3 Ups & 10 Downs From WWE Raw (Aug 3)
New ideas =/= good ideas.
There is an understandable thirst for new ideas in professional wrestling, particularly within the WWE product.
Increasing volumes of fans are sick of the same-old programming. WWE's presentation style and storytelling mechanisms have barely changed over the past two decades, generating fatigue, jadedness, and frustration for their most commonly used tropes, techniques, and formulae. Individual shows are barely distinguishable from one another, so the slightest hint of anything fresh or original perks the ears and grabs the attention of those whose interest hasn't completely waned yet.
It's hard to blame them, and shrinking viewerships show, definitively, that WWE's old methods aren't working anymore. Change is a necessity. Only a paradigm shift can break the fanbase's deep-rooted ennui.
An unfortunate byproduct of this is that all new ideas are immediately hailed as good, even when the execution stinks, because it's "different," man. This is a horrible way to analyse any artform. An idea isn't automatically "good" because it's different - last night's WWE RAW proves this.
This absolute mess of a show brought the debut of Shane McMahon's RAW Underground, WWE's new "chaos" stable, a teary-eyed episode of the KOs Show, a new 24/7 Champion, and more. Let's take a look at it...