Fresh matchups, how practical is it to run them EVERY time?

[EoE: Well There's Your Problem]

As I type this, we have Nakamura v Corbin going on SmackDown for what I have as their sixth televised singles match this year, their first since an extended feud between them in May-July, and it calls to mind one of the many bugbears about WWE. How often they run the same matchups over and over again.

The question to ask, is what are the reasonable expectations for running fresh, never-done-before matchups? Sure, they could run show after show of them, but how long before they run out of combinations? You could put in more matches with outside enhancement talents to pad them out, but you can't put in too many because networks aren't paying hundreds of millions of dollars for Wrestling Challenge circa 1994. You could blow up the size of the roster, but then you could have talents going weeks without appearing, but by necessity as opposed to indifference. And the problem is exacerbated tenfold for the women's division because they have only about one-third as many people at any given time.

It's all a big juggling act, so let's just get a rough guesstimate of what the average fan would think is practical.

[Starshine]

It's not a matter of doing new matches on a constant basis. It's making the matches on offer feel like they have actual stakes involved, and with results that have meaning.

At least 95% of what WWE produces feels unimportant, so seeing the same guys wrestle the same pointless matches only exposes the problem further.

It's a bad TV problem. Any show that had as lazy and uninspired writing would be just as bad.

[Oh Cry Me a Screwball]

Oct 22, 2021 20:56:40 GMT -5 Starshine said:

It's not a matter of doing new matches on a constant basis. It's making the matches on offer feel like they have actual stakes involved, and with results that have meaning.

At least 95% of what WWE produces feels unimportant, so seeing the same guys wrestle the same pointless matches only exposes the problem further.

It's a bad TV problem. Any show that had as lazy and uninspired writing would be just as bad.

Yes, it's not just running the same combination over and over again, it's also the amount of spacing between matches, and any sort of stakes or purpose to differentiate each encounter.

I know making the comparison to AEW can be annoying, but look at how many year-plus long rivalries they have had, and how none of them got as stale as a typical WWE two-month rivalry. It's because they find ways to advance rivalries that aren't singles matches with bad finishes, and they also know how to put a rivalry temporarily on the backburner and revisit it later (think Omega vs. Moxley, which technically ran for almost two years, but they weren't fighting for that entire two years either).

[saneiac]

There are times when repeating a match makes sense, but most of the time they repeat for no reason and with no plot advancement.

Look at the recent Dominik Mysterio losing streak story. He lost to Sami Zayn. Then he lost to Sami Zayn again the next week. And again after that. How much effort would it have taken to have the second loss be to, say, Apollo Crews, who hasn't been on TV for weeks, and the third loss to Robert Roode, who badly needs some credibility. There was no reason to repeat that match three times in a row other than laziness.

[06vwgti]

I would be happy if the rematch clause would go away, but then again why does it matter when they'll repeat the same match ad nauseum even after the clause was applied

[Deleted]

WWE's roster is so deep that you could have an absolute TON of first-time matches, but they're never realistically going to do that.

The biggest problem with WWE's booking for years has been that each wrestler seemingly only has two or three people they are allowed to work with, because wrestlers absolutely don't go outside their spot on the card. You'll see Drew vs. Sheamus, Lashley, or Jinder until you're sick to death of it, but why not throw in a Drew vs. Mansoor just to mix it up?

One of the main things I'm enjoying about AEW is that, for the most part, it feels like anyone could face anyone. Omega vs. Pillman doesn't sound impossible at all, and you'd go into it expecting a competitive match. If you hear Reigns vs. Mustafa Ali advertised, you know for sure that it's just a total squash to advance a storyline. I believe WWE could benefit from AEW's approach in this particular area.

[Mozenrath]

Oct 23, 2021 2:50:27 GMT -5 @wvguitar said:

WWE's roster is so deep that you could have an absolute TON of first-time matches, but they're never realistically going to do that.

The biggest problem with WWE's booking for years has been that each wrestler seemingly only has two or three people they are allowed to work with, because wrestlers absolutely don't go outside their spot on the card. You'll see Drew vs. Sheamus, Lashley, or Jinder until you're sick to death of it, but why not throw in a Drew vs. Mansoor just to mix it up?

One of the main things I'm enjoying about AEW is that, for the most part, it feels like anyone could face anyone. Omega vs. Pillman doesn't sound impossible at all, and you'd go into it expecting a competitive match. If you hear Reigns vs. Mustafa Ali advertised, you know for sure that it's just a total squash to advance a storyline. I believe WWE could benefit from AEW's approach in this particular area.

Right, we're pretty far removed from that era where Smackdown used to have Matt Hardy facing random people like Finlay, etc, in long singles matches weekly. I think a lot of it was just to try to cement Matt as a singles guy, but it also did help people get showcased a bit.

[polarbearpete]

I think their rosters are actually too small now post-roster cuts. They could use more talent added to each show.

[This Player Hating Mothman]

It'd be easier if they hadn't cut so many people, but the problem is that WWE is running matches for matches' sake, and that means a ton of repeats and threepeats and whatever the hell Ziggler vs. Kofi back all those years ago qualified as. You can run matches back if there's a good reason to, but WWE just kinda throws stuff out there without a whole lot of care, just to put on their TV show. If it wasn't written in the short term and then rewritten on the absolute shortest imaginable term, I don't think they'd run into this problem, but when you don't know what you're doing outside of the biggest, most zoomed out picture, and someone can scrap the script hours before show time, it becomes impossible to put in any real care or precision.

["Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay]

WWE's rematch clause pokes holes in their writing and immediately makes any title changes less exciting the day after because you know the next month of the feud already.

[HMARK Center]

Oct 23, 2021 2:50:27 GMT -5 @wvguitar said:

WWE's roster is so deep that you could have an absolute TON of first-time matches, but they're never realistically going to do that.

The biggest problem with WWE's booking for years has been that each wrestler seemingly only has two or three people they are allowed to work with, because wrestlers absolutely don't go outside their spot on the card. You'll see Drew vs. Sheamus, Lashley, or Jinder until you're sick to death of it, but why not throw in a Drew vs. Mansoor just to mix it up?

One of the main things I'm enjoying about AEW is that, for the most part, it feels like anyone could face anyone. Omega vs. Pillman doesn't sound impossible at all, and you'd go into it expecting a competitive match. If you hear Reigns vs. Mustafa Ali advertised, you know for sure that it's just a total squash to advance a storyline. I believe WWE could benefit from AEW's approach in this particular area.

I'm curious how much of that is a difference between the two companies on things like whether to prioritize match results (the destination) or to allow room to breathe for the road to getting to said results (the journey). I saw someone post about this on Reddit, and it's insanely clear when looking at the numbers that AEW does far, far, far fewer rematches than WWE does, whether in terms of hard numbers or in terms of percentage of matches produced for television (since it's hard to compare them in hard numbers when WWE has seven hours of prime time TV).

So much of WWE's booking seems to revolve around repeating matchups and falling into the rut of 50/50 booking. In doing this you make most of your matchups between wrestlers who are on similar levels or tiers of the card to one another and instill an expectation in the audience that since neither wrestler is too high over the other, so it's not a given who will win. Plus, with that "keep them on the same tier" mentality, you likely book a lot more screwy finishes so that things don't feel so definitive, lest the definitive winner look that much stronger than the loser. Like it's been said many times over, this all combines to really not put anybody over too much above the rest of the roster, and it kind of trains the audience not to pay too much attention to the actual matches being wrestled, as the action during the match takes a backseat to reaching the "destination" and asking "ok, who's actually winning and who's losing?"

A lot of AEW's booking, meanwhile, actively revolves around recognizing the all but referencing the tiers that exist between wrestlers on different parts of the card. Like you say, a Kenny Omega vs. Brian Pillman Jr. match could easily happen on the show: if it did there'd be little doubt that Kenny was going to win, but the match would likely be structured to serve some kind of story or character work. For example, maybe the story is that Pillman is angling to take the next step in his career, and just taking the fight to Kenny would do wonders to raise his stock; maybe the story is that Omega has a title match coming up and is using Pillman to make an example, or maybe he's getting distracted by something and it's keeping him from dominating, etc. Either way, the tier level is intact (Omega the established main eventer, Pillman the young midcarder), but the suggestion to the audience is "you know Kenny is 95% likely to win, but let's see how he and Pillman get there", asking you to pay more attention to the "journey" that the match represents.

I won't make any bones about it, I think that when you have a big enough roster the latter is always superior to the former; ROH did it great during its golden age, NJPW and AEW do it very well, and it serves to build more notable stars (hard to be a star if you're not depicted as superior to your competitors) and to give more midcarders something to do as they try and build themselves up since they're getting more match time, even if they're losing a portion of that time. WWE's way of doing things only really works when you have a small roster where you kind of have to protect people as much as possible to maximize their value for you, but even in that case I don't see smaller promotions today like current ROH doing stuff like booking lots of inconclusive or screwy finishes that leave the crowd unsatisfied or being afraid to show a few key names as being the real cream of the crop on their roster.

[sunnytaker]

Oct 22, 2021 21:42:33 GMT -5 Oh Cry Me a Screwball said:

Oct 22, 2021 20:56:40 GMT -5 Starshine said:

It's not a matter of doing new matches on a constant basis. It's making the matches on offer feel like they have actual stakes involved, and with results that have meaning.

At least 95% of what WWE produces feels unimportant, so seeing the same guys wrestle the same pointless matches only exposes the problem further.

It's a bad TV problem. Any show that had as lazy and uninspired writing would be just as bad.

Yes, it's not just running the same combination over and over again, it's also the amount of spacing between matches, and any sort of stakes or purpose to differentiate each encounter.

I know making the comparison to AEW can be annoying, but look at how many year-plus long rivalries they have had, and how none of them got as stale as a typical WWE two-month rivalry. It's because they find ways to advance rivalries that aren't singles matches with bad finishes, and they also know how to put a rivalry temporarily on the backburner and revisit it later (think Omega vs. Moxley, which technically ran for almost two years, but they weren't fighting for that entire two years either).

look how long hangman vs omega has been going on with only one singles match between them to this point. meanwhile big e was fighting apollo crews 3 times a month it seemed like. or how many title matches mcintyre and lashley had. cody/black is probably the most spammed aew matchup i can think of and that will be 3 matches in 3 months or so. jericho/OC maybe?

[HMARK Center]

Oct 23, 2021 14:56:46 GMT -5 sunnytaker said:

Oct 22, 2021 21:42:33 GMT -5 Oh Cry Me a Screwball said:

Yes, it's not just running the same combination over and over again, it's also the amount of spacing between matches, and any sort of stakes or purpose to differentiate each encounter.

I know making the comparison to AEW can be annoying, but look at how many year-plus long rivalries they have had, and how none of them got as stale as a typical WWE two-month rivalry. It's because they find ways to advance rivalries that aren't singles matches with bad finishes, and they also know how to put a rivalry temporarily on the backburner and revisit it later (think Omega vs. Moxley, which technically ran for almost two years, but they weren't fighting for that entire two years either).

look how long hangman vs omega has been going on with only one singles match between them to this point. meanwhile big e was fighting apollo crews 3 times a month it seemed like. or how many title matches mcintyre and lashley had. cody/black is probably the most spammed aew matchup i can think of and that will be 3 matches in 3 months or so. jericho/OC maybe?

And even with Jericho/OC, like with Omega/Moxley, they made sure to vary up the kinds of matches they did, and built to a clear "this gimmick match will determine the feud winner" bout.

[MolotovMocktail]

This is why I advocate for a return to the 80’s/90’s model of using local indy guys as enhancement talent and featuring 1-2 matches between “name” guys every week. Unless someone is just debuting, there isn’t really a fresh matchup, and there are only so many combinations you can do.

[Deleted]

I do not mind people facing one another multiple times if the story crafted around the feud is worth doing the same match over and over over.

WWE has no stories they book situations thus we find ourselves in quite the evil repetitive conundrum.

[Corre.222]

With the brand split, the solution to this problem is to elevate many many more guys & more people, instead of the same, like they do with the Women's division with only 5 relevant people (Horsewomen + Bianca). If WWE utilized Deonna, Chelsea Green & Santana Garrett and signed others (Delilah Doom, etc) and used them instead of merging divisions or rematches, this would solve the issue (same with men)

[thecrusherwi]

Oct 23, 2021 2:50:27 GMT -5 @wvguitar said:

WWE's roster is so deep that you could have an absolute TON of first-time matches, but they're never realistically going to do that.

The biggest problem with WWE's booking for years has been that each wrestler seemingly only has two or three people they are allowed to work with, because wrestlers absolutely don't go outside their spot on the card. You'll see Drew vs. Sheamus, Lashley, or Jinder until you're sick to death of it, but why not throw in a Drew vs. Mansoor just to mix it up?

One of the main things I'm enjoying about AEW is that, for the most part, it feels like anyone could face anyone. Omega vs. Pillman doesn't sound impossible at all, and you'd go into it expecting a competitive match. If you hear Reigns vs. Mustafa Ali advertised, you know for sure that it's just a total squash to advance a storyline. I believe WWE could benefit from AEW's approach in this particular area.

What you have described is one of the things I miss most about WCW. They had as much if not more TV to fill than the WWE has now, but they would find interesting matchups because they would have main eventers show up on the B shows and take on some undercard guy you never dreamed they'd face. I remember a random Worldwide where Randy Savage had a match with Ultimo Dragon. It really rewarded you for seeking out all of their programming.

[Celexa Bliss 54]

Oct 25, 2021 8:28:02 GMT -5 thecrusherwi said:

Oct 23, 2021 2:50:27 GMT -5 @wvguitar said:

WWE's roster is so deep that you could have an absolute TON of first-time matches, but they're never realistically going to do that.

The biggest problem with WWE's booking for years has been that each wrestler seemingly only has two or three people they are allowed to work with, because wrestlers absolutely don't go outside their spot on the card. You'll see Drew vs. Sheamus, Lashley, or Jinder until you're sick to death of it, but why not throw in a Drew vs. Mansoor just to mix it up?

One of the main things I'm enjoying about AEW is that, for the most part, it feels like anyone could face anyone. Omega vs. Pillman doesn't sound impossible at all, and you'd go into it expecting a competitive match. If you hear Reigns vs. Mustafa Ali advertised, you know for sure that it's just a total squash to advance a storyline. I believe WWE could benefit from AEW's approach in this particular area.

What you have described is one of the things I miss most about WCW. They had as much if not more TV to fill than the WWE has now, but they would find interesting matchups because they would have main eventers show up on the B shows and take on some undercard guy you never dreamed they'd face. I remember a random Worldwide where Randy Savage had a match with Ultimo Dragon. It really rewarded you for seeking out all of their programming.

Savage was great for working matches against just about anyone in the company. The first few Nitros had him work with guys you'd expect, like Luger, Flair and The Giant, but also with guys like Scott Norton, Kurosawa and Shark.

["Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay]

With a roster as vast as WWE's still is, you could have a fresh match every week for years at a time easily.

[khali]

Oct 25, 2021 8:28:02 GMT -5 thecrusherwi said:

Oct 23, 2021 2:50:27 GMT -5 @wvguitar said:

WWE's roster is so deep that you could have an absolute TON of first-time matches, but they're never realistically going to do that.

The biggest problem with WWE's booking for years has been that each wrestler seemingly only has two or three people they are allowed to work with, because wrestlers absolutely don't go outside their spot on the card. You'll see Drew vs. Sheamus, Lashley, or Jinder until you're sick to death of it, but why not throw in a Drew vs. Mansoor just to mix it up?

One of the main things I'm enjoying about AEW is that, for the most part, it feels like anyone could face anyone. Omega vs. Pillman doesn't sound impossible at all, and you'd go into it expecting a competitive match. If you hear Reigns vs. Mustafa Ali advertised, you know for sure that it's just a total squash to advance a storyline. I believe WWE could benefit from AEW's approach in this particular area.

What you have described is one of the things I miss most about WCW. They had as much if not more TV to fill than the WWE has now, but they would find interesting matchups because they would have main eventers show up on the B shows and take on some undercard guy you never dreamed they'd face. I remember a random Worldwide where Randy Savage had a match with Ultimo Dragon. It really rewarded you for seeking out all of their programming.

That was a great thing about WCW. They’d book these random as hell matches with people who don’t fit and you’d think “I’ve got to see what this match will be like.” When’s the last time anybody felt that way about a WWE match? They never book matches that make you think “I wonder what this will be like.” We already know.