WWE: Are we currently in the darkest timeline?
It’s a really nothing-happening period for wrestling right now, as it has been for the past three months or so, and that’s a really bad sign with Wrestlemania season just around the corner. A reader sums up the thoughts of many with an e-mail the other day:
Hey, Scott. Love the blog and books. We IWC people bitch about the product pretty consistently, but is it fair to say that 2014's weekly WWE TV product after Wrestlemania was the worst it's been since '94 or so? I've been watching for a long time, and it really feels like it's gotten so bad that it's almost beyond comprehension. Pick any young, hot commodity from 2014, (Cesaro, Wyatt, Ambrose, even Dallas...) and chart their booking, and it really defies description it's so abysmal. Am I alone in this, or are we in the darkest timeline for mainstream wrestling?
Things are getting pretty bleak, no doubt. I think a lot of what ails the company is the departure of Daniel Bryan right after his hottest moment ever, winning the big one at Wrestlemania and supposedly ascending to the “face of the company” spot that he had been chasing for months. Of course, given a feud with Kane while John Cena remained the “real” star, that was only the façade of change anyway and we were always going to end up with Brock Lesnar winning the World title at Summerslam and then taking it back to Minnesota as a trophy piece for six months. However, comparing it to 1994 (or especially 1995) is pretty strong language. Even an absent champion who is never mentioned for weeks at a time is still a better choice than Kevin Nash. Anyone who had to live through Diesel v. King Mabel as a top program is still coping with the flashbacks. The problems of ’95 are actually kind of opposite from what we’ve got now. Vince in 1995 was trying to be everything to everyone, throwing out wrestling garbagemen, clowns, hog farmers, voodoo priests, teachers, race car drivers and evil dentists in a bizarre attempt to capture any freakshow fanbase he could. Plus he raided groups like ECW and various indy promotions to cash in on whatever might have been hot at the time. With no success, I might add, but at least he was trying something new by casting brawler Louie Spicoli as a grunge rocker, for example.
Today, the problem is adhering so closely to the status quo that no one is ever allowed to get over. Guys have no defined characters or opportunity to develop a character, and everyone is forced to come up through the homogenizing developmental system for months on end until everyone can work the same cookie cutter on the TV shows. Guys are trained to only work to the crowd on the hard camera side, making comebacks at strictly defined times, usually with three clotheslines. People no longer have motivations beyond “becoming a legendary WWE superstar” or “building momentum” or pointing at the Wrestlemania sign. Jeff Jarrett attempting to use the WWF to springboard his career into Nashville’s music scene was stupid, but at least he had some ambition. It’s bad enough that guys today are so terrified of life outside the WWE bubble that they won’t ever know about working indies or telling Vince to go screw himself so they can return for big money later, but even the characters on the TV show itself are terrified of the owners and submit to their every whim! If you watch the WWE Network live stream for more than an hour it’s likely you’ll see a show about how great the Austin v. McMahon feud was, which makes it all the more ironic that they are now so completely missing the point of it.
Also, 1995 episodes of RAW were only an hour, so they automatically win.
(For more on the disaster that was 1995 WWF, check out the excellent book Titan Sinking by James Dixon, available now on Kindle and paperback via Amazon!)
