So it seems that there will indeed by two PPV's per month for each brand. The only time it will be one is when it is one of the major 4, WM/Rumble/SS/Survivor Series.

If true we are talking about 20 PPV's per year now. So some how creative need to be trusted in writing good stuff for 2 brands now and 20 different PPV's. No chance in hell, they can't cope now. Not going to end well this at all.

The singer of some of my favourite ever WWE theme tunes (DX, X-Pac, Triple H's My Time) Chris Warren has died, aged 49. He also did some work for TNA

There's already a separate creative team for Raw and Smackdown (hard to believe I know when they have the exact same matches etc) so each team really still only has to write for one show and one PPV a month.

If WWE intends to go this route (which seems likely) then this needs to be a wake up call to Creative, Vince, Steph and HHH that they have to step up with the writing. It's barely strong enough to build up one PPV a month, never mind an extra one.

I do hope they commit to the Brand Split though. I do feel in the long run its the best option WWE has. It would seem with the fact they seem to be looking to bring in old talent that they are building this as a long term plan.

WWE has a chance with this to reboot and refresh. Hopefully they take it with both hands.

The lowest Raw ratings since 1995 and apparantly the basketball game didn't start till after the first hour of Raw was over so they can't use that as an excuse. Someone said Game Of Thrones has had 7 writers in it's 6 seasons but WWE needs 30? 30 people to write wrestling?


I hope the smark crowd are happy. They got the roster they wanted. They got the type of show they wanted and it's drove off millions of people. People are leaving in their droves. Maybe their idea of what a wrestling show should be isn't the same as what everyone elses idea of a wrestling show should be. And the worst hasn't been seen yet. The worst has still to come when they do the brand split and then when the NFL starts later this year and it wont be pretty.

100% agree on that bit in bold mate. I said something familiar the other day. They need to do this properly, new set designs, credits and bring back different sets for PPV's. Really make this feel like a new era they keep banging on about.

For me it is such a important time for the WWE. If they actually commit to it and put effort in to it, then it could kick start a great new era which we all crave. Yet it could go the other way (which I fear it will) where nothing really changes and viewing figures continue to go down and in 1/2 years the product is dying.

Game of Thrones has written 58 hours since its debut in 2011. WWE writes that in 3 weeks. I can't possibly think why that would need more writers.

On a separate note, all 32 competitors for the WWE Cruiserweight Classic have been confirmed.

http://www.wwe.com/section/cruiserwe...ic-competitors

(Just keep scrolling past the WWE popups in between to see them all)

Some real talents in there. A couple of familiar faces in WWE with Brian Kendrick and Tajiri.

Gargano and Ciampa regularly show their stuff in NXT. Rich Swann has also appeared on NXT a couple of times.

On the British front there's Noam Dar, Jack Gallagher and Zack Sabre Jr, who are all really top talents and have had some quality matches on the Independent scene.

And Kota Ibushi is awesome.

Really anticipating this. Should be a quality tournament with some excellent matches if WWE allows them to showcase their full talents.

Gets started 23 June.

Really looking forward to the CWC. Its something completely different for WWE

Same day as the EU Referendum I believe I am of course more looking forward to CWC.

It's a shame Chris Warren has passed away. RIP.

The roster is diverse. How they are handled not so...

Take this bit of booking on Raw. You've got Del Rio teaming with Owens and predictably they implode, with Rio kicking him in the head afterwards. Then we go to a segment where they meet again and simply argue a little bit! The personality Owens is that of a cocky, unpleasant family man who can and will take the fight to you. But he decides to do nothing but bleat to Stephanie. Hell, you could write an essay on how they dulled down Del Rio's once interesting character into just another midcard wrestler.

Currently we have Titus O' Neil, who has been on a minor winnng streak on the C shows, suddenly challenging for the US title. He's naturally charismatic, 6'6, legit role model and several months ago was the talk of the web due his suspension. If they had any sense they'd have actually brought that controversial suspension into a storyline and got him over.

The invisible camera segment with Stephanie, Shane and Kane was just another in a very, very long line of 'winking at the camera/this is all one big joke' story-lines. There are way too many of them and not enough thought out serious stories to interest the casual.

Then there was the Zayn vs. Cesaro match. Both guys are seriously athletic and have their fans to a certain extent, but neither have been developed much apart from that. They're victims of 50/50 booking, yet have been protected at mid-card level. A face vs. face match like that should have meant something, but as it was booked that night and done to fill time you hear a pin drop.

I don't disagree with anything that you've said but what we forget is, there's a large number fans out there that don't see those things as issues, they quite happily watch week to week and they are happy with it. As much as I bang on about ratings and interest falling I need to remind myself that there are people out there that do enjoy everything, even the stuff that doesn't make sense or the stuff that is just plain laziness on their part.

You got it right with Owens and Del Rio but bare in mind, we've had Rollins and Reigns within feet of each other and neither man will try and hit the other. Infact there's talk shows and contract signings all the time and you have people in the ring that supposedly hate each other and yet they will stand and have a conversation and not even try and hit each other.

With Titus O'Neil what will hold him down is ego. It's in their interest to hold him down and keep him in his box, just like they do with everyone else, you stay in your box, you're not allowed out of it, we decide how far you're gonna go and you follow your orders and if you don't wanna do that then you can go somewhere else. There's no getting over, it's just them deciding where you are on the card and that's it.


I know what you mean with Zayn and Cesaro. This is where people tend to go against me and the wrestling I like. I get that they have suffered from 50/50 booking but what I would argue with that is how can either man get the other guy over if neither is REALLY really over? To get someone over you need to put them in there with someone that really means something so that when they beat them it then means something to the viewer at home. Now with that is all sorts of problems that we talked about like no selling, the psychology, finishers not finishing the matches etc. This is where I would have wanted storylines. I would have wanted them to do other things, maybe one heels it up a little and wishes the other well before their match. They lose their match and the other smugly offers advice. Maybe they fight backstage. Give them a reason to get in the ring in the first place and be creative. Have Cesaro interrupt a match and offer advice on the mic during the match or help Zayn win a match and Zayn hates that he won the match that way, just something and even though i'm only using very basic storylines there at least it would have been something the announcers could have talked about.


I think the invisible camera thing has run it's course. It's not how people talk or interact in real life. We don't all face the same direction when we talk to each other. I do think it worked in the Attitude Era because the show was more of a soap opera and when that stuff was done, it tended to be the McMahons where it was so over the top and dramatic where it suited it. Nowadays it's casual conversations. Everyone talks in the office and nothing really happens, there's no need for it really unless it involves a match or something happening that night and even then it tends to be a wrestler walks in, if it's a heel they tend to argue before the McMahons put them in their place and then they shrug their shoulders and scoff and leave and I get it, it's family entertainment but there's other ways of doing it for people watching on TV at night to enjoy it. It comes off bad. It comes off as bad TV and I don't know if they think it's good, maybe Stephanie and Shane and Vince are in those arenas and they're laughing at all this and they think we are all laughing and it's a big joke. I wish all 3 of them would sit down in front of a TV between 8pm and 11pm at night and have a good look at what is on TV at that time, it's not childish TV. It's serious dramas and comedies and sports that have the country glued to their TV sets. I'm all for panto wrestling and characters and costumes and everything being a bit kooky but there needs to be a level of sophistication nowadays. People expect it. You could argue that TV has better writing than Hollywood does. TV is not to be scoffed at anymore. TV viewers, especially at night expect a lot more and expect to be treated with respect. I think the McMahons and Triple H are so invested in that company that they probably have no idea what is on TV. I don't think any of them have any clue just how far TV has come in the last 20 years. If they had any clue as to the quality of TV that is out there now they wouldn't think what they are putting out is good.

Put Heyman back on the creative team

But Game of Thrones had books to fall back on to.

Game of Thrones has 10 episodes of roughly an hour long per year, for the last six years. WWE has two (main) shows a week, plus NXT, plus the monthly PPV and is what, two or three hours long per episode? That and they've been around for quite some time, and they'll likely be around long after Thrones has ended.

WWE needs a larger creative team. It's questionable how good their 30 man team may be, but they'd never work anything out with a 7 man team.

got by ok with russo and ferrera

.....with Vince as a filter.

Vince McMahon the filter. Well if that's the case then why has 10 million people stopped watching wrestling since the year 2000 in America? Why did we go from an audience of 10 million Monday nights between WWF and WCW to now UNDER 3 million?


And that same filter is still working there. They love to bash Russo on the Network and it was all McMahon, McMahon did everything, well if that's the case why is the audience under 3 million? Where's the other 7 million? They're watching something else on Monday nights that's what.



I'm with Vince Russo on this. I don't get any pleasure out of this. Raw getting a 2.03 rating and under 3 million viewers gives me no pleasure at all. I want wrestling to be the best it can be.

Here fishy fishy fishy.

Could be worse. You could have your Chief Financial Officer telling the world that he had to find interim finances to get your production trucks moving to host a PPV.

Maybe I'm being too small minded, but I'm not sure I'd consider the actual in-ring time and time spent on entrances as being too difficult to write. The road agents and the wrestlers set-list of signature moves should take care of the actual match content.

At a conservative estimate the in-ring and entrance time combined for all the weekly shows comes to just over 3 hours.

The time spent on adverts, product advertising, recaps and hyping what's coming up will work at out at nearly 3 hours.

Apart from the setting up the match listings, that means there is 2-2.5 hours worth of actual storyline and character content to write a week.

So your happy to agree with Vince Russo the same guy who ran WCW down to the ground no surprise there.

The problem with the inring wrestling in WWE and the same with TNA and all the others is it's an exhibition, it doesn't look like a fight. They don't sell the injuries. Neither wrestler in the ring looks or acts like they want to WIN. It's just not believable.


There is too many hours of WWE TV. And wrestling already doesn't make as much money as other shows do through ad revenue, it's well documented that wrestling doesn't bring in as much money due to it being wrestling and most people tend to look down their nose at wrestling. JCR already posted the PDFs showing that most people that watch wrestling in America are white and have low incomes. So of course USA Network is gonna take as many ad breaks as they can and make that as much money as they can back. Wrestling is literally trashy TV and I like it like that.


The numbers never lie. The attendance numbers for house shows and TV shows don't lie because they are taken directly from the arenas, anyone can call up and get those numbers. Nielson doesn't make up lies with their numbers. These are what we have to measure wrestling. It doesn't matter about opinions. My opinion doesn't even matter. I don't even pay for sky or cable anymore because I can get anything I want via the internet now so I don't even exist to WWE anyway. What matters is those numbers and those numbers tell you how many eyeballs are watching, more importantly that 18-49 demographic. Those numbers determine how many people COULD possibly buy tickets to their live events, COULD possibly buy some merchandise, COULD possibly try the WWE Network for a month.


And like I've said for the past year. If the numbers were going the other way then I'm an idiot. I'd be a fool to come on here and other sites and say those things but the fact is they're going down. Soon it will be Raw 1.9. We thought Roman 2:15 was a rough point. Raw is very close to dipping to a 1.9 rating. People are tuning out in their droves and I know why they are. There's about 7 million other people in the USA that used to watch wrestling and DON'T anymore, they can tell you why.


And do you know the only good thing to come of it is? And I don't get any joy at all seeing Raw getting a 2.03 rating. The only good thing about it is the whole show is plastered with the wrestlers the IWC love. The New Day. Sami Zayn. Kevin Owens. Enzo and Big Cass. The women from NXT. The whole show is full of them and I love that because it lets the IWC know, it lets the dirtsheets know and it lets Vince McMahon know that the more they are on TV, the more people are changing the channel because casual fans know.........just like I know.........these people are not TV stars, they are average looking men and women at best, at best, they are not TV material. They will never get over. They will never be millionaires. They will never be household names and I'm glad the whole show is full of them because it sends everyone a message.

And that goes for anything on TV. Even a show like Big Brother which is scripted reality TV. Even the X Factor! Britains Got Talent! Look at the people on those shows. They are TV material. OK they've got make up on and they make them look nice for the HD cameras but everyone of them looks the part, they know what they're doing. It's like going for a job interview, sometimes it literally comes down to whether your face fits or not. That's how people are in life. When casual fans turn on Raw they know these men and women don't belong there. It's not the way professional wrestling should be.


And I don't know how long it will take. I don't know if maybe Raw has to dip below the 2s and hit 1.9 or 1.8 but at some point surely, surely Vince McMahon has to say, this experiment has failed, let's get wrestling back to where it was, let's give everyone a character, a costume, a gimmick, let's have storylines, soap opera, let's get people that look the part, talk the part, act the part, let's get back to proper pro wrestling.

Sinister what age are you? I hear this all the time from teenagers and people in their 20s. Seriously. Did you live through that time as an adult? Are you gonna tell me WCW lost $60 million in one year? Stuff that can't be proven or backed up? Who told you that Sinister? Did you read that on a dirtsheet? Who blames Vince Russo for WCW failing? No one does. Only the dirtsheets do. The network didn't want wrestling, it was that simple. It didn't matter if it made money or not.


Are you gonna buy Stephanie McMahon's book later this year? Are you gonna believe all the fake stories in there too? You believe everything your told? You might aswell believe it since you believe what strangers on the internet tell you about a business you've never worked in.

NXT has already started if you click on it.