Amid the sea of negative wrestling columns I see online I must say that I see some positive changes coming to the WWE. Some of them are already in place or planned for the future.

What I like: a return to characters. The return of the Dead Man gimmick. While not exactly the original Dead Man it is a cool return of a character we all know and love. Mordecai. While his costume/appearance might be a bit lame (a wrestling columnist referred to it as a kid dressing up on Halloween) it reminds me of the debut of Undertaker. Nobody was impressed with his in-ring work at first, but his character helped keep people interested until his in-ring work won more people over.

The return of faces and heels. I know the anti-hero is really popular. Stone Cold Steve Austin is a shining example. And while I am a Stone Cold fan, I think the days of the anti-hero are largely gone. A lot of fans want to see the return of good guys vs. bad guys. Like wrestling was when we grew up. I believe it is headed there. Even Stone Cold at the end of his WWE run, was considered pretty much to be a solid face. Notable anti-heroes who have made straight face turns: John Cena, Eddie Guerrero, The Rock & Stone Cold.

Selling injuries. I like that the WWE is back to selling injuries. For far too long the rules have been thrown out the window. We've seen it all. Mick Foley thrown off a 20-foot high (ok 16 foot) Hell In A Cell Cage, people thrown through tables as common as a family sitting down for a meal, chair shots etc. With that reality went out the window as well. If someone has steel stairs hit them in the head they are bound to be in bandages. For a long time there were no consequences for these type of bumps. No "selling" of injuries. After a recent match with The Undertaker the FBI came to a match with Booker T all bandaged up. I think this does well to sell Taker's moves (especially the Tombstone Piledriver).

Pushes for stars who were buried for years. I like the recent pushes for Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit, John Cena and others. WWE fortunately timed this well since they lost Goldberg, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Brock Lesnar & Kurt Angle (Angle only for a short while). Wrestling is like a cycle. There are up and down periods and there are periods when main event stars come and go. Like in the early 90's we have recently witnessed a bunch of main event stars leave WWE forcing Vince to develop newer wrestlers and push stars that were being buried. I think this can only help Vince, WWE and us, the wrestling fans. It is making the product more interesting and building for the future at the same time.

Making main event stars "special" again. Remember back in the days when seeing someone like Hulk Hogan, Andre The Giant, Ultimate Warrior and other main event stars was a special thing on one of the weekly shows? It seems that the WWE is getting back to that. That's a good thing because if you leave us fans wanting it keeps us coming back for more. An example of this is the recent return of the Dead Man. Undertaker is now being made special again. His appearances are being hyped with promos, Paul Bearer, fog etc. It makes seeing Undertaker exciting like when he first came on the wrestling scene.

While stars like Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit & John Cena are not yet given this "special" status it helps give them more air time and helps all the wrestlers in the process by not having a main event star bury them on the card. HHH is another story. I am trying to write a positive column here.

I also like the push for WWE DVDs featuring past and current WWE stars. Look at how well the Ric Flair DVD sold. I've heard that a Bret Hart DVD package is in the works. I'd like to see future WWE DVDs of old-school wrestlers like Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat, Hulk Hogan, Randy "Macho Man" Savage, Ultimate Warrior and many others from the 80's. I also like the idea of pushing DVDs of John Cena, Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit. I think WWE is doing a good job here. If only they would get to work on doing the first 10 Wrestlemania's on DVD. I'm sure there is a goldmine there. I know I would buy them.

Lastly, I want to say I like the idea of a return of ECW. I think eventually they should bring back WCW as well (in name not run the same). Think about it. WWE could create competition for itself like they are trying to do with RAW & Smackdown. I say cut shows like Heat, Velocity & WWE Experience. Who watches those shows anyway? They are either recaps of what we have seen already or boring as hell. Bring back ECW & WCW. Bring back some stars, managers etc to help build the pool of wrestlers and have a real draft this time. Not a small draft that doesn't change much. Change the whole works. Have a genuine draft where everybody's name is thrown into the mix and they don't know where they are going. Surprise works well as far as entertaining in the WWE.

Keep RAW & Smackdown as is, as far as the day, time & content. Have ECW be on Saturday nights (late night) on tape. ECW would pay off well not being live so any mess-ups would be covered up in the editing room. WCW could come back to Monday Nights (recreate the Monday Night Wars) or better yet Friday Nights. WCW and Smackdown could be old-school wrestling with some of the older & younger stars doing classic wrestling with cool characters/gimmicks. RAW & ECW could be hardcore style wrestling with real-personality type wrestlers.

Much like divisions in any sport you could split the rosters by style instead of location. You could have 4 PPV's a month (the only downside is some fans will miss out because of lack of $ ) and special PPV's featuring all 4 rosters (Wrestlemania, Summer Slam, Royal Rumble & maybe 1-2 others). Maybe they could cut it down to one PPV a month. One month it's RAW, the next month Smackdown, EWC then WCW. That would help make each PPV special for it's own brand (by limiting the # of PPV's for each brand) and help make longer feuds by not killing a feud every month. They could still run the inter-brand PPV's in the same month as a brand PPV and still do better then they are doing now. Also with the addition of ECW & WCW, WWE could bring back fans from both companies and offer old and new fans something different.

Anyway, this is just my opinions. Feel free to agree or disagree or post your own ideas. I'm just excited about the current WWE and whatever the future may hold. It looks like Vince is finally headed in the right direction (knock on wood)....

by Joseph Huber
-http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WWEFansRUSA/..