Columns - Online World of Wrestling

WRESTLING COLUMNS

Stop Dissing WWE
August 14, 2004 by Justin Bailey

It seems that most talk about WWE these days is negative. You constantly hear comments such as "Why can't WWE be like TNA (or other Indy promotions)"", "WWE has no idea on what true talent is" and "Whatever happened to the attitude era"". In some cases, these complaints are legitimate and understandable. But this constant griping about the organization that made wrestling into what it is today needs to stop.

One of the main factors of this is the absence of "extreme" matches and events from WWE. There is no longer a hardcore title, and you barely ever see a major brawl backstage anymore. But just because there isn't much of that stuff anymore, does that mean it's gotten worse" Let's face it, wrestling fans are one of the most hard to please crowds you'll find. I am in no way putting down wrestling fans, as I am a big one myself. I just believe that people need to stop looking at all the negatives and allow themselves to enjoy the good points of WWE.

WWE features the most diverse array of wrestlers and wrestling styles of any company. They have high flying cruiserweights, tremendous power wrestlers, and the best technical guys you'll find anywhere. Even the WWE's jobbers are among the best wrestlers in the world. And for you people who enjoy storylines the most, no company can put together storylines like WWE can. They have by far the most elaborate, detailed storylines there are.

WWE has the best characters and personas as well. Does TNA or any other Indy promotions have characters like The Undertaker, Triple H, or Kurt Angle" WWE has characters that you can actually care about, and this makes the rivalries all the more epic and important. Not one person can tell me that they don't get the chills when they see Triple H and Shawn Michaels go at it, or when Chris Benoit steps into the ring to face Kurt Angle.

Sure WWE rarely has epic matches, they sometimes misuse wrestlers, and have occasional cheesy storylines. But without it, would there even be wrestling anymore" What organization do you think inspired all these Indy feds" Which organization created timeless characters, unforgettable feuds, and some of the most amazing moments that the entire world will never forget" Wrestling is entertainment, it is meant to entertain the person watching it. In my opinion, no one does entertainment like WWE.

by Justin Bailey..

Jojo, 15, Oregon City, OR wrote:
I totally understand where you're coming from here, World Wrestling Entertainment has become a multi-billion dollar corporation! I just think that they are in a rut right now. People aren't pleased with the product, and if the fans aren't liking the product, what happens to the WWE!!!""!! Some people are just really fed up with all these mediocre wrestlers trying to create interesting storylines, but the fact of the matter is, the fans just ain't buyin' it!!! The WWE definitely needs to step it up a bit! I mean, I love wrestling, and I'll always watch it, no matter how lame it gets! But when I watch wrestling, I want to see some hardcore action! I want to be entertained! We just aren't getting that right now. But hey, it's all in good fun! Don't worry, be happy now!!! We should all just stop complaining right now! 'Cause there isn't anything me or anyone else can do about it at this point! Plus, We don't even know the business! How could we possibly understand anything that's going on right now!"! I say we leave this matter to the professionals! Let's just watch wrestling and stop getting caught up in all this debate!!! It's all good...

HULKAMANIA225 wrote:
"In my opinion, no one does entertainment like WWE." quote from Stop Dissing WWE

thats just it they do entertianment. They make it more of like a real soap opera. If I wanted that I would watch all my children for crying out loud. I want to see wrestling not Triple H talk for have the program. Don't get me wrong I watch WWE and love some of the matches but the basic Triple H coming out and saying the same thing annoys me. Your right WWE is somewhat the reason why most Indy promotions are out there. But they have better storylines when they have competiton

Timmy wrote:
exactly, noone does entertainment like WWE, but i think there is a reason. the other promotions remembered the first rule to having a succesful promotion, good wrestling. but let me respond to your piece, first off, i don't think WWE was ever extreme, the hardcore belt was a joke, even before they turned it into one. I realize they were trying to keep it calm for the censors, but cookie sheets, alluminum garbage cans and fire extinguishers" As for wrestling styles, best technical guys you'll find" it seems to me that every match on raw or smackdown is long entrance, then some brawling, a couple of moves, then either someone comes out and distracts them or we see a finisher in 4 minutes, nothing about that is technical. I know guys like benoit, guererro, stone cold (a brawler in wwe while he was there, but one hell of a wrestler everywhere else) can wrestle a great match, but i feel that isn't what Vince wants. As for storylines, i don't watch soap opera's, i watch wrestling. sure sometimes its fun to have a story behind a match, but when you start to feel like there are matches behind stories, you know something is wrong. I personally think that wrestlers don't need goofy gimmicks to make you care about them. i find kawada amazing, not because he wear's a funny costume or pretends to be a porn star, but because he deliver's stiff kicks and puts on amazing matches. As for misused talent, i could ramble on for days about how stupid they are for firing jerry lynn, chaz or d-lo. i could also go on to no end about what a mistake it is to keep RVD at mid-card status or keep shane helms as a gimmick wrestler. Not only are they losing talent however, it seems they're pushing the ones without talent! Randy Orton is a mediocre wrestler, and they want to push him more then benoit, a man who earned his contract and given everything to wrestling. as jerry lynn once said "wwe isn't about wrestling, its about coming up with crazy gimmicks to sell action figures and video games". fans can love it, haters can think it sucks, as for me, i'll watch wrestling. With no soap opera storylines, no cheesy bumps, no elaborate entrances, just wrestling, and hopefully, wwe will to.

dan king wrote:
I really hate people bashing the WWF all the time. Do people really say "Why can't WWE be like TNA (or other Indy promotions)"" Talk about ignorance. TNA is crap. Do they mean X division style of wrestling" There are reasons why WWF never really used crusierweights. One of them being that the McMahons have a certain promotional style or philosophy, that works --very well-- for them. Unfortunatley there are marks unable or unwilling to grasp that simple fact. It's like complaining that McDonalds dosen't sell steak.

And it's the same as far garbage wrestling goes. Also, WWF Hardcore matches are best done only once in a while. Like the Foley-Orton match at Backlash this year. The hardcore gimmick meant more in that match because it wasn't done every single week.

Also, TNA makes no money ---which is the point of having a wrestling company by the way. Know how much WWF made in it's last financial quarter"

William McCracken wrote:
It's nice to be reminded from time to time that, like or hate what WWE has become, we all still watch it. Everyone who rips WWE for bad storylines, poor talent, and atrocious matches always has current examples of them to discuss. So, even though they can't stand WWE, they are watching it every single week! It would seem that on some level, they still like the product that WWE turns out; because, if they didn't, they wouldn't keep watching.

Al Powers wrote:
A good reason why so many people talk negatively about the WWE is because the WWE puts out negative "wrestling", week after week after week. To Vince McMahon, the sport that he got invovled in when he purchased the WWF from his father is no longer wrestling, it is Sports Entertainment. Vince McMahon changed the game to his liking. Thus, emphasizing more on entertainment than wrestling. This is a reason why some many say that WWE should be like the other wrestling organizations. The WWE puts on a show, like a stage play/soap opera. The wrestling is secondary to the skits and backstage antics of any given show.

What you and some others don't see here is the fine line between wrestling and entertainment. The WWE entertains with wrestlers/actors that put on a show. While TNA and other indy feds entertain with Wrestling. These smaller organizations entertain the people with putting on astonding matches that will get people talking and creating a buzz. Most big time WWE matches live for the 'big bump'. The matches drag on for whatever amounts of time, then a ladder or table is brought into play. Regardless of who's in the ring, if a table is brought into play, then the match turns face. The people will begin to get interested in the match.

For instance, if Chuck Palumbo was wrestling D-Von Dudley, that would be boring. But, if a table was involved, listen to the crowd get louder and wish for someone to get sent through that table to apease their appeitite for destruction. The WWE doesn't give the people what they want all the time. Some of the wrestlers go into matches half-hearted and don't put on a good show or they are simply not capable of doing so at the moment, (Mordecai).

Mordecai is a prime example of the WWE misusing talent. They pushed him down our throats to the point where if he screwed up, didn't put on a great performance or just didn't lack the stage presence, the fans won't pay him attention and the whole idea is dead. And that was exactly what happened. Mordecai is no more because the WWE decided to put a "gimmick" on someone and he was not good enough or have the presence to hold an audience. The WWE's problem is that everyone is a gimmick. They truly believe that someone has to look like a character or have some kind of acting skill to promote them. Big difference between WWE and TNA. TNA doesn't have to soak someone in a gimmick to get them over. In ring ability gets talent over in TNA. If they hit their spots, put on a great showing and has a fantastic finisher, something to get a pop or ohhs and ahhs out of the crowd, then that person is an instant hit with the fans. There is no need to change the person's image to suit someone's else's imagination. Why would Lance Storm retire at such a young age when he's a wrestler" The WWE doesn't know how to utilize true talent for their ability. So they call him 'boring' and make him dance on stage like a junior high computer geek who got his first taste of pink cookies. He's a prime example of misused talent.

Oh, the Attitude Era was a rip off from ECW. Before ECW starting sending ripples through the North American wrestling world, the WWF/E was falling off the map in popularity. Then word started going around that a small fed out of Philadelphia was making some noise with some known names. Guys worked hard, bled, put each other through tables and dove off of ladders, and the titles meant something. The WWF/E picked up on it, and since they were on a worldwide market, they could take those ideas of ECW and label it 'Attitude'. Making people believe, who hasn't seen or ever heard of ECW, that the WWF/E have gone crazy. I would get into a discussion about that, but it's plain to see that ECW made the WWE what it is today. The only thing was that the WWE had the money and mainstream popularity to elevate what they took from others.

The WWE didn't make wrestling what it is today because no other organization wants to be like WWE. They do what they do to be popular and TNA is doing something right to gain a following and many turning their backs on WWE. Granted, the WWE is the only major player in town, but if you had the chance to see a TNA event on the same day a WWE event was coming to your town, which would you pay to see" Hmmmmmm"

The WWE treats their talent like circus animals. They are supposed to do and perform as they are told because it is the vision of someone else to put out a certain product. The WWE's product has become stale because they have no one to leech from. Hell, Billy Gunn used the Styles Clash on Velocity this past weekend. I wonder where he got that from. All the competition is gone, only because they ran out of money to keep guys around. Not because the WWE had better programming.

Now you can say the lack of 'extreme' matches could be the cause, but it's not. As I stated earlier, most big matches live for the 'big bump'. Putting someone through a table, throwing someone from the top of a cage or cell, diving elbows from the turnbuckle to someone laying on a table, ladder dives, hanging from belts suspended from the ceiling, and others are what makes a WWE match good. Rarely do you see a wrestling match. It's all fluff until that big moment happens, then the match is spectacular in the eyes of many. Nothing is remembered about the match until that big moment. A TNA match is remembered for all the high flying and innovative moves done for the entire match............the entire match.

The WWE does not possess the most diverse array of styles and wrestlers in the world. They possess the most diverse array of something, but it's not wrestling. We grew up on The Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, and others, and of course we are going to enjoy watching them get in the ring, but that doesn't mean we have to care about them more over anyone else. We can learn to like someone else, so when they get older, we can appreciate them for what they've done in the ring and watch a new crop of talent blossom. But the WWE holds back the guys who are ready to blossom in favor of the older guys all because they are more well known. They are trying to juice it as much as they can before the wheels fall off the wagon. WCW did the same thing and it caused a revolution of sorts between the older locker room and the younger locker room. And please don't speak of the cruiserweight division in the WWE, they don't do anything with it as Vince doesn't like smaller talent. The division has promise, but someone needs to take care of it in order for it to work. Right now, the division is a joke.

Once again, getting back to misused talent, if you mat wrestle or are a tremendous low to the ground wrestler, but can't work a mic, then the WWE doesn't want you. As stated earlier, Lance Storm, Jerry Lynn, and many other solid wrestlers have been let go or reduced to nothing because they don't work a microphone but can out wrestle most of the more famous talent on any of the two rosters. Regal was fired from WCW because he was wrestling cirlces around Goldberg in a match and made him look bad. Goes to show, where the money lays and where the true talents real place is. It's big business, all about the money to the WWE, screw the fans intelligence and screw Wrestling.

TNA does not need characters to get it's product over. The wrestling should be the characteristic of each man or woman who gets into a 6-sided ring. Each wrestler has his own style and technique in a match. You do not see the same things out of each man everytime they enter the ring. The WWE wrestlers, you can almost call out their moves or chain of moves before they even do them. Many people care for the TNA wrestlers, even without a gimmick. To me, it sounds like you only care for someone if they are a gimmick. So someone like AJ Styles is no one to care for" The man would put on a great performance in a WWE ring, only if politics didn't weigh in. If AJ were to sign with the WWE, he'd get a push for a month, then he's a jobber just like all the other people Vince waved a fat check in front of to lure them away from their federation. Vince is killing wrestling with the promise of big money and fame. But he stabs you in the back and sits you on the bench. Look what most of the WCW and ECW guys are doing now. Van Dam is a glorified jobber, Taz is basically retired, and everyone else is either gone or reduced to nothing. All because Vince waved a check in their face and they took it, thus killing off what could have potentially been a good thing for a smaller fed.

The WWE is not inspiring indy feds. Indy feds are inspiring the WWE, to rip off their ideas and talent. Indy feds are trying to come up to be as big as the WWE but not be the WWE. If anything, everyone is trying to take the evil empire down.

You said it yourself, "Sure WWE rarely has epic matches, they sometimes misuse wrestlers, and have occasional cheesy storylines. But without it, would there even be wrestling anymore"". Sure there would be wrestling, but it would be WRESTLING, not a soap opera. I hear what you are saying about the gimmicks and storylines, as that's what drives the WWE, but how many times do I have to sit and watch something unfold and be mad as hell because it all concluded with a stink bomb" Sometimes you have to appreciate wrestling for it's wrestling, not the stories being told that absolutely stink. Wrestling is entertainment.............NOW. It was a sport, it is a sport, it's in the olympics. But one man's vision has distorted the sport and turned it into a spectacle that has turned many away. That's why it's so hard now for feds to start up and get television time, the WWE is the example of low ratings and no one wants to put money behind an up and coming fed that no one knows. If the WWE can't draw ratings, what makes a major company want to fund a federation with no names"

TNA is respected for what they have done and will do. They will eventually be looked at as an option for many up and coming stars and cast aways from WWE. They will be used correctly and it will only benefit them. The WWE will always be here, as they are what people know and it's where the money is. But the WWE is on a downward spiral and right now, something has to be done with how business is being run. Or they could become #2, and I'm not looking down into the toilet when I say that.

Anna wrote:
Reading the column by Justin Bailey left me in a state of disbelief regarding the state of The WWE and how we view wrestling. I am not a mark nor a smart or a smark for that matter i enjoy watching the various promotions worldwide that produce wrestling, but lately The WWE has slipped from that position as the number one brand, why"

Yes The WWE do misuse wrestlers, sometimes in a very spectacular fashion as witnessed by the absolutely awful Kane, Lita and Matt Hardy Storyline, who wants to watch that for 9 MONTHS". You have taken a wrestler who was a mainstay of The WWE with The Undertaker and reduced him to a mid card attraction after THAT debacle with Necrophilia and Matt Hardy who worked so hard to create a new persona for himself after the split from his brother. Now he is reduced to a feud over a pregnancy with his Real Life Girlfriend Lita that has been littered with factual mistakes like the DNA test that could have never happened.

Other Errors" Chuck and Billy, Vinces total milking of the American Media that backfired so dramatically when both of them announced that indeed they were straight and that is was being played for publicity.The Media promptly slammed it and now can Vince get any coverage of the more worthwhile projects" What a good move WWE bearing in mind the problems that wrestling has had in the past with homophobic gimmicks. The Anti American group of Canadian Wrestlers or La Resistance, WWE attempts to clamber on the bandwagon that is xenophobia and use American fears to create a bankable group of wrestlers who are out and out heels ( all for commercial gain.)

Highflyers who can't do a decent match cause "car wreck" style wrestling is no longer allowed by The WWE or the ending of hardcore matches cause we need the family viewing. The comparisons to NWA-TNA or ROH are valid despite Justin's assessions as those companies book their wrestlers to perform in their natural styles and showcase their talents, what do The WWE book" plodding "Big Man" brawls between green as grass wrestlers who have nothing but their size to offer the fans. No Talent and No Hope look at the failures Matt Morgan, Mordecai, John Heidenreich and Nathan Jones. Yet The WWE think that we can't spot the fact that Mordecai was only pushed because Vince created the Gimmick and that despite the proof in the ring that poor kevin Furtig wasn't ready he was handed a programme that should have seen him with The Undertaker, but clearly he wasn't even close to that stage. The big Man of NWA-TNA, Abyss can actually move and work with the smaller wrestlers around him plus he has a decent finishing move, another feature that is missing from most WWE wrestlers.

In a nutshell WWE is moving closer to that point that saw their main rivals WCW go under, not in terms of financial ability as WWE will always do better than WCW could ever have dreamed of. But in terms of creative ability and creative output The WWE is reaching a low point like 1994 again with champions who look like they are merely there til the next "Big Man" comes along to pull the company bandwagon.

Justin Bailey (original author) wrote:
Many of you have argued that WWE still likes to use a lot of big man brawls and uses green talent such as Matt Morgan, Mordecai, and John Heidenreich. Notice how all these guys were sent back to OVW. The WWE realized that they weren't ready. Yeah, WWE makes a lot of mistakes. But cut them some slack. It's difficult to consistently create great storylines and gimmicks, especially when wrestling fans are constantly screaming for something new. WWE has done more gimmicks and storylines than anyone else, so they are constantly experimenting. So not all of these new ones are going to be good. And something might actually sound good, but when they do it, it turns out to be not that great. I'm sure all of you think you could do better, but I bet if you were in charge you would make as many, if not more, mistakes. So yes, they make some mistakes, but I think they more than make up for them.

RaceKidd wrote:
I think the guy has a point. I mean, it takes a lot to pull out something new, when everything has been done. People keep complaining about the Kane/Matt/Lita Love Triangle thing, I am personally enjoying this segment. The only truely bad thing WWE has done lately is the Diva Search. Now, even the most intelligent writers can hit the occasional "writer's block" and the ideas just stop coming to him. But, you have to take the good with the bad. WWE is sitting on a potential gold mine in the Orton face turn. This could be an epic Orton/HHH feud in the making. I would enjoy it a lot. And I know a lot of fans would. WWE has been getting on a slight upswing lately, so maybe it is turning around, slowly but surely.

Matt wrote:
My point is, that most of it.. 90% of the show is all Entertainment now. I am not talking about, what happened to Hardcore as I am one of the biggest Hardcore wrestling fans in the USA. But, what happened to the wrestle aspect" I would watch ROH of WWE any day. Yeah, they got some highflying cruiserweights, but AJ Styles, Chris Cash, or Sonjay Dutt, are all better. And what about Trent Acid, he has a wickedly awesome character. Or, what about ... AJ Styles, Jeff Jarrett, or even Scott D'amore" They are entertainment, not wrestling. They judge you more on how well you talk on the mic, rather than how you can wrestle. I watch AJPW, NJPW, ROH, TNA, CZW, BJW, I watch IT ALL! My point is, the reason wrestling fans are "Dissing" them is cause they are, well 50% or so, are WRESTLING fans. Not sports entertainment.

If you have any comments, reactions, rebuttles or thoughts on this column, feel free to send them to the email below,
If your email is intelligently written, they will be posted underneath this messege..
We at OnlineWorldofWrestling want to promote all points of view, and that includes YOURS.