WWE's "Unpredictability"

[Dub H]

More a discussion of why WWE loves to tout this idea that you can turn in and happen anything can happen instead of giving people information. The "Wild Card" is just one more of those examples,instead of having people announce on Smackdown all the stars that are showing up on RAW next week.

Maybe this is just all a side effect of Vince rewriting everything last minute but man they love that idea that you are going to turn in with no idea of whats going to happen (even if we do).

[cassonova]

I feel like some of this is a holdover from the attitude era, where you need to watch the entire show or you could miss something exciting or important.
Like many smaller formatting items, as time progressed, they didn't change anything. I imagine that this is still part of the hook to watch, since the concept of wrestling as an actual competitive sport has been pushed to the wayside and Vince does view everything that runs against WWE as some form of competition.

[Tenshigure]

On one of my old forum's we used to have a saying: it's not just predictable, it's WWE predictable. Even the change of storylines at the last second for inexplicable reasons is a predictable thought process brought about by Vince. Their 'unpredictability' went out the window a long time ago when they keep playing it safe for far too long.

[Dub H]

May 15, 2019 8:24:38 GMT -5 Tenshigure said:

On one of my old forum's we used to have a saying: it's not just predictable, it's WWE predictable. Even the change of storylines at the last second for inexplicable reasons is a predictable thought process brought about by Vince. Their 'unpredictability' went out the window a long time ago when they keep playing it safe for far too long.

I meant less than being actually unpredictable and more about how they present thenselves.They love to look like anything will hapens and its a wild show.

From the wildcard to announcing matche son the opening segment.

[ChitownKnight]

Sometimes they are on the mark with this. The streak ending, as well as the Ambrose turn when it happened, the Rollins turn, and especially the Bryan turn were all things in recent memory that nobody saw coming

[Deleted]

May 15, 2019 9:27:20 GMT -5 ChitownKnight said:

Sometimes they are on the mark with this. The streak ending, as well as the Ambrose turn when it happened, the Rollins turn, and especially the Bryan turn were all things in recent memory that nobody saw coming

This, and to turn it around, Kofi winning at WM was predictable as hell and people still lost their shit.

[Deleted]

They're unpredictable 20% of the time. The problem is that they push it as them being unpredictable 90% of the time.

[Sponsored by Groose Wipes]

WWE is very unpredictable because half the time even WWE doesn't know what they are going to do.

[EoE: Well There's Your Problem]

In light of recent events, I think unpredictability for unpredictability’s sake is greatly overrated.

[arrogantmodel]

The fact that we can predict the Wrestlemania card pretty accurately in November and December is pretty telling.

[EoE: Well There's Your Problem]

May 20, 2019 2:53:34 GMT -5 arrogantmodel said:

The fact that we can predict the Wrestlemania card pretty accurately in November and December is pretty telling.

That shouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

The fact is, most logical storytelling is often the most predictable, I mean, it kind of has to be if it’s what makes the most sense to the most people. Unpredictability should then come from the possibility of multiple, logical outcomes and not knowing at first glance which they’ll go with. WWE’s usual course of unpredictability is somewhat paradoxical in that they usually literally have no idea what their outcome is, but is often highly predictable in that 1. It’s probably going to piss people off and 2. No matter what happens, things will usually circle back to a select few people.