It took over a year of Vince Russo's writing before the ratings took a noticable change. A year of hard work and effort and concistency. You don't earn people's trust over night. It takes time, a long time.


And it goes back to Vince McMahon's famous words back then and back then McMahon really did know what he was talking about. He told Russo, if it's good, they will watch it, if it's not good they wont.



And it really is as simple as that and that doesn't just apply to wrestling. It applies to everything on TV. If it's good, people will watch. It really is that simple and you had football on Monday, the return of the Big Bang Theory, Gotham, Teen Mom. Right there that is 4 things on that have huge fanbases, all on at the same time as Raw. Then there was the Jon Benet Ramsey case which had a lot of people's attention online.


If it's good people will watch. And unfortunately for WWE with the NFL, Teen Mom, Big Bang Theory, Gotham....there's a lot of shows on which can grab people's attention. Next week is the first Hilary vs Trump debate. They wont even make an effort. Wont even try. Do you think the other shows do that? Do you think the writers and producers of Gotham and Teen Mom and Big Bang Theory just say hey, don't bother writing any good shows for the next 14 weeks cause the NFL's. No they do not. They put the effort in but of course WWE get's a free pass.

They also had the benefit of WCW Nitro being totally must see for a good year and half. Starting in the spring of 1996 and peaking artistically in the final three months of 1997. The NWO story helped WCW bring cable based wrestling consistently highest ratings in 6 years. The channel surfing between shows did a lot to help Raw at that point in time too, with Raw then helping Nitro's ratings in 1998 as more and more casuals found out the WWF was a completely different monkey to that of 4 years earlier. Ironically, I still feel Raw from April 1997 to October 1997 is the best they've ever been. It didn't show in the ratings though.

Believe it or not, with its own network and cash reserves WWE is very well positioned for another boom period. The TV format hasn't really changed in 20 years and the prevalent theme is still 'us versus the evil boss', which replaced dated 'American vs. foreigner' and 'beloved babyface vs. monster' dominant themes. As it's nearly 20 years since Bischoff went heel and started all that.

The rise of UFC. Television becoming more and more critically aclaimed and sophisticated compared to movies. Lucha Underground. If WWE wants to expand its audience again it probably needs to look at these entities. Or bring somebody in who can channel the age old wrestling format into it, without driving away the core audience.

I think it just takes time for any change to be noticable. I'm sure Bischoff worked hard before they got prime time on Monday on TNT and Heyman with ECW and even early 80s WWF with Hulk and McMahon's vision for his WWF. None of it really happened overnight but when you think about those times, it seemed like every 10 years something happened to change the business, it didn't just change once and that was it and between WCW and WWF in the 80s and WWF/WCW/ECW in the 90s you arguably had within a 10 year period 5 very different wrestling companies, they all changed within a short period of time.

Of course WWF was the only one to survive and I don't think they know how to change nor want to, if they're making all that money they might not care. If we really look at the success of WWE, whether it was in the 80s or 90s, in both cases Vince had to succeed, his back was against the wall in both cases. Hulkamania could have failed and he was out of business, the Attitude Era could have failed and they were already losing money, he could have went out of business. I'm not saying Vince doesn't deserve a lot of credit but they were both risks that paid off. He had no choice but to bank on them. He was basically forced into it. Basically the only times WWE has changed, really changed from what it was currently doing, is McMahon being forced to change it and right now I don't think they feel as though they need to change anything. I wish they could see that in order to keep up with the times you need to keep changing, you can't just change when your backs against the wall and then hope it pays off a third time. They should know or at least have the right people employed that as you said, can look at UFC and Lucha and they can see what works there and find a way for WWE to put those ideas into their own shows and the presentation of them but unfortunately I think there is too many wrestlers working backstage at WWE and unfortunately they too go back to what they know best and that right there with Triple H or Road Dogg could easily be 25, 30 years ago. Vince McMahon himself. He can't do the Attitude Era again, because he never wrote it, he has no idea how any of that was done, so he's went back to what he knows. There's no one there that I'm aware of that is late 20s, early 30s that's got their finger on the pulse or if they are there I wish them the best of luck.


The NWO story really is responsible for the wrestling business we see today, even when Bischoff was at TNA they tried doing similar storylines. The NWO storyline was so simple yet effective and all these years later we still see glimpses of it. Even with the cruiserweights today infact a lot of things from an Authority figure on the show to real proper main event caliber talent wrestling on the weekly shows, there's a lot of stuff we see today that WCW and Eric are responsible for. Look at Raw this past week. His fingerprints are all over it. Look at the way Raw is formatted just now, even the way it looks in the arena. It's not a far cry from WCW in it's last few years, even the 3 hours in length is eerily similar.


I definately think Lucha has a great thing going, they film their vignettes on actual film, actual 35mm film. The whole show looks like a movie, it really doesn't feel like wrestling at all and they mix it so well with actual based in reality wrestlers and a lot of mysical goings on and it doesn't feel out of place. UFC no doubt stole a lot of WWE viewers when they were on after Raw in the Spike TV years. It's got such a good following and they know how to promote fights, some of the things UFC does are things wrestling promoters used to do. They're using wrestling tricks to promote their fights. Things that maybe Vince McMahon has forgotten to do.


I think the pro wrestling business needs revamped and as you say if someone who knows what they're doing or even someone who has good ideas and can see how things are, they can see why UFC works and why Lucha works and they can see the problems with WWE and TNA and that tired format that's being used and try and implement new changes to bring the business into 2016 and look at other TV shows aswell for characters and ideas. And that might be an issue too. You could argue that TV right now is so good that you just can't compete. Even with Game of Thrones and Walking Dead and they just finished Rizzoli and Isles and Gotham started back up, when you go beneath the surface of those shows, really it's the people, it's not about zombies and swords and solving crimes, those people mean something to viewers and from their backstory to their family life and their relationships to those around them. How do you compete with that? That's taken a lot of time and effort to put together and that's before you put those characters in storylines every episode. I've often said on here that I like writing, even I sit back and just get blown away from time to time, TV can be too good sometimes. Some of the best producers and actors are working in TV.

i think some sort of Shield Reunion at Survivor series could happen

also was RAW & Smackdown any better this week with Triple H running the Shows in Vince's Absent ?

http://www.ringsidenews.com/wwe-news...ampaign=buffer

It is strange now to watch an episode of NxT, and then have no CwC to follow it sadly.

That was when Bret turned heel and formed The Hart Foundation, have to agree with you, my favourite era of WWF. As I've said before, the year end was probably one of the lowest as WWF fan for me, first with Brian Pillman's death and then the Montreal screwjob.

When Bret was a heel in America, but a major face in Canada, at the very same time, was great, I loved his promos then!

Triple H reportedly interested in bringing Matt Hardy back to WWE.

Hopefully as a part time wrestler as we all know he would fail the wellness tests

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb4a_CLHtBs

The same can be said about Triple H.

https://ukff.com/topic/137653-wwe-the-remake/

Mojo Rawley has to be the Ultimate Warrior, get him in tassels and paint

Ain't nobody ever been as hyped as Warrior

Ambrose would make a much better Roddy Piper

It is stating the obvious somewhat I guess, but Big Show as Andre.

Bo Dallas as IRS perhaps?

It's a fake record of a fake title. Who cares?

Still really confuses me why they will waste Lesnar/Orton II at a house show tonight while the main PPV card tomorrow looks very low on star names.

That can only be done on joint PPV's as Lesner is Raw and Orton is SD.

TBH the card is not to bad on paper it looks better than Backlash.

From what I can remember I'm sure Lesnar is contracted to a certain amount of TV/PPV dates and a separate amount of house show dates, so they arent losing an appearance by having him at a house show

He was asked who he wanted to face and he said Orton, at least with it being on a house show it won't be a trip to concussion city again

Yet it will no doubt be a 5 min squash match. Orton will have some offence for 2/3 mins then Lesnar will get on top, 2/3 suplexes, F5 and it will be done. Carbon copy of all his house show matches.

Thus wasting two matches against Orton, which if they done properly they could of had some great matches!

Kinda like when they did the Rusev/Brock and Lesnar/Del Rio matches?

Looks like the Rumours that Irish wrestler Big Damo O'Connor is coming to NXT is true

That's been known about for months, ICW wouldn't have taken the title off him if he could have done the November Hydro show.

Pretty much inevitable that the moment ICW announced they were big enough to run an 11,000 capacity building they started getting talent raided.

do agree William Regal has been busy

And the reason he can go is a former WWE guy.

They have already had to write 2 guys out to go to NXT/WWE.

Wonder who will be next.

Somewhat surprised Marty Scurll hasn't gone yet.