John Pollock &Wai Ting review WWE Raw featuring Drew McIntyre vs. Kofi Kingston, the debut of announcer Jimmy Smith, a review of the Mick Foley A&E Biography, and the Toronto Maple Leafs are done!
WWE Raw: If Bobby Lashley and MVP are banned from ringside, will we get a winner between Drew McIntyre and Kofi Kingston? Can Nikki Cross beat the clock again? Why would Elias walk out of a title match? Can Shayna Baszler communicate with dolls? What are T-Bar and Mace talking about? If Kevin Patrick asks politely, will Drew McIntyre share with the audience if he’s ready? How short of a match can Shelton Benjamin and Cedric Alexander squeeze into this episode? All these answers and more.
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Horrendous show, I thought Smith was ok but anyone would sound great compared to Virk.
The RAW women’s division is probably the worst in wrestling. Rhea Ripley is completely dead, just the lamest scripting in a long time.
I found this almost impossible to watch after Dynamite and DON. The Thunderdome feels very lame and stale and I think it begins to hurt WWE’s numbers soon
It was the best they could do without adding more people in an indoor setting during a pandemic, which helped stopped their ratings dip for a significant period of time, and they’ve already announced they’re going back on the road in a month an a half. There’s plenty of valid criticisms for Raw, but it seems like complaining for the sake of complaining just because another company that owns an outdoor venue beat them to the punch by a couple of weeks.
While I am sick of the thunderdome and cant wait for fans to come back, I completely agree with this. I give them credit for coming up with this concept as while its not as good as fans, its 10 times better then the performance centre shows.
To me it’s been nine months. Other leagues (NBA,NHL) have pivoted a lot more smoothly and were in the exact same position last August. They just likely don’t want to disappoint shareholders by dumping this monstrosity they paid millions for (while at the same time cutting talent due to “budget” reasons).
Its crazy how a company can have 3 main shows (Raw, SD, NXT), and 2 of the three can be very good, while one is just hot garbage. The 3 hours i a factor, but its not the only factor.
These aren’t analogous things. Those are teams with owned arenas where getting any sort of ticket sales is helpful because they’re already sunk investments. WWE doesn’t own an arena so renting out and traveling for the sake of putting a couple hundred people indoors a week doesn’t help anyone and I’m sure there would be just as many complaints about the sound not being right in those scenarios as well (including putting people indoors in any significant numbers before vaccines were proliferated - which they’ve become at an increased pace than we believed even 4 months ago).
By the way, the talent thing isn’t just a check mark response to this - if there’s a bottom line, not wasting even more money in a time they won’t be making it up with enough ticket sales means less people wind up losing their jobs. So complaining about talent getting released (not commenting on the breaking news right now) and also wanting them to get less out of investments (especially one that was almost completely positively received) is just boxing them in a ridiculous corner.
That’s not the case for every team. WWE had plenty of time to try new things or experiment but they have done the same thing for nine months now. Sad thing is, because their booking is terrible, it’s actually better to control the reactions in the Thunderdome.
They are making a ton of money so the fact that they make all these cuts for “budget” reasons and then are too cheap to get out of the Thunderdome is a joke.
They are bankrupt creatively both on and off screen
“Try new things” is a great thing to say without a plan, price, or consequences for it not working. AEW’s big idea was changing nothing and adding a slight amount of fans at a time the pandemic was flaring up. New Japan has run clap crowds for a year. ROH, Impact Wrestling, and MLW have had empty arenas. Who is making these kinds of investments and experimentations that you expect just out of WWE?
And it’s just a need to criticize, because the company as a whole is not creatively struggling. One show is. Smackdown and NXT are positively regarded. NXT UK has made massive improvements since going to the BT studio, and outside of a slip or two, WWE’s shortened PPVs (that was a pretty major and positive change from their usual designs) have been almost all well-received. It’s fine if you don’t like their shows, but generically criticizing across the board doesn’t work.
Management’s job is to adjust, they have not done that. Today’s releases are more evidence of that. They have enough money to take risks but play it safe because they are only accountable to shareholders. That’s it
Alright I get it. You’re mad at them. But acting like they didn’t adjust by moving to their Performance Center, then reorganizing how the direction they shoot the show, then trying to add people to the audience to help the atmosphere, then invested in a technology we had never seen before the pandemic to a greater extent than any other league, rented out arenas and stadiums to keep the look of their normal shows as best as they could - but that they didn’t preemptively throw it out before vaccines were prevalent enough to fill indoor arenas and do “something”, just because they have money and you expect them to throw it away, is just kinda crazy.
They’re literally ramping up to leave this place as you ask. I know they’re the big, bad company to a majority around here, but setting generic goals with ambiguous requisites is just meant to get the answer you want. They’re going to be the first company back to touring in the country. It’s happening as fast as possible. That’s fine. Be mad at Raw, but it doesn’t work in blanket fashion.
