This is my first article being posted on this website of hopefully many to come. I hope you enjoy & comment. I assure you others that follow won’t be as long.
Problem: Wrestling is in decline/Cause & Effect
Its no secret that viewership regarding the WWE as well as all other promotions have been in decline over the past several years. Reasons why are numerous but mainly because it lacks competition. WWE like most companies are in a market place and for any industry to thrive requires innovation and competitive strive that keeps the consumer interested. With any marketplace monopolized by one single entity, the consumer or in this case, the viewers/fans are not given a viable alternative, therefore are left with WWE are their only wrestling fix. Years after Vince McMahon purchased ECW & WCW this did not seem to be the case but now WWE is showing signs of fatigue with viewership, story-lines, ratings, PPV buy-rates to even merchandise sales. In large part this is due to WWE not having to have their guard up and forced to compete. Companies like TNA are not a threat and really have remained a fraction of not only the size of WWE. Because of that it is nearly impossible for them to offer a superior or even equal product due to their limited resources and/or inabilities to keep good enough talent before losing them to the WWE (i.e. RVD, Hogan soon to be Sting amongst others). So essentially, unless some Billionaire wants to get into the wrestling industry again (which is unlikely at best) the industry itself will only shrink and suffer as a downward spiral appears to be inevitable. Luckily the company has enough resources and other projects such as the Network, Movies etc to keep them afloat for us fans to enjoy for years to come before its decline comes to a rude awakening.
How to fix it: Prelude Solution
If its one thing ALL Americans have in common is that we ALL love variety. Everything from our mustard to our soda, you name it, we have variety in every consumer product. The same goes for Television, Music and Movies as we as most things throughout our culture. Sadly we don’t have variety in two things: Political Parties & Wrestling. The Party thing won’t ever change but the Wrestling might. When Vince McMahon bought the WCW, he couldn’t see past his own ambition to have them on a platter as well as his own ego. Throwing it away was horrible for business and began the decline. He must have realized it soon after because he began to make fictitious split brands (i.e. Raw/Smackdown) Which any “real fan” knows its not competition when they have wrestlers that can be drafted from one show to the next, not to mention same writers, story-lines etc.
How to fix it: Final Solution/Create Variety!!!
Wrestling fans want are loyal but have an attention span of a nat, I should know because I’ve been a fan since I was 4 years old and get bored easily but when WCW was around I was never bored. Granted I hardly ever watched WCW but because of WWE’s desire and consistency of thinking outside the box, I watched them mostly. BOTTOM LINE is this… Vince needs to put his ego aside and stop with this B.S. brand crap. Fro example: Keep WWE TV going with a roster with several shows throughout the week such as Raw, Smackdown and maybe a 3ed & 4th but Revamp WCW with Nitro and have them truly complete and maybe with a 2ed show to promote other superstars and/or to build story liens for their promotion and Revamp ECW as well but… keep them where they belong and thats at the smaller arena’s and have them do the smaller house shows for their tours while the others do big events competing. The IMPORTANT thing is… they MUST be kept completely separate!!! They would all belong to the WWE shareholder and to the WWE corporation but would remain separate devisions from one another, separate budgets, rosters, writers, story-lines, championships etc. If the guy who owns both Wawa & Sheetz is brilliant enough to compete with himself which deters outside competition than McMahon should see this too as a viable option to change the tide & direction of the industry. If a wrestler is really good, than promotions should be able to offer better conditions, schedules, work-load and money to the wrestler period. This would ultimately give wrestling fans what they REALLY deserve & need which is VARIETY which will force competition; which in return will create better product all around.
