Necro

WHY WWE WILL DESTROY ECW AT NEXT WEEK'S PPV
by Jay Landry @ 1:28:00 PM on 6/5/2005

Remember when WCW was bought by WWE?

Everyone thought that one of the "Brands" they would expand on was WCW, until the butchered the handling of the angle and made it the "Winner Take All" one shot PPV.
This virtually took something that could have been profitable to something virtually worthless, except for the "historical archives".

When they brought back the NWO, they handled that VERY poorly and wound up destroying that brand so it is worthless.

This is going to devolve into a WWE vs. ECW, that will wind up destroying the ECW brand. Just like they did in the Invasion PPV. That is all the angle devolved in. ECW is completely different in fan base, story telling and skill set requirements for wrestlers. The WWE is so shallow in it's authorized booking talent base, so single minded and committed to enhancing the WWE brand at all costs, and devoid of any creativity beyond rehashing and revamping what they did 3 years ago, any attempt at spreading the creative juices results in abject failure.

Look at the Arena Football League. It is nothing more than a 50 yard XFL and McMahon knows it. He blew it because he, and his core management team, could not stretch themselves beyond the WWE, because they can't. They don't have the imagination and talent for it and he will not allow outsiders to take credit for success. You don't put 1 million butts in seats, beat the MLS in season ticket sales, have over a 85% Q rating before you even start a season (The highest of any sports team or league in history) and fold up the tent while the summer coaches meetings are going on in one city and your expansion team search group is coming back from visiting your second city in two weeks. To use a Foley-ism, it's a lack of Testicular Fortitude.

And lets not get into the humongous pile of talent that the WWE has either abandoned, butchered or beaten down to the point of submission or destruction. Granted, dressing up as a dancing astronaut or having a yellow jockstrap on your head is pretty humiliating. But, as an example, Scott Steiner bringing tons of good press and butts in the seats. He was totally misused, the bookers were so clueless on how to sell him and make the sacred cows of the WWE still look good. But, they jobbed him into invisibility, when he still should be putting butts in the seats and selling novelties today.

As a shareholder of WWE, I am getting sick and tired of WWE management destroying the value of assets to keep one brand going. Does Ford say that the Escort is better than the F150? No, they sell everything equally. They sell cars, not just a specific brand in favor, or to the detriment, of another brand. It means that shareholders are losing value because of their mismanagement of the companies assets.

Everyone knows that it should have been WWE Raw and WCW Smackdown. It could have also been ECW Saturday Night, instead of putting that train wreck of programming they had from 10p to 12m.

And, to have to look at the pariah of all wrestling has-beens, Triple H is using his horizontal McMahon platform to continually destroy what little entertainment value that Raw has. To continually propel his failing, china doll body and mind-numbing acting skills, into the main events again and again, makes Raw about as watchable as Supertrain.

I actually tried to watch Raw a couple of weeks ago. The funniest thing I have seen in a long time was Big Vis doing the Sexual Chocolate routine. Then, it collapsed into mediocrity. With Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler turning into the stiffs who call Real Pro Wresting, even the commentary isn't a distraction to the crap that WWE is putting in the ring. Gorilla and The Brain could make Bastion Booger vs. Pete Dougherty as entertaining as Hogan v Savage. Even Sean Mooney and Lord Alfred Hayes were more entertaining than Ross and Lawler are now.

It's sad because the caliber of the athletes isn't the issue. It is the garbage they are making them do. And the continuity is miserable. Referees run down at certain times, they don't in others that they should. They never use the 8 bell help count, except in inappropriate moments, and they use it poorly. And they could not track a storyline to save their lives.

I think, if you watch a whole WWF Superstars and WWE Raw, it is evident that the paradigm for WWE has changed. It was a televised competition, not a television show. But, everything was built, settled and finished in the ring. If you were the champ, you wore the belt, you always wore the belt. You dressed like a champ. Good guys fought bad guys. Gray area wrestlers were very few and very far between. Because there is nothing worth fighting for if you are neither good or bad.

You had a commissioner that, even though he was a bit naive, always was fair and impartial. Growing up, I didn't want to be Hogan or Savage, I wanted to be Jack Tunney or Dick Worley. They had class and were completely impartial. They were slow to anger, but do not raise their ire or you would be dealt with swiftly and justly. The refs ALWAYS came down to ringside when there was a problem. They would empty the locker room for help. The agents always were the last line of help and always carried the respect to break something up. And you NEVER put your hands on a ref or an official. If you did, you PAID.

Remember when McMahon was drilled with a chair when Savage and Piper were fighting? That stunned the house, because NO ONE touched an official or an announcer. Now, anyone is fair game for a beating. And nothing happens when they do.

I am not saying they should go back to Kayfabe, but they need to have more respect for the viewers. They need to have much more respect for the past. And they need to have much more respect for the intelligence of the audience.

I guess, you could say that the WWE is like the US in Iraq. We won the war, we now need to win the peace. WWE won the wrestling war. And the WWE is losing the peace. Badly.