The Wrestling Thread

[Raging Justice]

I could argue that the best time for a wrestling show would be one hour and I mean ONE HOUR. That's means no commercials. Lucha Underground and NXT were both great as one hour shows, though there were some episodes of Lucha Underground that felt like they needed a little bit more time. That's why I think one hour WITHOUT COMMERCIALS is the best amount of time for a wrestling show.

Pay per views should be two to three hours like the old NXT Takeovers and some of the Ultima Lucha events.

Some might say doing things this way doesn't allow enough time to feature everyone. I'd argue that it forces you to realize who is WORTH featuring and who isn't, unlike AEW/ROH these days who just throw anyone on TV whether they deserve to be featured or not. There comes a point in every modern wrestling show where some wrestlers you don't give a fuck about come on TV and you end up taking a bathroom break, changing the channel, going online, or getting a snack. Or some angle or storyline that is so cringe you can't watch it. I like John Morrison but everything he's been featured in since coming to AEW has been garbage.

On any given week, WWE could fit all three of their brands into the amount of time they devote to ONE episode of Raw. AEW could do the same by trimming Dynamite and Collision down to one hour and leave Rampage as it is. Every show would feel way more focused and three hours a week is plenty of time to feature everyone that is worth featuring.

[Raging Justice]

I am well aware that doing a wrestling show without commercials is impossible by the way, due to networks, sponsors, etc.

Some of my posts are wishful thinking for a non existent alternate reality that is way better than the sucky one we actually live in.

[Raging Justice]

So Cody wins the tag team titles, while "The Self-Proclaimed Megastar" LA Knight was teaming up with "The Greatest of all Time" John Cena to fight the remaining members of The Bloodline.

I think they've firmly established that LA Knight is at the top of the pecking order now in WWE.



It's interesting when you compare Knight to the previous top faces in WWE. I'm leaving out Roman because it feels like they eventually gave up on him as a face and instead decided to book him as WWE's top heel (something they NEVER did with John Cena). Knight has inherited the People's Elbow and the Five Knuckle Shuffle from The Rock and Cena with his own variation on it. He's got the attitude and promo skills of Austin and The Rock and his look feels like a combination of the two of them. He even likes to get people in a corner and "stomp a mudhole in their ass". Weirdly enough, he's sort of inheriting Daniel Bryan's "Yes" thing, except now the people say "Yeah!". He was kicking someone in his match on Saturday and the crowd was going, "YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH" for each kick. It's like some genius created the perfect babyface in a laboratory and out came LA Knight.

[RCBH928]

In late 90s they went crazy, I think 3 hours per show and they had like 3 shows each (WCW&WWE) not to mention ECW.

1 hour of wrestling per week is too short. I think 2 hours is too long. I say 1.5 hours a week or 2 shows each one hour but I think each show should be distinct. Like NXT for the new commers and RAW for the main eventers.

I am completely shocked to learn AEW has 3 shows, I think it bores the viewer and dilute the attention span. i think monthly PPVs is another "too much" but according to Eric Bischoff in the late 90s it was more profitable to make more shows, so yeah, numbers don't lie.

[Reprise]

Raw and Nitro were both two hours. WWE added Smackdown in April 1999 and that was just one hour originally.

I have to agree that I don't understand why either WWE or AEW feel they need so many shows and so many hours of wrestling per week. It's silly. I don't have time to watch it all or keep up.

[Raging Justice]

It's absurd the amount of wrestling content out there for the more serious wrestling fan. Hours and hours of weekly content from AEW and WWE. Indie companies like GCW who seem to have a pay per view every other week as well as many other indie companies like Wrestling Revolver, Deadlock Pro-Wrestling, etc. Yearly PWG shows. Impact Wrestling. Ring of Honor. NWA, OVW, MLW (where you sometimes will see the last few dying embers of Lucha Underground with people like Dario Cueto and Mil Muertes performing there), AAA, CMLL, NJPW. Stardom. DDT. Noah. Dragongate. TJPW and tons of other joshi companies. UK wrestling like Revolution Pro.

You guys have no idea how many companies there actually are out there. It's crazy. Some wrestlers even how their own promotions like Booker T and Reality of Wrestling.

What's even crazier is how Tony Kahn seems to think people have time to watch all of these and know who every random person he brings onto his shows are. I took on the task once of trying to keep up with everything in wrestling and I realized it was impossible unless you give up your job and your social life. So now I just watch what interests me the most and try to keep up with whatever else is going on in wrestling via forums or wrestling sites like F4online, voices of wrestling, pwtorch, etc. I give the most attention to WWE, AEW, NJPW and Stardom as I view them as the The Big Four of Professional Wrestling right now.

What's even crazier is how I see wrestlers (including some people in AEW) making appearances in so many of these different companies. I wonder how the hell they keep up with such an intense schedule with all of the back and forth travelling not to mention the intense toll on their body of wrestling in so many places month to month. People in the wrestling business really are insane.

[RCBH928]

Raw and Nitro were both two hours. WWE added Smackdown in April 1999 and that was just one hour originally.

I have to agree that I don't understand why either WWE or AEW feel they need so many shows and so many hours of wrestling per week. It's silly. I don't have time to watch it all or keep up.

Are you sure there was not a time when WCW Thunder reached 3 hours long? I could have sweared I read that some where. IIRC there was an episode of Nitro where 40min there was still no ring action just skits

.

. I took on the task once of trying to keep up with everything in wrestling and I realized it was impossible unless you give up your job and your social life.

You are absolutely correct. And god knows where else on earth there is wrestling action going on that we do not know about. Thats why its a competition on who stays and who ceases to exist. The sad part this also means that very very few people who opt to be wrestlers will actually get the tv time meanwhile there is no place for the others including very good talent. I recall this happened to Jericho, Mysterio, and Guerrero in WCW as all the big name stars were taking all the main event positions, eventually led them to leave for WWE. Heck, Stunning Steve Austin was let go! Its now even worse with female wrestling taking a share of the pie so there is less time and spot for every one. In addition to the current content, is the past content. Honestly there is some really good shows and angles you could rewatch or see for the first time if you missed it.

The confusing part for me is why are there people continuing to have a wrestling organization where obviously they are not making any money and have no future growth.

[Reprise]

Are you sure there was not a time when WCW Thunder reached 3 hours long? I could have sweared I read that some where. IIRC there was an episode of Nitro where 40min there was still no ring action just skits

I think Thunder was 2 hours. Not sure if that was for the entirety of its run though or if it started as just one hour or ever went up to three hours. I don't think I ever actually watched an episode of Thunder though, so I could be wrong.

I think WWE probably went 40 minutes with no ring action a few times in the Attitude era too Remember the "This is Your Life" segment with Rock and Mankind and other stuff like that? I went back and rewatched every Raw and Smackdown from 1997 to 2001 about 10 years ago and it was a wild time haha.

[Reprise]

This is getting silly

AEW announced that Dynamite will have an extra 10 minutes of overrun tonight.

WWE announced that NXT's first 30 minutes will be commercial free.

So AEW announced that Dynamite will also now have the first 30 minutes with no commercials.

I think it's obvious NXT will win this one, sadly (and I say sadly, purely because AEW is the underdog and I am not a big fan of big corporations trying to trample on the competition). Their trajectory has been upwards, whilst AEW's has been downwards. Adam Copeland has done absolutely nothing for AEW's ratings either. In fact they just got their worst viewership record for Collision and their second lowest Dynamite number of the year with his television debuts on both shows.

Whenever I see people say stuff like "ah, so Edge isn't a draw" or "CM Punk isn't a draw", "Bryan Danielson isn't a draw" or "The Elite aren't a draw", I think it's flawed logic though. AEW isn't a draw. The issue isn't the stars, it's the product. AEW is just kinda stale at the moment. The MJF and Cole angle has been great, but it means they have gone weeks and multiple PPVs now with essentially no world champion and no world championship match. They are correcting that with the Jay White feud (and I cannot wait for that match), but otherwise there isn't really any main event stars. Edge is a really popular wrestler, but people just aren't that interested in AEW. I guarantee if any of those guys went (or went back) to WWE, everyone would suddenly start raving about them, just like Jade Cargill is getting a ton of hype despite being thoroughly mediocre and green.

[Raging Justice]

This is getting silly

AEW announced that Dynamite will have an extra 10 minutes of overrun tonight.

WWE announced that NXT's first 30 minutes will be commercial free.

So AEW announced that Dynamite will also now have the first 30 minutes with no commercials.

I think it's obvious NXT will win this one, sadly (and I say sadly, purely because AEW is the underdog and I am not a big fan of big corporations trying to trample on the competition). Their trajectory has been upwards, whilst AEW's has been downwards. Adam Copeland has done absolutely nothing for AEW's ratings either. In fact they just got their worst viewership record for Collision and their second lowest Dynamite number of the year with his television debuts on both shows.

Whenever I see people say stuff like "ah, so Edge isn't a draw" or "CM Punk isn't a draw", "Bryan Danielson isn't a draw" or "The Elite aren't a draw", I think it's flawed logic though. AEW isn't a draw. The issue isn't the stars, it's the product. AEW is just kinda stale at the moment. The MJF and Cole angle has been great, but it means they have gone weeks and multiple PPVs now with essentially no world champion and no world championship match. They are correcting that with the Jay White feud (and I cannot wait for that match), but otherwise there isn't really any main event stars. Edge is a really popular wrestler, but people just aren't that interested in AEW. I guarantee if any of those guys went (or went back) to WWE, everyone would suddenly start raving about them, just like Jade Cargill is getting a ton of hype despite being thoroughly mediocre and green.

Yeah, AEW doesn't feel different or special anymore. The big joshi tournament they once did, the Jericho cruise, the first Stadium Stampede, they don't do interesting stuff like that anymore. AEW has run out of surprises. They've also run out of big debuts. Punk and Bryan felt like game changers when they debuted. So did Moxley. Edge is a big signing, but at this point interest in AEW is so low that it doesn't matter. Also, the shock of us having another big wrestling company has died down. It was so exciting back in 2019-2020, now we're just used to it. Lastly, they've diluted their product. Too many shows. Too many wrestlers. Too many belts. On that last point, I think buying ROH has actually hurt AEW.

WWE feels hot right now. Their product isn't perfect by any stretch, I could easily rant about it, but generally speaking WWE has people's interest right now. LA Knight, The Bloodline, Roman Reigns, Paul Heyman, Rhea Ripley, Dominick Mysterio, Cody Rhodes, Gunther, they've got some great talent that people are invested in and they know how to use them. AEW doesn't seem to know what to do with the people on their roster. I'm not even sure of the pecking order in AEW at the moment. Who is the top heel? Who is the top face? Why isn't there a dominant faction? Why isn't there a dominant story line? Where's your focus AEW?

Also, AEW is starting to feel like WWE used to be with their dumb gimmicks like the blond, singing girl with QT Marshal's group that no one cares about, the stupid new gimmick Tony Storm is doing. AEW is doing a lot of dumb WWE style stuff lately. There're starting to get too cute with a lot of things. I also hate that dork they got who sometimes does interviews with wrestlers. I forgot his name but he showed up a couple months ago and his segments always have bad comedy.

One thing I will criticize both AEW as well as WWE for right now is not knowing how to use their world titles. MJF needs to drop the title if they are going to continue his story line with Adam Cole. And it's looooooooong been time for Roman Reigns to drop at least one of his two world titles to someone. He's not even on TV most of the time. I still don't know what the hell is the point of Seth Rollins' title when Roman has the original Raw title. Even Stardom deserves a bit of criticism as they haven't done a stellar job of protecting their world champ Tam Nakano as much as she should be. She's been the champ for months now, but she's lost a few non title matches and quickly lost her secondary, white belt after like a month.