? The mainstream press would consider Bret to be a larger-than-life personality, maybe even a borderline clown. But just because Bret wasn't as over-the-top in interviews as Hulk Hogan or Rock were, that doesn't necessarily make him a dry or bland character.

Every wrestler has their own gear that works for them. It's up to the writers to find better ways to utilize that. Bayley doesn't need to cut crazy Flair style promos to get over, and I don't expect her to. Give her good angles like she had in NXT that make her look strong, and she'll be fine.

[Allie Kitsune]

Jun 8, 2018 8:04:41 GMT -5 Magic knows Black Lives Matter said:

WWE is very weird in that they can't decide if they want to be an athletic competiton or a cartoon. Now, you can do either one and have it work but f***s's sake, you gotta pick one! They straddle that line so much that everything comes off like a disjointed mess, almost none of these characters come off as interesting, and the entire product falls flat on it's face.

Oh good god, this.

And LU is showing that you _can_ go full-on batshit cartoon and make it work.

You just have to commit to it.

[nisidhe]

You're not wrong. There are many characters in WWE and most, if not all of them, scream "pro wrestler" rather than the old "day job" gimmicks. The problem, as I see it, is that characters need stories and committed bookers/writers to put them together. I know I've harped on this a lot, but there is one very recent example that could have elevated both characters, but instead resulted in both being buried to the point at which one is still directionless and the other needed to be teamed with someone else to bring them back.

The Balor/Wyatt feud last year should have been a writer's multiply-orgasmic wet dream - imagine being able to draw from the wells of American Gothic symbolism, Celtic mythology, cosmic horror, Jungian psychology, and WWE's own history to put that feud together and see it play out in the ring. What WWE had in that feud was the potential to lift its product out of the meaningless slog of chasing championships and restore what it had lost when it lost the Undertaker. The willingness to suspend disbelief was never greater in even the last twenty years than it was as that feud started, in my view. That it instead deflated into nothingness to the point at which it was almost - not quite, but almost - a mercy that it was cut off when it was, was an absolute travesty for which Vince should hang his head in shame. He was the one who killed that feud, and who nearly reduced to nothing the Broken Universe.

[Cyno]

If we're looking purely at talent and potential, WWE has assembled dream roster of some of the best wrestlers in the hemisphere.

The problem is, and has been for quite some time, awful booking and worse writing with a generous helping of McMahon-brand stubbornness.

[Perd]

The roster is absolutely loaded. That’s a big part of why the current product is so frustrating. If only the booking/writing was better. 

[Dub H]

I think most character have a personality they follow. Sometimes booking goes against that character.So in the end it may feel the character is not there.It needs good writing to rely on personality instead of gimmick.

In some cases*roman* writing want to change that character to fit what they want

[Mister Pigwell]

The roster is peachy keen. The writing of those talents is the big issue.

[The Thread Barbi]

For me

These are characters I am engrossed in.



This is shit

[Aboutreika18]

I think we're just arguing semantics on the definition of "characters".

I want more colourful, larger than life, over the top but also easy to understand in terms of motivation characters, that were commonplace throughout the '80s and '90s.

Work-rate and in-ring ability has gone up across the board but simple wrestling psychology is lacking IMO and the fact that Zombie WWE is stumbling around with no real identity or purpose doesn't help and the fact every match/segment in a show seems to exist in a bubble makes it hard for anyone to try and immerse themselves in this universe WWE has created.

[The Yes Man]

The roster is really f***ing good. The writers are really f***ing bad.

[Jedi-El of Tomorrow]

Jun 8, 2018 7:10:32 GMT -5 Clash, Never a Meter Maid said:

Ok, sure I can complain about the booking all day, but I really don't like this sentiment going around with so many people saying "this WWE wrestler has no character, they have no personality." Right now, there's a ton of WWE superstars I feel are getting a raw deal from fans.

I'll admit I'm partially influenced by a thread that was recently made asking "how many people on the roster have actual characters": officialfan.proboards.com/thread/574693/people-on-roster-characters To answer that question, I think many of them DO have characters, they just aren't being given plot lines that the fans can sink their teeth into.

Finn Balor hasn't had a storyline in forever. How do you not give a guy as over as him a storyline?

Bray Wyatt and Matt Hardy don't have a storyline. They're tag champs, and their characters call for a zany storyline, but they have no storyline. They're just there doing nothing basically.

The lack of storylines is bad. Why should we care about a match if there's no story to it? Sasha vs Bayley at Brooklyn and Gargano vs Ciampa, just to use 2 examples were fantastic matches, made into all time great WWE matches thanks to the storylines. You got invested in those matches, and are still invested in the Ciampa vs Gargano feud. f***, the biggest match in company history, Hogan vs Andre, from a technical standpoint is terrible, but they packed that many people into the Silverdome, and it became the biggest match in company history thanks to the storyline. You kind of have a feeling that if that match happened today, it would just be Hogan vs Andre, it's a dream match, you don't need anything else.

Jun 8, 2018 8:17:20 GMT -5 Allie Kitsune said:

Jun 8, 2018 8:04:41 GMT -5 Magic knows Black Lives Matter said:

WWE is very weird in that they can't decide if they want to be an athletic competiton or a cartoon. Now, you can do either one and have it work but f***s's sake, you gotta pick one! They straddle that line so much that everything comes off like a disjointed mess, almost none of these characters come off as interesting, and the entire product falls flat on it's face.

Oh good god, this.

And LU is showing that you _can_ go full-on batshit cartoon and make it work.

You just have to commit to it.

Braun's a giant cartoon character, and he's the most popular guy on Raw.

[Reflecto]

Jun 8, 2018 8:03:22 GMT -5 Clash, Never a Meter Maid said:

Right, because when I hear someone mention "bland wrestlers"....I don't think about the Bobby Roodes, and certainly not the Roman Reignses of the business. Because we've seen both of those guys be quite entertaining when they're given strong angles and effective match layouts. When I hear DUHN-DUN-DUHH DUHH or the open chords of Glorious, I can't help but notice these guys.

When I think of bland wrestlers with no personality, I think of jobbers, the PJ Walkers or Colin Delaneys. The Young Lions in New Japan, before they go on excursion and develop more detailed characters. The ones who clearly aren't meant to be stars. Maybe they need to give Roode more to work with, but he has things that separate him from the pack already.

But that ties to the point Magic said all along there.

If you have some semblance of a character, what happens when you're in the ring to make it work?

Bobby Roode is an example. Bobby Roode's not a "bland wrestler" when the chords of "Glorious", and on paper that makes Bobby Roode not bland.

Then you notice his gimmick. In NXT, that gimmick is "I'm a high-class person and will take NXT from you peasants"...which isn't reinventing the wheel, but it's a perfectly cromulent gimmick.

In WWE, that gimmick is..."I have a theme song!" So? Everyone has a theme song. What makes Bobby Roode so much more special?

He's not bland because he's a bad wrestler- we have enough proof that Bobby Roode is quite good. Rather, Bobby Roode is bland because you can literally hand "Glorious Domination" to anyone else on the roster, and instantly Bobby Roode is dead in the water. (And it wouldn't even be the first time they did that storyline- witness the Xavier Woods/Brodus Clay feud where Woods started using Brodus's theme and coming to the ring with Brodus's managers, and within a couple weeks, Brodus Clay was dead as a performer.)

[HMARK Center]

The big issue, at least to me, is that they don't have characters play off one another. If you do that then all you need is dirt simple motivation to get something compelling going.

I said this in another thread, but a lot of people often overthink what's necessary to make for an interesting wrestling character or storyline. It can be argued that wrestling has two big psychological components: the story that's told inside the ring, and the broader world that all the wrestlers exist in. Inside the ring, wrestlers need to use words, moves, facial expressions, sequences, and all other types of actions to further stories; ideally, what a wrestler does in the ring adjusts and changes to suit the opponent they're facing or the storyline/angle they're involved in. Outside of it, the fictional world the wrestlers exist in provide them with a broader context they fight within and simple motivations for fighting and hurting themselves and others in the first place (e.g. Gorilla Monsoon's "winner's share of the purse"/Dusty's "pay winduh").

As said throughout this thread, WWE has tons of talent fully capable of doing whatever needs to be done inside the ring; for reasons I cannot begin to fathom (my personal guess is that they simply believe the audience isn't bright and thus they just structure everything about "face starts hot, heel controls, hit your signature spots then finish"), they opt not to do it the vast majority of the time. Rollns seems to be working varied matches that utilize different psychological angles, but too few others get the chance to do that. This is a major strike against making the wrestlers seem more interesting: we don't get to see them really struggle and grow through what they go through in the ring, as the show essentially tells us "what they do in the ring isn't important until the last 2-5 minutes, depending on the match's length", so we don't really have much motivation to pay attention to what's going on and how that can shape our relationship to their characters.

Arguably worse when you consider how much simpler this must be, like Magic was getting at there's not really much in the way of a broader context either. Why are these people wrestling? Why do so many of the random matches on Raw or SD happen? Why do some of them face each other fifteen times in the course of just three months of TV? Most of the time we don't know, and they don't care to tell us. Something as simple as "pay winduh", "title contention implications", "in danger of losing their spot", "wants to earn their way onto a big show like Wrestlemania", ANYTHING. It doesn't have to be super complex, it doesn't have to get built for months and months beforehand, it doesn't need to involve deep philosophy or complex narratives (though if they think they can pull those things off well, great!), it just has to be "Wrestler A is facing Wrestler B, they're facing one another because of broader context X, and their personal motivations (Y) are shaping how they're performing and what they're doing in the ring." Boom, done.

I'll repeat something I've said a good deal before: I remember so often back during my big ROH fandom days (circa 2004-2009) getting told how I must've only liked "flippy moves" and "bad psychology" because I preferred that to WWE, something I'll still hear albeit to a much lesser degree these days about being a NJPW fan. The reality for me was that those other companies did/do a much better job establishing the broader world their wrestlers exist and compete in, plus they use stories and feuds to give their characters something to play off of and motivate them in a way consistent with how the audience know them. Frankly, their storytelling, from the simplest in-ring facial expressions up to the longer arcing multi-month storylines, often blew WWE's output away, at least for me, and I'm convinced that a huge reason why is that they didn't get bogged down in absurdity, they picked a direction and ran with it and let basic motivations take over.

[Hit Girl]

Any character is bland if they are written like shit.

[Oh Cry Me a Screwball]

Jun 8, 2018 8:17:20 GMT -5 Allie Kitsune said:

Jun 8, 2018 8:04:41 GMT -5 Magic knows Black Lives Matter said:

WWE is very weird in that they can't decide if they want to be an athletic competiton or a cartoon. Now, you can do either one and have it work but f***s's sake, you gotta pick one! They straddle that line so much that everything comes off like a disjointed mess, almost none of these characters come off as interesting, and the entire product falls flat on it's face.

Oh good god, this.

And LU is showing that you _can_ go full-on batshit cartoon and make it work.

You just have to commit to it.

And without that conviction, you just get stuff like Eddie Edwards and Sami Callahan in the woods.

[Hit Girl]

Very few of their characters are convincingly booked. They just give them nicknames and think that's enough.

Seth is the Architect!......no he wasn't.

He's the Kingslayer!......no he isn't.

Dean is the Lunatic Fringe!........no he's not.

Bray is the Eater of Worlds!........nope, he always loses.

Sasha is THE BOSS!......no, she's in a high school feud with Bayley.