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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2022 18:52:34 GMT -5
(In my opinion, of course.)
There is one major difference I've noticed in the boom periods of wrestling (80s-early 90s and Attitude Era) to now.
It's not the fact that the overall product was miles better... Well, maybe that did play a part.
But I figured out what really CAPTURED the audiences attention. And that was crazy, (sometimes) big, muscular, over the top guys.
What do Hogan, Warrior, Savage, Piper, Flair, Austin, Rock, Foley, Taker ALL have in common? They were crazy and over the top. They weren't afraid to "live the gimmick"... Nowadays, most wrestlers don't even have a gimmick. They're just regular guys doing "cool moves" and pretending they're tough, MMA fighters.
Look at meme culture on social media. It's always guys like Hogan, Warrior, Austin etc. Guys who did stupid shit and acted energetic and over the top. Take this away from wrestling and who are the most people who get memed? The likes of Joe Exotic, Spider Man, Kanye West... What do they all have in common? They're all CHARACTERS. They're not people you see every day.
Would you walk up the street and see a guy like Ultimate Warrior running around? No. Have you ever spoke to somebody who acted like Hogan, Austin or even Piper or Flair? Chances are, no.
The way wrestling would boom again is if THE TOP GUY was somebody who could cross that barrier into pop culture. Into meme culture. Into social media culture and get people who don't normally watch wrestling curious about who that crazy guy is.
Joe Exotic got more people to watch Tiger King than somebody like Kevin Owens has ever got anybody to watch Raw. Someone who LOOKS like Joe would be catch more people's attention cause he looks and acts funny and wacky.
Kevin Owens might be capable of a good match and cutting a good promo. But I see people who look like him every day. His look isn't interesting. He tries too hard to be a "cool tough guy" in this fake sport, as opposed to being a "wacky energetic over the top" guy. And it's not just him... There's a roster of people in AEW and before that in NXT, filled with regular looking guys in generic gear.
The problem with wrestling these days is this. They're stuck in this niche. Where everything they do is catered towards US (The Internet die hards). People who are always gonna watch, no matter what. What happened as a result of this is, we took away the wackiness and replaced it with "phony tough MMA wannabes" who only focus on having "5 star matches" and looking "cool". They have no character and when they cut a promo, they all sound the same. Every face promo sounds like it was written for the same person. And that's not just the writing... Its the delivery too.
Give the line "I'm gonna kick your ass" to Johnny Gargano and then give it to the Ultimate Warrior. It would sound completely different because of the Warriors wacky energy and over the top delivery. But Gargano saying it sounds like my neighbour saying it.
Thoughts on this largely unpopular opinion of mine? And does anybody share the same thoughts?
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fw91
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Post by fw91 on Apr 1, 2022 18:57:39 GMT -5
Preach brother.
(But get ready for the backlash. I tried to say the something similar a few years ago questioning whether or not blaming Vince was a cop out, and was labeled as a shill.)
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Post by King Boo on Apr 1, 2022 18:57:47 GMT -5
I was just gonna say "because it sucks now", personally.
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Post by Hypnosis on Apr 1, 2022 19:00:43 GMT -5
Camera cuts, overly-scripted promos, haphazard show format (entrance, then another thing trope), and eye-bleeding CGI.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Apr 1, 2022 19:13:40 GMT -5
It's certainly a factor, but the lack of memorable characters feels more like a symptom than the underlying cause IMO. Everything's just so formulaic, and it's been that way for most of the 21st century. So much about the presentation and plot tropes is still just recycling things that worked in the Monday Night Wars or earlier. That's not just on Vince, that's on every semi-big promotion in the US right now. The ones that aren't WWE are still playing follow-the-leader, doing a combination of WWE fanfiction and/or parroting the WON "wrestlers not sports entertainers" line that became meaningless over a decade ago now that WWE's filled with the same quality of workrate guys.
The only real stab we've had at completely overhauling the entire pro wrestling format and creating something fresh and interesting in recent years was Lucha Underground.
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Post by Jindrak Mark on Apr 1, 2022 19:19:56 GMT -5
What even is mainstream anymore? 20+ years ago it was easy to tell. Even if you didn't watch Friends or listen to Britney Spears you still heard about them all the time. Nowadays though it's entirely possibly for something to have millions of fans and still be completely unknown to most of the world. Everyone has their own niche interests and can choose what kind of stuff to follow while easily ignoring everything else. Probably the closest to an unescapable, omnipresent thing in pop culture today is like the big superhero heroes, other than like one-off events like the Superbowl and the Oscars (and even that would have quietly passed without the slap).
On Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights every week a wrestling show is one of the highest rated shows in the US (sometimes THE highest). Raw this week had more viewers than The Walking Dead which I thought was a pretty mainstream show. South Park still seems like a popular show and Raw, Smackdown and even Dynamite usually beat it every week. Every time there's a wrestling PPV it's usually one of the top trending topics in the world.
Roman Reigns was on The Tonight Show this week. The biggest box-office star in Hollywood is The Rock. The hottest new TV show of the year starred John Cena. Wrestling memes/gifs are all over Twitter. ESPN covers WWE regularly and doesn't treat it as a joke. If anything, even in this fractured state of society, wrestling seems more "mainsteam" right now than at any point since probably the Rock/Cena stuff a decade ago.
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Post by Rolent Tex on Apr 1, 2022 19:24:36 GMT -5
That’s on Vince. It’s the brand that matters not the wrestlers or their gimmicks. He barely lets guys get over outside of his little bubble anymore because he’s afraid one will pull another Rock like Cena did. Also god forbid you dare get over with a gimmick that you’re not supposed to like the Bad News Barrett’s, Zack Ryder’s and Damien Sandow’s of the world or they’ll cut you off right at the knees.
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J is Justice
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Post by J is Justice on Apr 1, 2022 19:28:15 GMT -5
The only wrestler today that gives me those vibes is Shinsuke.
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Post by Cyno on Apr 1, 2022 19:32:50 GMT -5
WWE and AEW are both mainstream. Even using the outdated metric of Nielsen ratings, Raw, Smackdown, and Dynamite are among the best rated shows on their nights. Even Rampage does a good number for a timeslot traditionally considered the "graveyard slot."
We need to stop using "things I don't personally like" as a synonym for "this is a failure."
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TWERKIN' MAGGLE
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Post by TWERKIN' MAGGLE on Apr 1, 2022 19:33:22 GMT -5
Kids don't wanna watch wrestling, kids just wanna watch a chubby guy eat 59 different types of Campbell's Soup on YouTube.
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Post by ChitownKnight on Apr 1, 2022 19:36:36 GMT -5
I think Punk had the opportunity to become main stream if wwe didn’t f*** it up. Weren’t Dusty Rhodes and Ric Flair mainstream?
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fw91
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Post by fw91 on Apr 1, 2022 19:41:25 GMT -5
That’s on Vince. It’s the brand that matters not the wrestlers or their gimmicks. He barely lets guys get over outside of his little bubble anymore because he’s afraid one will pull another Rock like Cena did. Also god forbid you dare get over with a gimmick that you’re not supposed to like the Bad News Barrett’s, Zack Ryder’s and Damien Sandow’s of the world or they’ll cut you off right at the knees. I mean that much is true. Yet all the while, I still think there's a square peg in a round hole issue these days in regards to the roster. Don't get me wrong, I think WWE is currently the worst it's been in my lifetime. But when their style hits, it's my favorite style.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2022 19:41:46 GMT -5
Kids don't wanna watch wrestling, kids just wanna watch a chubby guy eat 59 different types of Campbell's Soup on YouTube. This. Kids don't wanna grow up to wrestle like back in the day. You don't see these kids practicing moves on each other anymore, they all wanna be Youtube stars or musicians. As a kid when I watched these stars seemed larger than life and I don't really mean body size but I mean overall. HBK was super eccentric, he was my favorite as a kid, he was a character. Razor Ramon was a badass. Warrior was out of a cartoon. You then get to the Attitude Era and you've got Austin beating up his boss, Rock wearing the most expensive shit he could find looking like the coolest dude on the planet and you had Triple H just being a douchebag using sledgehammers. They were cool and they were doing cool shit. It was videogame-like in that it was a unique mesmerizing world that drew you in. It just had eal people playing the characters. Today's wrestlers just feel like regular people to me and sure, part of it is because I'm an adult but to a kid you ain't gonna see em say they wanna be some of these people. Another reason is that that "world" I talked about that the previous decades had doesn't really "exist" anymore. It just feels like a company where people wrestle and with all the Authority stuff, it's very realistic compared to standard jobs in a way that even kids know it's not outlandish. Basically, it looks more like people with jobs rather than characters in another world which you wanted to be apart of. If I was a kid watching today I'd be way more tuned out of it. Now, I'm not going to get into the "is WWE mainstream" thing. I think what you meant to say "why isn't WWE the talked about popular mega thing it was in the 80s-00s" and well, that's pretty much my opinion on that. It ain't the same. That doesn't mean you don't have people trying to make it be that way, you've just got a lot of others who buck against that and given the confines of these companies, it's hard to break through like that again.
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Post by A Platypus Rave on Apr 1, 2022 19:52:32 GMT -5
WWE and AEW are both mainstream. Even using the outdated metric of Nielsen ratings, Raw, Smackdown, and Dynamite are among the best rated shows on their nights. Even Rampage does a good number for a timeslot traditionally considered the "graveyard slot." We need to stop using "things I don't personally like" as a synonym for "this is a failure."
Yeah, WWE is as mainstream as anything else is... but like the bigger issue is... as I've said time and time again... "there is no mainstream." there is no central line of the zeitgeist that is all encapsulating in entertainment as there has been before. People can have billions of views on youtube more watches than literally any tv or movie currently playing and not get recognized on the street. Entertainment and media is SO much more fractured now than it ever has been relying on the old way of doing things is not going to f***ing work.
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Post by ChitownKnight on Apr 1, 2022 20:03:21 GMT -5
WWE and AEW are both mainstream. Even using the outdated metric of Nielsen ratings, Raw, Smackdown, and Dynamite are among the best rated shows on their nights. Even Rampage does a good number for a timeslot traditionally considered the "graveyard slot." We need to stop using "things I don't personally like" as a synonym for "this is a failure."
Yeah, WWE is as mainstream as anything else is... but like the bigger issue is... as I've said time and time again... "there is no mainstream." there is no central line of the zeitgeist that is all encapsulating in entertainment as there has been before. People can have billions of views on youtube more watches than literally any tv or movie currently playing and not get recognized on the street. Entertainment and media is SO much more fractured now than it ever has been relying on the old way of doing things is not going to f***ing work. I guess sports will always be mainstream and certain tv shows are always hot when a new season comes out (Ozark, squid games ect) UFC which I feel was mainstream in the late 00s/early 10s isn’t really mainstream anymore and neither is boxing. I feel like wwe can more relate to boxing and ufc than anything
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Post by Fade on Apr 1, 2022 20:55:47 GMT -5
Yeah, I tend to agree with “mainstream is different now” and “it’s not mainstream mentality?”. It’s WWE. People know about WWE even if they’re not fans.
However, I do agree with the thought wrestling is lacking in “larger than life characters”. I do think that’s a key of sorts. It’s ironic because that’s absolutely WWE’s objective but they tend to stumble over their own feet with it. And I thought AEW was creeping towards focusing on “over the top characters” (by todays standards) the first few years but they’ve gotten a lot more grounded and more modern “wrassler-y” as of late.
I also have had the “do kids today even watch it as much?” concern. You see kids in both WWE & AEW’s audiences (with WWE being more family-friendly of course) but I wonder if both companies are tapping into them as much as they could be.
If the bottom line sentiment is “will wrestling catch fire like it use to?” I’d like to think so. However, in that respect I do agree with OP. I think it’s the “characters” that are lacking across the board.
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TWERKIN' MAGGLE
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Post by TWERKIN' MAGGLE on Apr 1, 2022 21:44:05 GMT -5
Just imagine if WWE changed it's content into eating soups on YouTube.
Think of the views, bro.
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Post by GodzillaIsMyMonster on Apr 1, 2022 22:24:11 GMT -5
Mainstream isn't a thing. Really there's nothing that 100% captures the attention of the masses. Marvel movies are probably the closest thing.
WWE is popular. Wrestlemania is still seen as a huge media and pop culture event.
But pretty much everything is niche. Some are more well known, but everything is basically a niche these days.
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Post by El Pollo Guerrera on Apr 1, 2022 23:16:07 GMT -5
But I figured out what really CAPTURED the audiences attention. And that was crazy, (sometimes) big, muscular, over the top guys. The WWE does have big, muscular, over-the-top guys that capture the audiences' attention. Unfortunately, it's Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, John Cena, and Dave Bautista. The WWE hasn't made anyone else be able to step into those boots to replace them.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 2, 2022 1:04:44 GMT -5
But I figured out what really CAPTURED the audiences attention. And that was crazy, (sometimes) big, muscular, over the top guys. The WWE does have big, muscular, over-the-top guys that capture the audiences' attention. Unfortunately, it's Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, John Cena, and Dave Bautista. The WWE hasn't made anyone else be able to step into those boots to replace them. You say this yet these same guys that are cast away that WWE "did not create to replace them (older stars)" are the same guys who end up in NJPW, iMPACT, AEW ETC, and are expected to be immediately pushed to the moon or it is an immediate failure. I feel we are all so absolutely critical because these people in WWE are so overexposed while performing a job that they have very little control over.
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