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I am going to avoid the typical questions that are usually covered about ratings and creative and go with one about how WWE does merchandise. Routinely we see people ask "How does WWE decide to push X and not Y" asked, with one of the qualifying points for a wrestler being pushed is "wrestler X sells more merch" (along with crowd reaction, etc). My questions is doesn't WWE/Vince work themselves into a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy with merchandise? What I mean is, if they make 20 high end, attractive items (shirts, toys, headbands, glasses, towels, etc), for wrestler x, and 1 lackluster tshirt for wrestler Y, then wouldn't wrestler X, who has more and nicer items, naturally sell more?
To me, there is a sameness to all of the march. It starts out usually with the shirts, which are pretty generic all around. If they sell well, then they make more of the nicer stuff. They don’t want to commit to making the nicer stuff until they think it will sell. That makes sense.
Case in point: Roman (I am NOT picking on him for the standard reason most people do, I just knew he would have a high total). As of today, he has far more items (59 by the page's count) under his name on the WWE shop than Bobby Lashley (3, different fits of the same shirt) and Cesaro (7, made of 1 toy, a pair of socks, and 3 shirts). I certainly am not questioning the success of Vince McMahon, it would be silly to do so, but it would seem the WWE would be a bit quicker to approve more sellable things for talent to broaden the scope of who can sell more. Any insight as to how the machine decides who gets things to sell and how the Fed gets those items to market? I remember JTG mentioning that he wanted sunglasses that never made it to reality.
Here is how I see it. There may be a little more stuff for Roman than need be (and I am not saying there is, but there may be since that is a lot), but the flip side is that if Lashley’s stuff was selling, they would make more Lashley stuff to cash in. Part of what got Kevin Owens his spot was his merch sales when he came up to the main roster. WWE took notice of that.
Have you ever heard as loud and sustained of a booing session at a wrestling show than the one we heard during the Elias-KO segment on Raw? Holy crap, that was astounding. And I loved how Elias and Owens handled the reaction. I don't care one bit about their feud with Lashley, but that was one of the most entertaining bits I've seen on WWE programming in a while.
The only other one that comes to mind is Roman Reigns on Raw after he beat The Undertaker. But yep, that was awesome last Monday. WWE played into the raw nerves of the Seattle fan base. They miss their Sonics.
I'm thrilled that Renee Young is part of the Raw commentary team. She's extremely talented, funny and engaging, but have you noticed that her contributions to commentary since she started have been greatly overshadowed by Michael Cole and Corey Graves? At times I feel like she's either not able to get a word in edgewise, or that anything she adds is superfluous to what Cole and Graves are saying. Am I wrong in this assessment?
I haven’t noticed that. I have heard her make a lot of great points. She just needs to fight for her time. That is how it is in a three person broadcast team. If Cole doesn’t throw it to you, jump right in. Graves does it all the time.
With WWE and Impact seemingly building bridges, do you think they'll have a working relationship similar to what WWF had with ECW in the late 90s and early 2000s, such as talent exchanges and/or financial support? Or will this mostly be regarding licensing Impact footage when WWE needs it?
I am guessing you mean will they have that relationship with Impact. Honestly, I don’t see any reason for them too. They already work with Evolve and Progress. They have their own training facility, which they didn’t have back in the day. And, Impact doesn’t run that many events. WWF worked with ECW because they were running full time and could work with talents. Impact doesn’t offer that.
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