Yes, I’m back writing wrestling once again. Not to worry, I will have a commentary on the California gubernatorial election as the recall date draws near. You KNOW I’m not going to miss that one!
So I thought that I would write an article explaining something that has always bothered me about WWE storylines – namely that many of them are started and then abruptly stopped; leaving the hardcore fans wondering what the hell happened. I will illustrate this issue for you:
Do you remember a year or so ago when Bischoff laid a big kiss on Stephanie at one of the PPVs and Stephanie fought it off, then embraced him for a minute? What the hell happened there? That’s something that I wanted to see pan out!
And I know that WWE pretty much killed off the Mr. America storyline with that post-Smackdown! mask removal by Hogan, but what happened to Piper? I mean yeah, I know what happened to him and chances are that you know what happened to him, but what happened to him in the official storylines?
How about The Legion of Doom? Yeah, they were horrendous in the ring and should not have been signed as they weren’t (which we on the internet know), but why not have a storyline where they were written off as “too old to compete at a competitive level?” Keep this in mind, because it will lend itself towards my theory in the end.
You see, I believe that this lack of storyline completion is because of another problem that I, and many other internet wrestling journalists have with the current WWE product. This problem is namely the fact that there are too many people on top who do not want to do the job.
All you have to do is look at the SummerSlam main event. You have HHH on one side, who will only lose to his good friends Nash and HBK (and perhaps Flair), ONLY if he winds up beating them soon thereafter to put himself back on top. And on the other side of the ring, you have Goldberg who thinks that he is bigger than the industry itself. So what do you get? A great storyline that pitted two of the biggest names in wrestling right now against each other that wound up becoming an Elimination Chamber match.
Sure, I’m excited about the Chamber match because I really like that concept, but what about all of us who were hyped on seeing the “Match of the Year” between HHH and Goldberg? Are we supposed to accept the fact that all of the guys fighting on The Highlight Reel or whatever show they were on ultimately leads to this Elimination Chamber match?
What about just putting HBK and Nash in the ring against Jericho and Orton? How about putting Nash in a match one on one against Jericho in that hair vs. hair match, but at SummerSlam? Is it REALLY that hard to plan this stuff out a week or two in advance? I see people doing it on the internet all the time.
So my main point is this – there are too many storyline gaps in WWE programming to encourage long-term excitement about the product. We’ve seen the increase, recently, in “not this week, but next week” promotion on RAW which is a good start to having a longer-term interest in the product. However, why not have a long-term storyline going on at the same time? Such as that Angle and Steph storyline from a few summers back?
What? We can’t do that? Egos won’t allow it? That’s funny, I thought that Vince McMahon was in charge of WWE…it certainly seems as though that isn’t so right now.
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