10 Easy Ways Of Injecting Realism Into WWE
9. Tear Up The Script
This is something the likes of Steve Austin and Kevin Nash have been crying out for, and they're hard men to argue with. Well, Austin is at least. Nash, oblivious to tape-trading, thought Dave Meltzer watched Japanese wrestling via periscope in the 1990s.
WWE's stranglehold on promos is as much to blame as 50/50 booking for the current, homogenised landscape: everybody, with few exceptions, sounds exactly the same. Transcribing a Seth Rollins and AJ Styles promo would show the same verbatim results: an overlong, repetitive spiel with a few schoolyard-standard 'zingers' thrown in. This doesn't just inhibit the performers - it unravels the whole enterprise as fictitious. The talent is so clearly being told what to say that virtually every promo bleeds into the next. It's little wonder that the integrity of performers haemorrhages on a weekly basis.
This stranglehold, however, might not be quite as tight as some would have you believe. CM Punk stated in his Best In The World special that he considered them to be a 'guideline', and would always put his own spin on the content. Far from being reprimanded, his exceptional promos caught the attention of top brass almost immediately (once he served his time in OVW, naturally).
The New Day, too, are clearly injecting their own personality into their promos. Then again, you can understand the hesitation on the part of some talents - Zack Ryder try to get over on his own accord, and look what happened to him. He was driven off the stage on a bloody wheelchair, injured and insulted.
The product is sorely lacking in vitality, despite, for example, The Club being so much more entertaining IRL than they are on the terrible telly - but compliance is vital to safeguarding your career in WWE.