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| I've seen something like this before... Photo Credit: WWE.com |
If you feel like WWE dabbles in déjà vu more often than you might like them, it's because they have a shallow well that they go to far too often. I didn't even watch the show and I felt like I already lived through it, and it's because it has happened several times before, with Ryback, with Umaga, hell, they even did it with the Undertaker to an extent. In 1991, Taker was so hot that they put him in the title match against Hulk Hogan at Survivor Series. He ended up winning, but, in a move that was unprecedented at the time and far more galling in the age of asking folks to shell out full price for a single event, they announced a second pay-per-view to be held days later called This Tuesday in Texas, where Hogan won the title back days after Survivor Series. As an aside, he was stripped of the title days after that, and it led to the single greatest Royal Rumble match ever. But in 1991 and 1992, Vince McMahon's bullshit wasn't as developed, and his product wasn't as oversaturated as it is now.
You took stuff like that, even if you were as hardcore then as I am now, in stride because hey, you didn't have to deal with the aftermath the next night, and then you didn't have Bobby Heenan or Hogan on Twitter telling you to shut up and like it because they're going somewhere like you do with Corey Graves and some of the talent. To his credit though, Rollins hasn't tweeted in three days at this point, so you have to give him some props for restraint. Then again, that'd be like giving Henry Kissinger props for taking a day off from Agent Orange-ing Cambodia.
Going to the "disqualification in a no-DQ match" (although they retconned it almost immediately to call it a no-contest with no winner) well again a year after doing it with Roman Reigns and Braun Strowman is an extra touch of bullshit, the exclamation point that McMahon is using to tell you he has a limited arsenal and he doesn't know how to let the ammo build back up again before using it. You might say that other wrestling companies do or did the same things over again and didn't get dragged for it, but honestly, every other "major" wrestling company outside of New Japan, TNA, and now All Elite Wrestling operated in the age before social media. But the trick with wrestling is that when you repeat something, you repeat what has worked for you and do it in such a way that it makes people not think what you're doing is repetitive.
All McMahon would have to do is stop putting wrestlers like The Fiend or Umaga or Ryback or ANYONE in a title match before he thinks they're ready. Aura is such a precious tool in wrestling, and the funny thing is they actually successfully built it around Bray Wyatt a second time with this Fiend character. I don't know if they wrecked this time, because who knows anymore, but honestly, deciding to do the same thing they did with guys that didn't work in the past with The Fiend shows a stunning lack of learning from mistakes.
The funny thing is that no matter how much measurable metrics decline, WWE keeps bringing in that scrilla. Revenues keep expanding thanks to plum television deals from NBC Universal and FOX, and if the Smackdown premiere is any indication, the latter looks to be putting its own money into presentation of it. I don't see how WWE suffers from any bad booking in the short term, because people still tune in. The outrage factory always makes it look worse on Twitter, and the loudmouth hardcore fans in the audience chanting for CM Punk and now All Elite Wrestling only yell displeasure while continuing to buy tickets. The only way McMahon will learn is by losing revenue. Therein lies Vince McMahon's trick.
However, what McMahon didn't have between 2000 and now was strong competition. AEW came right out of the gate this past Wednesday and smoked NXT, tripling them in viewers aged 18-49. Of course, it's difficult to parse any meaning out one week; you probably need three or four months of solid results to make any sort of claim on who's doing better. That being said, it's a strong warning shot across the bow. WWE will feel pressure for the first time in nearly 20 years. Maybe it will be the thing that wakes them up to what they have to do to retain customer satisfaction more than just the people on Twitter who like it already and who proselytize about those decisions to people who don't like them.
Obviously, nothing is going to take the sting away from supporting a company that gave so much money to Donald Trump that they got a member of his cabinet out of it. That being said, it's easier to support trashbag of a company when they put out a product that is engaging and worth viewing rather than one that makes waves for how mad it made its viewers afterwards. People are going to realize that it's not worth it more and more. There's only so much repetition of acting on the worst impulses that people will take before they move along and spend their time on something else, wrestling or otherwise. I'm not saying WWE should pull out of the creative rot, or that I'm rooting for them to be honest. Vince McMahon is the worst thing ever to happen to pro wrestling, and I will not be sad when he's forced out of leadership whether by force or nature. What I am saying is that if they want to keep the company alive for undeserving reasons, maybe they should stop playing the "hits" and start engendering themselves to their audience, whether existing or potential, with something fresh.
