Is the WWE Just One Big Commercial Now?

This new Southpaw Regional Wrestling thing that WWE released on YouTube the other day was interesting. Not because of that cheesy, hold-the-joke-too-long, shit comedy, but because the WWE slipped branded content advertising so cleverly into the smark world, and had you eating (maybe literally) out of the palm of their hands.

The immediate online social media reaction was overwhelmingly positive. You know, making Ragnarok-level proclamations that this is now the “greatest southern pro-wrestling federation in the history of the universe”, and how this is a “better booked than every Wrestlemania combined!” Hmm… all I know is that I sure feel like some KFC Georgia Gold Honey Mustard BBQ chicken.

Fine, we all get the concept of product placement. Somehow we now live in a world where it’s as accepted to joke about the government listening to your conversations through your computer (they probably are) as it is to spot the “product placement” of a Dell or Apple branded-computer in the middle of a movie or TV show. So yeah, when Rick gets out of his brand new Nissan Rogue in the middle of the Walking Dead zombie apocalypse to have another emotional argument with someone in clear view of the shiny bumper and hood ornament, we all roll our eyes and just accept it. I mean, it’s not like we’re watching the commercials anyways, so fine they gotta pay for this stuff somehow.

But do they?

It’s one thing to charge for content or sell commercials during it, but it’s another to keep layering ads on top of that content. At what point have you squeezed all the blood money out the stone that is your middle class (or below), fee-paying, average person?

The WWE gets paid by the USA Network to make a TV show that they are able to slot in advertisements throughout. USA charges money from the companies that want to sell products to the people who watch those show, and hopefully those companies make their money back (and then some) when those viewers go out and buy those products later. So the WWE’s role here is to make the best content possible, something so compelling that we MUST keep watching, even during the commercials, because we don’t want to miss anything. Or they can play the balancing game of attempting to get more money out of the viewer by teasing you along with bland content that promises but never pays off, and stuffing additional advertising inside the show that they’ve already been payed to produce.

Yes, this is a simplified explanation on the “business” of pro-wrestling and television, but I’m a simple person and when I’m already sacrificing my eyes and mind to a TV channel that wants to sell me products by cutting into the kind of content that I would prefer to be watching uninterrupted, do I really need to see a segment inside that show that is “brought to you by Carl’s Jr”? It’s insulting, and indicates so very real problems with the WWE from a fan’s perspective.

When the WWE introduced the WWE Network, in theory, this was an incredible moment. I thought this was going to be the “Netflix” of pro-wrestling; everything was going to be different because now the WWE could do whatever they wanted. We’re gonna pay them directly and they’re gonna make the great wrestling we want to see again. But it hans’t really turned out that way, has it?

The wrestling, both on the PPVs and TV side, have ground to a painful halt in regards to action, stories, interesting moments, and compelling characters. Now everything is slow, repetitive, and drawn out; a predictable fulfillment of exactly what we speculate is going to happen. And when we do make successful educated guesses about the lame things that might happen (which has increasingly become the norm) it feels justified because that’s good for “business”. This is stupid.

I want to pay for the WWE Network because the content is so amazing – all the time – not because I’m constantly hoping that it will eventually get amazing because of all the potential is has to be amazing one day. While there have been flashes of pro-wrestling brilliance, from the CWC, the UK Title Tournament, and a handful of NXT events, there’s also an onslaught of reality shows, documentaries, comedy, and shit-lame wrestling. I get it, they’re trying to add variety, but by doing so they’re conditioning us all NOT to expect a constant flow of awesome wrestling content.

And therefore, let me ask you a simple question: what is the WWE about?

Honestly, what is the narrative in the WWE about anymore? Is it about working your way up through a competitive system to earn a championship? No. Is it about settling feuds? Barely. Is it about making really bad insult jokes towards others for no reason? More than anything else probably. But still, I don’t feel like you can honestly say that the WWE is truly about any of these things anymore.

There still might be this implied struggle against “the authority”, but unlike the 90s when Austin/McMahon encapsulated the struggle of laborers or creatives against the oppressive, capitalistic motivations of management, in 2017 the world (much like the overarching premise of most WWE RAW storylines), has shifted to a place where management has definitively won and there is no endgame to the fight against that power anymore.

So really, the WWE as a “work of art” isn’t about anything. If I asked you what an episode of The Soprano’s was about, or last week’s NCIS, you’d be able to tell me the story of that episode and the general theme of the series. If I asked you to tell me about the difference between South Park, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia or The Goldbergs, you’d be able to explain the concept of each show along with why some parts were funny to you. With the WWE there’s no plot to explain, there’s no mood being expressed other than juvenile and simplistic I’ll-get-you-back anger, and jokes are only funny because of an inter-textual knowledge of social media gossip and a basic acceptance of “poopy” humor.

Whether you like Criminal Minds or The Young Pope, Drake or Yasiin Bey, Kong: Skull Island or Apocalypse Now!, or if you just want to stand in front of Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ for an hour, you will experience some level of intellectual challenge and emotional response based on the semiotical concepts being artistically displayed or empathically implied. But this no longer happens when you watch the WWE.

On the other hand, if I ask you what an ad for Apple’s Air Pods or a commercial for Tide Pods is about, you could tell me that pretty easily as well. You could describe the aesthetics used, possibly the short story or quick joke told, and then – of course – what product they want you to buy. This is what the WWE is now.

The WWE is an engine to show you stuff that you need to purchase in a cute, flashy clips, in order to maintain this relationship of dependance. There’s no deeper meaning, no superior athleticism on display, or exhilarating competition implied. Hell, we all know what the outcomes to the matches we’re seeing are, if not also the future marquee match-ups for the next 6 months. And certainly we’ve been conditioned to not want to see the wrestlers doing anything dangerous in their fake fight that might accidentally really hurt their partner in the performance. Instead, we’re watching these “wrestlers” (if we’re even officially allowed to call them that anymore) go through safe motions in empty competition so to guarantee that it continues to do what we expect it do, in perpetuity. The WWE is now just like toothpaste or pasta sauce.

And – hey – the WWE is pretty cheap! Modest tickets to live events aren’t that expensive and are rarely bought out by ticket re-sellers bots in advance (a minor miracle), merchandise is constantly on sale and often sold in discounted combos, and of course, we all know that the WWE Network is only $9.99 (US). So at those prices, why would you expect to be getting any kind of premium product? You’re getting what you’re paying for.

It would be crazy to pay $30 for the WWE Network now, right? Even though that’s what one, 3-hour PPV used to cost. And guess what? It used to be worth that price.

Give me PPVs that are solidly awesome, and about something more than just leading me into the next PPV, and I’d pay $50 for that shit. Hell, if I go to the movies with another person every weekend I’m gonna be paying way more than that every month. A movie, at the very least, has the promise of a fulfilling, singular, artistic experience. But a WWE PPV today, it’s just a homogenized, bullshit commercial for the next PPV. That’s the current business model, and as fans in 2017 we all just care about “the business”, right? Well, all you business marks (BARKS!) have painted us into a creative corner where the risk of putting on consistently interesting, innovative, exciting pro-wrestling shows is now overridden by the need to maintain the bottom line. Cool.

And that’s what gets us back to a world where the Southpaw Regional Wrestling skits are considered a “success”. I’ll ask you again, what was that shit about? Was there any wrestling? No. Was it interesting? Not really. Was it funny? That shit was corny (c’mon… maybe there was a good couple of seconds, but if that’s your idea of comedy then I’ve got about five stand-up comics I’d like to introduce you to, and a whole library of PFFR shows you need to watch). Did it make you think about anything? Did it stimulate your imagination? Seriously?

The WWE used to be a place that promised a world where your imagination could run wild. While Southpaw Regional Wrestling is fine enough as a cute gag, I guess, are you actually imagining what it would be like to see these wrestlers fighting in these gimmick roles? If so, that’s as much of an indictment of the sad state of WWE wrestling as anything: that you’d rather see Big Bartholemew vs. John Johnson, knowing that you’ll never see a good Rusev vs. TJ Perkins match in the WWE.

Nah, the WWE isn’t concerned about giving you content to think about, or expanding your mind, providing imaginative content; they want to sell you products. And to do that efficiently it means providing the minimum amount of great wrestling that still allows them to subconsciously drill into you how much Georgia Gold Honey Mustard BBQ chicken at KFC is delicious.

Southpaw Regional Wrestling, make no mistake about it, was branded content; you know, when marketers get creative people to produce incognito commercial content specifically for an unrelated product. Google does it, the New York Times does it, GM does it, Gimlet does it; it’s common, but it’s also annoying.

While the WWE generates income from the ads and views on their YouTube page, they also just doubled-down on that by getting you to watch four complete KFC ads on their ad-sponsored YouTube page – and made you love it and tweet about it for free all weekend! All to see some bad skits that poke fun at how stupid wrestling is… again. Here’s a crazy idea, why not just make some awesome wrestling and we’ll all just pay you for that… and then you can tell KFC to go peddle their gross new chicken flavor on an episode of Scandal or some shit.

So congrats WWE, you’re now just a big fucking commercial. And what’s gonna happen when we don’t want to buy your shit anymore?