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In the average match, what percentage of the moves are planned ahead? Are they always performed in the exact order that they were discussed?
It all depends have on the situation. In the past, they would be assigned a finish and then call everything on the fly while heading towards that finish. Today, a greater percentage of the match is planned out ahead of time, especially for WWE TV and PPV events, where they are directed by creative and put the match together with the help of the Producers assigned to the match. On the independents, there is a lot more leeway. I think the answer really depends on the talent involved and where the match is taking place.
Why did WWE run near identical storylines one night apart with the 3 women on Raw and the 3 women on Smackdown? It seemed really odd. And I felt bad for Riot, Logan, and Morgan since they came off as a rip off Angle without the star power of the returning Paige.
It's not a ripoff if they reveal all the women are in on this together. I don't think we've seen the complete story play out yet. Let's see what happens. Part of me still really wonders if Paige has been the ring leader for both sides.
Great job on the site as always – I appreciate the coverage you provide (along with all of the other content). I was reading a recent Q&A, and in your response to a question about how NXT talent who are brought to the main roster are frequently underutilized, you said, “part of being a great booker is protecting your people.” This got me thinking about the Mae Young Classic (which I was fortunate enough to attend). One thing that impressed me was the way the women were presented in their matches. It seemed like every woman got to showcase her strengths, with any potential weaknesses being minimized (this seemed more so the case for the women with the least amount of wrestling experience – it seemed like their matches were almost tailor-made to make them look as strong as possible – no offense intended toward those women). I remember that Triple H talked a lot about the amount of thought that went into the matchmaking – for me, anyway, every woman, win or lose, came away looking like a strong performer. What are your thoughts on the matchmaking, and do you think there are bookers out there who could learn a thing or two from said booking?
I thought the matchmaking for the Mae Young Classic was great. Everyone had a chance to shine in some manner before they eventually lost. The Cruiserweight Classic was in many ways the same thing. I think every booker should always be out there trying to learn from what others do and those tournaments are great examples on how to properly get new talents and concepts over.
I just finished reading about the death of Floslam. How do you see this effecting WWN-affiliated promotions and Gabe Sapolsky being involved with WWE? Also, does Flosports edge out Impact in terms of worst management for 2017? At the very least it's got to be a close call.
Floslam was far worse than Impact. Impact at least survived for years and hell, survived this year. Flo didn't make it a year. The lawsuit against WWN continues and that has a very possible chance of sinking the company. I don't think I'm speaking out of school when I say WWN wasn't making a ton of money before that deal. I expect WWN will counter-sue but again, there will be a lot of money spent on this and we don't know what the outcome of any of this will be except lawyers will be counting dollars and will be very happy. If it's proven WWNLive pulled something shady on Flosports, I could see WWE cutting ties with WWN but if Gabe Sapolsky isn't specifically to blame for that (if it indeed happened), he will be fine with WWE. It's pretty obvious his long-term goal is to be there anyway, at this point.
On Raw several weeks ago they featured three womens matches including a Womens title match. Why not have at least one ladies match every hour on Raw and two on Smackdown? What do you think?
I think they should have matches that are dictated by what they need for creative. If that means one match or four matches that's great, but they shouldn't be locked into three women's bouts or 4 Cruiser bouts or 3 tag bouts a week. I personally feel there shouldn not be a woman's match or a Cruiser match or even a random match every week out of "just because it's time to throw that out there." To do that is taking something meaningful and just throwing it out there without thought or a plan, and there are already too many wasted, bloated segments out there to kill time on WWE TV. That's something that would dilute the women, just like it would dilute say Sheamus & Cesaro if they were thrown into 4-5 segments every week "just because." Each talent, each division should be treated as they are special and with a plan, not tossed out on TV. You never want to send people out "just because", because the audience will see right through it.
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