The WWE is the most well known wrestling promotion in the world, but over the past decade in particular, the ratings for RAW and Smackdown Live! are dipping and dipping. And as a matter of fact, I haven’t watched WWE since the Chris Benoit incident went down over 10 years ago.
Here are top 5 main reasons as to why I don’t watch WWE today.
1. Too Many Filler Matches, Promos, And Segments - Every week on RAW and Smackdown Live!, there are so many unnecessary filler matches, segments, and promos. An example of a filler match was an impromptu match between Curtis Axel and R-Truth before the main event of Fastlane 2016. An example of a filler segment was the horrible segment last Monday in which The WWE and Sami Zayn clearly disrespected Bobby Lashley and his family by having his kayfabe “sisters” be portrayed as drag queens. That segment made me so angry and sick.
2. Titles Are No Longer Prestigious As It Used To Be - There are also too many short title reigns which greatly diminishes the significance of titles such as The WWE and Intercontinental Championship because for example a wrestler nowadays that wins a title at a PPV and then either the next night on TV or the next PPV, the title immediately changes hands. This also stops pushes for wrestlers that particularly used to hold the belt.
3. Over reliance On Old Washed-Up Part-Timers - One of the biggest problems that many fans like myself have with the WWE today is that they’re constantly relying far too much on these old washed-up part-timers and heavily pushing them at the expense of the young full-time wrestlers on the main roster. An example of this was when The WWE writers had booked a young full-time wrestler Kevin Owens to drop The Universal Championship to Goldberg in a glorified squash that greatly angered many wrestling fans at the WWE writers which later led to them turning on Goldberg throughout the remainder of his last WWE run.
4. Bad Booking - The booking has gotten so bad nowadays that it’s led to a slowly rapid decline in ratings for Raw and Smackdown Live every month and every year. Examples of bad booking: 1) AJ Styles and Nakamura both kicking each other in the groin leading to a double disqualification at Backlash. 2) the horrible segment in which Sami Zayn disrespected Bobby Lashey’s family by having his kayfabe “sisters” as drag queens. The segment was deliberately done to bury Bobby Lashley. That may have been funny to The WWE and Zayn, but it definitely was not funny to people like me who saw it online. 3) Continuously forcing and shoving Roman Reigns down the fans throat and giving him these unnecessary pushes at the expense of everyone else on the main roster. 4) Gimmick Matches like “House Of Horrors” and “Punjabi Prison” are watered down to fit The PG rating. 5) Booking old Washed Up Part-Timers to go over young full-time wrestlers.
5. The Over saturation Of WWE Programing - Back in the day, particularly during 1998-2008, Raw used to be for two hours with decent matches, non-scripted promos, and segments that fit The TV-14 rating, but over the past decade, WWE has been greatly watered down to TV-PG to attract more investors and corporate sponsors and they extended RAW to three hours back a few years ago and it’s filled with nothing but filler matches, scripted promos, and segments nowadays. And then they have so many meaningless PPVs like Fastlane, Great Balls Of Fire, Hell In The Cell, and Money In The Bank. The WWE recently signed a new deal to keep RAW on The USA Network and for Smackdown Live! to be on Fox. There’s even been talk of Smackdown Live! moving to three hours and that too would be overkill because most fans can’t stand watching a three hour weekly wrestling show. Then there’s talk that WWE is now considering extending their PPVs to like five hours and I remember thinking, “They are already killing their own product, so now they’re gonna kill it more by now extending their PPVs to five hours.”
The Conclusion - One of the main reasons why many wrestling fans like myself stopped watching the product because it is so bad and there’s absolutely nothing good about it.
By Kwame Shakir
Those are among the reasons why I stopped watching since late 2014. It became a struggle to watch as I found my enthusiasm waning in late 2013 as I got tired of watching the 3-hour format. Plus, I really dislike the shaky-cam stuff as well as some of the editing where it deviates into that horrible Michael Bay-style of cutting where you don't get a sense of what is going on.
ReplyDeletePlus, I hate the fact that they're trying to push those who don't have the talent to be over or get heat (the Maharajah-bum) as well as those who can't really deliver (Roman). It's why I stopped watching WWE as I only read about it through Cageside or listen to Solomonster.