10 Quick Fixes For WWE In 2019
Like remonstrating with a child.
We all, collectively, offered the same quick fix in connection with 205 Live around this time last year: instead of using the brand as a vehicle to annoy the target audience, through the push of not very good wrestler Enzo Amore, it was probably wise to provide the exciting action promised in the tagline - preferably in a fictional universe tonally different to that of RAW. People could and cannot barely stomach the third hour, so WWE's decision to add an ostensible fourth, with more Alicia Fox squealing than show-stealing action, was Peak Vince.
You want cruiserweights, huh pal? Have some heat!
In a Reddit pitch made real, Triple H assumed control of the brand from Vince, and reimagined it as something more akin to his NXT. It never did cultivate the same hardcore appeal. This did however render the very name of the show a mistake, mirroring WWE's wider content-heavy strategy, but it's hardly the most egregious of WWE lies. People weren't fussed about that, nor anything to do with the show. This quick fix did not work - there is too much WWE content to consume - and so 205 Taped still couldn't hold together viewer interest. Those viewers were so exhausted that the oxymoron barely inspired any memes. If WWE plans another resuscitation, and expect it to work, they must present us with the best of British.
Erm, German.
10. NXT UK TakeOver II
Already scheduled, of course, is NXT UK TakeOver: Blackpool. With respect to some of the incredible talent on it, the card is good on paper - but it is hardly the touch paper with which to set the emerging brand ablaze.
There is a clinical quality to NXT UK; the in-ring action is solid outside of the main event, the undercard storylines approach boilerplate territory. The show is just anonymous, and with Pete Dunne moonlighting also on NXT proper, it is missing both an exclusivity factor and genuine talisman.
Enter WALTER.
WALTER, and here's the quick component of the fix, should defeat Dunne for his United Kingdom Championship on his first night in. In doing so, WWE creates an overnight sensation and major news story alike, while, in parallel, reimagining a brand that has barely taken off and providing an upstart babyface, like Mark Andrews, with the ultimate antagonist to overcome.
To enact this quick fix, WWE must present the actual WALTER, and not a tame WWE dilution of his chest-blackening brilliance. WALTER, representative of true difference, needs to chop everybody to death, for an age, in matches that live up to his reputation as Independent wrestling's foremost conductor of the big fight feel.
Then, perhaps, it might not feel so small-time.