So as you may have noticed, I’ve dropped off the routine of doing my weekly wrestling roundups. I actually did write one for the 5th April episode of Dynamite, but it was pretty perfunctory, and I contemplated shifting this series to a fortnightly routine to make each instalment more meaty, but when it came time to watch this week’s Dynamite I found I couldn’t be bothered.
You’ve probably seen this coming – I’ve been scaling back my wrestling viewing for a bit – but I thought I’d post a quick article to discuss why this has happened.
1: Waning enthusiasm on my part. It’s only natural for this to be the case; if you’ve seen my other blogs you know that I’m not a one-trick pony and you’d expect my various interests to compete for time.
It’s not that I suddenly hate wrestling – in fact, I’m quite excited for AEW to be running All In at Wembley, and I am mulling over doing WWE’s Money In the Bank show in London (and the SmackDown the evening before it) as well, though I may have missed the boat on that one and if Vince continues his steady return to prominence in WWE I may give it a pass. It’s more that I’m at a point where I would probably enjoy more if I watched less of it – restricting myself to catching up on news and editing highlights and then watching major shows when they happen. I might find I end up dipping back into indies a bit more often that way, come to think of it.
Both WWE and AEW do a good job of making video packages for PPVs which showcase the most exciting moments of the build to a match anyway, so there’s not much need to sit through the weekly TV’s filler when the video packages are all-killer. There’s an old bit of wrestling wisdom about the danger of wrestlers becoming overexposed and fan interest in them waning – “How can I miss you if you won’t go away?” – which somewhat dates from the territory days, when a wrestler could “go away” but still actively work by simply moving from territory to territory, but is still kind of true these days.
However, ratings competition being what it is, it seems like there’s little chance of the major stars of any major promotion deliberately going away for significant periods any time soon, but there is something I can do as a fan to make all the performers seem more special – turn that bit of wisdom on its head and ask “How can I miss you if I won’t go away?” By scaling back my weekly consumption, it will probably make the wrestling I do watch seem more special.
2: Both major companies being in a bit of a fallow patch. Another bit of old wrestling wisdom is that no company stays hot forever – everyone goes through their creative peaks and troughs, as bookers get themselves into ruts and start repeating themselves and rosters become played out due to every combination of match eventually being tried. Both WWE and AEW seem to be going through cooler patches at the moment, but there are particular reasons this time around to expect these patches to be especially cool.
On the AEW side of things, it’s no secret that there are intensive negotiations happening around the return of CM Punk. It’s understandable why; for better or worse, the “Brawl Out” scandal was the biggest AEW story of last year, and quite possibly the second biggest story in wrestling, with only Vince McMahon’s temporary ousting from WWE competing with it. Of course, it was a shoot, not a planned angle, and it caused tremendous backstage fallout and grief – but if Punk’s return could be negotiated, there’s no question that it would be a massive draw, and with All In needing to fill Wembley Stadium and a Chicago show planned hot on the heels of that, that’d be a great time to do it.
The problem is that whilst this negotiation happens, Tony Khan is essentially going to have to keep two booking plans in his head – one for if Punk is available, one for if Punk doesn’t come back. In fact, he might need to juggle three – because whilst some in the company (notably, and publicly, FTR) are advocating for a match of Punk and FTR vs. the Elite, rumour has it that the Elite don’t want to work with Punk, so there’d need to be a plan for if that can be overcome and a plan for if it can’t.
Punk vs. the Elite is, obviously, the big money match – because it was that backstage punch-up with the Elite which prompted Punk’s exit in the first place. That said, it’s understandable that the Elite have reservations, since what seems to have happened after All Out was that the Elite showed up with AEW’s head legal counsel to hand (which isn’t something you do if you are about to assault a guy) but Punk felt threatened and threw the first punch anyway. Given such circumstances, it makes total sense to be hesitant about working with the man, especially in a context where you need to trust everyone in the ring to look out for your safety.
AEW booking has felt like it’s in a little bit of a holding pattern lately, and it may well be because of this – because unless and until this whole thing is resolved, the entire direction of the booking is in potential flux. In addition, Tony Khan’s attention has been split between AEW and Ring of Honor, what with their weekly show starting up, and many of the ROH storylines which had previously been advanced via AEW television time have been shifted over to that show – leaving a vacuum which is still in the process of being filled.
AEW will need to get their booking tightened up one way or the other by All In; if they don’t, they are in big trouble. Tony Khan has a 90,000 seat stadium to fill, and it will be deeply embarrassing if he falls far short of that target; it needs to be a big show, as big a deal as the original All In was, and if the booking is in a mess by the time we get there it’s going to struggle to be that.
On the WWE side of things, Vince’s heavy-handed return to the head of Creative for the RAW after Wrestlemania has shot the bottom out of locker room morale and fan confidence alike. Sure, since then Triple H seems to have being handling things, but the message has been sent: if Vince is in town and he feels like it, he can just take charge and do whatever he likes. The main reason I stopped watching NXT was because I got sick of getting invested in wrestlers there only for Vince to ruin them when they got to the main roster; if anything this is worse, because I feel like I won’t be able to get invested in anything on the main roster because at any moment Vince might come back for another one-off stint at Gorilla and wreck everything again – or push his way back in permanently. Moreover, Vince will have more formal authority than Triple H does in the new merged entity that WWE and UFC intend to form thanks to this deal with Endeavor – giving him further influence.
The Endeavor deal still might fall through – it’s possible some manner of legal challenge or regulatory block may come up, after all – but it seems very likely to come to fruition, but that won’t happen until the end of the year, and it feels likely that WWE booking will fall into a holding pattern at least until that happens.
We’re used to seeing a bit of a slump in WWE post-Wrestlemania, of course, though the honeymoon period after Mania typically lasts a bit longer; it’s come in hard and suddenly this time. In principle, the fact that the TV rights deals for RAW and SmackDown are up for renewal should prompt WWE to try and really drive up the quality of their booking, because under ordinary circumstances they would want to seem like a hot prospect in order to get the best possible deal. In practice, the hype around the UFC deal and curiosity about it may end up getting eyeballs on the product anyway – and may convince any potential television partner that they’ll want to secure those rights regardless.
As for other, smaller promotions with weekly TV, I just don’t know. Impact seem to be on an upward trajectory in terms of audience size, and I do think they have the best women’s division in the business, but the shaky production values on major shows keep bugging me. ROH is, whilst distinct from AEW, sufficiently close that it feels like yet another AEW B-show. NWA under Billy Corgan has become increasingly unpleasant, culminating with putting the world championship on Tyrus. MLW hired Enzo Amore, for crying out loud.
There’s other promotions out there, of course – but many of them don’t have weekly TV, and don’t seem to need it. Perhaps it’s time I shifted gears to keeping an eye on those instead. Whatever I end up doing, I’ll probably blog about it here.
Nothin' Means Nothin'! 