10 Failed Concepts WWE Needs To Revise And Revisit
"Mistakes are the portals of discovery."
The history of professional wrestling is riddled with phenomenal failures.
The Kennel From Hell match was never going to work; if Hollywood can barely manage children and animals, Vince Russo had no chance. The Gobbledy Gooker was an actual, anthropomorphic giant turkey, and WWE still didn't consider the irony. Similarly, Duke 'The Dumpster' Droese was a waste collector - a garbage man. Those were the insane manifestations of Vince McMahon's mind, the motives behind which were inscrutable.
If you were of a kind disposition, you could understand what he was playing at with Pirate Paul Burchill. Somebody clearly told Vince about Jack Sparrow, and Vince tried to monetise it. Unfortunately, it never occurred to him that it had already been monetised in the correct medium, and the once-promising career of Burchill, excavated hidden British treasure, walked the plank.
The Reverse Battle Royal was similarly irredeemable. Ditto the great (read: dreadful) loophole of 1996; you can't just find the two nearest tall lads and call them Diesel and Razor Ramon. Neither for that matter can you dress an oaf up as mummy and call him a bloody Yeti.
Other failures, however...
10. The Ambrose Asylum
WWE doesn't do the best pure wrestling in the world. It can't; the crazy touring schedule necessitates phoned-in TV performances, company guidelines prohibit the neck-shattering drama of a New Japan masterpiece, and the matches are invariably over-produced and often formulaic.
WWE also doesn't want to do the best pure wrestling in the world. It is above pure wrestling; it presents "larger than life" characters as part of grand storylines "like Shakespeare, opera or ballet," per Stephanie McMahon.
The Ambrose Asylum was a dud sequel experiment to the Casket Match or the Boiler Room Brawl - a bespoke gimmick match designed to project and market individual characters to the "WWE Universe". The Asylum match itself is redeemable - replacing the cage with a Cell would negate the overwhelming anti-climactic drama, and hanging actual weapons from it would negate the lame, forced comedy aspect - but the essence behind the match is what requires development.
A Bar Boom Brawl mastered by the The Bar; a Hollywood Backlot Brawl as the preserve of The Miz; a No Fly Zone Match for Drew Gulak, in which climbing the turnbuckle is outlawed - this is the character-driven storytelling we expect of WWE, and what WWE expects of themselves.