For years it has been the redheaded stepchild of both this publication and the mainstream media: Professional Wrestling. Now that the archaic former Collegian editors are gone, a column on professional wrestling will finally have a spot in this newspaper. We should offer coverage of a form of entertainment that millions of people enjoy. With that comes the first installment of “Under The Ring.”
Wrestling’s popularity has wavered in the past few months. Now that the WWF is the only game in town (sorry, the XWF sucks), things have grown stagnant. Ratings and attendance are down, and the steps the WWF needs to take to make their program entertaining again are fairly obvious, yet they don’t seem to realize this. In hope that a member of the WWF writing crew, or even Vince McMahon himself, sees this, here are the steps, in no particular order that need and must be taken.
– Push New Characters to the Top of The Card: The best way to keep a wrestling promotion fresh is to continue to push fresh faces to the top of the card. Instead of The Rock vs. Stone Cold vs. HHH etc., etc., how ’bout The Rock vs. RVD, Stone Cold vs. Edge, HHH vs. Booker T or some combination of that? Not pushing fresh faces was one of the major downfalls of WCW, yet the WWF seems to have not learned from history.
Some in the wrestling industry will say that creating a top star that the fans accept is harder than simply pushing somebody. While they are right in some respects, the WWF needs to figure out which of their wrestlers have the tools to be accepted as a top star (there are plenty), and give those characters a real push. Most of all, they can’t cut the legs off the push when the ratings or fans don’t respond right away.
– Rebuild The WCW Brand: The WWF blew the biggest angle in professional wrestling history simply because Vince McMahon was too cheap to buy the contracts of the established names (Goldberg, Nash, etc.) that fans associate with WCW. Nobody “believed” in the WCW angle because so few of the wrestlers associated with it were involved.
McMahon needs to bite the bullet and sign Goldberg, The Outsiders, Scott Steiner and other “big names” associated with WCW, and give them their own TV show under the “WCW” banner, get some of the past WCW announcers (as bad as some of them are) and build a set that looks like Nitro’s during the program’s heyday. Give the program a different feel and identity from the WWF show. This is the only way to bring back the millions of disgruntled ex-WCW fans who have turned off pro wrestling entirely now that the WWF has a monopoly on the industry. The promotions can be brought together at some point for the inevitable “supercard.” When it does happen, the angle will seem special, not like another run of the mill storyline.
– RVD! RVD! RVD!: It’s obvious that the fans want him, and Vince needs to give it to them. When Stone Cold and The Rock started getting over, they weren’t given some half-assed push like Van Dam. Sure, he doesn’t work in a “traditional manner,” and pushing him might upset some of the established main eventors, but at some point you have to give the fans what they want.
-Surprises: Make watching WWF programs unpredictable again. When the WCW names are signed (Goldberg, etc.), “shock” fans with their appearance. Raw featuring the return of Ric Flair and Jerry Lawler was a good start. When Nitro was hot five years ago, one of the main reasons to watch every week was to see who would show up. With a monopoly, the WWF has the opportunity to have several more “Nitro moments.”
-Russo-Style Booking (in some ways): Say what you want about Vince Russo, but it was his booking style that made the WWF popular at the time and that same style is copied (in a watered-down manner) today. Think back to just two years ago when wrestling was far more of a pop culture phenomenon with the college audience than it is today. Why is that? Because of risqu
