Question for you and the ranters. Are we too harsh on the creative team? With guys like Lagana and Seth Mates on Twitter now and giving the fans an insight to what it was like working with the WWE on creative, it sounds like it wasn't the easiest job and I can see why. They practically are booking 24/7 and i'm sure Vince isn't the easiest guy to work with, so I can understand why everything they shit doesn't turn to gold. After all, can we really even blame them, don't they have to get approval from Vince on most of the script, so this would in turn be Vince just being Vince then right?
But then I looked at it the other way, I mean when something fails, no one(except the fans) wants to call out creative, it's let's blame (insert scapegoat talent here) and demote them as punishment. Did they really think Zack Ryder was gonna recover from getting his ass kicked by Kane on a weekly basis, cock blocked by John Cena, and friend-zoned by Eve? It's the elephant in the room that no one wants to address.....
So essentially my question is are we gonna be stuck with this type of booking until Vince decides to give it up or a main eventer like Cena or Punk calling them on their bullshit?
We're stuck with it until Vince decides to give it up. Even longer, probably, since Stephanie has been in charge of Creative for 10 years now and shows no signs of letting go, either. I don't generally blame Creative as such for stuff where Vince should know better, but the stupid comedy stuff and scripted promos are definitely their fault.
Yeah but isn't the stupid comedy stuff still coming from Vince, Stephen, or HHH? Maybe not the actual skit but I'm sure the idea is from one of them. Vince will be like "We need a segment at 9:45 pm with Santino and the divas." There's only so much they have to work with.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is more with the people they are hiring for the Creative Team, failed/middling Hollywood TV writers.
ReplyDeleteThey've so convinced themselves that wrestling is a soap opera, when it really should be a drama with comedy mixed in.
At the end of the day, the problem is Vince and his "vision" for entertainment.
Can somebody tell me why Big Johnny loathes Cena with every fiber of his being?
ReplyDeleteBecause Cena mocked his raspy voice?
Basically, since Vince bought out any threat to him he's cared less about making money and more about doing what he wants, which is to make WWE an all encompassing media empire instead of a "rasslin" company. The wrestlers and the fans be damned.
ReplyDeleteI always thought referring to the writers as "creative" is supposed to be some sort of ironic nick name, like calling fat guys tiny.
ReplyDeleteAren't the scripted promos also Vince/Steph's fault? They're the ones telling the writers to write them out word for word. If they told the writers to start producing only outlines then they would make only outlines.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I move that anytime anyone on blog of doom refers to WWE comedy they are required to add quotations. Example: WWE "comedy" hasn't been the same since Rock and Austin left.
ReplyDeleteNot true at all. he still cares about making money, but it's a public company. As a public company, you have shareholders that are risk averse. As long as the product that is currently being produced is bringing in a certain level of revenue, the shareholders are not going to be happy if Vince suddenly decides his product is a critical failure and changes everything up. Plus you have other factors like Linda running for Senate and the Mattel deal that box Vince into keeping stuff fairly mild. WWF has hit on two major changes that rocked the wrestling world. They both required maximum risk taking. The first was going to a more character driven, cartoony product. This involved Hogan winning the title, which was a no-brainer. As much as they would probably argue otherwise, I think if he would have went to mid-atlantic, Georgia, WCCW, Mid-south, etc., the NWA board would have put the belt on Hogan also. A second factor was of course going national. Recognizing the importance of cable and of production values. A third was giving the guys larger than life characters. MTV, the TNT talk show, music albums, cartoon shows, action figures, etc. And then of course the risk of doing WM. The second time Vince's show hit huge was the risk of going edgy. he had little to lose at that point because the WWF was struggling and he had a talent gap a mile wide with WCW. But in both cases they had competition and needed to take risks to make the product more interesting.
ReplyDeletewith public shareholders, they just won't go for that. As long as Cena sells merchandise, Raw gets a halfway decent rating, house shows bring in bucks, DVDs can be churned out. and international revenues fill in the lost PPV revenue gap, we can expect the product to largely remain the same. And that's not because Vince isn't interested in making $$$ and cares more about being an entertainment company, it's because the shareholders see the outside stuff as a key revenue producer and the current format as a safe way to guarantee a base line level of profit. Innovation is generally the product of necessity. If you are desperate, you innovate. Often that fails, wrestling world or business world, but occasionally you strike gold. If Vince thought that going back to an edgy product with dynamic wrestling matches was risk-free and would make a ton of money, he would throw away the cheesy humor sketches, Hornswoggle, Santino, and all the rest in a NY minute.
All I can think of is in the Rise and Fall of ECW DVD where they talk about having no creative, just Heyman sitting at a desk in the locker room where wrestlers would come up, say "Hey Paul, what do you think about this?" and Heyman would give his opinions and then let the wrestlers loose.
ReplyDeleteComplete apples and oranges.
ReplyDeleteI certainly don't envy their position of having to keep Vince happy and come up with interesting storylines for 52 weeks a year.
ReplyDeleteyes and no. I think many of us would argue that some of the best promos happened when guys weren't scripted. I realize that in today's corporate WWE they don't want to take the chance that a wrestler will fail to hit the key points, go too long, or say something he shouldn't, but let's be honest, how many scripted promos are things that you remember? Assuming Punk's are scripted, he's had a couple. Cena had one that I really liked during the period Bret Hart first came back. But overall non-scripted promos generate more memorable promos.
ReplyDeleteThat said, ECW was unique in that guys often weren't there long-term. Austin could say what he wanted because he was done in 3 months. And before Barely Legal, guys weren't selling ppvs, they were simply selling themselves and their angles, since the ECW arena was packed either way. Honestly they weren't even selling house shows with the way the tapings were done and aired. And unlike Raw, they were taped. Sure in-ring promos were live at an arena, but the truly memorable stuff like Foley, Raven, Austin, etc. were all taped in a basement. It's easy to cherry pick the best ones or edit as needed. A live promo on Raw has very specific risks. Sometimes even when it goes off the rails like the "This is Your Life" segment with Foley and Rock, it scores big. Other times though it could mess up the format of the show. I know several times Raw had very abbreviated main events due to other things going long. In Bret Hart's book he discusses how a promo went long and as a result HBK's superkick came after the show went off the air, so Bret ended up looking surpreme that night (boy was that rare in his final WWF year) and HBK was pissed.
Much like with my post above about risk-taking to change the product vs. the safe revenue stream for stockholders, unscripted promos are the same. Sure they aren't earth shattering but they get the basics to sell the ppv, the angle, the feud, etc. across and keep the show moving with a minimum of risk involved.
exactly. and we don't know how much stuff gets shot down. maybe there are (or were. you know before they realized how it works with the WWE) a lot of writers that came up with clever, witty and genuinely funny stuff only to have it torn to shreads by McMahon.
ReplyDeleteGuys, I know we're all real mad about this Brock thing right now, but come on.
ReplyDeleteVince is a businessman. He runs a publicly traded company. He absolutely cares very, very much about making money.
The McMahons own more than 51% of the stock. Furthermore, the McMahons own special stock that has more voting power that can only be owned by a member of the family. Yes. True. When they went IPO, they figured out how to pull a bunch of carnie bullsh*t on Wall Street. Wall Street gave them money in an IPO en exchange for never being able to ever has much say as a McMahon. They're a public company but not as public as say, Coca-Cola.
ReplyDeleteHe does like money. However, eventually you get so much that you get so insulated by being surrounded by yes-men/women who rubberstamp all your dumb ideas. He doesn't seem to know or care when his "vision" isn't creating new customers. It's what entertains him. Ditto HHH, except it's about soothing his incredibly fragile ego.
ReplyDelete... and to later get future endeavored for "having bad ideas." Yeah. There's no two ways about it, that company is seriously mismanaged.
ReplyDeleteWhen I say "WWE Creative" I'm talking about the writers, Stephanie, Vince, and even HHH.
ReplyDeleteI think we're arguing semantics at this point, because I totally understand what you're saying, but I'd say that's different than not caring about making money.
ReplyDeleteyour understanding of the stock market leaves something to be desired. yes they own the majority of the stock, however as a public company, the company is only as valuable as the stock. If Vince does something the other 49% don't like, they sell their stock, the price drops and the 51% is worth less now. If he takes a huge risk and it fails or the 49% don't buy into it, the price could drop fast, leaving Vince with a company worth a fraction of what it once was. I'm not a Vince fan either. heck I don't even watch his stuff anymore. But the whole "vince doesn't care about money and just does what entertains himself" bs is just stupid and wrong. It's not based in reality.
ReplyDeleteBesides, if it was true, where are all the hillbillies on Raw?
In concert with that, the comedy skits are written for Vince's sense of humor, not the audience.
ReplyDeleteI didn't say he didn't care about making money, just that it's not as important to him as it once was due to lack of competition.
ReplyDeleteWWE still turns a profit, so it's not so much about whether or not they're making money, but more about how MUCH they're making.
ReplyDeleteVince is happy with the money he and his company are making now, and has no real desire or need to take a risk on changing things; in the words of Punk, he may be "a millionaire that should be a billionaire", but I think people forget that, uhh, he's a millionaire. It's not like he's broke or the company is going out of business.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and as things are, the product is not "broke"; sure, it's not as good as it used to be, but it's not bad enough that it's losing money, either.