Flicking through an old photo album of mine the other day, I came across a photograph of me from 1990, around the time I started watching pro-wrestling. Apart from looking the obligatory fifteen years younger, I sensed something was different about me and I couldn’t work out what. Granted, my hair was bleached strawberry blonde back then (don’t ask) and the Van Dyke beard was nowhere to be seen but still something wasn’t right. After ten minutes of scanning the picture I finally noticed a small gold cross dangling from my left ear. I’d forgotten all about getting my ear pierced because all my friends were doing it too and I rushed over to a mirror to see if the hole was still there. Aside from a few surprising ear hairs (you teenagers will find out one day) I couldn’t really see the hole any more as it had almost completely closed over. Later that day I managed to dig out some of my old earrings and I held them up to my ear to see if the look suited me better now that I’m older and wiser (who laughed?) and to my amazement … I still looked like a complete twat. No seriously, I wouldn’t insult gay people by claiming that’s how bad I appeared. I looked like a grumpy weekend pirate with a squint. I think it’s fairly safe to say that not every temporary desire to bring something back from our past is a good one.
In wanting things to be better, or at least different, WWE fans have been guilty of seeking solace in the familiar, the things that remind them of a time when wrestling didn’t seem like a joke and it could hold its head up high amongst the other more mainstream branches of entertainment. By dredging ideas from WWE’s past, would they be taking an almighty step backwards only to repeat the same mistakes and end up here again in a few years time? Or would they be resetting the style to a more successful era where they can rebuild in the right way and move on with renewed vigour? Or am I just using a poorly constructed device to go on and on about ‘the good old days’ in the hope that someone believes me even if I’m not sure that I do? Let’s see.
Just because I am assessing the merits of bringing back some of the WWE’s ideas that have since been abandoned, that’s not to say that I would do them in the same way. Take the King of the Ring tournament. On paper it’s a good concept. A tournament structure culminating in a PPV in which the winner is decided and several other matches take place to keep the interest diverse. Sounds like a pretty solid idea. For me, the first televised King of the Ring tournament in 1993 is the best WWE PPV in history. Possibly one of the only WWE PPV’s to overrun its allotted time, it was jam packed with good wrestling and eventful angles so it’s hard to see how it could have failed from such a promising start. But here’s why. On that first night, and also in 1994, 1995 and 2000, the quarters, semis and final round of the tournament appeared on the PPV. In the other years, it was just the semis and final and this meant that the tournament matches were getting lost in the shuffle. Plus, as the standard contests took precedence then the quality of the performers entered into the bracketing decreased and fan interest plummeted. In the last three-round King of the Ring PPV in 2000, Rock, Undertaker, Kane and HHH were omitted from the tournament in favour of Crash Holly, Rikishi, Bull Buchanan and Val Venis (amongst more prominent talent) and these contests were easily out-shined by a decent four-way tag match and a dumpster/tables gimmick bout. Compare that to the first PPV in 1993 when only two major players were not in the grouping (Yokozuna and Hulk Hogan) and the rest of the card was novelty free to keep the focus on the tournament. Add to that the high quality of the prime entrants (Bret Hart, Mr Perfect, Bam Bam Bigelow, Razor Ramon, and Owen Hart) and you can see why the WWE was guilty of letting a good idea fall into a sorry state by the time it was cancelled. I say King of the Ring needs to come back and be done even more specifically than before. No World or IC title matches on the card, no tag bouts, gimmick matches or diva segments. Just enter the hottest and best eight wrestlers into the tournament and give them the time and space to put on a show.
The more puritanical detractors of the WWE’s product might suggest that both Raw and Smackdown are ‘adult orientated’ enough by mainstream standards but recent incidents of violence against women and the watered down ‘hardcore’ motifs, like the barbed-wire steel cage, could signal a renewed interest in a late-night WWE broadcast similar to the aborted ‘Shotgun Saturday Night’ programme. On such a show, Vince could use all of the demographic devices in attracting his target audience without the shackles of corporate advertising pulling the strings. It’s not as if female nudity is a problem as the majority of WWE divas have appeared naked in print or on film and if Vince wants to find a snare for the more extreme fan then he need look no further than the ECW brand, which he owns already. He wouldn’t need to create a third roster as the wrestlers could be drawn from either of the two main shows and performers who ordinarily wouldn’t make it under the spotlight of athletic competition could get their characters over on the extreme show and then move up the card on Raw or Smackdown based on this niche popularity. Hell, even the damn Diva Search would be given a more explicit lease of life on the new show. Smaller arenas, dangerous matches and banned language would go to make this an unmissable sixty minutes for any extreme fan. But not me. See, you take away such a controversial part of the WWE and it loses more than just chair shots, ladders and bikinis. It would lose its ability to feed our fevers, the bit of us that can’t look but has to. Remove one suit and the house of cards falls down. I like the idea that the WWE attempts to be all things to all people and to siphon off such a talking point would hurt the flagship shows.
The next one comes in two parts, Survivor series matches. Everyone knows the format, a ten-man elimination tag match, but the original PPV format was more involved. The heel survivors and the face survivors of the under-card matches formed two teams in the main event to determine who was the ultimate survivor on the night, giving the whole PPV a reason to exist just like the early King of the Ring tournaments. Ignoring the fact that it was presumably done just to get either Hogan or the Ultimate Warrior to appear twice on the same night, it led to some interesting moments in an era when the WWF was very predictable in its booking. I’m not sure that modern audiences are willing to invest three hours of their time for such a small pay-off so the overly-structured PPV shouldn’t make a return. But I would like to see the classic Survivor Series elimination match used more routinely at the eponymous event otherwise it becomes just another supercard. I find it odd that, at a time when Vince is so keen on branding nearly everything in sight, he seems so determined to make the PPV’s as uniform and indistinct as possible.
I know that vignettes are still used in the WWE but nowhere near as much as they used to. Virtually every new WWF superstar in the 90’s received a lengthy on-screen promotional campaign before they made their wrestling debuts. Of the recent efforts, Mohammed Hassan’s anti-American vignettes were as good as anything from years gone by but the Chris Masters promos were deadly dull and both MNM and The Heart Throbs received no build up treatment at all. Kama, The Bodydonnas, Duke Droese and Hunter Hearst Helmsley all garnered stronger fan support or heat in their initial runs based solely on their decent vignettes and, in the long run, the cream rose to the surface and the turds got flushed away. As long as the WWE put thought and production values into these promos, I say the more the better.
What about the easily forgotten ‘In your house’ PPV idea? A reduced price for a two-hour show in between the main PPV events would assuage the dismay some fans feel at paying full price for single-brand only supercards. With few expectations and possibly showcasing mini-feuds, the first hour of the PPV could be a useful exercise for the lower-card and rookies to get some valuable air time in front of a paying audience and mid-card stars could get their main event shots without the pressure reserved for the three-hour shows. But that’s also the main drawback. As with the original ‘In your house’ events, it’s not the usual first hour of glorified television matches that gets left out. In fact there’s probably more lesser-quality matches in the two hour format, making it less cost effective than the longer version. Bringing back the shorter PPV idea would only work if the matches were pulled from the mid-card up, even if it killed the opportunities of every new talent the WWE came across. I think it’s safe to say that the ‘In your house’ PPV concept deserves its place in the waste paper bin of history.
Maybe the WWE should go back to not acknowledging other promotions. When I started watching wrestling, WCW was a four-letter word in the WWF (so to speak) and a wrestler’s previous credentials were rarely if ever mentioned on WWF programming. I’m trying to recall when the wall came down and I’m drawing a blank but I do remember how freaked I felt when I first heard the name WCW spoken on Raw. Obviously it was open season by the time the Monday night wars were in full swing but it was still an unnerving feeling watching the ‘Billionaire Ted’ skits or the ECW stuff in the build up to the Raw extreme invasion. Oddly enough, this idea doesn’t need meriting because it’s already happening. Can anybody remember the name TNA appearing on WWE television? I can’t. Vince might feel that his competition has returned to the level at which WCW was in 1991 (pre-Hogan and pre-NWO) and he can now go back to being the corporate lion that doesn’t notice the mouse at his ankles. Careful Vince, albeit not on the same scale, you’ve made that mistake before.
What about the Brawl for all tournament? The Lex Express? GTV? No? Damn you people are hard to please. I give up.
Lee
