Well, well, well… what do we have here? It’s A View From the Rafters #101. It’s probably more like 115 or so, but it’s my column, so it’s whatever I want it to be. There were 100 running from 2004 until 2010. Then I brought it back, but it was in name only. They have been safe, generic pay-per-view prediction columns. Not at all what AVFR was, and is again. Although, with that said, ladies and gentlemen, the prediction editions of AVFR aren’t going anywhere; after all, they’re easy content. And easy content is better than no content.
“Say my name like it’s a secret / Say it low, then say it loud / Try to frame me as the problem / Like I don’t enjoy it now / You want sweet, you want careful / You want safe behind the eyеs / But I flirt with every danger / And I don’t apologizе…”
“Trouble” by Liv Morgan & Def Rebel
AVFR #1 was titled The Rebirth is Complete, and later got retconned to be AVFR #11 after I canonized the 10 editions of The Smart Plan as A View From the Rafters. Again, my column series, my rules. And we’re talking about a series that launched 22 years ago. I thought of calling this one The Reboot is Complete, but that’s lame, and so I didn’t. And I will begin posting some of those older columns here on the site, mainly to properly archive my old stuff.
This column series ran on LOP Forums, Lords of Pain, NoDQ, The Wrestling Voice, and a whole bunch of other sites back in the early and mid-2000s. Now it finds its home exclusively on the best damn site on the Internet, the only one making Internet fun again, Titanquisitor.com. Also known as the worldwide leader in pro wrestling coverage.
And yes, as is tradition with this column, the banner does in fact feature lovely ladies. Why shouldn’t it? Your eyes don’t deceive you. Ladies and gentlemen, those are the magnificent Monroe twins on the banner… they take the crown of co-Miss AVFR from Zooey Deschanel. Why Blake? Why Chantel? Why the hell not? They’re hot, they wrestle, and I like them! Plus, again, it’s my column, and I want them on the banner. And look, there they are! Amazing.
I’ve now carried on this intro for over 300 words, so probably time to get this show started. It’s officially a proper A View From the Rafters again. And that means nonsense abounds.
Ample Assets
Oh, modern-day WWF, how much do I loathe thee? I can’t even begin to count the ways. Before I even start with this little mini section, let me answer the question that you’re already asking… if you loathe it, why do you watch it?
Mainly out of habit, I guess. I’ve been watching it literally all my life. I’ve watched it every Monday since January 1993. That’s an easy answer though, and a lazy one. I still like the wrestling part for the most part. I do think there are good wrestlers, and occasionally some decent stories, and so that’s why I watch. And basically, because I like wrestling. As I’ve stated many times, it may be shit sometimes, but wrestling matters. And so here we are.
But my God does the modern WWF presentation suck. It’s so bad that I actually miss Vince McMahon. Granted WWF is in the shape it is in now because McMahon was being super petty by selling the company to TKO, but still, he was never this greedy.
Watching any WWF show today is hard because of all the advertisements. I don’t just mean commercials, which are also out of control, I mean there are literally ads everywhere. The ring canvas looks like someone vomited logos on it. For bigger events, they sell space around the edge of the canvas for people to have their names written on it despite not even being able to see it on TV because it’s so small. Fools and their money.
We have PLE entrances for wrestlers coming to the ring that are advertisements. Matches are presented by companies. Slim Jim presents WCW Halloween Havoc was cool and acceptable, this Women’s Championship match presented by PlayStation’s Wolverine is terrible. Even the ads have ads, and I’m not even sure exactly how that’s possible.
I’m a fan of capitalism, but modern WWF is about as greedy and excessive as it gets. It’s par for the course considering who’s behind TKO, but good lord. And then on top of all the ads, everything is so overly polished and corporate it just sucks the life out of the product. There’s nothing RAW about RAW, and that’s sad. RAW today might as well be Overly Polished and Exceptionally Well Done. It makes a terrible name for a show, but that’s what it is! Will I start calling it that in my previews? Absolutely not, because the show is still called RAW, but that’s what it actually is. That’s also been the case for like 20 years now, but damn, I just miss when RAW was RAW.
Can we ever get back to that? Probably not, at least not as long as TKO owns the company.
And no, this wasn’t the main column, even though you probably thought it was going to be, considering the section heading is the same as the column title. That’s just misdirection, ladies and gentlemen. Some might call it a swerve!
Now we can proceed to our feature presentation, presented unknowingly by Dasani water – the (un)official drink of Stinger. And by Coke Zero, again unknowingly, the (un)official drink of Titanquisitor. And by… see how annoying it is?
There’s Too Much Wrestling On TV,
and It’s Mostly the Same
Our main event topic might sound weird coming from a die-hard wrestling fan, but I stand behind it: there’s too much wrestling on TV these days. And it’s not just too much of it being broadcast; it’s also a problem of it all being mostly the same. Hence the title, “There’s Too Much Wrestling, And It’s Mostly the Same.” No swerve this time, just good journalism from the premier wrestling correspondent on the worldwide leader in pro wrestling coverage.
We have wrestling on some platform every night of the week, except maybe Sunday (and even then I’m not sure). Some days have multiple shows. Even pay-per-views are no longer confined to the weekends, they may pop up at any damn time.
It gets to be exhausting, especially when you try to cover the stuff. And even then, you can’t cover it all. I would like to watch and cover Evolve and Main Event, and MLW, and NWA Powerr, and Ring of Honor, and AAA. And that doesn’t account for various Indie shows. Notice how I wrote “and” a bunch of times? That’s not grammatically correct; I know this. But that’s how they came to me when I remembered another one that existed that I don’t cover.
Who has the time? There’s already RAW, NXT, Dynamite, Impact, SmackDown, Collision. Then the never-ending onslaught of PPVs and PLEs. Halloween night gave us NXT Halloween Havoc, AEW Fright Night Collision, and week two of AAA Heroes Inmortales. Did I cover AAA? No, because Halloween Havoc and Collision took long enough due to trying to watch a little college football.
Now when I was a kid, I probably would have thought this was a fantastic problem to have. There’s wrestling on every day of the week. I’m a wrestling fan, what’s not to like?
Well, it’s a lot like binge-watching a show. Sure, you’re enjoying it, but there’s no anticipation building. You’re just rushing through it. There’s no time to think about it, to properly digest what you’ve witnessed, or to miss it and have something to look forward to. It’s just right into the next episode.
And wouldn’t you know it, the next episode is kinda like the last one. It’s a different show, it may be a different promotion, but it’s fundamentally the same.
Yes, one promotion may feature less actual wrestling than the other, but ultimately the wrestling follows the same pattern on both shows. It’s largely formulaic at this point.
Monday Night RAW features largely the same group of wrestlers wrestling the same group of wrestlers for however many weeks until they switch dance partners. Dynamite does the same, although they do mix it up slightly more. NXT is generally good about what they do, but outside of the women, it has suffered significantly with the current crop of male superstars. SmackDown and Collision follow the same pattern as RAW and Dynamite.
It’s not just the matchups that stay stagnant for lengthy periods of time, but the formula of those matches largely stays the same as well. We’re either going to get a clean finish, or we’re going to see outside interference. It’s usually outside interference.
Every match that’s not a singles match has to include the same spots. One wrestler hits his supposed finishing maneuver, another then hits his move on that guy, and then someone takes him out with theirs, and the cycle continues until everyone gets a move. And of course if it’s a multi-person match, well everyone gather around and hold hands and wait for one wrestler to get their magnificent dive over the ropes or off the top to the convenient crowd that has been gathered below waiting for 10 seconds for the spot to develop.
And because we have main wrestler against main wrestler, everyone has to get their stuff in. Everyone has their sequence, their trademark maneuver, their spot that they have to get in in every single match. Wouldn’t you know it, someone could wrestle 10 matches and never find themselves in a certain predicament, but once they’re in the ring with this particular wrestler everyone ends up eventually in the same spot so that person can hit their move or sequence.
And then there’s the constant shimmying. I’ve been laid out, but I’m not in the correct position. I know my opponent is heading to the top rope, because they do this move every single match after doing the move that just put me on my back. Oh, but what’s this, I’m not in the correct position. Let me roll around a bit, and reposition myself, and behold now I’m perfectly primed to have my opponent land on me. It looks so natural. I am a professional.
Moving away from the match itself, there’s also the way the show itself is presented. And this criticism is directed more towards the World Wrestling Federation where, in case you have forgotten, anything can happen. And why can anything happen? Because the show seemingly isn’t booked until it’s already in progress.
They have General Managers, or Directors of Authority, or Commissioners, or whatever they call Adam Pearce and Nick Aldis, but lo and behold, half the matches get made by the wrestlers during the middle of the show. Adam and Nick should be glad that wrestlers give promos that escalate their beef with another wrestler, otherwise the show might not have a main event since they didn’t think to book one beforehand.
And wouldn’t you know it, props to All Elite Wrestling, while they may not have an onscreen authority figure, they always manage to announce the card beforehand. Or at least 90% of it. It’s not a hard concept to grasp, I don’t know why the WWF fails to understand the basic concept of promotion. Announce a reason for people to tune in, not scramble to find a way to try to keep them watching during the show.
This brings me to one of the things I dislike most about modern TV wrestling, and I can admit it’s a minority opinion. And I just hurt myself by typing modern TV wrestling, only to remember that this has been a problem since at least 1998. Apparently, my preferred style of TV wrestling went out of style nearly 30 years ago, and now I’m old and saddened. Congrats to me, I have seemingly worked myself into a shoot.
See, I liked when wrestling featured enhancement talent. The journeyman, the local hero, who stepped into the ring with the established superstar, and had a solid five-to-ten-minute match. It wasn’t always a squash, the enhancement talent usually got in some decent offense, but the outcome usually wasn’t in question. And what did this accomplish? Well, it allowed the superstars to pick up some clean wins. We didn’t need constant cheating, constant DQs from outside interference, or 50/50 booking where wrestlers wrestle each other each show and simply trade wins.
Dean Douglas is on quite the win streak. Razor Ramon is on quite the win streak. What’s this? Razor just looked very impressive over some dude from the nearest indie promotion and now he’s being attacked AFTER the match by Dean Douglas. Now Dean Douglas is having a match against some kid from a nearby town, and there’s Razor Ramon in a square at the bottom of the screen talking about what he’s going to do to Dean Douglas at the next pay-per-view. They’re both on win streaks, they’re both looking impressive, and they haven’t wrestled one another yet, let alone the past seven weeks in a row. I think I’ll order the pay-per-view and see who prevails.
That’s not to say that wrestling shows can’t have main talent against main talent, or that I only liked old RAWs because they featured main talent against enhancement talent. I watched Ric Flair and Mr. Perfect in a Loser Leaves Town match on RAW. I watched Bret Hart defend the WWF Championship against 1-2-3 Kid on RAW. And part of what made that last match special was because the Kid had been that enhancement talent. We had seen him lose a lot, until he shocked the world and beat Razor Ramon (the unsung hero of this column apparently). And because of that victory, it was believable to me at the time that he might do it again and knock off the Hitman.
There’s room for both. You can have the traditional squash, to make someone look dominant. Think Oba Femi destroying three guys. You can have a main star have a competitive match against an indie guy, even if the finish largely isn’t in question. After all, these matches should serve as a way to improve at the craft for each person, meaning the established star having to sell. I know, selling in this day and age, what a concept! And you can have a main talent take on another main talent.
But they should feel like bigger deals. You should know coming into the show which match that’ll be. Because it should be announced a week or two in advance. It’s not hard. You announce that Superstar A will be taking on Superstar B in two weeks on RAW. And maybe A wrestles some local guy tonight, while B delivers a promo talking about how he can’t wait to get his hands on A in two weeks. Maybe, and this will blow your mind, Superstar A can be walking to the ring for his showdown with the local hero, and while he’s making his entrance a pre-taped promo airs in the corner where he’s telling Superstar B to pay attention because this ass whooping will be his in two weeks.
Now I have something to circle on the calendar. It’s going down in two weeks, and I can’t wait to see it. And why can’t I wait to see it? Because I haven’t seen it the previous four weeks in a row.
And I know that the World Wrestling Federation has Premium Live Events now. They’re not asking you to shell out $60 for a pay-per-view, therefore they don’t have the greatest incentive to try and get you to watch their PLE. They’re more concerned with the ratings for their weekly shows, which I don’t understand because they don’t promote those worth a damn either. I know, we preview every single one of them.
We have companies that are overflowing with talent, and yet each show features the same handful of guys and gals doing the same thing week in and week out. Meanwhile, talented individuals are sitting in the back guarding the catering. Are they injured? No. Creative just doesn’t have anything for them. Because everyone has to be involved in a story, and we only have room for those in a story on the show. And our stories consist of doing the same thing week in and week out until we do it on the PLE. Oh, is that the blow off? Of course not, we’re going to keep running it until the next PLE.
This isn’t a revolutionary concept; I didn’t invent it. It worked for over a decade. Instead of doing some variation of the same match week in and week out, or combining matches and running a tag match, we cycle in other stars and they wrestle enhancement talent. Everyone learns, everyone improves, and no one spends three months twiddling their thumbs waiting for some guy in creative to say, “we have a story for you, you’re about to spend eight weeks losing to the same guy, then six weeks losing to another, because your story is that you’re a loser, or rather that you’re growing frustrated because you’re on a losing streak.”
That doesn’t mean you abandon stories, it simply means you tell them in a different fashion. Just because two people wrestle one week, doesn’t mean they have to continue their conflict the next. There are backstage interviews and pre-taped promos to keep stories moving while neither has to wrestle. But anytime main talent are going to be wrestling main talent, the fans should know about it at least a week in advance, preferably more, and especially for a championship match. At no point should we be 30 minutes from going off the air and have an in-ring promo turn to violence, causing Adam Pearce (or whoever) to run out with a referee. Because what the hell did you have planned had this guy giving a promo not been attacked? Apparently, nothing, in the context of how the show is supposed to work.
And before anyone complains about my usage of “anything can happen in the World Wrestling Federation” and wanting to have it seem like the show wasn’t booked on the fly, I can most certainly have my cake and eat it too. It wouldn’t have been much use in baking it if I couldn’t. I want to eat it, not admire it before it molds and gets trashed. Just because two guys erupt into violence because someone lets words get under their skin doesn’t mean we have to have the match tonight. Imagine Adam Pearce (or whoever) running out and stopping it, and proclaiming, “You two will settle this next week in our main event.” A week to promote a match? Is such a thing even legal? Well, of course it is. You can build anticipation over the course of a week, or two, you don’t instantly need to blow your load right then and there. Have a little stamina.
It gets to be exhausting when it’s every show, and every day of the week. There’s a break on Sunday, most weeks, but every other day of the week is filled with wrestling. Doing the same thing, over and over again. And with the same people. Am I watching wrestling or developing a monogamous relationship?
And it’s not just one-hour shows anymore. We need two-hour shows.
We need shows that are scheduled for two hours, but set your DVR because we’re going over. This week we’re only going over five minutes. So next week you set it to go 10 minutes over. A rational thought, but we’re going 14 minutes over. Excellent, I’ll set it for 15 next week. I’m sorry, did you want to see the finish to the main event? Well, you should’ve set it for 30 minutes, because this week we’re going 20 minutes past the hour. Okay, I’ve learned this game; next week I’ll set it for 30. I’m a silly goose, of course you went over 35 minutes this time. Next week, I will see all of your show because I’m setting the DVR to run an hour past the time you’re scheduled to be off the air. But of course, the joke is on me, you only went four minutes over this time. I guess I’ll just have 56 minutes of Impractical Jokers to not watch.
Would someone please tell me why Tony Khan can’t have his shows go off the air at either a decent hour or at least on a consistent schedule? Why does it vary so much? You never know when Dynamite is going off the air. I’m okay with an overrun, but is it going to be five minutes or 45 minutes? It shouldn’t be that big of a discrepancy, nor should it fall at any point in between those times. Their approach seems to be “we’re on the air, and we’re not going off,” ladies and gentlemen. We announced 13 matches for a two-hour show, and dammit, every single one of them needs to go 15 minutes. And we have factions galore, and they all need to brawl. We need factions joining factions and creating mega factions.
It’s the opposite of old Monday Night Nitro, where we’d spend the show being hyped up for a main event, then get into that main event with two minutes left in the show and have it cut short by some big brawl between WCW and the NWO (for the 25th ending in a row) only to not even get to enjoy that because lo and behold, we’re out of time. Of course you are. That was piss poor planning. But in AEW, their motto seems to be, “we’ve only just begun!” Of course you have.
And don’t think I’ve forgotten about SmackDown! It’s main event time, there’s ten minutes left and you have no reason whatsoever to believe any near-fall you see. If this match ends with a pinfall, it’s going to do it in the final minute. You see, on SmackDown!, the winning wrestler has impeccable timing. He knows the show is about to end, he knows there’s no overrun; and would you look at that, he gets the pinfall at 8:59 Central, and there are 45 seconds to celebrate and let the victory sink in.
It’s literally paint-by-numbers at this stage. Ultimately, I can’t blame the writers (my goodness, people, can we get a proper booker and not a team of writers?) as they are trying to create multiple hours of TV every single week.
For that reason, I humbly suggest that each brand should have one major show that’s two hours long, and not a minute more, and a one-hour show, and not a minute more. We use our wrestlers strategically, and in proper rotation, so that we’re building towards shows several weeks in advance in addition to properly building a PPV or PLE. This way the viewer doesn’t get burned out, all the wrestlers get to do something at some point, and every show doesn’t follow the exact same formula with no variation from week to week.
And let the record show, I am being rather generous. If I truly had my way, all weekly shows would be a maximum of one hour, and they would be tightly produced. RAW was best at one hour. Nitro was best at one hour. NXT was best at one hour. Impact was best at one hour. It’s a proven formula, and it works. Now we’re asked to watch 15 hours or more of wrestling a week, every week.
Give me time to miss it, or at least change it up a bit.
And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the first real old-school-style A View From the Rafters that I have written in over a decade. And do you know what? It was kinda fun to be back in the saddle, and not simply previewing a wrestling event and offering some predictions.
Will this be a weekly thing? Absolutely not.
I already publish a ridiculous amount of stuff on the site. Adding another weekly commitment wouldn’t be smart, or at least trying to promise it wouldn’t be.
So instead, I’ll try to make it at least a monthly occurrence. Ideally, I’d like to do it biweekly, but between endless previews and various other columns, plus the Weekly Wrestling Wrap-Up, I’m not going to publicly commit to that schedule.
With that said, I’ll be back later today with our Monday Night RAW preview. I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I’d venture a bet that it sounds an awful lot like last weeks.
Until next time, this has been Stinger, reporting from the rafters of Titanquisitor Hall, reminding you all that even though it may be shit at times, wrestling matters.
