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WWE Raw drops to lowest TV rating in 18 years

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Kaiterra

Banned
I'm really glad Fargo is airing on Mondays so I'm not even tempted to watch this shit for now. Reading up on last night's episode is just embarrassing.
 

impact

Banned
So let me get this straight. Rollins:

- Was caught cheating on his fiance, and his dick pix were leaked on the web during an airing of RAW.

- The chick he was cheating with turns out to be a women hating neo-nazi, and he never condemned her behavior.

- He broke Lord Sina's nose.

- Nearly killed Stang in the ring.

- Has the worst ratings of all time as a champion.

How is this man not jobbing to Hornswoggle yet? Let alone still the champion?

He must have pics of Vince fucking a goat or something, there's no other explanation, friends.

He should just go back to RoH. I don't watch the shit WWE product but he was the fucking man in RoH.

Also this

Hope it keeps tanking.
 
Rollins is awful in and out of the ring, as Bionic detailed with pure facts. At the end of the day he is WWE champ and fair or not, he's the first to take the blame on the roster.
 

BadAss2961

Member
So let me get this straight. Rollins:

- Was caught cheating on his fiance, and his dick pix were leaked on the web during an airing of RAW.

- The chick he was cheating with turns out to be a women hating neo-nazi, and he never condemned her behavior.

- He broke Lord Sina's nose.

- Nearly killed Stang in the ring.

- Has the worst ratings of all time as a champion.

How is this man not jobbing to Hornswoggle yet? Let alone still the champion?

He must have pics of Vince fucking a goat or something, there's no other explanation, friends.
All this and he even got a promo on ESPN.
 
So let me get this straight. Rollins:

- Was caught cheating on his fiance, and his dick pix were leaked on the web during an airing of RAW.

- The chick he was cheating with turns out to be a women hating neo-nazi, and he never condemned her behavior.

- He broke Lord Sina's nose.

- Nearly killed Stang in the ring.

- Has the worst ratings of all time as a champion.

How is this man not jobbing to Hornswoggle yet? Let alone still the champion?

He must have pics of Vince fucking a goat or something, there's no other explanation, friends.

Because his chest hair game is HBK-tier.
 
And the time they do devote to stories is actually well-spent since THEY ACTUALLY GO SOMEWHERE.

Rollins might wind up taking the blame for it, which sucks because they've booked him even worse than Rey Mysterio as World Champion. He has lost nearly ever match he's been in for the past couple of months, and never been booked as a serious threat. He's basically a Swagger-level World champ in terms of booking, who can't beat anyone clean.
 
This. Just about every episode of Lucha Underground had PPV quality matches, and they don't devote a lot of time to stories.

The audience for that is probably limited. I don't think putting Lucha Underground or NXT or ROH style shows in RAW's spot will do anything to increase ratings. If anything it will probably decrease them. WWE isn't looking to (and can't afford to) go after a cult following type of audience. They need kids and casuals. Kids and casuals put promos and skits ahead of wrestling.
 

Kaiterra

Banned
If Vince truly did believe in telling stories and not having wrestling for wrestling's sake, maybe he'd stop green lighting storylines without a goal or purpose other than to spin wheels and fill time in his three hour monstrosity of a show and focus on getting over actual characters and plots.
 
If Vince truly did believe in telling stories and not having wrestling for wrestling's sake, maybe he'd stop green lighting storylines without a goal or purpose other than to spin wheels and fill time in his three hour monstrosity of a show and focus on getting over actual characters and plots.

I've harped on this before, but even something as simple as introducing a ranking system for the titles would help. If you're going to have all these random matches during 3 hour Raws, having guys fight for the simple motivation of moving up the ladder to get a shot at the US/Intercontinental title is better than nothing.

This assumes that the titles are booked to mean something again.
 

Fox318

Member
So let me get this straight. Rollins:

- Was caught cheating on his fiance, and his dick pix were leaked on the web during an airing of RAW.

- The chick he was cheating with turns out to be a women hating neo-nazi, and he never condemned her behavior.

- He broke Lord Sina's nose.

- Nearly killed Stang in the ring.

- Has the worst ratings of all time as a champion.

How is this man not jobbing to Hornswoggle yet? Let alone still the champion?

He must have pics of Vince fucking a goat or something, there's no other explanation, friends.
He has the pedigree as a finisher.
He is marketed as a HHH clone and subservient to the authority.

Burying him would bury Vinces real son.
 
Just from a cursory look there's no diversity on the roster. All the guys look the same.

WWE really needs to get more ethnicity in its cards. I think the absolute dearth of Latino wrestlers is a mistake, for example.
 

kirblar

Member
Just from a cursory look there's no diversity on the roster. All the guys look the same.

WWE really needs to get more ethnicity in its cards. I think the absolute dearth of Latino wrestlers is a mistake, for example.
The problem with attracting Latino stars is that they can get good money with easier schedules in Mexico right now.
 
Just from a cursory look there's no diversity on the roster. All the guys look the same.

WWE really needs to get more ethnicity in its cards. I think the absolute dearth of Latino wrestlers is a mistake, for example.

Listening to the Shane Douglas Stone Cold podcast last week brings up an interesting point. Shane seems to think that wrestling needs to get more real and unpredictable, more worked shoots, more unscripted (in terms of promos I agree with him) because you can't insult anyone's intelligence anymore...but I wonder sometimes if the opposite has to happen. Like, there is so much exposure to these guys with social media and the internet that the "Attitude Era" didn't have to deal with, that realistically trying to pull off some of the stuff they did would be impossible. Someone mentioned it above maybe WWE needs to go back to the cartoony era of the 80s and 90s and drop the line between fiction and reality completely.
 

mreddie

Member
Listening to the Shane Douglas Stone Cold podcast last week brings up an interesting point. Shane seems to think that wrestling needs to get more real and unpredictable, more worked shoots, more unscripted (in terms of promos I agree with him) because you can't insult anyone's intelligence anymore...but I wonder sometimes if the opposite has to happen. Like, there is so much exposure to these guys with social media and the internet that the "Attitude Era" didn't have to deal with, that realistically trying to pull off some of the stuff they did would be impossible. Someone mentioned it above maybe WWE needs to go back to the cartoony era of the 80s and 90s and drop the line between fiction and reality completely.

But that was why the WWE almost died in the mid 90s, people evolved from the cartoony gimmicks.
 
But that was why the WWE almost died in the mid 90s, people evolved from the cartoony gimmicks.


It evolved into something more realistic, which, for that time, was seen as cool. Realistic wrestling angles are not cool in 2015. The Attitude Era stuff wouldn't work today. It needs to adapt and evolve again, maybe into something completely different. They've been living on Attitude/Reality Era fumes for years now.
 

mreddie

Member
It evolved into something more realistic, which, for that time, was seen as cool. Realistic wrestling angles are not cool in 2015. The Attitude Era stuff wouldn't work today. It needs to adapt and evolve again, maybe into something completely different. They've been living on Attitude Era fumes for years now.

Oh that I agree with. But going cartoony won't help either. That was the base of the PG era and it's seen with disgust. Reality TV angles aren't helping as well. They just need to write a story, have a arc but not be silly or come off as cheap.
 
Oh that I agree with. But going cartoony won't help either. That was the base of the PG era and it's seen with disgust. Reality TV angles aren't helping as well. They just need to write a story, have a arc but not be silly or come off as cheap.

What can you do? Wrestling is, especially the more you are exposed to it, sort of inherently silly. Maybe they should embrace that instead of trying to ground it and bend over backwards to try and make it make sense. I don't mean turn it into a sitcom but it should probably just be wacky as shit. Lucha Underground is sort of like that from a character stand point. There's a guy who transforms into a dragon for fucks sake.
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
Vince needs to take action. Come out to that ring and fire everybody after the next ppv. Shake things up.

He needs to cough up a few more mil as well and make Lesnar full time. Having him once or twice a month is a stupid strategy. Push him to the max while he is still somewhat young.

I guess that's one way to make sure the new talent doesn't get overshadowed by the old, but it'd take a ton of talent on multiple fronts to pull that one off.

Oh that I agree with. But going cartoony won't help either. That was the base of the PG era and it's seen with disgust. Reality TV angles aren't helping as well. They just need to write a story, have a arc but not be silly or come off as cheap.

Silly doesn't have to mean a bunch of poop and gay jokes. The problem with peak PG era was immature stuff, not silly stuff.
 

mreddie

Member
What can you do? Wrestling is, especially the more you are exposed to it, sort of inherently silly. Maybe they should embrace that instead of trying to ground it and bend over backwards to try and make it make sense. I don't mean turn it into a sitcom but it should probably just be wacky as shit. Lucha Underground is sort of like that from a character stand point. There's a guy who transforms into a dragon for fucks sake.

Like Dean becoming the Condiment King or rigging the MITB suitcase with Gak?
Or Bryan explaining DIAGRAMS!
Bob Barker hosting RAW

Yeah, that could work.

/Yes, Bob Barker hosting RAW was funny.

Bring back jobbers clap clap clap-clap-clap.

Why did they get rid of 3MB?
 
The problem with attracting Latino stars is that they can get good money with easier schedules in Mexico right now.
So build your own. How many buff white dudes can realistically be pushed to the top of the card?
Listening to the Shane Douglas Stone Cold podcast last week brings up an interesting point. Shane seems to think that wrestling needs to get more real and unpredictable, more worked shoots, more unscripted (in terms of promos I agree with him) because you can't insult anyone's intelligence anymore...but I wonder sometimes if the opposite has to happen. Like, there is so much exposure to these guys with social media and the internet that the "Attitude Era" didn't have to deal with, that realistically trying to pull off some of the stuff they did would be impossible. Someone mentioned it above maybe WWE needs to go back to the cartoony era of the 80s and 90s and drop the line between fiction and reality completely.

I think a guy above said it best - matches don't mean shit anymore because being the champ means nothing. When I was a child Hogan was amazing because you just DID NOT see him sully himself on free tv. At best he squashed the shit out of some regional jobber on Superstars. All the real shit was on PPV, or if you managed to stay up late enough, SNME.

Now they're giving everything away for free on RAW. that worked when WCW still existed and interest in wrestling was at its apex, but now WWE is the only major game in town. RAW should be exclusively used to build up PPV matches/WWE Network. Put the good stuff behind a paywall again.

Look at Mayweather. You rarely see him, his matches are hyped months in advance, and his record demands you respect him. Just like with Hogan years ago. What current WWE star could claim any of that today?
 

FStop7

Banned
The problem with attracting Latino stars is that they can get good money with easier schedules in Mexico right now.

Vince should recognize this because it means lucha libre wrestling is growing. It's a huge market, he should spend the money to get talent and get someone familiar with the business to run it.
 

BadAss2961

Member
So build your own. How many buff white dudes can realistically be pushed to the top of the card?


I think a guy above said it best - matches don't mean shit anymore because being the champ means nothing. When I was a child Hogan was amazing because you just DID NOT see him sully himself on free tv. At best he squashed the shit out of some regional jobber on Superstars. All the real shit was on PPV, or if you managed to stay up late enough, SNME.

Now they're giving everything away for free on RAW. that worked when WCW still existed and interest in wrestling was at its apex, but now WWE is the only major game in town. RAW should be exclusively used to build up PPV matches/WWE Network. Put the good stuff behind a paywall again.

Look at Mayweather. You rarely see him, his matches are hyped months in advance, and his record demands you respect him. Just like with Hogan years ago. What current WWE star could claim any of that today?
I'm behind this idea too. Problem is Brock's the only guy they have that pulls this off, and it's probably more by contract than design. If he was full time like the rest, he'd be overexposed like them too.

Hogan actually had that kind of booking even during the peak of WCW. You'd usually only see him wrestle on PPV. Every match of his had that big fight feel.
 

DJKhaled

Member
He should just go back to RoH. I don't watch the shit WWE product but he was the fucking man in RoH.

Also this

Haha yes, he should totally give up a huge paycheck and the main title on a tv show that airs around the world live each week to go back to the indies haha.

Rollins is awful in and out of the ring

I hate when trolls can't even be bothered to put in effort to troll properly


Rollins would be an amazing champ if the booking was good, he is one of the best wrestlers on the roster and can be great on the mic when they don't script him to do 30 minute long Triple H style promos and he was amazing when he was a coward but still a heartless piece of shit like when he was going to kill Edge. Now they just have him getting beat by the Big Red Jobber.
 

DeathyBoy

Banned
Haha yes, he should totally give up a huge paycheck and the main title on a tv show that airs around the world live each week to go back to the indies haha.



I hate when trolls can't even be bothered to put in effort to troll properly


Rollins would be an amazing champ if the booking was good, he is one of the best wrestlers on the roster and can be great on the mic when they don't script him to do 30 minute long Triple H style promos and he was amazing when he was a coward but still a heartless piece of shit like when he was going to kill Edge. Now they just have him getting beat by the Big Red Jobber.

Rollins backed down from a face to face with Edge not long ago. Dude would absolutely be petrified of Kane.
 

Striker

Member
Rollins has all these high impact moves and they all go for nothing. Springboard knee, powerbomb into the turnbuckle, frogsplash, indy-as-fuck superplex into Falcon Arrow. List goes on. Has any of these finished anyone for a pin? No, instead, they work a Rollins-Cena contest like they did when he fought low mid-card Neville. Zero sense.
 

DeathyBoy

Banned
Rollins has all these high impact moves and they all go for nothing. Springboard knee, powerbomb into the turnbuckle, frogsplash, indy-as-fuck superplex into Falcon Arrow. List goes on. Has any of these finished anyone for a pin? No, instead, they work a Rollins-Cena contest like they did when he fought low mid-card Neville. Zero sense.

And yet the crowd buys them as finishes regardless.

People can talk smack about Rollins all they want, but the crowd absolutely buys him as someone who can beat Cena et al. Legitimately. Not in a 'we want him to' way, but in a 'he actually could' way.
 

KingBroly

Banned
At some point, WWE forgot Wresting is a sport, and the show they put on should be treated as a sport, with rules and stuff people can understand.

Do people understand what's going on every week? Nope. I can't tell you what's going on with the Divas. Where's Miz? Cesaro? R Truth? It's just...wow

You know what'd get people interested in the Divas? A Tournament. A Real, Genuine, Tournament with thought and effort put into every match.

You know what'd also be great? Wins and Losses mattering. Rollins losing every fucking TV match since August is bullshit. He shouldn't be Champion. Champions don't lose clean.
 

UberTag

Member
You know what'd also be great? Wins and Losses mattering. Rollins losing every fucking TV match since August is bullshit. He shouldn't be Champion. Champions don't lose clean.
The WWE forgot how to book title feuds that don't revolve around champions constantly getting pinned clean (or by lame ass distraction garbage like I'll get the guy in the truck to play my entrance theme during your match) in non-title contests.

You know, feuds that actually involve storylines, personal grudges or legitimate competition where the two best athletes in the division square off. Shit they don't bother to write for whereas they'll instead waste time doing PR bullshit for the Susan G. Komen scam artists or padding out a 3-hour show with "you get a win, I get a win" in 20-minute matches with 3 commercial breaks whose outcomes mean NOTHING. While booking all of their heel champs like chickenshit losers and all of their mid-card as jobbers who float around aimlessly hoping that one week they'll get to wrestle John Cena in a 20-minute match where he no sells their offense and they get beat.
 
The most alarming thing about Rollins being 1-19 since SummerSlam isn't the W/L record, it's that he's fought 20 times in about 2 months. Talk about over exposure. How is a ppv match supposed to feel special when they are beating every feud into the ground.
 

kiguel182

Member
Listening to the Shane Douglas Stone Cold podcast last week brings up an interesting point. Shane seems to think that wrestling needs to get more real and unpredictable, more worked shoots, more unscripted (in terms of promos I agree with him) because you can't insult anyone's intelligence anymore...but I wonder sometimes if the opposite has to happen. Like, there is so much exposure to these guys with social media and the internet that the "Attitude Era" didn't have to deal with, that realistically trying to pull off some of the stuff they did would be impossible. Someone mentioned it above maybe WWE needs to go back to the cartoony era of the 80s and 90s and drop the line between fiction and reality completely.

NXT has both cartoony and realistic characters and it works. Because they have good characters with clear personalities and stories. That's it. You write a show that makes sense, make matches feel important and don't have the same guys wrestling each other each week.

Anything can work if it's well written and doesn't insult the viewers audiences. Raw is trash no matter the gimmicks involved.
 

UberTag

Member
The most alarming thing about Rollins being 1-19 since SummerSlam isn't the W/L record, it's that he's fought 20 times in about 2 months. Talk about over exposure. How is a ppv match supposed to feel special when they are beating every feud into the ground.
Apparently they're NOT supposed to feel special.
Or they are just for the one or two matches that involve THEIR chosen guy (who clearly isn't fucking Rollins).

Instead, they're monthly specials designed solely to construct this bullshit argument that the monthly WWE Network subscription provides "value"... when its only value is for basking in nostalgia while reliving the past when wrestling (as a product ... not wrestling via match quality or star ratings and terrible booking) was worthwhile.

That and NXT. Which is one hour per week. And the occasional special.
 
Rollins has all these high impact moves and they all go for nothing. Springboard knee, powerbomb into the turnbuckle, frogsplash, indy-as-fuck superplex into Falcon Arrow. List goes on. Has any of these finished anyone for a pin? No, instead, they work a Rollins-Cena contest like they did when he fought low mid-card Neville. Zero sense.

you have no idea how much that superplex combo pisses me off, I feel like I turn into an old ass wrestler complaining about these no selling kids when he does it.

That move is one the best "face" moves I've seen and Seth is a heel
It looks absolutely devasting, a super finisher and yet it's never won a match and it's never properly sold
He uses that damn move all the time now and it's starting to lose its luster


goddamnit man, SELL you motherfuckers.
 

Striker

Member
And yet the crowd buys them as finishes regardless.

People can talk smack about Rollins all they want, but the crowd absolutely buys him as someone who can beat Cena et al. Legitimately. Not in a 'we want him to' way, but in a 'he actually could' way.
They spam false finishes all night. Every single match. It's the same thing. Another point, those sort of moves should be able to finish off lower card guys if there is any believability to giving them any credibility against greater opponents.

If he is doing those high impact moves all the time and everybody kicks out of them, sooner than later they become regular moves.
 
They have made seth rollins fucking hopeless, they're really booking him basura every week on raw

It's time he learns from one of the gawds Latino Heat and starts taking some wins with the "lie cheat steal" gimmick. WWE plz....

And he's great on the mic as a heel but holy fuck cut his God damn promos. They feel like they're 40 minutes. This Kane feud is awful too. End it already plz
 

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
It evolved into something more realistic, which, for that time, was seen as cool. Realistic wrestling angles are not cool in 2015. The Attitude Era stuff wouldn't work today. It needs to adapt and evolve again, maybe into something completely different. They've been living on Attitude/Reality Era fumes for years now.

Exactly. If people want reality, they can watch UFC now.
 
Q

Queen of Hunting

Unconfirmed Member
Wwe is like most free to play. Lacking a direction and being able to make things stick.

Things start going well some stories get going and people get into the wrestler and story etc. But they seem to lose steam at that point (writers vince etc) and we go back to square one.

If a wrestler starts getting liked when they feel its not right they get put into a shit hole for months and destroy them. They have created this ratings issue. The product is getting shitter and they are blinded by going with what vince wanta not what ur viewers.


You cant have the authority and commentators every week praising fans saying we couldnt do it without you then shit of everything they like.

Daniel bryan is a perfect example. He took something that im sure in vince's was a character wrecker and he took it and made it boom and the company shat on him. Triple and steph telling him straight up in the ring u cant stand up with us ur arent big ur popularity is a one month thing etc.

That right their showed how they dont understand the fans the product and everything in between
 
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