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In 1997, pro wrestling was flourishing. WCW and WWE (then the WWF), in hot competition on Monday nights, were both pulling amazing ratings with viewership in the millions each show they put on. They were selling PPV's. More importantly, it was captivating, entertaining television.
You could flip the TV back and forth between The Rock and Hulk Hogan on the same night, considered the two biggest pro wrestling draws of all time. You could watch Undertaker's Ministry at one moment, then flip over and watch the nWo storyline progress. Both organizations had remarkable depth of talent on their rosters and both had amazing storylines to back up their in-ring product.
Then things started to change. WCW started becoming less and less entertaining, the downward slide beginning with the infamous "fingerpoke of doom" in which Kevin Nash dropped the WCW Title to Hulk Hogan only a matter of seconds into the match when Hogan "poked" him with his index finger. Nash dropped to the canvas and was pinned. Fans felt ripped off. There was also an incident where Eric Bischoff spoiled the end of a taped Raw live on Nitro, telling everyone that Mick Foley would win the (then) WWF Title. Many switched over to watch Foley win the title, and that was the start of the WCW ratings decline.
WWE remained relatively entertaining simply due to the talent of its roster, including The Rock, Steve Austin, Kurt Angle, The Undertaker, Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, and the list goes on and on. The booking was at times horrible (anyone remember Katie Vick?), however the product remained strong. WCW continued its slide and eventually collapsed to be bought out by WWE.
Then WWE ran the catastrophically awful Invasion angle, where WCW and ECW stars were feuding with WWE stars in an admittedly clever way to assimilate them into the roster. However many of the former WCW 'stars' were quickly demoted to jobber duty, such as Diamond Dallas Page and Scott Steiner. WWE was now without competition, but instead of the ratings going up, they went down.
Bad booking made for boring television, and many former ECW and WCW fans were upset to see their favorite wrestlers mistreated (I still feel that WWE could have used Raven much better than they ever did). I still watched WWE though, at the least for its great in-ring PPV wrestling. And for The Rock. That guy is just awesome.
The invasion angle died with a whimper, and the WWE introduced the Brand Split in April of 2002. Different stars would be exclusively featured on each of their two shows, Raw and Smackdown. At this time they had just absorbed the WCW and ECW rosters, so this worked well for a while to add intrigue and make storylines more interesting. Lesser stars would get more time on their individual brand because there wasn't a top card traveling from show to show.
However today, the WWE roster is fractured. No more Rock, no more Steve Austin. The WWE only has perhaps 10 wrestlers that you could reliably put a World Title on, whereas they may have had 30 or even 40 back in 2002. They just don't have as many entertaining wrestlers any more, and their roster is spread far too thin between three brands. I tend to watch Raw for Jeff Hardy, Chris Jericho, and to extents Mr. Kennedy and Santino. I don't watch Smackdown right now, it just isn't good enough. I don't want to see Vicki Guerrero. I don't want to see Mark Henry. I don't want to see Big Daddy V. The only redeeming qualities of Smackdown are Edge, Rey Mysterio, Undertaker and MVP, but they aren't enough to make me want to stay in on Friday nights.
Collapse the three brands into one unified roster. Unify the IC/United States Title, The WWE/World Tag Titles, and the World/WWE/ECW Titles. Get all of your talent on all three shows - whether or not they want to work Tuesdays.
You know, I'd probably watch Smackdown for Hardy and Jericho.
1 comment:
Good post. It's hard to believe how good things were back in 1997 compared to now.
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