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WRESTLING MAKES IT HARD FOR NEW FANS (AND OLD ONES) TO KEEP UP, WHAT TO DO WITH A BIG MATCH, IS WWE HELPING THE COMPETITION AND MORE

By Dave Scherer on 2021-06-15 10:00:00

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What are your thoughts on Wrestlemania 37 objectively? Where would it rank if it wasn't the first post-covid Mania? I feel like since Mania 35 the card itself has felt like a “meh ppv” card that either wraps up a story or two or continues some bland crap nobody cares about.

I don’t rank shows like that.  Given we were in a pandemic, I think they did as well as could be expected.  I think night one was the better of the two shows.  As for the meh, that has been WWE booking for a while now.

Which do you think is a better stage for a Big Match in WWE, a pay-per-view that’s not one of the big four, or a heavily hyped episode of Raw/Smackdown?  Like, say you’re in charge and you have John Cena available to wrestle Roman Reigns only for the next month, and not Summerslam (as heavily rumored).  Do you make the match happen at Hell in a Cell or the PPV after it, or do you make it the main event of Smackdown and promote the hell out of that episode?

If it’s purely my call, I put it on an event I can sell tickets to and hopefully WWE Network subs to, since I control that outside of the US and my TV revenue and Network money in the US are already fixed.

So AEW is going to add 2 more hours of weekly programming in the near future. WWE has 7 hours of Raw, Smackdown, and NXT airing each and every week. This does not count monthly PPVs, specials on other networks, and original WWE Network content. How in the world can new fans be expected to commit to watching ONE 2 or 3 hour wrestling show per week, much less be able follow at least 11 hours of wrestling every week between AEW & WWE to keep up with storyline? While I would have LOVED this amount of weekly programming when I was a kid, don't you think the time investment to "keep up" for new adult fans - with jobs, kids, and other interests - must be a key reason that WWE and AEW has difficulty building their fan bases back to being a pop culture fad?

You make a good point, for sure.  The booking isn’t especially intricate but still, it’s a LOT of programming to follow, especially given the many other options people have today, especially younger folks.  It’s harder and harder to grab younger viewers.  That’s why we see things like The NFL doing a playoff game on Nickelodeon.

Growing up in the late 70's and early 80's in Western Canada I was a huge fan of Stampede Wrestling. I never got to see any wrestling from the US. What territory was the most like Stampede.

Hmm, you know, back then all of the territories had their own flavor.  I think they were all pretty distinctive.

Isn't WWE just helping their competitors by releasing talent like Braun, Aleister Black, Murphy, and Ruby Riott? They just handed the competition 4 great talents when lockdowns are being lifted and they can go back to live shows, not to mention the others that were previously released, why wouldn't they just hold on to them and run out their contracts?

Will they help their competitors?  We will see down the road.  Certainly the potential is there for it since those are talented people that were released.  Now, the competitors need to bring them in and make good use of them.  As for why WWE let them go?  They don’t want to spend money they feel is needless.  It also shows they don’t fear their competition taking the talents and making them rue the day they released them.  We shall see down the road if that was a mistake or not.

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