Spens1 wrote:this, recent weeks aside (because credit where its due, its actually been somewhat decent), the main roster is absolutely terrible. NXT is light years ahead and there is no reason main roster WWE shouldn't be almost that good given the talent they have on hand (both wrestlers and writers).
Yeah, I've never really understood the idea that people push sometimes that we want WWE to suck because we get off on bashing it. I mean, maybe that's true for a few people, but I think the vast majority of us bash it because it's a terrible product and we have fond memories of watching it when we were kids when it wasn't a terrible product. I largely grew up right as the Attitude Era was kicking off, so my memories are all those glory years of Austin, Rock, DX, Angle, Jericho, and even WCW stuff like Hogan turning heel and the nWo before they ran it completely into the ground.
I think it's safe to say that none of us want WWE to suck. We want it to be great again, and it's incredibly frustrating because they have everything in place to be an amazing wrestling promotion, but they basically never are. It's surprising when WWE isn't terrible. We cling to the handful of great matches they give us each year, like Styles/Cena at the Rumble last year or the Hell in a Cell between Usos and New Day, but those matches are so few and far between that it's downright embarrassing for a company that probably employs half of the best wrestlers in the world.
It's equally frustrating watching NXT, which is the same damn company, and seeing them do wrestling so well without really doing anything fundamentally different. At its core, NXT is no different from WWE. The angles are nothing that we haven't seen before a million times. The wrestlers are the same guys who end up going to the main roster and largely floundering. It's still PG, with no purposeful blood and very little swearing.
The main difference is that NXT is well-booked. Guys (and gals) are allowed to look like stars. There's no need for 50/50 booking because the people running the show understand that no one gets over like that, and a good promotion needs stars (and not just one guy that the crowd hates that they keep booking as a face) to find a real audience. We likely all started watching wrestling because of guys like Austin, Rock, Michaels, hell, maybe even Hogan and Andre for some of you guys. Guys that were stars and booked like it. Guys that won a hell of a lot more than they lost, and weren't forced to trade wins with everyone. Guys that got to largely write their own promos and develop their own characters without constant micromanagement.
NXT seems to understand wrestling and what it needs to be to please a crowd. WWE doesn't give a damn about the crowd. It's become a soulless, soul-crushing machine that exists solely to make money. And look, making money is obviously the primary goal of any wrestling promotion. I get that. You can't survive if you're losing money. But it can't be the
only goal. WWE has created a system in which they make money despite the will of the fans, and while that may be nice for their bottom line now, you're starting to see cracks in the foundation. Live event attendance is down. Viewership goes down every year. Network subscription numbers are constantly fudged by WWE giving away countless free trials (I haven't paid for it in over a year thanks to this). Eventually, if they keep down this path, there won't be many fans left to keep throwing money into the machine.
But ultimately, as a fan, all I really want is to watch a good wrestling show. NXT is a good wrestling show. Lucha Underground is a good wrestling show. Raw and Smackdown are not, and that's the problem. People can shout "sports entertainment" until they're blue in the face, but there's almost nothing entertaining about Raw or Smackdown these days, and the in-ring sport aspect sucks too. If they wanted to focus more on the creative aspect of wrestling, fine, but they're doing it so terribly that there's no rational reason to support it.
/rant
