Wrestling Is Pretty Awesome Lately
Extreme Rules was a friggin' awesome show. I was sort of excited about it because it was in Chicago, then I got more interested in it when Jim decided to buy a ticket and see it live, and then WrestleMania was really good, so that got me more excited, and then a bunch of other stuff happened and I decided this was gonna be pretty friggin' sweet. And the event itself managed to exceed expectations. Maybe part of the reason it was so satisfying is because for once all the good guys won. The lone exception would be Cody Rhodes defeating the Big Show in a Tables Match, but it was cool because Big Show stumbled off the ring apron and broke a table by the ring when he stepped on it to break his fall. So the audience was like "Boo, but yeah that makes sense." Then Big Show absolutely murdered Cody in his frustration, so anyone feeling sore about the finish got what they wanted.
Personally, I wanted to get a nice long Sheamus vs. Daniel Bryan match, to make up for their 18-second quickie at the top of the month. WWE delivered the goods this time, and not only was that match awesome, but the Punk/Jericho match was equally awesome. Seriously, if either one of those matches had sucked, I'd still be praising the show because the other match would have made up for it. And yet they were both awesome. I wrote WWE in a survey that while I enjoyed WrestleMania XXVIII, the way the show was scheduled made me question their priorities. A lot of things I wanted to see more of were rushed or cut short, in favor of extended musical acts, video packages, and comedy segments. Extreme Rules was almost like WWE writing me a response in the form of a three-hour television show. "Sorry, Mike, is this more what you had in mind?" Hell yes.
Prior to 2011, I could probably count the number of wrestling pay-per-views I'd seen live on my fingers. I should probably try to do that sometime, because it'd be interesting to try to remember which ones I actually ordered and which ones I watched on home video. The point is, it's a pretty low number for a variety of reasons. In the early 90's, my town couldn't get pay-per-view and we didn't have a satellite dish. In the mid-90's I lost interest in wrestling. In the late 90's the Monday Night Wars made the shows on free-TV so good that I didn't miss the PPV's. I think WrestleMania XV was the first show I ever bought with my own money. By the time I got a job and my own apartment, I guess I could have ordered all sorts of shows, but the last decade had conditioned me not to. Even if I was interested in a show, I would just skip it, feeling that Pay-Per-Views were best experienced in small doses. Besides, they were kind of expensive. Not crazy expensive, but it adds up. Plus it's a risky investment because you have no idea what's going to happen until you watch it. In the late-2000s I stopped watching TV altogether, until I got back into wrestling in December 2010.
Since then, I think I've watched more PPV's than I've skipped. I've listed them below for my own reference, along with notes to help me remember what happened where. My favorites are in bold, and I've crossed out the ones I didn't see.
1. Royal Rumble 2011 (Alberto Del Rio wins 40-man Rumble)
2. Elimination Chamber 2011 (lol i dunno)
3. WrestleMania XXVII (Undertaker vs. Triple H/Michael Cole Trilogy)
4. Extreme Rules 2011 (Michael Cole Trilogy)
5. Over the Limit 2011 (Michael Cole Trilogy)
6. Capitol Punishment 2011 (shrug)
7. Money in the Bank 2011 (CM Punk wins 1st WWE title)
8. SummerSlam 2011 (Kevin Nash powebombs Punk)
9. Night of Champions 2011 (Mark Henry wins World Heavyweight Championship)
10. Hell in a Cell 2011 (Awesome Truth ambush main event)
11. Vengeance 2011 (Mark Henry superplexes Big Show, collapsing the ring)
12. Survivor Series 2011 (Rock and Cena team up)
13. TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs 2011 (Punk defeats Miz and Del Rio in balls awesome Triple Threat TLC match)
14. Royal Rumble 2012 (Attended event, Sheamus wins Rumble)
15. Elimination Chamber 2012 (lol who cares)
16. WrestleMania XXVIII (Undertaker vs. Triple H/Rock vs. Cena)
17. Extreme Rules 2012 (Cena defeats Brock Lesnar)
So yeah, that's ten out of seventeen, and you have to consider that this is over the course of fourteen months. I deliberately skipped some of these shows because I had just seen one the same month, and really didn't feel like watching another one with a weaker card. I should probably cut back this year, but it says a lot about how WWE has improved in my eyes. For a long time, I wrote a lot of their product off as a weak joke. Even when I could order their shows, I didn't bother, because I knew they'd just screw it up. But lately they've really been firing on all cylinders. This is why I get irritated when internet smarks dust off the same tired critiques they were making back in 2003. I'm not a WWE apologist, but dammit, they must be doing something right, because I ordered zero shows in 2003 and last year I watched seven.
I think part of the success story here is that WWE finally figured out how to promote these shows. Back in the Attitude Era, you really didn't even need to watch the pay-per-view because the focus was on the storylines rather than the matches. This put the PPV events on equal footing free-TV, so only a completist was going to pay for the product. This actually worked out just fine, because the storylines and the characters were so compelling that a whole lot of fans became completists. They wanted to see how the feuds ended, and they were willing to pay money for it. But the casual fans were okay watching it for free. Yeah, you might miss Undertaker murdering the Big Boss Man on pay-per-view, but you'd still get to see the Undertaker kidnap Stephanie McMahon on Raw, so it's all good. The problem was when WWE started to cool off in the early 2000's, and they were still struggling to maintain that business model, long after the rock star writers and big-money characters had moved on.
These days, there's more of a "Big Fight" mentality to WWE's promotional style. For example, Chris Jericho returned at the beginning of 2012, but I think he's only wrestled like five or six matches in four months. Four of them were on pay-per-view, and at least one of the free-TV matches had pay-per-view implications. Obviously they can't do that with all of their talent or they'd have no show, but there's a clear distinction between what you get for free and what you don't. If you want to see Jericho wrestle, you'll have to pay for it. Back in the Attitude Era, that line didn't seem to exist. Kane would beat Austin for the WWF title on a pay-per-view, and then Austin would win it back in a rematch on TV the next night. Unless there was a specific match you had a hankering for, you could probably bide your time and get exactly what you wanted without paying a dime.
I also think there's a little more focus and flexibility in management than there used to be. This is always hard to figure, but just from watching the shows it seems like they're more willing to experiment than in years past. After Sheamus squashed Daniel Bryan at WrestleMania, fans started chanting "Yes!" all-show long the next night in Miami. Other venues have followed suit, and while WWE hasn't exactly embraced this development, they haven't rejected it altogether, either. Bryan got a new "YES!" shirt, and renamed his finisher the "yes lock". WWE seems to encourage "Yes!" signs in the crowd, but they're not thrilled about the chants, probably because Bryan is supposed to be the bad guy. There was a time when they'd bury Bryan on the spot and try to punish the fans for even daring to defy their carefully crafted designs, but that doesn't seem to be happening. It's like when CM Punk got a live crowd to chant for the return of WWE Ice Cream Bars. The ice cream bars never actually came back, but WWE did make a T-Shirt with a picture of a CM Punk Ice Cream Bar on it. This is probably savvier than most people realize. The fans didn't want to eat ice cream, they just liked the callback. So why charge two dollars for ice cream bars when you can sell a thirty-dollar shirt that presses the same buttons? The whole "Yes!" issue seems to be following a similar pattern. The chant can derail a show, but the signs sell shirts.
Mostly, though, it just feels like WWE is finally sticking with some sort of gameplan. At one time, they seemed to push and abandon one guy after another, and now it feels more like they've committed to a rough outline of what they want to do. At the same time, they're not following that plan off a cliff. The Rock celebrated his successful WrestleMania comeback by teasing that he would win the WWE championship again. So that might mean he'll be involved in some shows down the line, but if he breaks his leg or decides to back out for personal reasons, they're not boxed into a corner. The controversy coming out of Extreme Rules is that Cena pinned Brock Lesnar in his first WWE match in eight years, even though he's getting paid five million dollars for one year of limited dates. I'll admit it defies conventional wisdom, but at the same time WWE's been playing it safe for the better part of a decade and it hasn't gotten them very far. If Brock loses all his star power with one clean loss, then he never would have been worth the 5 mil in the first place. He would have been deemed useless after his last UFC fight. Hell, before Extreme Rules, his last WWE match was a loss to Goldberg at WrestleMania XX, and fans were still pissing their pants to see him come back. There's obviously more to Brock Lesnar than wins or losses, which is kind of what the whole business model of professional wrestling is about. Granted, it's strange to job the guy out in his first match back, but hardly disastrous. If anything, it suggests a confidence on the part of WWE. They know they have to work hard to justify the $5 million investment in Brock, and they must think they have a strong plan for him if step one is so counterintuitive. Hell, if it were up to me, I'd job Brock out to everybody in the company. Yeah, I'm taking a loss at the end of the year, but if it helps build up some of my midcard talent, then I stand to make a much bigger profit over the next few years. That's just off the cuff, and maybe it wouldn't work in the real world. All I'm saying is that there's more than one way to make money with Brock Lesnar. WWE's way may not work, and it may not be what everyone wanted them to do, but at least it's clear that they've charted a course instead of just improvising.
Personally, I wanted to get a nice long Sheamus vs. Daniel Bryan match, to make up for their 18-second quickie at the top of the month. WWE delivered the goods this time, and not only was that match awesome, but the Punk/Jericho match was equally awesome. Seriously, if either one of those matches had sucked, I'd still be praising the show because the other match would have made up for it. And yet they were both awesome. I wrote WWE in a survey that while I enjoyed WrestleMania XXVIII, the way the show was scheduled made me question their priorities. A lot of things I wanted to see more of were rushed or cut short, in favor of extended musical acts, video packages, and comedy segments. Extreme Rules was almost like WWE writing me a response in the form of a three-hour television show. "Sorry, Mike, is this more what you had in mind?" Hell yes.
Prior to 2011, I could probably count the number of wrestling pay-per-views I'd seen live on my fingers. I should probably try to do that sometime, because it'd be interesting to try to remember which ones I actually ordered and which ones I watched on home video. The point is, it's a pretty low number for a variety of reasons. In the early 90's, my town couldn't get pay-per-view and we didn't have a satellite dish. In the mid-90's I lost interest in wrestling. In the late 90's the Monday Night Wars made the shows on free-TV so good that I didn't miss the PPV's. I think WrestleMania XV was the first show I ever bought with my own money. By the time I got a job and my own apartment, I guess I could have ordered all sorts of shows, but the last decade had conditioned me not to. Even if I was interested in a show, I would just skip it, feeling that Pay-Per-Views were best experienced in small doses. Besides, they were kind of expensive. Not crazy expensive, but it adds up. Plus it's a risky investment because you have no idea what's going to happen until you watch it. In the late-2000s I stopped watching TV altogether, until I got back into wrestling in December 2010.
Since then, I think I've watched more PPV's than I've skipped. I've listed them below for my own reference, along with notes to help me remember what happened where. My favorites are in bold, and I've crossed out the ones I didn't see.
1. Royal Rumble 2011 (Alberto Del Rio wins 40-man Rumble)
2. Elimination Chamber 2011 (lol i dunno)
3. WrestleMania XXVII (Undertaker vs. Triple H/Michael Cole Trilogy)
4. Extreme Rules 2011 (Michael Cole Trilogy)
5. Over the Limit 2011 (Michael Cole Trilogy)
6. Capitol Punishment 2011 (shrug)
7. Money in the Bank 2011 (CM Punk wins 1st WWE title)
8. SummerSlam 2011 (Kevin Nash powebombs Punk)
9. Night of Champions 2011 (Mark Henry wins World Heavyweight Championship)
10. Hell in a Cell 2011 (Awesome Truth ambush main event)
11. Vengeance 2011 (Mark Henry superplexes Big Show, collapsing the ring)
12. Survivor Series 2011 (Rock and Cena team up)
13. TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs 2011 (Punk defeats Miz and Del Rio in balls awesome Triple Threat TLC match)
14. Royal Rumble 2012 (Attended event, Sheamus wins Rumble)
15. Elimination Chamber 2012 (lol who cares)
16. WrestleMania XXVIII (Undertaker vs. Triple H/Rock vs. Cena)
17. Extreme Rules 2012 (Cena defeats Brock Lesnar)
So yeah, that's ten out of seventeen, and you have to consider that this is over the course of fourteen months. I deliberately skipped some of these shows because I had just seen one the same month, and really didn't feel like watching another one with a weaker card. I should probably cut back this year, but it says a lot about how WWE has improved in my eyes. For a long time, I wrote a lot of their product off as a weak joke. Even when I could order their shows, I didn't bother, because I knew they'd just screw it up. But lately they've really been firing on all cylinders. This is why I get irritated when internet smarks dust off the same tired critiques they were making back in 2003. I'm not a WWE apologist, but dammit, they must be doing something right, because I ordered zero shows in 2003 and last year I watched seven.
I think part of the success story here is that WWE finally figured out how to promote these shows. Back in the Attitude Era, you really didn't even need to watch the pay-per-view because the focus was on the storylines rather than the matches. This put the PPV events on equal footing free-TV, so only a completist was going to pay for the product. This actually worked out just fine, because the storylines and the characters were so compelling that a whole lot of fans became completists. They wanted to see how the feuds ended, and they were willing to pay money for it. But the casual fans were okay watching it for free. Yeah, you might miss Undertaker murdering the Big Boss Man on pay-per-view, but you'd still get to see the Undertaker kidnap Stephanie McMahon on Raw, so it's all good. The problem was when WWE started to cool off in the early 2000's, and they were still struggling to maintain that business model, long after the rock star writers and big-money characters had moved on.
These days, there's more of a "Big Fight" mentality to WWE's promotional style. For example, Chris Jericho returned at the beginning of 2012, but I think he's only wrestled like five or six matches in four months. Four of them were on pay-per-view, and at least one of the free-TV matches had pay-per-view implications. Obviously they can't do that with all of their talent or they'd have no show, but there's a clear distinction between what you get for free and what you don't. If you want to see Jericho wrestle, you'll have to pay for it. Back in the Attitude Era, that line didn't seem to exist. Kane would beat Austin for the WWF title on a pay-per-view, and then Austin would win it back in a rematch on TV the next night. Unless there was a specific match you had a hankering for, you could probably bide your time and get exactly what you wanted without paying a dime.
I also think there's a little more focus and flexibility in management than there used to be. This is always hard to figure, but just from watching the shows it seems like they're more willing to experiment than in years past. After Sheamus squashed Daniel Bryan at WrestleMania, fans started chanting "Yes!" all-show long the next night in Miami. Other venues have followed suit, and while WWE hasn't exactly embraced this development, they haven't rejected it altogether, either. Bryan got a new "YES!" shirt, and renamed his finisher the "yes lock". WWE seems to encourage "Yes!" signs in the crowd, but they're not thrilled about the chants, probably because Bryan is supposed to be the bad guy. There was a time when they'd bury Bryan on the spot and try to punish the fans for even daring to defy their carefully crafted designs, but that doesn't seem to be happening. It's like when CM Punk got a live crowd to chant for the return of WWE Ice Cream Bars. The ice cream bars never actually came back, but WWE did make a T-Shirt with a picture of a CM Punk Ice Cream Bar on it. This is probably savvier than most people realize. The fans didn't want to eat ice cream, they just liked the callback. So why charge two dollars for ice cream bars when you can sell a thirty-dollar shirt that presses the same buttons? The whole "Yes!" issue seems to be following a similar pattern. The chant can derail a show, but the signs sell shirts.
Mostly, though, it just feels like WWE is finally sticking with some sort of gameplan. At one time, they seemed to push and abandon one guy after another, and now it feels more like they've committed to a rough outline of what they want to do. At the same time, they're not following that plan off a cliff. The Rock celebrated his successful WrestleMania comeback by teasing that he would win the WWE championship again. So that might mean he'll be involved in some shows down the line, but if he breaks his leg or decides to back out for personal reasons, they're not boxed into a corner. The controversy coming out of Extreme Rules is that Cena pinned Brock Lesnar in his first WWE match in eight years, even though he's getting paid five million dollars for one year of limited dates. I'll admit it defies conventional wisdom, but at the same time WWE's been playing it safe for the better part of a decade and it hasn't gotten them very far. If Brock loses all his star power with one clean loss, then he never would have been worth the 5 mil in the first place. He would have been deemed useless after his last UFC fight. Hell, before Extreme Rules, his last WWE match was a loss to Goldberg at WrestleMania XX, and fans were still pissing their pants to see him come back. There's obviously more to Brock Lesnar than wins or losses, which is kind of what the whole business model of professional wrestling is about. Granted, it's strange to job the guy out in his first match back, but hardly disastrous. If anything, it suggests a confidence on the part of WWE. They know they have to work hard to justify the $5 million investment in Brock, and they must think they have a strong plan for him if step one is so counterintuitive. Hell, if it were up to me, I'd job Brock out to everybody in the company. Yeah, I'm taking a loss at the end of the year, but if it helps build up some of my midcard talent, then I stand to make a much bigger profit over the next few years. That's just off the cuff, and maybe it wouldn't work in the real world. All I'm saying is that there's more than one way to make money with Brock Lesnar. WWE's way may not work, and it may not be what everyone wanted them to do, but at least it's clear that they've charted a course instead of just improvising.