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The 411 Wrestling Top 5: The Top 5 Desired WWE Changes

April 24, 2016 | Posted by Larry Csonka

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The 411 Wrestling Top 5: Hello everyone and welcome to 411 Wrestling’s Top 5 List. We take a topic each week and all the writers here on 411 wrestling will have the ability to participate and give us their Top 5 on said topic. So, onto this week’s topic…

Week 336 – The Top 5 Desired WWE Changes

If you had the chance, what five changes would you make to the WWE product?

Kevin Pantoja
5. Relying on the old guard – I understand why the WWE uses part timers. Brock Lesnar, Undertaker and the Rock usually bring in good money. The issue I have with this is that the part timers are always seen as being so far superior to the current crop of stars. Before CM Punk left, he took losses to Rock, Undertaker and Brock Lesnar. Bray Wyatt built up an entire feud with the Undertaker, completely on his own, just to do the job at WrestleMania. A lot of the guys are just happy to work the stars they watched growing up but that’s not enough. It hurts their growth. Could you imagine if Stone Cold was on the rise and then he started jobbing to someone from the 80’s? Outside of John Cena and Roman Reigns, none of the current stars really get to compete or beat anyone from yesteryear. Also, it has to be costing them a lot. I get that they bring in money but look at WrestleMania 32. The Rock added NOTHING to the show, probably got paid a ton and I don’t think anyone purchased the show/network to see him do something unannounced. It’s far too much of people far too past their prime.

4. Commentary – Mauro Ranallo is absolutely a step in the right direction. Corey Graves comes across as a breath of fresh air. Tom Phillips and Rich Brennan aren’t too bad. Everyone else is pretty terrible. Michael Cole can be okay at times, but is too grating and unlikable as a lead guy. Jerry Lawler has been awful for about a decade. The heel turn has been an improvement but his bad jokes and dated style is lame. JBL might be the worst of them all. He just shouts nonsense, disagrees with both of his partners and adds nothing. Booker T and Byron Saxton are kind of just there. However, the biggest issue, bigger than any one personality, is the constant need to focus on things irrelevant to the story or match. Sometimes they just bicker, stop to take selfies or plug the latest social media trend. Give me Ranallo, Graves and someone else, have them focus on the show and you’ve got a winner.

3. The camerawork – A lot of people hate Kevin Dunn. They’ve heard about him on interviews or podcasts and dislike his work with creative. I have no proof that he does anything like that and no reason to hate him for the possibility. What I do dislike about him is his work with the production team. Let me get this out of the way. They are phenomenal when it comes to video packages and things like that. The horrible part is that A) everything looks alike and B) the WWE has the worst camerawork I’ve ever seen. I hate that every Raw, Smackdown, PPV, Main Event, Superstars and anything else all look exact alike. That’s why I really dug Beast in the East last year. It felt different. Don’t even get me started on the shoddy camerawork. Moves are constantly missed, the camera shakes rapidly and everything looks so staged. It’s as if the WWE hires the most amateur people to work their cameras while a lot of their other stuff is done so well.

2. Make Raw Two Hours – This is too simple. I 100% get why they can’t make this change. The advertising money they make from the extra hour of commercials is far too good to pass up. Still, one of the biggest problems with Raw and the WWE in general is that a lot of stuff feels like filler. Because they have to find a way to fill three hours, they put on pointless rematch after pointless rematch. The perfect time for a wrestling show tends to be one hour (Lucha Underground, ROH and NXT are all a much easier watch) but two is nearly as good. Three hours drags on so much. So many times I see Raw and think, it would be great if this were to end in fifteen minutes but there’s an entire 75 minutes left. You can cut out the fluff, make the show easier to watch and still cover all of the important angles in the WWE.

1. 50/50 Booking – Nothing hurts the current product more than the obsession with 50/50 booking. The reason that guys like Dolph Ziggler, Alberto Del Rio, Sheamus, etc. can be former World Champions and still not be viewed as stars is because of 50/50 booking. The guys that move the most merch (Cena, Bryan, Punk and even Styles recently) are the guys that tend to get booked better than 50/50. It hurts the WWE so much. They have their top tier of guys (Cena, Reigns, Brock and to a lesser extent, Seth), then upper mid-carders with some momentum (Owens, Bray, Ambrose) and then everyone else just muddles together. Ziggler, Miz, Ryder, Breeze, Ryback, Kailsto, the list goes on and on. There is nothing to separate those guys or give any of them any real momentum. Some guys should get 50/50 booked or even less so. Some guys need more. It’s a tough problem to fix too. The reason people on NXT seem like big deals is because they do some of the classic squash matches against nobodies. That’s cool but Raw is at a point where they can’t really go back to that. Until the company figures out a way to find a balance, they’re going to be in trouble.

Bradley Hargett
5. Less Pay-Per-Views – In a WWE landscape that is already majorly over saturated, the least they could do is decrease the amount of ‘Pay-Per-Views’ that take place. I feel this is a no-brainer. Less of these events will allow for more time to build feuds, and give us fans more time to become invested in the resulting matches. It would also cut-down on the amount of times we have to see the same guy’s and girls face off in a given month.

4. Make Raw 2 Hours – Raw being at three hours seemed awesome to me when the concept was first introduced, but in the years since the change took place; the show has become increasingly hard to sit through for three hours every Monday night. (Obviously there are some exceptions) I feel that this also ties into the over-saturation issue that WWE faces. It would also force them to bring their A game every week, and no rely on filler just to take up the time.

3. Revamp Commentary – I think we can all agree that the current state of commentary is pretty atrocious. Cole seems to be merely going through the motions. It’s very rare that he legitimately seems interested in what is going on. JBL has ran his course, and is no longer the fresh breath of air as a heel commentator. Byron Saxton is passable at best. That’s another thing, I’m not a fan of the three man both. I’d cut it down to a two man once again. Maybe Raw would be Mauro Ranallo and Corey Graves. Smackdown could be Renee Young and Byron Saxton.

2. Unify The Mid-Card Titles -My reason behind this is to elevate the importance of the mid-card championship. I’ve always felt that too many titles bring down the importance of the championships. You can argue that they are mere props, and that’d be true; but they are props that represent who we should believe is the best WWE has to offer. Have a unification match at SummerSlam, and then retire the US Championship.

1. Change Creative – This one here is a hard choice for me to write about. It’s a conflict of interest, because I would like nothing more than to be a member of WWE creative. However, as a fan I believe that the way creative is ran is in major need of change. Quite frankly I think there are too many hands in the cookie jar. If It were up to me, I’d cut the team down considerably. I’m okay with having someone on staff who is equipped to write for television, but I don’t’ see why there is a need for more than a couple of those positions at most. Beyond that, utilize your guys who have been in the business for years. Former wrestlers and wrestling personalities should know how to run a wrestling show.

J ONWUKA
5. Moratorium on legends – This is a big deal to me because, as we saw at WrestleMania, jamming a bunch of legends into the show is the ultimate rob Peter to pay Paul in pro wrestling. WWE thinks that the legends will pop the casuals but it kills the interest of those who want to watch every week. So no legends for a while. If you run into a show where you don’t have enough star power, deal with it. That’s how a booking team develops, by having to deal with issues. The hope is that by having only to rely on the guys they have, they’d eventually learn how to make stars out of those guys.

4. Down with MITB and Royal Rumble, Up with King of the Ring – The title match gift is a really difficult problem for me cause it makes sense as a prize but it often adds a level of hotshottery that leaves me feeling dissatisfied. Money in the Bank is the worst prize because in canon it’s the most powerful one and that means it just gets tossed in nonsensically, but Royal Rumble is the same: now that a lot of people can tell who the big Mania match is being built to, Royal Rumble is like a deus ex machina to get any guy with zero momentum into the title shot. I don’t think MITB & the Rumble should go away totally, but make the MITB just for a prize, or put a belt up there. Make the Rumble for a prize. And if you have to do a gift thing, I think King of the Ring makes for a much better setting. Since the game isn’t so crowded like with MITB or the Rumble, you can actually build a good, gripping story where we can build up some doubt, some anticipation. MITB and Royal Rumble never give us a shot to really get excited about so-and-so’s chance to win. If a title shot’s on the line, I feel like that whole process is important to see play out.

3. Women’s wrestling show – In my opinion, there are two options for top flight women’s wrestling: intergender competition or a dedicated show. I don’t think that WWE is going to do intergender stuff on a large scale, so what I’d love to see is for them to do a show that’s like NXT for their women wrestlers. Ideally this should have a lot more overlap with the main show than NXT has. Perhaps the women’s show would not have its own PPVs and joins up with NXT for the TakeOver specials. Not just for WWE but for women’s wrestling in general I think this would be amazing to see.

2. NXT/WWE challenge matches – We’ve seen it a bit already with Kevin Owens going up to the show as NXT champ but it’d be great if there was more interaction between NXT-as-NXT and WWE. Right now, most times NXT people just get promoted. What if there was like a Bragging Rights-style series between NXT and the show? Or what if an NXT guy answers an open challenge? Main show talents should win most of these, definitely, but an uptick of NXT guys trying to make themselves known would add some definite color to the main shows.

1. Light brand split – Speculation about the brand split returning are thick in the air these days. In a lot of ways I think the idea is played out, but with the roster WWE has a ‘light’ version of the brand split would provide some interesting ways to separate out the competition. I wouldn’t have Smackdown guys stay on Smackdown and RAW guys stay on RAW, but people would be assigned to brand rosters as they were before. The change I’d implement to what WWE did before is to make most opportunities for advancement brand-specific. So let’s say if Ziggler’s SD! and Owens is RAW, Ziggler and Owens can get into a feud, go on the ‘other guy’s’ show, whatever. But if there’s a snap #1 contender’s match and they say ‘it’s gonna be on SmackDown!’, Owens couldn’t be in that match, it’d be only SD guys. Put the IC title on RAW and the US title on SD!; a RAW guy could win the US title, but he’s going to be defending pretty much against SD guys unless something weird happens. I feel like that way you can start to build specific attractions on SmackDown and create a reason why you gotta watch that show as opposed to hearing about ‘the good bits’ next week on RAW. But also it avoids the kind of claustrophobia of the early brand split since we’re not restricting appearances at all.