WWE Champion Drew McIntyre headlined the Legends Night episode of RAW with Keith Lee in a WWE Title match. McIntyre and Lee’s match began at 10:30 EST and the two competed until the final stretch of the show. In the end, it was McIntyre delivering a Claymore Kick to Lee to retain his WWE Championship.
After the match, McIntyre shook Lee’s hand, grabbed a microphone and it appeared that he was going to share a few words about the match and speak to the number of legends that were sitting at the top of the entrance ramp watching the main event. As McIntyre began to speak, former Universal Champion Goldberg’s music hit and he made his way to the ring to confront McIntyre. Goldberg talked about how McIntyre views those on the stage as “washed up” and how McIntyre feels he’s better than them. This led to Goldberg challenging Drew to a match for the WWE Title at the Royal Rumble on 1/31.
Goldberg’s last match for WWE took place at WrestleMania 36 where he lost the Universal Title to Braun Strowman. He has appeared on WWE programming since that lost via the ThunderDome and on WWE’s The Bump program.
During the summer of 2020, Goldberg revealed that he’s under contract to WWE through 2023 and his deal is structured on two matches per year. The match between McIntyre and Goldberg has not been made official as of this writing.
Unlike some, I have no problem with Goldberg coming back, however I think they did some damage to him with how he was jobbed out to Strowman and mania after squashing The Fiend. I’m cool with him jobbing, but based on the way Strowman was booked after mania, he was not the right guy which makes Goldberg just look bad thereby hurting his stock which will effect whomever beats him now.
As for Drew, to be honest I’d rather see Roman face him. Spear vs spear where Roman destroys him. Do a Rockey/Apollo/Drago story line where Roman is like Ivan Drago and he just kills (not literally like in the movie lol) Goldberg leading to another babyface to come to his aid and challenge Roman at mania.
Goldberg hits a spear
Goldberg hits a 2nd spear
Goldberg hits a jackhammer
McIntyre kicks out
Goldberg goes for 3rd spear but McIntyre hits a claymore
McIntyre hits 2 claymores and gets the win
Yeah that was the worst part of the whole interaction to me. Goldberg treated Drew as if he was some heel. It’s odd how everything in WWE is scripted to death but an important detail like that is just overlooked.
I didn’t realize they did a bad number last night.
Regardless, I think ratings are down due to a variety of things, but there are four big ones in my mind.
Overexposure: First and foremost I think overexposure is killing them. Just look at Raw vs SD, SD is so much easier to watch then Raw. To commit to WWE main roster, that means 5 - 8 hours of viewing a week. Very hard to bring in new viewers with that model.
Creative: I think overly/poorly scripting performers with little to no acting ability is hurting the product, same goes for storylines/gimmicks that are simply outdated/get dropped out of nowhere/are not logical. I could go much deeper, but everyone knows what I mean.
Bad PR: Amongst the hardcore fans I think bad PR hurts them. from former talent Speaking out regarding the way they were treated, the handling of Covid, the Saudi deal etc. it is to a degree hurting the viewership. I do limit this to hardcore fans though, I don’t think casual fans care.
TV landscape: no doubt about it, TV has changed. I’ll use AEW as my example. I think most would say AEW is far more successful then TNA ever was. Well, to put that in perspective, AEW is stuck in that 760K to 980K viewers per week range, I’m pretty sure TNA was close to 2mil and I would never call TNA a better or more successful product. More things to watch and a change in viewing habits is definitely a factor.
Those are my main four. And I should also mention no fans. I consider myself a hardcore fan, and I have watched since the early 90’s, and I find AEW, WWE, Impact etc are all hard to watch to a degree with no fans. I will say though, the environment that AEW has created is the best I’ve seen, got to give them credit.
The bad creative is probably the main issue. Roman Reigns seems like a game changing talent compared to anything else on the roster. He has logical motives, and his actions make sense. Where as, Buddy Murphy lost half his name for no reason, helps take Rey’s eye out, beats up Dominic, but then hooks up with an 18 year old member of the same family,
because…reasons???
Where as, in Japan there is more story telling in a single match than 8 hours of WWE programming
Agreed with pretty much all of this. Biggest problem with WWE is knee jerk reactions and storytelling that is being changed week to week. Almost any writer will tell you that when you write a great story, from the beginning you map out the ending, in fact l, I have heard many writers say they start with the ending and work their way backwards. When you change things weekly, things just make no sense, and seem all over the place. But, to give credit where credit is due, they have done an amazing job with the Roman storyline.
How many people watch New Japan? Being more like them won’t help their viewership that much, it’d just make wrestling purists happy. Every singles match in New Japan also seems to have the exact same formula and when that formula means every match going 20 mins plus, a lot of people will just be bored by it.
I agree there are issues like I put in my previous post, but they just did their best rating since March. Your original post gave me the impression that you read the ratings were down which is not true.
There is a middle ground. I agree that WWE shouldn’t be just like NJPW, there is a reason why WWE is and has been the #1 wrestling promotion in the world for decades. With that said, they should be able to be better versions of themselves. Cut Raw to 2 hours, dont use scripting that is unrelatable, and tell long term stories that make sense and I think that it would make the world of difference.
A lot of what you outlined is doable. But the big one that would facilitate everything else is “Cut RAW to two hours”. But if they do that, their investors file a pretty solid lawsuit against them. The most profitable wrestling company of all-time isn’t about to start giving up that revenue because the IWC doesn’t like Retribution.