WWE Raw Discussion I

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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1441 » by improper » Tue Mar 7, 2017 7:28 pm

TankCommander17 wrote:This ×1000. Because i as a casual fan honestly could care less about Jericho coming back for the 1000th time and wrestling. Was his list thing funny? Yeah. But he should be nowhere the main event at mania.

I am intrigued by Goldberg vs Brock and 100% behind them main eventing mania. None of the young full time wrestlers are over enough to get those spots. Other than maybe AJ but he is old.

Aj vs wyatt i would pay to see main event butwe wont get that.


See, the problem is, if you never give guys a chance to become main event caliber guys, they never will. And by continuing to feed all your full time guys to part time guys, you're basically creating a never-ending loop of bad decisions that ultimately harm the future of your company.

Who are the part-time stars they are going to bring back in fifteen years? Cena, Lesnar, and Orton will all be over fifty at that point, and Cena will likely have been full Hollywood for ten years by then. It's the problem of diminishing returns. When you keep refusing to make any new stars because you rely on old ones, there will come a day when you no longer have any old stars to rely upon because you kept allowing all the ones with the potential to become your future stars be buried by the former old stars.

Right now, the WWE only seems interested in investing in one future star, and it's the one guy all the fans hate. They're going to be screwed in ten years when they no longer have anyone to call upon to come and prop up their ratings for a few weeks.
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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1442 » by skbucks1985 » Tue Mar 7, 2017 11:23 pm

whysoserious wrote:
Max Green wrote:
whysoserious wrote:
Well, you're never going to be able to put on a show in Chicago without them.

Either way, he's better than many at the top of the roster and things he complained about with the company are problems that still exist.


Meh, I'd argue AJ, Rollins, Owens, Cena, Bray, Jericho, Joe, Zayn are all equal or better then him at this point. So what's the endgame with the Chants?? What are they supposed to accomplish?


It's Chicago supporting a hometown boy. Some of those guys you mention are better but we still see the issues like Goldberg getting the title heading in to WM. Or Owens getting the title but not really setting himself apart because of some horrible booking.

It's not like there's Punk chants everywhere still taking over shows but you're never going to stop them in Chicago and there's still huge money in his return IMO.


With the exception of AJ Lee-related appearances, the Punk chants aren't about Punk. They happen to express displeasure with what they are seeing. When they chanted it at Goldberg it wasn't because they wanted to see Punk vs Goldberg, or because they want Punk to be Universal Champion. They chanted it because those people don't want Goldberg as champ. They chant it at Stephanie because they don't like her. If it really was about Punk, then Heyman would constantly get Punk chants but he doesn't because that section of the crowd liks him and is invested in what he has to say.
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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1443 » by TankCommander17 » Wed Mar 8, 2017 2:09 am

improper wrote:
TankCommander17 wrote:This ×1000. Because i as a casual fan honestly could care less about Jericho coming back for the 1000th time and wrestling. Was his list thing funny? Yeah. But he should be nowhere the main event at mania.

I am intrigued by Goldberg vs Brock and 100% behind them main eventing mania. None of the young full time wrestlers are over enough to get those spots. Other than maybe AJ but he is old.

Aj vs wyatt i would pay to see main event butwe wont get that.


See, the problem is, if you never give guys a chance to become main event caliber guys, they never will. And by continuing to feed all your full time guys to part time guys, you're basically creating a never-ending loop of bad decisions that ultimately harm the future of your company.

Who are the part-time stars they are going to bring back in fifteen years? Cena, Lesnar, and Orton will all be over fifty at that point, and Cena will likely have been full Hollywood for ten years by then. It's the problem of diminishing returns. When you keep refusing to make any new stars because you rely on old ones, there will come a day when you no longer have any old stars to rely upon because you kept allowing all the ones with the potential to become your future stars be buried by the former old stars.

Right now, the WWE only seems interested in investing in one future star, and it's the one guy all the fans hate. They're going to be screwed in ten years when they no longer have anyone to call upon to come and prop up their ratings for a few weeks.


You are assuming. Loved KO when he debuted but afterwards they killed him for me. And when he won the title they put a suit on him which made it worse. His new gear makes him look chubbier to me for some reason. Maybe red is not his color.

The rest of the roster is meh. Who else would main event?
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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1444 » by TankCommander17 » Wed Mar 8, 2017 2:14 am

Flames24Rulz wrote:
TankCommander17 wrote:
iMoreland wrote:
Canceling your network account. But none of us (internet fans) are gonna do that and they know it.

So why would they cater to us? We're gonna buy their product regardless.

This ×1000. Because i as a casual fan honestly could care less about Jericho coming back for the 1000th time and wrestling. Was his list thing funny? Yeah. But he should be nowhere the main event at mania.

I am intrigued by Goldberg vs Brock and 100% behind them main eventing mania. None of the young full time wrestlers are over enough to get those spots. Other than maybe AJ but he is old.

Aj vs wyatt i would pay to see main event butwe wont get that.


Let me get this straight. Jericho, one of the best workers AND best talkers in recent memory isn't good enough to main event WM. But 50 year old Bill Goldberg, who legitimately is probably a worse wrestler than the majority of the posters on this board, is?

The "casual fan" should realize how moronic this whole Goldberg thing is. The guy can't even talk on the microphone without sounding like a total buffoon, and I legitimately had to wonder if he was hurt after taking an F-5 last night because that's the first bump that old Bill took in over a decade.

The "casual fan" should also realize how moronic the Undertaker thing is too. He's 55 years old, can barely walk, and yet somehow, Braun Strowman cowers in fear at the sight of Undertaker? Come on.

The first segment of the show last night with Jericho & Owens showed why that should be the RAW main event at WM, but thanks to the "casual fan," we get another Goldberg-Lesnar 2 minute fiasco. Thanks.

This is what you internet/indy fans dont get. There is a reason that the indys are barely making money and their houses are a few hundred people. The casual fan doesnt care about little jumping bean wrestlers. Aj styles excluded.

We watch to see larger than life people/gladiators. You may like jericho. But one of the worst wrestlers of all time in the ultimate warrior was a bigger draw than jericho ever has been. Why? Because he was a larger than life character.

This is why the heavyweights in bixing ruled the 80s/90w not because it was better technical bixing.

Once you guys get that you will understand.
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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1445 » by improper » Wed Mar 8, 2017 3:54 am

TankCommander17 wrote:You are assuming. Loved KO when he debuted but afterwards they killed him for me. And when he won the title they put a suit on him which made it worse. His new gear makes him look chubbier to me for some reason. Maybe red is not his color.

The rest of the roster is meh. Who else would main event?


What am I assuming? I never made any comments about your personal preferences, just about the WWE's poor overall strategy and refusal to build future stars.

As for who else could main event, there are a dozen guys who could pull it off with the right booking. The list below is in no particular order...just listed them as I thought of them. I tried to focus on guys who either haven't been main event level guys or haven't been properly booked while main event guys (I see you, Rollins and Owens).

1. Owens
2. Zayn
3. Rollins
4. Styles
5. Nakamura
6. Roode
7. Big E
8. Rusev
9. Wyatt
10. Strowman
11. Cesaro
12. Luke Harper

There are ten guys who could either be main event caliber guys now or in the near future with proper booking. And to address your second post about not wanting smaller, flippy guys, well, aside from Styles, none of those guys are small or flippy. In fact, Styles aside, they're all six feet and above and none wrestles a particularly flippy style. Owens and Rollins have already been main event guys, albeit they certainly suffered from awful booking when they were champs. Wyatt is finally getting some recognition as a main event guy. Styles has been there as well, although sadly they went away from him for Wrestlemania season for seemingly no reason other than Vince wanting to push Orton again while Cena is on another break.

I do find your disdain for indie guys to be somewhat amusing, though, given that the majority of the WWE roster these days is composed of indie guys. Hell, basically everyone I listed outside of Big E, Wyatt, and Strowman are indie guys (does NJPW count as indie? If not, I guess remove Nakamura too, but he's not a WWE guy is my point).
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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1446 » by WRau1 » Wed Mar 8, 2017 12:26 pm

The casual fans aren't doing too much to help the ratings of a company that caters to them.
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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1447 » by whysoserious » Wed Mar 8, 2017 1:16 pm

safi wrote:With the exception of AJ Lee-related appearances, the Punk chants aren't about Punk. They happen to express displeasure with what they are seeing. When they chanted it at Goldberg it wasn't because they wanted to see Punk vs Goldberg, or because they want Punk to be Universal Champion. They chanted it because those people don't want Goldberg as champ. They chant it at Stephanie because they don't like her. If it really was about Punk, then Heyman would constantly get Punk chants but he doesn't because that section of the crowd liks him and is invested in what he has to say.


Great point. I do think Chicago is just unique as it's his hometown too. The message Punk delivered in his pipe bomb still resonates today so you're right that when it's displeasure, they associate it with Punk and then let it out.
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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1448 » by improper » Wed Mar 8, 2017 7:22 pm

WRau1 wrote:The casual fans aren't doing too much to help the ratings of a company that caters to them.


The fact that they're giving Wrestlemania away for free for the second year in a row tells me that they're not getting casual fans to subscribe to the Network like they'd hoped either.

One thing I've never understood is why the WWE bothers trying so hard to cater to kids. Kids are pretty much going to like who they're told to like, which means the WWE could basically push anyone as a top face and the kids would buy in. So why waste your time appealing to them when you could appeal to the adults in the audience who actually spend money? The kids will follow.

I'm not saying they need to go back to the Attitude Era (although I was a kid during that and I freaking loved it), but making the show a bit more mature wouldn't hurt.
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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1449 » by Stanford » Wed Mar 8, 2017 8:19 pm

WRau1 wrote:The casual fans aren't doing too much to help the ratings of a company that caters to them.


OK, but how are other areas of the business doing? WWE, the company, isn't just a television show.
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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1450 » by improper » Wed Mar 8, 2017 9:05 pm

Stanford wrote:
WRau1 wrote:The casual fans aren't doing too much to help the ratings of a company that caters to them.


OK, but how are other areas of the business doing? WWE, the company, isn't just a television show.


You are correct, but their biggest source of revenue is from their TV shows.
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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1451 » by skbucks1985 » Wed Mar 8, 2017 10:30 pm

TV rights fees are a plurality of where WWE makes their money, followed closely by PPV/network subscriptions and then everything else.

I think casual fans probably comprise one of two groups. There's the group that we generally think of, the people who tune in during WM season to see the big stars and then largely tune-out afterwards. The other is the lapsing fan. I don't think most people that stop watching WWE do so completely cold turkey. They gradually become less regular viewers and and are at the casual point in that process.

Having said that, I think the reason they feature these part-timers is more about getting media coverage and sponsors than it is about casual fans. WWE's current business model is one where if they had 1.6 million subs for WM and then had a 10% dropoff for the following month to 1.44 million subs they would make more than if they had 2 million subs for WM and then had a 30% dropoff to 1.4 million subs. But they're very invested in making WM feel like a major cultural event and so many of those media members and sponsors that they have don't know Kevin Owens or Seth Rollins. They know Goldberg because he was a huge star at a hot period in the industry, they know Brock because he's a huge star due to all of his accomplishments. And so Goldberg vs Brock furthers that objective of feeling like you've got a major cultural event in a way that a match with Kevin Owens doesn't.
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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1452 » by Stanford » Thu Mar 9, 2017 5:40 am

How do we feel about the significance of TV ratings in 2017?
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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1453 » by Pharaoh » Thu Mar 9, 2017 1:48 pm

It's been a long time since I was an avid wrestling fan and beyond the "busy life" reason it's because of the part timer effect

The WWE has had:

Undertaker's streak end
HBK retire
Flair retire
Golberg return
Lesnar return
Sting join WWE
Numerous HHH fueds
Numerous Cena fueds

ALL opportunities to not simply put over a new star but to literally turn a guy into a made man

And they botched them ALL!



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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1454 » by Dunthreevy » Thu Mar 9, 2017 3:41 pm

Stanford wrote:How do we feel about the significance of TV ratings in 2017?


They don't really seem to matter to WWE that much anymore, but they should because I'm pretty much 100% certain that when WWE's tv contracts are up there will be MASSIVE change in what USA or another network is willing to pay them the next time. I won't go as far as saying that future RAW and Smackdown episodes will be on the network every week, but there will be pretty huge changes in how they negotiate deals with advertisers. TV networks aren't going to continue to pay them the money they do now for the same dwindling returns, especially with WWE attempting to drive more viewers to their own network. The only way I could see them putting RAW and SD on the network every week is if they could convince advertisers to pony up huge dough to advertise on the network (which they won't be able to do unless their subscriber numbers grow pretty substantially).
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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1455 » by skbucks1985 » Thu Mar 9, 2017 4:45 pm

Dunthreevy wrote:
Stanford wrote:How do we feel about the significance of TV ratings in 2017?


They don't really seem to matter to WWE that much anymore, but they should because I'm pretty much 100% certain that when WWE's tv contracts are up there will be MASSIVE change in what USA or another network is willing to pay them the next time. I won't go as far as saying that future RAW and Smackdown episodes will be on the network every week, but there will be pretty huge changes in how they negotiate deals with advertisers. TV networks aren't going to continue to pay them the money they do now for the same dwindling returns, especially with WWE attempting to drive more viewers to their own network. The only way I could see them putting RAW and SD on the network every week is if they could convince advertisers to pony up huge dough to advertise on the network (which they won't be able to do unless their subscriber numbers grow pretty substantially).


From a micro perspective we can look at the weekly drops and occasional rises in ratings and diminish their importance. But from a macro perspective, its incredibly important. Their TV rights deal is still their biggest source of income and as you said they will probably see a drop-off in the amount of money they make because as you said the landscape of TV is changing dramatically and that will only accelerate, I think, by 2019 when the next deal is due.

And WWE's ratings are probably more important than they are for shows like Suits or I-Robot. Wrestling will not get near the ad rates that TV shows and especially not live sports do that get comparable numbers so in a lot of ways they have to have better ratings to compensate for that. Also, a not insignificant part of why USA has them on is that the USA Network is very invested in being the #1 cable network and the lower WWE's numbers go, the less beneficial they are in that objective.
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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1456 » by improper » Thu Mar 9, 2017 6:17 pm

Stanford wrote:How do we feel about the significance of TV ratings in 2017?


They'd be less important if TV money weren't the WWE's main source of income. It is, though, and so the ratings do matter when it's time to renew that TV contract.
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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1457 » by Wo1verine » Fri Mar 10, 2017 8:50 pm

Yeah casuals especially my age don't really care for 90% of the current wrestlers. For me, watching Goldberg destroy everyone in 20 seconds is more entertaining over anything else they have come up with.

Unless something changes soon - I'm not sure where i am going to be when guys like Goldberg and Taker retire.
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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1458 » by Spens1 » Fri Mar 10, 2017 10:50 pm

improper wrote:
Stanford wrote:How do we feel about the significance of TV ratings in 2017?


They'd be less important if TV money weren't the WWE's main source of income. It is, though, and so the ratings do matter when it's time to renew that TV contract.


this.

TV is a significant factor and will effect WWE's ability to command top dollar from USA around renewal time in 2019.

If their TV deal goes down significantly (probably not but it is possible since they did go down from mid-high 3's to low 2's now) then their revenue is going to take a significant hit.
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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1459 » by improper » Sat Mar 11, 2017 7:10 am

Wo1verine wrote:Yeah casuals especially my age don't really care for 90% of the current wrestlers. For me, watching Goldberg destroy everyone in 20 seconds is more entertaining over anything else they have come up with.

Unless something changes soon - I'm not sure where i am going to be when guys like Goldberg and Taker retire.


It sounds like you just don't really like wrestling if all that interests you are twenty second squash matches featuring guys who can't wrestle.
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Re: WWE Raw Discussion I 

Post#1460 » by Wo1verine » Sat Mar 11, 2017 4:24 pm

improper wrote:
Wo1verine wrote:Yeah casuals especially my age don't really care for 90% of the current wrestlers. For me, watching Goldberg destroy everyone in 20 seconds is more entertaining over anything else they have come up with.

Unless something changes soon - I'm not sure where i am going to be when guys like Goldberg and Taker retire.


It sounds like you just don't really like wrestling if all that interests you are twenty second squash matches featuring guys who can't wrestle.


I wouldn't call my self hardcore, that's for sure. I like watching beasts destroy people. I probably enjoy the wrestlers that aren't considered good the most tbh.

Braun, Goldberg, Taker, Lesnar.

I still like some of the current top guys like Rollins, Cesaro and Jericho but they aren't as exciting as the above mentioned for me.
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