I’ve been quite vocal about the presentation of WWE’s “wrestling” TV shows for a while. At some point, I gave up because it became too much talk. Then there was that one South Park episode that poignantly ridiculed and parodied what the WWE had become, which was more like a stupid stage play (complete with Vince and Stephanie showing up in some box office seats with binoculars you’d see at operas). The thing is that the South Park episode wasn’t wrong at all to call the WWE out because of how the WWE effectively taught the audience to care more about the drama and promos than any actual wrestling. The result for old school fans like myself is that you tend to have an extremely dry, horribly paced TV episode where the only developments either occur at the beginning or the end of the show while silly backstage skits, meaningless long matches, replays of things we just saw (or lengthy reviews from previous weeks) and of course the horrible infomercials attempting to brainwash the ham n eggers to buy the crappy merchandise. The fortunate thing for the WWE is that they’ve been riding their name brand recognition for a long time and experienced a hot recent years partly due to various corporate changes (especially with Vince gone) that created an upturn in interest especially after the pandemic. That said, it doesn’t mean people aren’t going to get burnt out again and leave due to the dribble coming out as of late.
My biggest complaint about these TV shows is that the pacing is awful. There’s a lot of boring drek sprinkled in between the stuff you want to see. But even if those things aren’t what I care about, too much end up taking a lot of unnecessary time that puts me to sleep whether it’s promos or the matches themselves. Obviously, the big stars get plenty of time for their promos because these days management wants to ensure that the top of the card remains healthy to be able to perform at the PPV. In turn, that forces the audience to endure these terrible soliloquys or segments that have almost nothing to do with wrestling and meander forever. Of course, some of that is to give these writers a job but the bulk of this stuff is horrible because they don’t seem to know wrestling either.
When it comes to the matches, they take forever and the modern style sucks when matches last beyond 3 – 5 minutes. Most of the wrestlers that are shown typically are ones that seem to be in need of getting a push and seem to be thrown out there to impress management. There might be a particular wrestler that management wants to get behind so the matches become transparent at who will win, which means the audience can’t truly get behind the person in question. I would argue these matches are worse than the 80s squash matches just because those squash matches didn’t last long and were done to showcase the people management wanted to push. The difference is that the jobbers are now contracted. While I do use the derogatory term “jobber” here, the idea is that the audience doesn’t care about most of the people involved. They sit around in silence and occasionally pipe in to pop themselves rather than react to the matches. I almost wish the crowd would bring back the old “boring!” chants.
Before I talk about the pacing fix, I want to mention how I recently started watching old Georgia Championship Wrestling and Mid-Atlantic Wrestling from the early 80s. Despite being on for an hour or so, I preferred those shows to anything right now mostly due to the pacing, the people involved, the commentary (Gordon Solie IS the voice of wrestling) and the angles shot. The other thing I enjoyed from those shows is the simplicity of it all. People were more focused on the issues and didn’t seem like bad actors trying to convince an audience of what they were doing. They talked naturally and when things got heated, they started screaming. Of course, the people that really stood out could easily hold your attention like Roddy Piper, Flair, etc. The matches do seem dated but at the same time, people actually wrestled and things looked more believable.
So taking the lessons of those older territories and blending it into something modern, I think cutting most of the non-critical matches on TV down to 3-5 minutes max would solve a lot of pacing issues as well as spotlighting newer talent that management want to spend more time developing. That would also allow for more overall matches but nothing that would bore a live audience into silence which flows into how the TV audience may receive such things. The shorter matches would eliminate the commercial break and people can showcase the 2-3 good moves they know. Get in and get out as they say. Also, it should lessen the chance for wrestlers to get injured while having them focus on really tightening up these key moves and forcing them to concentrate on getting over quickly in front of a live crowd.
I know that the next complaint would be that going back to short matches will prevent talent from getting over and that they’d have less time to be showcased. Well, the talent mostly aren’t getting over with these longer matches. They’re boring the crap out of the audience because the matches are shit and way too long. Not only that but they’re trying to have an unnecessary stupid moment that ends up injuring someone. It’s better if the matches were short but gave more people a chance to be seen but at least focus on making things look decent. And if they need to build up the feuds or characters, go back to 1-2 minute promos in the back. Force the talent to figure out why the audience needs to see their upcoming match. If they can’t do that concisely, they won’t ever get it.
Next, is the real elephant in the room: long winded promos by main eventers. I know why they do this but it’s been a major issue ever since the Attitude Era when the Rock and Mick Foley had that horrible time waster segment on the life of the Rock (or was it Mick?) But the long, meandering promos by people that last 15+ minutes are bad when it’s clear the talent are being forced to speak in extraordinarily slow cadence, then saunter to the ring like a slug trying to cross one coast to the other along with the extra minutes of milking the crowd as the bored audience amuse themselves in singing a shitty theme. I’m at the point where I fast forward all the way until someone’s lips move. Maybe if you’re in the arena and you’ve already spent however many hundreds of bucks for a seat, it’s fun. But I don’t go to wrestling events to see a stupid concert.
And yes, the promo is something that needs time to develop. But every show? Can’t there be a better way to get a story over that has some action? I mean, if you’re relying on these aging, broken down, unmotivated veterans to be the key pieces in selling tickets, maybe the problem is not having enough confidence in the younger talent as well as a better process to sell them. Someone once told me that the real wrestling match is won during the promo. That might not necessarily be the case (I mean CM Punk should be the Undisputed Champion if that were true) but it’s the wrong emphasis. I feel like most of the people miss the point and go off tangent or say things to amuse each other. In general though, there are so few people who can do this part well. But way too many speak forever and probably shouldn’t. Want to give more time back to talent? Cut these shitty promos down by 10 minutes.
What about the recaps? I get why they exist. Some video packages are great. I don’t want to see a goddamn recap after each segment. Just show one or two that revolve around the most important issue or main event. Otherwise, this is just more fluff that pads time and puts me to sleep or invoke the fast forward much quicker. Obviously, the infomercial part is not fixable outside of getting rid of them. I fear that these will eventually become the majority of the show. When that happens, I’ll simply quit wrestling altogether. But until then I’m not happy that they exist.
At any rate, these are the key problems I see with the TV shows. I’m hoping that with this latest set of releases, something else can change. But it is infuriating watching a show just degenerate into an absolute state of boredom. Well, there are all those GCW and Mid Atlantic Shows I can catch up on….
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