Hey Scott,
After reading about the crap of the pre-raw WWF tv tapings, what aspects would you bring back from the 1980s/early 1990s WWF/NWA TV shows? I always liked the weekly interview segments like the Brother Love Show and the pre-match promos that were in the corner of the TV because you can explain reasons for a feud in a few minutes not twenty. I also liked that the big stars especially Hulk Hogan were not wrestling on TV every week which made it very special when they did wrestle.
Thanks,
David
I have always considered NWA's weekly TBS show to be the perfect template of exactly what I want in a TV show. Recap of a big angle to start, promo, squash, promo, squash, promo, Midnight Express, promo, hype upcoming big show, done. Memphis was also much the same. Early Monday Night RAW was probably #2. I'd like to see more off-the-cuff promos, where someone wins a big match and then just talks themselves up or calls someone out. Kind of like what UFC fighters do now, hmm?
The production of NWA's show can make it hard to watch. I like the format, but I'd reduce the number of squashes if I was doing it on TV today.
ReplyDeleteI have been watching Smokey Mountain TV from 1992 and they have it right as well. I am getting more entertained by watching 2 or 3 of those in one sitting than I am watching WWE or TNA lately!
ReplyDeleteThose old TV shows were great for what they were - they were broadcast on local TV stations and cable networks (back when cable was still a pretty small item in the TV universe) that made you want to buy tickets to a show or the occasional PPV. If you miss an episode or two...no big deal.
ReplyDeleteBut the genie's out of the bottle - and wrestling is a prime time show, and cable TV networks want higher ratings than they did in the 80s. Those old programs just wouldn't bring in enough viewers to last in a prime time slot. There would have to be a fundamental shift in the way the companies structure their TV programs.
Yeah I don't think you can get away with that many squashes in a major show nowadays, but if they just altered the structure of the show, it would make it seem a lot more fresh. Do we HAVE to start a show with a 20 minute promo? Switch it up, that's what made those '97 Raws interesting, at least it SEEMED like things were a lot more off the cuff (which they were) because they switched up the format every once in awhile.
ReplyDeleteDo whatever you want but I swear to God if you take out the 20 minute opening talk segment every show that's about 20 steps in the right direction. We're about 10 years removed from the Attitude era and we're still following that formula where guy comes out, gets interrupted by some guy, then maybe some other guy, then authority figures music hits and sets up matches. It's beyond tired and needs to go. I still think that hyping matches from week to week could work in today's day and age (instead of booking everything storyline-wise the day of).
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid, our market (Pittsburgh) got all three of the syndicated shows of the era - Superstars, Challenge, Spotlight - I always liked that the shows were tailored to the individual market with promos about upcoming house shows and such, even previewing cards and having wrestlers cut specific interviews about who they would face at the Civic/Mellon Arena.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair....nobody can quite pull off an old-school Midnight Express promo anymore.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite format was probably Raw, when it was good. That probably has more to do with the talent and the writing, but I liked how there was usually some sort of storyline going on throughout the show. The bad guys would brag about their accomplishment, the face would confront them, a match of some kind of booked that one of them is unhappy about, and then during the rest of the show there's backstage segments with them preparing, plotting or attempting to get out of it. While this is happening, other people are doing things that you also care about, like E&C trying to get out of wrestling, Jericho ripping into someone, etc...
ReplyDeleteI also liked Nitro, when there were just random competitive matches. Outside of the nWo stuff it felt like a sporting event - guys showed up to wrestle. The guys wrestling well eventually got title shots or pay per view matches. Sometimes competitive matches got heated and led to a personal feud. Then you'd have guys like Jannetty or Martel showing up, giving the impression that WCW was the play to be for competition. It all went to shit, of course, but it was great for a while.
It doesn't even make sense when you think of it. Put that scenario into a real sport. The fans show up to an event, and the players are just randomly hanging around until the game starts. Then they just start talking shit to one another until the Commissioner shows up to make them play a game - tonight - on that very field.
ReplyDeleteI keep hoping they'll bring back the picture-in-picture promos. WWE gives us so little chance to hear from their talent that we're almost surprised when we hear them speak. Kofi Kingson, for example. From all the times I've heard him spoke, I think he's got some good mic talent. But it just never happens often enough.
ReplyDeleteGiven the length of everyone's entrances these days, I don't see why this isn't possible more often.
"it felt like a sporting event - guys showed up to wrestle. The guys wrestling well eventually got title shots or pay per view matches. Sometimes competitive matches got heated and led to a personal feud."
ReplyDeleteThis. This is what I wished wrestling still was. Actually, ROH kind of is this, but the pacing and production values of their TV shows is so bad I can't watch it anymore.
Yeah, I miss the "episodic" format of RAW. The matches may have sucked, but the stories left you on the edge of your seat and made the time fly by. I remember when RAW ended that I couldn't wait to watch the next one. Now, I either fall asleep before it ends, change the channel if I get bored, or just skip the next week because I don't really anticipate watching it as much.
ReplyDeleteAs others have also said on this webpage before, I also liked how nearly everyone had something going on. You could get invested in the midcarders and that helped when some of them got pushes later on. Now, the WWE has some top level acts and the rest of the card is easily replaceable. I like Kofi Kingston, but don't really have any reason to latch onto the character except that he has massive hang time on big moves.
I love the Nitro "sport" format. You would get the occassional completely random match like Lex Luger vs. La Parka, but it made sense because the "matchmakers" are eying both guys for potential title matches. You knew there was no way in hell Lizmark would beat Luger, but it was still fun and made it feel like a real sport.
ReplyDeleteWWE did something like this a few months ago when they had Orton take on one of the Uso's. Completely random, but I'm a fan of that kind of booking. There's so many guys under contract that you never see on TV, I was shocked when JTG came out on Raw last week. They need to do that more. I would rather they mix up the roster instead of running Dolph vs. Kofi 12 weeks in a row. Try to avoid having a guy wrestle on Raw in consecutive weeks when possible. I think it would freshen up the product a great deal and who knows, maybe somebody you didn't think "deserved" to be on Raw will get over and you've got a new star on your hands.
AGREED. Someone said last year that you could have someone who watched RAW ten years ago and hadn't watch a single other episode watch one today and they'd see very little difference. The stage isn't much different and the overall flow of the show isn't different at all. That's just ridiculous, especially when RAW went through a myriad of changes between 1995 and 2000 or so.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't mind if they varied the promos up too. Why can't we just start RAW with a match? Better yet, why can't Cole or Lawler interview someone instead of someone coming out and just grabbing the mic and talking?
I'd love for the authority figure to go back to a Jack Tunney or Gorilla Monsoon role in that they arbitrate big disputes but stay out of the way the rest of the time.
I still think throwing a few competitive squash matches onto the show and keeping them at 3-5 minutes wouldn't hurt anyone. It doesn't need to dominate the broadcast, but it would avoid burying some of the younger guys and chopping their legs out from under them.
ReplyDeleteTo fill these three hour RAW's it would really help if the WWE had a tag division worth watching because that'd fill the gaps well. However, they haven't done that or really built anything aside from Cena, Punk, Bryan, Sheamus, and AJ. The rest is just "must miss TV" and that's a big problem the company needs to solve.
Personally, I feel that aspects of the less is more approach of the 80s and early 90s would make for much better TV.
ReplyDeleteI'm not really talking about jobber matches or squashes even -- I'm talking about segments. Look at a show like Superstars of Wrestling -- not one single segment on the whole show runs more than six or seven minutes.
People talk, people wrestle, angles are started, the upcoming PPV is hyped and next week is previewed -- all in one hour, it is put together very tightly. Insert interviews take place during restholds in the match or during long wrestler entrances and draw your attention away from the stagnant parts of the program with something new and reminds viewers of the eud. Don't have an insert interview? Throw up some hype for the latest WWE magazine release, DVD/BR release, or twitter facts.
Obviously this is harder to pace for a two hour block, but it can be done.
In this formula, twenty minute interviews are OUT. Seriously everything these days just takes too long -- especially all of the talking. Give more wrestling time to the guys you are trying to get over, who are over, or are good workers that keep the crowd into things between the main event guys. Give the shitty guys who can't work but have a good look shorter squash matches. It's all about maximizizing the strengths of your talent and minimizing their weaknesses -- not following a formula format.
Hey, remember when Hulk Hogan went on the Brother Love show and gave an
interview and Earthquake squashed him and they carried him out on a
stretcher... and then Summer Slam did as good of a buyrate as
WrestleMania VI? 5 minutes 49 seconds for the whole thing, from the
fade in from commercial to start the interview to the fade out of Hogan
being carried away and through the curtain and to the next commercial
break.
This! More interviews that allows the mid-carders, not just the main eventers to speak so the fans could get a chance to either like or hate them. Also bring back midcard feuds. Let different people have an issue up and down the card which would develop week by week. The Damien Sandow/Zack Ryder confrontations should have led to an actual feud instead of a 90 second squash. The issue could escalate week by week, creating interest so people could look forward to their matchups on the house show circuit and onward until the blow-off match at either a PPV or on RAW or Smackdown 2-4 months down the line. This would allow the fans to invest in the midcarders more and if they invest in someone than maybe there would be some upward mobility for some of them. There's no reason why some of the midcarders can't be in programs instead of randomly putting them on and off TV every so often.
ReplyDeleteI agree with this sentiment one hundred million percent but a lot of people don't seem to be into that sort of matchmaking. Every now and then you'll have a random match between two guys who aren't feuding and I'll read a recap where people are blasting it saying things like "what's the point?" or "this advanced nothing, waste of TV time".
ReplyDeleteI've always liked the format of wrestling when it's presented as a TV drama about a fake sport called wrestling. Yeah the drama part is important but the sport part has to be taken more seriously or the drama feels forced. The only time the sport part seems to get TV time is during small angles like "beat the clock" or 1 night tournaments to get a title shot. I think that's why I've been drawn to TNA's product lately with the BFG series where it actually feels like the sport part is being played up. It may also be why 96-98 Nitro was my most "hardcore" fandom where I followed the product most closely.
A part of me hopes that this kind of matchmaking will come back now that Raw is 3 hours. That eventually the writers will run low on ideas and we'll have "random" matches like Justin Gabriel vs. Christian that gets 12 minutes and the announcers talk about how this is a chance for both of them to move up the ladder. The more rational part of me knows this won't happen and that I shouldn't hope, but hope dies slowly.
The rare opportunities he gets to speak he always delivers. I don't know who he pissed off backstage--besides Orton--to not get a chance at an actual program with mic time and a real issue to sink your teeth into. It seems to me that whatever they need him to do he exceeds expectations. Why don't guys like that ever get a chance to move up and do more? It seriously bothers me.
ReplyDeleteThis is the one thing I truly miss from "old school" wrestling, tag-teams. I sometimes think to myself, is it so hard to bring them back and have them be a prominent part of the show? Recently, there are more actual teams wearing the same outfit (yes, this too) than in the last 5-7 years, at least that i can remember and it's a move in the right direction imo. So many dudes doing nothing that would work perfectly as a team.
ReplyDeleteI still worry that we're one RAW away from Big Show appearing and KO'ing the entire division and rendering it worthless again.
ReplyDelete"It's all about maximizing the strengths of your talent and minimizing their weaknesses -- not following a formula format."
ReplyDeleteEXACTLY. I couldn't have said it better myself.
Kofi would be the perfect Barry Windham to R-Truth's Lex Luger. I was watching the Barry Windham heel turn this weekend and man did that angle rule. He could just say he's tired of carrying crazy, unreliable partners and let it roll from there.
ReplyDeleteWell said, and to sort of disagree with you, I don't think the 20 minute interview necessarily has to go away forever, but you drastically reduce how many times you use it so when there actually is a 20 minute interview, it really means something rather than just something you expect at some point during the show.
ReplyDeleteOne Raw away? Didn't that just happen on Smackdown last week?
ReplyDeleteToday:
ReplyDeleteHulk Hogan is defending the title on free TV against Macho King.
At about 10:59 PM, Earthquake and Jimmy Hart run down to attack Hogan (they faced off in a six man tag last week) and the ref stops the match.
Hogan chases Earthquake backstage, but he can't find him. We're about 10 minutes into the overrun now, Hogan finally finds Jimmy Hart, who is begging for mercy. Earthquake then attacks from behind and THROWS HOGAN OFF THE BALCONY ONTO A CRASHPAD!
Michael Cole and Jerry Lawler are stunned at this despicable act.
This is not enough for Earthquake. Quake says he's gonna end Hulkamania once and for all (to secure his spot as a FUTURE HOF WRESTLEMANIA MOMENT OMG). He jumps 25 feet off the stage onto Hogan on the concrete crash pad below with the Earthquake splash. We fade out as the announcer's are speechless.
Hogan comes out next week with taped ribs.
Hogan beats Earthquake at the PPV the following week.
Yeah that is a good point regarding the whole look of the show -- seriously, besides going HD, it looks basically the same and is structured very similarly -- you can't even say that about 1992 versus 1996.
ReplyDelete*slow claps*
ReplyDeleteRusso was responsible for that with wwf back then. The moment he and ferrara left the main event guys were all that mattered. That's how Vince has always been and Stephanie is following suit. Its ridiculous but Russo actually stood up for midcard acts and stories. Nobody has balls to do it there anymore.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'd be fine with that. If you have the content to fill it, then use it. That's part of maximizing the talent -- if you have two guys who can fill that much time and be interesting, then use it, but sparingly. It'll break the pacing of the show up.
ReplyDeleteThe goal in my mind would be to write a show where you're up against a clock for each segment. Fill each one with all of the quality stuff you have. If you start running short on quality angles, then at least fill those segments with some variety.
The early 1990s was an interesting mix in particular -- because you basically had long term booking but shows with Vince Russo pacing and the resulting individual shows were a good balance between the extremes -- you didn't have to shoot your wad by cramming a TON of angles into every show, you just keep different guys coming along to prevent people from getting bored with things.
Maybe. I never watch Smackdown! anymore, mostly because I still don't associate Friday with wrestling.
ReplyDeleteYeah. It was one of the few things I liked about the Russo era. With a good filter, that guy is fine.
ReplyDeleteI dunno. With the way Roger is handing out suspensions, maybe he'll show up to a game this season and tell a player he's fired or read a list of suspended players prior to the game.
ReplyDeleteYou forgot that AJ...makes...a match...for Summerfest. And...tonight...Earthquake...will get in the ring...for a tag match. Earthquake.....and MACHO KING...versus Koko B. Ware...AND HULK HOGAN.
ReplyDeleteThe weekly interview segments ala Piper's Pit should definitely have a place on the 3-hour Raw because god knows they are going to struggle to fill in the gaps. I just have a bad feeling it's going to be a lot of 20-minute segments involving some combination of Cena, Punk, Bryan, Kane, Big Show and...I'm sure they'll find someone else.
ReplyDeleteThis would be the perfect time to introduce a cruiserweight division and pay attention to tag teams and the mid-card. There should be, at the minimum, two cruiserweight matches, two tag team matches and the IntercontiUS champion defending on every show.
I dunno, I've found that the NWA on TBS shows get tedious after a while. Two hours of it is too much, and it takes forever to get through. I think 1.5 hrs would be better.
ReplyDeleteThis may be a bit off-topic, but I don't think the format is the real issue. The Attitude Era RAWs essentially had the same pacing (twenty-minute promo, backstage segments, etc.) but it felt like Must See TV. Nowadays, you can literally skip 80% of the show and not miss a thing of importance.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the big problems is that guys don't have to sell themselves anymore. Guys like Austin and Rock and HBK are a dying breed, because they were really the last generation of wrestlers who came up through the old territory system: you HAD to sell the audience on your gimmick/character or your latest feud in the old days, because your livelihood depended on you putting asses every eighteen inches. Now, WWE does the work for you, right down to scripting the promos. So selling yourself has become a lost skill, and the product has suffered because of it. So most of the guys recite their scripted lines and work their choreographed matches and while some are better than others, the passion and intensity just isn't there most of the time. You can give the midcard wrestlers all the TV time in the world, but if they can't make the audience care about what they're doing, then what's the point?
Yep. This comes down to the WWE style again, with just about everyone working the same way. And the worst part is the promos scripted by bad TV writers. Just comes off as really artificial. If you have to script promos for guys, at least use people with a background in wrestling to write them.
ReplyDelete90 minutes is ideal, yes. Although one thing I liked about the TBS show is that you never really knew how long it was going to run due to baseball, so the format was constantly changing and it kept things fresh all the time. But yeah, the full two hour shows would tend to drag.
ReplyDeleteExcept Austin was seen as a career JTTS, who was a dab hand in the ring and not much else, Rock had familial connections and was marked for stardom from the start and Shawn was part of a tag-team and still didn't draw shit.
ReplyDelete"
ReplyDeleteI think one of the big problems is that guys don't have to sell themselves anymore "
The problem I have with your statement is when they do sell themselves and get over, the WWE undercuts them (see Ryder, Zack) or feeds them to the same old people. How many careers in the last few years has Big Show, Cena, Orton or Kane hurt or set back?
Yes, Show already did that
ReplyDeleteThe production values do suck, but i don't mind the pacing. I tune into ROH, i get 2-3 good matches and inside ROH furthers the other angles, we are done in an hour, certainly better pacing then the shit storm that is Monday night raw
ReplyDeleteIf you like old smokey mountain tapes then Corrnete's ROH might be right up your alley
ReplyDelete"This may be a bit off-topic, but I don't think the format is the real
ReplyDeleteissue. The Attitude Era RAWs essentially had the same pacing
(twenty-minute promo, backstage segments, etc.) but it felt like Must
See TV."
couldn't one of the biggest reasons for this be that we hadn't seen it a million times before?
this sounds more like the attitude era to me.
ReplyDeletethis was the one line I wanted to quote as well.
ReplyDeletethere are several reasons why ECW became the clear #3 promotion - and not one of the other indie competitors. but maybe the best is that Heyman was pretty good at doing just that. like he says himself on the "Rise and Fall" DVD regarding production values (paraphrasing here): "we didn't have the money to have the same huge pyro as the WWF or WCW... so have pyro at all?"
exactly. think about how easy (well, in comparism to what the promotion is dealing with now) it would be to fill three hours if they had a vital tag team, womens and cruisersweight division? add a working midcard and almost instantly all the "must miss TV" is gone.
ReplyDeletesometimes I really have the feeling they are worried a "midcard feud" might get too much heat (and overshadows their "main feud"). which of course is stupid and backward booking.
ReplyDeleteThe midcard feuds are supposed to supplement the main feuds but that seems to be a concept the current creative team does not get.
ReplyDeleteI am a regular goer to the ROH TV Tapings.
ReplyDeleteAwesome! as someone who's been there i have a question, I'm pretty well equidistant to Baltimore and New York, would I be better served making the long ass drive to a TV tapping or the long ass drive to a super show like super card of Honor or Final Battle at the Hammerstein?
ReplyDeleteI always liked what WCW did, especially in the early stages of the nWo, when a guy would win a match and cut a quick promo to the cameraman at ringside. Like a sentence or two. Thought it added some realism.
ReplyDeleteOf course, Goldberg used this the best when he would look into the camera and scream, "Who's Next?!?" Way more powerful than scripted promos.
As a lurker on this blog for years this is one of the best threads in awhile. There are some great ideas and many of you have hit the nail on the head.
ReplyDeleteThe TV Tapings are good but they drag on much like the mega-tapings you hear WWE used to do back in the day. They start at 7 and usually end around 12 and that is to only film less than 4 hours of shows (b/c you factor review segments and such).
ReplyDeleteIf you are curious about how the tapings are handled, come to a taping. (Don't buy ringside seats as they tend to make Gen Admission fans move up). But you may be better off going to a supercard.
Maybe pacing wasn't the word I was looking for. What bothers me is that a TV taping can cover up to six weeks of shows, and there's way too many episodes that show matches from the PPV, which is really stupid. Why would I order the PPV if I know a lot of the matches will be on free TV? And if I ordered the PPV, why would I watch the episodes that show matches I already saw?
ReplyDeleteAnother thing is the lack of actual wrestling. Best example would be a few months ago when one of the guys (Edwards? Maybe Strong or Richards? I can't tell those 3 apart, which is another problem in itself) was training with Dan Sevren. Most ROH fans are smarks who are pretty wise to the biz and know it's he's not training with Sevren, making the whole segment stupid. Even from a kayfabe (whch hadly exists in ROH) standpoint, why would you train with Dan Sevren? He was an awful pro wrestler. All that time, I think that segment ran for 3 weeks, should have been used for actual matches. Plus most ROH are terrible on the mic. Let their in-ring work do the talking.
I think Cornette is suffering from the same problem that Bill Watts had in 1992, in that he still thinks what got over 20 years ago will still get over today. He's also going to run into the problem Heyman had, where bigger companies start signing away his best talent (see Kenny King), though there's not much he can do about that. I'm kind of surprised that TNA hasn't signed Kevin Steen yet, though the fact that Cornette actually pays his talent probably helps.
True enough, but when they did come into their own, they still had to sell the audience on their personas and get themselves over to the point where they could draw money. Obviously, Austin and Rock were more successful than HBK in that regard, but you never got the sense that any of them were reciting scripted lines or playing a prefab character. You believed that they really were The Heartbreak Kid, The Rattlesnake and The Most Electrifying Man in Sports Entertainment because THEY believed it. That's why, as good as they may be in the ring, guys like Ziggler and Kofi have had such a hard time breaking through. They basically do what they're told to do by WWE and have done moderately well in the midcard, but they've yet to deliver the type of performance (in the ring or outside of it) where TPTB have no choice but to sit up and take notice. Shawn did it at WM X, Austin did it at KOTR '96, and so on. But under the current system, I think we're going to see fewer and fewer of those type of moments, and even fewer proper follow-ups by WWE.
ReplyDeleteI think that going back to the old and established is exactly the wrong thing to do. I think a wrestling show needs to do something completely different in terms of presentation and pacing. Maybe messing around with the meta, or perhaps how wrestlers are treated, I mean, whats with interviewing people in the backstage area? Unless what the wrestler did was really, really shocking and vile, interview them in the locker room or an officialish meet the press type situation.
ReplyDeleteI think presenting the talent as people who happen to wrestle instead of wrestlers is a lot better. I know a lot of people didn't love the Jericho/Punk feud, but seeing footage of Punk walking around wearing normal clothing did a lot for me, build up that wrestlers have interests outside wrestling, don't devote tons of time following them throughout their day, but in interviews or just smalltalk. The "behind the wrestler" segments on their youtube channel are really interesting for that very reason. I think they should play that up.
Maybe have a five minute interview every week from a different wrestler talking about why they entered wrestling and let them discuss their attitudes towards competing. Let them get their character across in a "real" manner.
Also, WWE in particular needs to establish if the cameras are invisible or not. I mean, is it a show about wrestling, or is it a wrestling show? Both could work, but you can't split it.
I don't want to go back to nothing but squash matches, but that doesn't mean I have to see a "BIGGEST MATCH EVER" every week. Just make the matches MEAN something. TNA has made every match matter with the BFG series. So you can have something like Bully Ray Vs Magnus that has no history and nothing you should put on PPV still matter.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes a million times to going back to interview segments. Do them Mean Gene style in the ring or WWF Superstars style with a little stage off to the side. Or even a Piper's Pit style, but I'd prefer that not to involve a current active wrestler.
I agree on the road rage matches from pay-per-views being stupid, but how you can say there is a lack of wrestling baffles me, one, ONE episode I've seen ended in a talking segment and there is usually more wrestling on there 1 hour show then we got from Raw in 3. That Dan Severn stuff was stupid, but i feel the product has gotten better through 2012 then it was at the end of 2011
ReplyDeletethanks, much thinking to do
ReplyDeleteAre you the guy in the Jushin Liger costume?
ReplyDeleteThe Road Rage kills me, for having to find something else to cover during those weeks. I think they're starting to iron that out by taping the occasional live show to do all-new Road Rages with, and now that they're doing iPPVs in-house they can do them on Sundays and don't have their TV show running opposite their iPPV leaving at least one week where it's going to be redundant viewing. So hopefully they're done with that for the time being? I don't know yet.
ReplyDeleteIt's weird to think that the last team that had A: the same outfit or at least similar, B: had a team name & joint entrance, and C: only won the titles after they'd been around for a while and worked their way up were the Hart Dynasty, and they really weren't even around THAT long.
ReplyDeleteWhen Hogan Hulks up, instead of doing the "you!" point at the opponent, he points at the Wrestlemania banner.
ReplyDeleteI am not. Too fat for costume :-) I am usually in the stands. This set I was in the second row in a light blue t-shirt.
ReplyDelete