We do our best to stray away from the negative when it comes to the WWE, but sometimes enough is enough. Let's face it - the WWE has some horrible habits. Join Adam Blampied as he breaks down the 10 biggest ways the WWE disrespects its fans.
What's your biggest WWE pet peeve? Let us know in the comments!
0:00 - Introduction
1:46 - #10
2:53 - #9
3:40 - #8
4:37 - #7
5:47 - #6
6:49 - #5
7:51 - #4
8:58 - #3
10:06 - #2
11:01 - #1
#WWE #WWETop10
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What's your biggest WWE pet peeve? Let us know in the comments!
0:00 - Introduction
1:46 - #10
2:53 - #9
3:40 - #8
4:37 - #7
5:47 - #6
6:49 - #5
7:51 - #4
8:58 - #3
10:06 - #2
11:01 - #1
#WWE #WWETop10
WrestleTalk Podcasts are moving here https://bit.ly/3pEAEIu
Adam Blampied's lists are moving here https://bit.ly/32JJsCv
Wrestling Daily has moved here https://bit.ly/3j3BXOZ
WrestleTalk stays here https://goo.gl/WfYA12 |
SUBSCRIBE TO THEM ALL! Make sure to enable ALL push notifications!
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/partsfunknown
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/partsfunknown/
SUBSCRIBE TO partsFUNknown: https://bit.ly/2J2Hl6q
Category
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SportsTranscript
00:00 Alright let's have a little bit of a moan. Honestly I've tried to avoid skewing negative
00:03 against WWE since I started doing lists again. Lists of the worst things in wrestling are
00:08 fun, they're fun to write, typing the word 'bad' into thesaurus.com and getting creative
00:12 with ways to talk about what is essentially silly entertainment, but I've tried to avoid
00:16 overtly coming after Vince's brigade of sweaty charades. But honestly right now, it's hard
00:21 to avoid how dumb it feels to follow modern WWE. The fact that fans have been back for
00:26 a little bit and some of WWE's worst habits have intensified rather than relaxed, it gets
00:30 proper dispiriting after a while. And if you'll indulge me, I'd like to dedicate one full
00:34 list into trying to examine what these habits are and how all those roads lead to one thing.
00:39 WWE not really giving a hairless monkey ass about wrestling fans. Fans have their own
00:44 bad habits, obviously, but I honestly believe at the end of the day we want to enjoy wrestling.
00:49 We want to be able to sit and watch a show without the constant spectre of questionable
00:53 decisions constantly needling us and forcing us to examine why. Why do we still care? Because
00:59 at this point I'm not sure that I've always got an answer to that. And it goes beyond
01:02 simple stuff like I don't like the doll, and trust me I do not like the doll, but it's
01:06 more than that and I'll try to explain why. Now just to be clear, this list was recorded
01:11 before SummerSlam, it's not being released in response to SummerSlam. Hopefully, SummerSlam
01:16 was good. We really hope that because we just had to watch it last night. Now as you'll
01:22 see, this is something that's been brewing for a while. I'm Adam from PartsFunKnown
01:25 and here are the 10 biggest ways WWE disrespects its fans. Do you often feel disrespected by
01:31 WWE? Tell us how, tell us why in the comments, we'd love to hear from you. And also make
01:36 sure you hit that like and subscribe button. Don't disrespect us. And subscribe, please?
01:43 Thank love, love, bye.
01:45 Number 10. F*** Tag Team Wrestling, huh? I'm really going to try and make this list purely
01:50 about WWE and not spend the whole time comparing them to other promotions, but for this one
01:54 you can't not bring up AEW. Now hey, those guys have their own problems, but they seem
01:58 to understand one thing. Tag Team Wrestling is fun. Team psychology, creative tag cheating,
02:05 the hot tags, the double team moves, the fact that tag wrestling has structured moments
02:08 for stars to rest, meaning the overall work rate is a bit higher on average. I do not
02:13 understand why WWE seems so dead set against denying its fans the simple pleasure of good
02:18 tag team wrestling with its myopic obsession of creating short term moments by imploding
02:22 all of its goddamned teams rather than letting them have an actual division. The Revival
02:26 left, the Good Brothers got released, the Hurt Business broke up, Heavy Machinery imploded
02:30 and then didn't even feud. Each brand has what, two, three teams at most? It is baffling
02:36 that WWE had so many people on their roster and five hours to fill each week that they
02:41 weren't swelling their tag roster with teams. It doesn't make any sense. And it's so
02:44 disheartening for tag wrestling fans to see a vital part of wrestling essentially shrivel
02:49 up and drop off like a cock in a blizzard. No, you animate that, Rich.
02:53 9. Manipulating Crowd Noise Well this one's an easy one to unpack, isn't
02:56 it? "Tell us what you want," says WWE. "You're the authority now. We want Bray
03:00 Wyatt," fans say. "Shh shh," says WWE. "Shh, just let's turn that mic down.
03:06 Shush." WWE have been doing it for years, where they think they can get away with it,
03:10 muting the crowd's boos at WrestleMania 32, even piping in crowd noise on recent SmackDowns.
03:15 I mean, Jesus, WWE. Just go back to the Thunderdome if that's how you feel. Must have been a
03:19 dream for WWE that time, telling fans when to gesture, how to move like meat sacks covered
03:24 in electrodes occasionally shocked into animation while WWE pipes in favourable crowd noise
03:29 over unfavourable Jackson Ryker. Nothing says WWE would much rather a world where the crowd
03:34 can't express themselves than literally turning them down when they go off message.
03:38 Which leads us to the age-old problem.
03:40 8. We Choose Who You Like It's something that's been talked about
03:44 to death. The fact that when Vince used to take the mic to scream at the crowd ostensibly
03:48 in character, "You like what I tell you to like," that it's the biggest shoot
03:51 in company history. It would be an easier point to not bring up if the fans hadn't
03:55 been recently vindicated a whole bunch of times with the oft-requested "Heal Roman
03:59 Reigns," "Main Event Cesaro," "Main Event Becky Lynch" things, you know, being
04:03 great. Getting those things felt like a struggle, but at least we got 'em. But it still feels
04:08 like we're having people's values dictated to us, rather than the other way around. The
04:12 lower midcard runs of Shayna Baszler, a UFC fighter so dumb she can't outsmart a puppet.
04:17 Keith Lee being repackaged to oblivion because of perceived problems he didn't have. He
04:21 is a sexy goddamn mountain and Keith Lee I love you so much. The Karrion Kross stuff.
04:25 I'm not saying the fans should get to book the show, but it's maddening to see someone
04:29 get over with the crowd and then have that reaction ignored because it doesn't gel
04:33 with how certain stars are viewed backstage.
04:35 And hey, speaking of, number 7, WWE vs NXT. Audible sigh. How do you even try to explain
04:42 to someone who doesn't watch WWE that there is a branch of WWE that everyone really likes,
04:48 or at the very least, really liked, that constantly received heaps of praise from fans and the
04:52 industry, and WWE has decided to reshape it based on decades-old standards of populating
04:57 it with the credo of "No More Midget." WWE already had a dicey relationship with
05:02 the black and yellow brand, pinning its champion in less than two minutes with a veteran painted
05:05 like a psychedelic frog, whacking paper plates on a bunch of their stars and giving them
05:10 names out of the Black & Decker catalogue, or ridiculing The Ascension for weeks for
05:13 a fleeting nostalgia segment populated by confused grandpas. We accepted that, almost
05:18 as the yin to NXT's yang, that WWE needed to balance out the quality somehow, but now
05:24 it appears that WWE is aiming to rip out the very heart. The high work rate, low stature
05:29 heart, the black heart, the all-heart, no soul, rip that out of everyone's favourite
05:34 bit of WWE and replacing it with more Land of the Giants bulls***. It's not the past
05:40 WWE, it's not then, it's now. And judging from recent reports, not forever.
05:46 6. All Hail The Legends Goldberg wrestled for the WWE Championship
05:51 at SummerSlam, and look, you didn't win, or at least if this goes out and you won yesterday
05:55 then it doesn't matter because you won't be watching this, you'll be too busy picking
05:57 up shards of TV from your carpet. But how is he still a thing in 2021? How is Jeff Hardy
06:02 beating undefeated behemoths and expecting no one to care because he came out to his
06:06 song from 12 years ago? And hey, maybe WWE doesn't really have much of a choice, maybe
06:11 it does need to bring back The Rock and John Cena and Goldberg and The Things We Remember
06:15 because without them the current star power of its roster isn't enough to make The Big
06:18 Four feel like The Big Four shows. But just look back at 1998-2001, wrestling's hottest
06:24 boom period, all of The Big Four shows main evented by current talent that were there
06:29 every single week. Doesn't it just make the rest of us feel like chumps for watching every
06:33 week where really WWE are telling us that the only weeks that matter each year are the
06:38 few weeks leading up to the big shows where Taker might come back or Brock or anyone else
06:42 who sticks their head in the door for WWE's version of sweeps rather than the roster they
06:46 have or should I say had.
06:49 5. Endless Releases It just makes me sad at this point. It's
06:54 been an endless conveyor of who's gone since Wrestlemania and look, on a tiny level, I
06:59 get it, WWE panic bought all the wrestlers it could a few years ago and didn't have
07:03 the room to promote everyone so some people drifted away. That I understand. However Buddy
07:08 Murphy, Malakai Black, The Iconics, Andrade, Braun Strowman, Bray Wyatt, that I do not
07:13 understand and when people of that calibre can vanish into the wind, sometimes in the
07:17 middle of a rebrand, how unsure for their jobs must that make 90% of the roster? That
07:24 really makes me f***ing sad. Especially when WWE is objectively not hurting for money which
07:28 makes all the spin of budget cuts even more insulting to the fans intelligence. Doesn't
07:32 matter who we like at the end of the day and for all of our pointless sound and fury in
07:36 this entire list, there's a load of pointless sound and fury, ultimately we can't protect
07:41 our favourite stars. Which as the authority you really think we'd have negotiated that
07:45 as part of our deal. But we can't protect them because we don't always have the same
07:49 values as WWE because
07:51 4. Wrestling isn't the draw
07:54 It really doesn't make any sense that WWE can have so much talent on its books but so
07:58 few of them feel like stars, despite often being imported to WWE because of their indie
08:04 star power. Why is that? He asked, pompously pretending to have any answers to the complex
08:09 working of an entire corporation because wrestling isn't the draw to main roster fans.
08:14 Like honestly, WWE should be the easiest thing in the world to book. Take someone good, pit
08:20 them against someone else that's good, say to the crowd, hey this is gonna be good, here's
08:23 where you can see them fight and here's how much it costs. And that's the sell. NXT do
08:27 it. Putting together those excellent hype packages, sit down interviews, doing their
08:31 best to not give away the important thing, the match itself. On the main roster, Rhea
08:35 Ripley and Charlotte's amazing talent for wrestling take second fiddle to weird skits
08:40 about crutches. Challengers for mid-card titles earn their shot by beating the champion, giving
08:45 away the match they're trying to sell. Obviously, storyline is a vital part of wrestling but
08:50 WWE produces matches to get to certain story moments and not the other way around. And
08:55 they hold so many matches.
08:57 Number 3. Endless rematches. This one's not complicated. This has nothing to do with business
09:02 psychology, the complexities of roster hierarchy or the demands of casual fans. It's as simple
09:07 as stop wasting my f***ing time. Not enough happened to justify Big E and Apollo Crews
09:13 wrestling each other 15 times in 2021. Or Randy Orton's endless feud with Drew or
09:19 Andrade and Angel Garza's endless series with the Street Profits in 2020. You absolutely
09:24 can have people wrestle each other over and over if there's story progression each time.
09:29 Christian and Randy Orton in 2011 is proof of that. Same with Jeff Hardy and CM Punk
09:33 in 2009 or HBK and Jericho in 2008. But so often, WWE trots out the same matchups week
09:39 after week after week with the bare minimum of booking, grinding these feuds into dirt
09:44 rather than developing them and diminishing the audience's desire to see these talented
09:48 wrestlers through the sheer f***ing power of tedium. Wrestling should be the draw, but
09:53 the same wrestling every week on free TV just flattens out the entire roster and crucially
09:57 shows zero respect for the audience on why they should tune in next week. Which brings
10:02 me, Julie Andrews style, to one of my least favourite things.
10:06 2. Non-finishes on pay-per-views. Stop doing this, you bastards. I'm having a full moan
10:11 this week so let's get it all out there. This is possibly my least favourite habit
10:15 WWE has. The pay-per-view is a sacred place. It's what we as consumers are spending our
10:20 money to see. Non-finishes on TV? It's not ideal all the time, but I get it. Protect
10:25 the match, give us a reason to open our moth-infested wallets and shell out for SummerSlam to see
10:29 these two settle their differences. Emphasis on settle. What WWE repeatedly does is cram
10:35 their cards with cheap finishes, double count-outs, DQs, Hell in a Cell no-contests, all to promote
10:41 Raw, Smackdown and inevitably the next pay-per-view, not understanding the parable of the boy who
10:46 cried wolf. If you string out your fans, you're paying fans, crucially, and expect the same
10:51 level of emotional investment and anticipation after, I don't know, counting out your WWE
10:55 Championship match because Randy Orton couldn't stop looking at Kofi's kids, then you're
10:59 living in a f***ing delusion. Especially when, number one, the rules don't matter. Rule
11:05 consistency is crucial for WWE and they do not care about it and I don't know why. A
11:11 consistent framework of rules in an ostensibly sporting contest creates a set of storytelling
11:18 rules for you to play with, as well as shortening the gap of understanding between the presentation
11:23 and the audience so everyone's on the same page and everyone understands why the breaking
11:27 of certain rules should make us angry, happy, whatever, you know, basically, you know, not
11:31 getting in the way of the audience and their emotions. Stories, basically. Instead, we
11:36 live in a world where people eliminated from the rumble can't eliminate current competitors,
11:40 except when they do. Refs don't count out when main events brawl to the outside, except
11:45 when they do. Tag matches are allowed to break down into skirmishes, except when they aren't.
11:50 Hitting your opponent with a tiny bit of the announce table doesn't draw a DQ, except
11:53 when it does. And Hell in a Cell matches can't end in no contest, except when Satan pisses
11:58 directly in our brains. Every single time WWE pulls this, it makes match engagement
12:02 harder and honestly just comes across as, "Ah, f*** 'em. They're too dumb to remember
12:06 the rules anyway." And I may be dumb, but I run a goddamn board game channel so I can
12:11 remember rules. And that's our list. Subscribe to my board game channel over at NoRollsBarred,
12:16 but also if you like this video, please like and share it around the internet. And make
12:20 sure you subscribe to PartsFunKnown for, honestly, next time, happier wrestling. It'll be a
12:25 silly list next week. Super promise. Alright, jam that jam. Oh, I need to scream into a
12:31 pillow.
12:31 (upbeat music)