Bear With Me – The State Of WWE Programming

This past Monday we witnessed two female superstars close out Monday night Raw with an intense cat fight. Brie Bella challenged Stephanie McMahon to a match at SummerSlam while being restrained from clawing Stephanie’s face off. It wasn’t the most entertaining send off from a Monday Night Raw despite Stephanie’s best intentions. You can easily blame Brie Bella for her lack of charisma and weird facial expressions, but I think the real culprit here are the fans or dear I say “THE IWC.” That’s the Internet Wrestling Community for those not familiar with the lingo.

This can include anyone with a passion for wrestling and a computer. When you don’t agree with something you flood to message boards, twitter, facebook, anyone that would listen, and complain about how bad the current product is. Stephanie and Brie wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either. When was the last time two females closed a Monday Night Raw? Wouldn’t this be a good sign for the Diva’s division if the segment brought in strong ratings? On the internet men pouted that they had to sit through this segment and watch these girls go at it. If it was Cena they would complain “It’s the same old S**t!” If it was Roman Reigns they would find a reason to bash him and call him a mediocre wrestler even though he gets asses of the seats. I understand that you want wrestling to go back to what it used to be, but you have to understand that fans who loved the Hogan era of the 80s were saying the same thing during the attitude era. They didn’t like it so they had to do what you’re doing now – bear the storm.

You’re going to have to bear the Bella twins, the streak ending, Cena’s emotional rants about showing up every day like he’s doing it for free, the part timers, The Miz, etc. You won’t be getting Bra and Panty matches anytime soon. The Trish and Lita types are the thing of the past. Yes we have great female wrestlers like Paige, AJ Lee, Emma, Naomi, Natalya, Tamina, a few from NXT, but WWE doesn’t know what to do with them. Paige was one of the best entertainers on NXT. She debuts and they give her a role that would have been a better fit for Bayley. The IWC began to doubt her and thought she wasn’t ready. I agree the way they introduced her was disappointing, but what did you expect from them? You can’t have two anti-diva gimmicks on the same roster, let alone a rookie who does it better.

So they gave her a weak confident, greenish, ambitious character that fans did not connect with. I envisioned her debuting through vignettes hyping up her background and the WWE promoting her like a female Bret Hart. There wouldn’t be a clear indication of her being a heel or a face (if that still exists) and her fans and the WWE universe would be excited to see a fresh face on Raw. Instead we got a Paige fluke win and an AJ exit. I didn’t like it, but I’m willing to bear with it. They are having their fourth match at SummerSlam. If they would have waited and hyped Paige up that feud could have started at Wrestlemania 31 and gave the WWE universe the first female wrestling match worth caring for since Trish vs Mickie James from Wrestlemania 22. The fans did shout “This is awesome!” upon Paige’s debut against AJ Lee. The whole stadium could have been shouting that on the road to Wrestlemania.

Now that I think about it, what happened to all the hype in wrestling feuds? I remember a time when WWE teased feuds months to even a year in advance. Wrestlemania 4 comes to mind when Hogan celebrated with Miss Elizabeth and Macho Man gave him a cold stare. That was alluding to something better that came to a head a year later. Or how about the Rock and Austin feud when Austin returned from injury? They teased that for months putting them in high profile matches like the six man hell in a cell and the 2001 Royal Rumble where they spared off briefly. That was alluding to a match that we all wanted to see again. Nowadays I feel as though we don’t have that anymore. The last time we got something like that was the Triple h vs Cena feud from 2006. When Triple h returned from his hiatus Cena was on Raw as the champ. Buzz generated that Triple H Vs Cena was going to be the main event at Wrestlemania 22. After Triple H beat up Ric flair he ran into Cena when Cena said something along the lines of “The champ is here and if you want it I’ll be ready.” Triple H responded “When I want it I’ll take it.” That sent chills of excitement down my spine. I haven’t felt something like that since, but I’m bearing with it.

Don’t get me wrong. There’ve been great feuds since then like Undertaker vs Edge, Shawn Michaels vs Chris Jericho, Triple H vs Randy Orton, Cm Punk vs John Cena, etc. There’s been hot one shot feuds like the Money in the bank match between Cena and Punk, The undertaker vs Brock Lesnar, many others, but neither of them had that teasing feeling, that build up for their first epic encounter, or the one fans cared about the most. When Brock came in fans wanted Brock vs Undertaker. We had to wait two years for that to happen with not one alluding moment until a few weeks before the PPV. The Rock and Cena (mostly Cena) has been dogging each other for years before The Rock returned. They talked smacked about each other, then Cena snuck him, Rock cost him the main event, and the next night the match was made a year in advance. I get why they did it that way, but the good stuff didn’t happen till a few weeks before the show. The Rock and Cena teaming up made no sense and they didn’t even talk smack against each other till a few weeks before their match. Rock in his promos was stall and half himself and Cena came off like a jealous ex-girlfriend. The match itself was overly hyped and delivered an average match. The method worked and they made a lot of money off of it, but as a wrestling fan I had to bear with it. The kids loved it, but I was left unsatisfied because I couldn’t feel the excitement I once had.

Times have changed and we all have to bear with the changes. I want to see a blade job during intense and hardcore matches, but I won’t get it. I want Cena to stop his BS speeches and tell us how he really feels about showing up at his high paying job and still get booed out the arena, but that would be bad for business. I wanted Bray Wyatt to be the one to end the streak, but that would have made too much sense. At the end of the day The IWC, the casual wrestling fan, the hardcore wrestling fan, and myself will have to bear the changes rather we like them or not. I’m still going to watch because I think there are talented people there that will bring wrestling to another level. Until that happens just bear it all until you have no choice but to turn the channel.

What do you think? Comment below with your thoughts, opinions, feedback and anything else that was raised.