RAW Is Just There (or, Mandatory UFC 100 Post)

In case you were living under a rock this weekend, UFC 100 took place to the fanfare of an estimated 1.5 million buys on PPV. The burgeoning juggernaut of MMA seemed to have its breakout moment, capped off by former WWE superstar Brock Lesnar defending his UFC Heavyweight Championship against Frank Mir. After that, he cut a heel promo, again showcasing how much of a hypocritical douchebag he is for dissing wrestling in one breath and using what he learned in his time in the business to further himself in the world of legitimate combat in the next.

(As an aside, for all you MMA fans out there who are pissed off at Skip Bayless for implying the sport is worked... don't waste your breath. He makes a habit out of dissing Philadelphia fans using the most inane logic and most sweeping generalizations possible. He's not worth it.)

Two nights later, Monday Night RAW aired to very little fanfare initially, but it turned out to be a pretty entertaining show featuring some comedic interjections from Seth Green.

Now, you may be asking yourself, what does one have to do with the other, other than Lesnar's past with the WWE making the comparison superficially germane? Simple. This could be professional wrestling's death knell as a mainstream player in America. Yeah, I know, it seems like hyperbole, but that's only if you don't account for how popular MMA is becoming in this country. If you just watch ESPN, you'd think that MMA is just for the fringe. It certainly got that kind of coverage, no more than what the English Premiere League, the NHL or the Tour de France would get. God forbid they take any time away from covering which Yankee player is having indigestion, Who's Now or the in-depth reasons on why Tony Romo dumped Jessica Simpson on the eve of her birthday.

But the numbers don't lie. The 1.5M buy projection probably will not be too far off the truth. Compare that to WrestleMania this year; the grandadddy of them all did about 900K or so. People blamed the economy. Even so, UFC did 600K more buys. Yeah. Couple that with Facebook and Twitter activity for the event going off the charts. UFC 100 trended at or close to the top. The only other sporting-related topic that came remotely close was the murder of boxer Arturo Gatti.

But death knell? It could happen. Let's face it. MMA is a giant. It's a monster. People love it because it's real, the people are real. The charisma shown isn't clouded by the stigma of cheese that can come with pro wrestling. It would take a lot to derail its momentum right now, like people dying every other card from here on out, or the admission that it was indeed worked, or that steroids are a bigger problem there than in pro wrestling. Even then, it would probably take a combination of those things instead of just one catastrophic moment of epic fail. And what does the WWE have to counter it?

John Cena. Triple H. Jeff Hardy. Not exactly a murderer's row there. Sure, wrestling fans may love them. I like them, well, two-thirds of them. Fuck Triple H. (someone at PTC just won $1000 vBucks :p) But it's not like having 1965 Buddy Rodgers, 1987 Hulk Hogan and 2000 Rock on the roster.

Even now, in the sort of upspike that wrestling has seemingly gone through in the last five years, ratings aren't changing all that much. PPV buys and house show gates may be marginally improving. The growth rates and the gross numbers aren't even trending close to MMA. For years since he bought WCW, Vince McMahon has been working under the assumption that he had no more competition in the sports entertainment business and was now competing with other prime-time television dramas and reality shows. He was wrong. He underestimated MMA, UFC particularly, and now, he's behind the 8-ball. They're going to leech his audience to the point where if there were fans of both deciding what they were going to spend their disposable income on that month, they'd probably spend it on UFC rather than WWE for PPV.

So what can McMahon do to overtake the lead? Nothing short of finding the next big guy. That is to say he's not catching with MMA anytime soon. The thing is, he shouldn't even try. It's too late. The shame part of it is that RAW wasn't completely awful last night. In fact, in the last few months, RAW's quality has sort of fluctuated. That being said, the highs are pretty high. But last night, you had a mainstream crossover that didn't completely feel embarrassing to watch, a guest host who was funny and popped the crowd in a wrestling match without tarishing the credibility of the wrestlers (Seth Green > Shane McMahon in that regard). You had good wrestling action, some good promos. And the best part? NO PROLONGED RECAPS!!! IT WAS FUCKIN' AWESOME!!! BAHAHAH... *ahem*, excuse me. I mean, if they stayed at that quality every week, I'd be a happy wrestling fan.

But then again, I don't like MMA all that much to begin with. It's not me VKM has to worry about keeping happy. That's why RAW couldn't afford to be just good last night. Last night's show was already kinda doomed by the Home Run Derby, but coming in the wake of the biggest MMA show ever? FUGGEDDABOUTIT!

Now that the game has changed, McMahon and crew need to bring their A material every week. First thing's first, they need to start creating new main event stars. While finding a new Rock/Hogan/Austin is unlikely at best, it's still possible, and you aren't going to find him by recycling the same old Orton/Trips/Cena/Batista/Hardy/Edge main programs. They need to find out what they have with guys like MVP, Jack SWAGGAH~!, The Miz, Christian and Shelton Benjamin, among others. At worst, they have a bunch of other guys to throw in the main event and potentially draw them money on the Trips/Cena/J. Hardy level.

Two, they need to learn the lesson from the Trump RAW three weeks ago and lessen the commercial time on the show. Supplement the revenue lost from the cut commercials by presenting certain portions of the program from them. I mean, it worked with Kentucky Grilled Chicken. I'm sure there will be other companies wanting to get their new or revamped products out there.

Third, they need to up the quality level, up the intelligence. Even if they don't draw in new audience, they need to show potential sponsors that they market to an audience that, y'know, HAS disposable income. That way, they can charge more for commercials, run fewer commercials... you get the idea.

Again, none of this will give the WWE the inside track at beating out MMA, but what it will do is keep people's options open. People will have a harder time shunning the WWE and pro wrestling completely if what's accessible to them is a quality product (which rules out TNA completely), and if it ever comes to a sink-or-swim moment for the company and the industry on a whole, wrestling won't automatically drown in the wake left by the aircraft carrier known as mixed-martial arts.