I think The Bash in 2008 was the final TV-14 PPV, with SummerSlam being the unofficial swansong to Ruthless Aggression. I'm not big on chair shots to the head and blood as less equals more, but they went too far banning shots to the head completely. It makes it all look even more staged. Still, cannot see things changing there now due to people being so willing to not only sue the company but collectively sue. In 2010 they should have just had Vince McMahon come out on Raw after WrestleMania 26 and ban chairs from being used in WWE matches.

As far as I'm aware they could use weapon shots, blood and mild profanity could be used on their PG broadcasts. In all depends on how the bleeding is filmed and how many curse words are used. F bombs and anything sexual in nature is obviously off limits.

Surely now they have their own network the ultimate end game has to be different tiers of rated programming - both wrestling related and series related. The idea of WWE being a one size fits all product should look old hat by 2025. An MA rated brand after 10pm would be rather interesting to say the least. It all boils down to how they juggle that with the lucrative sponsors and licensing deals.

Enzo and Cass are probably the most over tag team in WWE right now.

Last week when Enzo came out during the Sasha Banks promo, it was clear the live crowd loved him.

I can see their promo becoming a bit stale eventually though, which is why I think they need to mix it up.

Not a huge fan of Balor as either a wrestler or character but it's refreshing to see WWE actually giving a proper rocket push to someone. When is the last time that happened, Cena?

On Ambrose, I haven't seen the podcast but I'm surprised there was no comment here about his promo with Ziggler last week. I thought he handled that really really well.

Yeah I know. All this change in WWE with a brand split and we still get the same thing. Cant we have something fresh and new not keep giving us boring Seth Rollins in ring Promos like we ve had every week for the past 2 years. Is Seth suddenly the Vince Mcmahon of 2016?

I know hes fighting Balor for the belt but christ its boring. Nothing happened worth in that in ring promo.

And Tommy Rich was 19 when he won the belt so he beats Orton.

Cena was built up on the main shows before he became champion, his gimmick at the time allowed him to face the champion but when he turned face it was a long while before he took the reigns.

In terms of rocket pushes, whilst they didnt last as long you could argue the cases for Lashley and Sheamus.

I could see Balor having a similar kind of run as CM Punk, a title reign or title challengers move down a peg have a faction around him before heading back into the title scene.

Seriously? That was a mark out moment at Wrestlemania 7 when Savage and Liz reunited!

Reigns isnt going to lose at Summerslam. He put Seth & Ambrose over the last 2 PPVs. The fact Vince wanted him to go over balor but changed his mind to see about pushing someone else instead leads me to believe Reigns is walking out with the US title.

Ambrose should have gone over in that match. How they pushed Ambrose as he doesnt fear Lesnar or called the F5 wimpish move and they had him just job made no sense.

Not sure they should remove strikes just for entering a rehab..

Whats with the spoiler tags? Summerslam is a Live PPV it hasent happened yet so not sure why hiding about Vince being high on Balor for.

Dont really see why you wouldnt want blood. Thousands of indy wrestlers do it.

The worse one was the Money in the Bank match at Wrestlemania when he dove off the ladder and Edge had a chair and the way benoit's head jerked back is uncomfortable viewing especially what happened to Chris as I remember him bleeding.

If you want the myth to go away in your head just pretend Kevin Sullivan did it.

I meant she didn't seem happy at the Wedding at Summerslam.


Even so it doesn't change the fact in real life their marriage was pretty much over.

RAW got better as it went on, which is how I felt about last week's episode.

The ending was strange, as the point of the Foley/Bryan encounter is still passing me by, and it wasn't necessary to set up the main event but it was something different for me to see the US title scene close the show.

Balor/Rollins doesn't feel like a big match, but I'm intrigued by the demon gimmick now. Bray Wyatt's attempt at being creepy/unnerving doesn't work for me at all, so I'm hoping the demon is genuinely engaging.

I really wasn't sure about a monster heel like Rusev doing a silly segment like a WWE wedding celebration but it turned out to be OK.

If Sin Cara doesn't get used well in the cruiserweight division, release him.

Enzo & Cass (well, mainly Enzo) are annoying, heel Jericho is tedious and I don't care for Owens, so you can guess how much I enjoyed the show's opener. However, it wasn't quite as long as last week's, thankfully.

Because it contains a spoiler on who the current plans are to win a match at the live PPV that hasn't happened yet so for people who don't like to read that stuff I put it in spoilers.

Because it can be dangerous. Not just the way it's done but you potentially end up with a situation like when Bob Orton didn't mention his hepatitis to the company and proceeded to spray blood over the ring. It's potentially dangerous.

Plenty of things happen on the indies that shouldn't happen

All 3 hours of Raw fell under 3 million viewers.


As Lee said I do think they should be trying to have different kinds of shows for different audiences. I think Smackdown is aimed at a more casual audience, if you look at the presentation, the inring work, it seems to be aimed at the casual crowd and is more of a wrestling show, Raw is a mix of everything, NXT and the CWC obviously target the indie market and fans of the cruiserweights. I would slowly turn Raw or Smackdown, probably Raw into a more adult themed show.


None of us will ever know the truth about the sponsors and how much say they have. I know some require them to be PG but it would be interesting to find out what WWE can and cannot do. I did find it funny that the Bash At The Beach 2008 PPV you mentioned had Shawn Michaels bleed all over the ring infact it might have even been the DAY BEFORE they went PG and after that it was like, no mention of blood at all. I think there was even a first blood match on Raw that year too. I just feel like the no blood policy is a WWE policy and not a PG thing like many seem to think, like the Miz said, I think he was wrong to blame blood and chair shots to the head on them being PG when it's clearly nothing to do with it but I also think WWE are wrong for allowing those lines to be blurred. I know they can definately have a lot of swearing, the Tough Enough show Steve Austin did was full of swearing, words that I've never heard on WWE TV lol and that was PG too so the USA Network had no issue with the swearing and that was an hour before Raw started at 7pm.

Next year is 10 years since Chris Benoit's death and the tragedy with his family. It's 8 years just now since Raw went PG and the PPVs went PG, I really think it's been long enough. Enough time has passed and I know it's all done to clean their image up and clean the image of pro wrestling up but you can't change what wrestling was for at least 30 years prior, nor should they or anyone else. It doesn't need fixing, it was never broken to begin with and while I agree with the measures taken to look after wrestler's health and wellbeing, I'm all for everyone being creative and finding ways to make the shows great again. Cleaning their image up doesn't have to mean scripting every single word and movement those wrestlers make in the ring. It really doesn't.

Remained #1 viewership on all cable television, #2 in demographic as well though

No idea. Shame they couldnt work it out. Liz pretty much would be alive today if they had stayed togeher.

Doesnt mean its going to happen. Tons of news reports could say Vince wants Balor to win the belt but it could be a different scenario when it actually happens because Vince always changes plans at the last minute.

Well yes they should be tested for stuff like that.

I dunno I can think of one thats worse and thats being forced to watch Braun wrestle every week. The guy is shit in the ring but no cos Vince loves big guys he'll be shoved down our throats for the entire year.

I can't say WWE isn't doing well, the numbers are good for Monday night on cable. They're good numbers for any night on cable actually, is it $160 million a year good? I don't know. I don't know what USA Network make from the ads.

WWE is making plenty of money. They better. They're the only game in town so they BETTER BE making money, unfortunately as time goes on less and less people seem to watch. And of course numbers and demographics will be reported back to me but the difference between the WWE and near enough every other program on TV is that the WWE relies on a live audience, WWE is not a sport yet WWE needs, infact it relies on there being paying customers every week. Their TV revenue is a huge part of their make up. Right now they're getting $160 million a year, obviously we will find out where the panic button is, or when USA Network crack the whip. I don't know. Maybe they could make $160 million a year from advertisers if WWE got 500k viewers, if that's the case then fair enough, if I was WWE i'd put zero effort into the shows too, just let the money roll in regardless.

And where I might have been wrong in the past in comparing WWE's numbers to other shows on TV. Some good ones coming up. Season 3 of The Strain, American Horror Story, The Walking Dead, all will do good numbers. Those shows also have bigger budgets than the WWE puts into their shows, wrestling is fairly cheap to produce. The difference is those shows film for 3-6 months of the year and that's it, everyone involved moves on. The WWE with the way it is build, has no option but to keep going 52 weeks a year and the WWE doesn't have multiple production companies throwing millions at them to make their shows, the WWE does it out their own pocket and what deems those shows a success? What deems the company a success? By keeping those paying customers there and keep them coming back and those numbers are going down Hollie and the lower those numbers go, the less chance there is of people buying tickets to house shows, the less people will buy merchandise, the less people will buy the WWE Network. It's like a domino effect.


Like I said for all i know USA Network could rolling in money, years ago wrestling made hardly any money, networks couldn't charge for wrestling what they could for other shows, it had a stigma, that might have changed, maybe WWE could do a 1.0 rating and USA Network could still make that $160 million a year back. I don't know but the WWE relies on paying customers, other TV shows don't but where the other TV shows have a point is it's entirely possible in the year 2016 to get millions of people sitting in front of their TV. This excuse people make about watching TV on their phone and their tablet and their Ipad and they DVR things, even though sponsors don't care about DVR numbers since no one in their right mind is watching the ads, they're fast forwarding through them, the live numbers are all that matters, even after all of that, these TV shows and the Olympics too show that if you put something good on TV, millions will watch it. The WWE is just in a very unique situation where unfortunately low TV ratings could easily translate to low numbers for house shows and TV tapings and if that dries up then it's game over. The whole business relies on paying customers, it's like a circus, if not enough people come and pay enough money to cover the rent and wages of the workers? It's time to pack up and go home, it's over. I don't see that happening with WWE at all, I think they will always exist even if it is just as an On Demand service but I'll say this and this bit does apply to me personally, you can only keep pushing people's buttons for so long, you can only niggle at them and mess them around for so long before they have had enough and if they keep going down this road and poking their fans with a stick it'll end up getting to the stage where it doesn't matter how good the shows are, they could put on the best show in the world and they've prodded that much that people wont go back. And i don't think they care one bit.

But I haven't claimed the numbers aren't going down, they are. My point is Raw isn't the only show to face falling viewership. IMO, you act like WWE is in a world of its own when its operating in the same world as its Monday night competition, which at its lowest viewership in at least four years its still beating. I don't believe WWE lives and dies by its live ratings either because I don't believe you have to watch it live. You've now got networks actively telling the media Live+SD ratings are irrelevant and they won't be paying much attention to them, (I believe) every network now sells its advertising blocks on a Live+3 basis because live viewership is falling.

There are obviously shows that buck the trend and can pull 7 million viewers but the amount of cable shows that can pull a 7 million live viewership is far fewer than the amount that can't.

We will obviously see in 2017/2018 what NBCUniversal think to the ratings when the deal concludes. It's also not as simple as saying if it's good people will watch, there are plenty of great TV shows over the years that have viewership much smaller than they deserve.

But again, to be clear to everybody, I'm not saying WWE's live television audience isn't falling.

In my opinion WWE needed a scapegoat and they found one.

"Oh yeah those dangerous weapon shots to the head? We don't do those anymore, so a Benoit situation can never happen again"

"But what about the fact your wrestlers get little time off, are employed as independent contractors with few rights, work through injuries and are heavily reliant on painkillers to get through the week? What about the fact your much lauded three strikes policy is poorly enforced?"

"Yeah but...but...we banned chairshots to the head!"