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PWINSIDER Q & A: WHAT TO DO IN CENA'S ABSENCE, JERICHO'S RETURN, HOW TNA CAN RAISE THEIR RATINGS, STING AND ROBOCOP AND MORE

I was going through youtube watching some old footage and came across footage with Sting and a "Robocop" character from the then popular movie. It was very cheesy. He saved Sting from inside a jail cell of sorts. What was the plan with this character, who played the character and was there a finish to the storyline?

Ah yes, anyone who thinks that the current WWE product has problems should have been around to see WCW at its worst.  The year was 1990.  Robocop II (the very lame sequel to the excellent first movie) was coming out.  WCW was owned by Turner Broadcasting back then and as memory serves Turner's movie outlet was producing the movie.  As part of the promotion for the movie, they did a deal where Robocop would appear for WCW in an effort to get people to come to see the flick (and you thought WWE Films was the first one to use this synergy).  During the Capital Combat PPV, Sting was put into a cage by the Four Horsemen.  Robocop then used his incredible strength to break Sting out.  It was stupid to the nth degree.  That was all WCW had planned for him, to be Sting's protector for that one show and get people to come see the film.  I forget who was in the suit but do remember that it was one of the worst angles of all time.

Just wondering what you guys thought of Jericho's return (entrance, outfit, look, promo, etc). From what I've read from fan feedback, there's a lot of mixed reactions to his return. Do you feel WWE should have done Jericho's return differently than clotheslining some wannabe Olympic torch runner?

I liked the part where he laid the runner out.  What took something away from the whole scenario for me was the fact that we all knew it was coming, both because we knew Jericho would debut that night but also because it was the last segment on the show so it had to happen then.  They wrote themselves into a corner.  It would have been worlds more effective had it been a surprise, but such is life.  I think Jericho's promo, look and presence were very good.  The outfit he was wearing didn't do much for me, but that isn't a huge deal in the long run since he was back to normal in wrestling attire on Monday.

I will be going to the 11/19/07 RAW after survivor series (Y2J's return, yea I know you are jealous!!). When I bought the tickets 2 months ago, The advertised main event was Randy Orton and Umaga vs. Triple H and John Cena. Cena obviously won't be on TV because of his injury, but my question is why does WWE advertise matches in advance when they do not know if the wrestlers partaking in the match may not be available?

What else are they supposed to do?  They want to entice the local fans to come to the show when they start selling tickets by offering a bonus match, so they have to announce something.  I don't have any problem with them doing so.  Injuries happen and you can't predict when they will occur.  WWE has to still do their business.

With John Cena out, could there be a positive in this. I know that sounds terrible because a hard worker is injured and that is really bad. Do you think with John Cena out the WWE will focus some effort on making someone else a big star? Or do will they just stick with established people?

Well, they put the title on Randy Orton and pushed him hard and then brought back Chris Jericho to feud with him, so it looks to me like they will just keep doing business as usual.  Honestly though, they should have been pushing new people before Cena got hurt, and they knew it.  Yet, they didn't bother.  So, I don't see much changing now.  It's a shame too because they do have some younger guys that they could push and see what they have with them if they wanted to.  Hell, before he was Stone Cold Steve Austin was The Ringmaster.  All it took was a chance.  Instead, they fixate on guys like Orton and Snitsky and job a lot of other possible guys out.  The only guy I can see them maybe giving a shot to in Cena's absence is Jeff Hardy.  We will know a lot more about that after Armageddon.

Why do you think TNA can't improve their ratings from their current level?

Whenever I get this question about WWE, I always say the same thing, that ratings are largely where they are because of the job that creative is doing.  The same holds true for TNA.  Their creative process is stagnating the overall growth of the product, for a few reasons.  For one, they book a lot of convoluted stories that aren't satisfying to the viewer.  When you are left scratching your head, wondering why something happened instead of knowing why it did, well that is a bad sign.  A lot of TNA stories either don't make sense or are just too hard to follow.  This leads to.....

The other major problem is that they keep trying to be a derivative of WWE instead of running a wrestling company.  The fact of the matter is that they will never out-sports entertainment WWE and frankly the fans that want to watch that kind of product are more apt to just stick with the original than search out TNA.  What they should be focusing on is presenting a wrestling product and feature the work in the ring, backed up by good, solid wrestling storylines.  Look at how well ECW did when WWE brought it back.  It did 2.5s because people wanted to see a wrestling product and not sports entertainment.  As soon as they saw that the show would be more WWE programming, half the audience left.  TNA could get a lot of those viewers if they didn't present a WWE-lite program.  I bet that if they dropped the WWE style stuff that they did and focused on truly being an alternative wrestling product, they could double their ratings in six months or so.

With that said, a 1.0 every week is not bad at all.  I do honestly think with some changes to the product they could double that within a year though.

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