3. Writing Television Instead Of Booking Wrestling
For almost a hundred years, wrestling has been booked. Clearly defined good guys against bad guys drew money because people wanted to pay their hard-earned money to see the bad guys get what was coming to them. They cheered their heroes because wrestling was presented in a serious fashion. It was presented as a legitimate athletic contest between two larger-than-life characters that embodied either the best or worst of humanity. In short, wrestling was a living comic book. Thanks to the death of kayfabe in the late 1990s, wrestling is no longer presented in the serious fashion it used to be. Thanks to Vince McMahon coming right out and saying that wrestling was fake (in order not to have to pay the various fees associated with running a sporting event), wrestlers today are seen as actors playing a part, not athletes. In addition, McMahon even refuses to call his product "wrestling" and instead made up his own word: Sports-Entertainment. What in God's name is "sports-entertainment"? NFL players don't have to participate in silly backstage skits where they tell bad jokes and recite poorly written dialogue. Well, Vince would say, that's because we're entertainment. But if they are actors, then they are supposed to be in the actor's union and thus be provided health insurance and various other benefits. Hold on one second, Vince would say, in that case we are sports. It's a totally meaningless term that has been invented to justify the WWE's way of programming. The worst part is the movement away from hiring wrestling people to book the wrestling show and instead hiring failed soap opera writers to write WWE shows. WWE has hired people like Freddie Prinze Jr. to write storylines for Kofi Kingston instead of allowing someone like Dusty Rhodes to book matches and angles. To show what I mean, go back and watch some of the NXT episodes before it got put on the WWE Network. The show was booked by Dusty and it was a total throwback to 1980s NWA shows. Clearly defined characters, simple reasons for having matches, and then having the match with an actual finish that causes repercussions. For a while, it was the best wrestling show on television and it was only an hour long. Of course, now that WWE has noticed it and put it on the Network, they'll probably screw it all up.
