10 Lessons WWE Shouldn’t Forget From WCW’s History

3. Be Realistic

One of the biggest problems with wrestling today is that it's not treated like a legitimate sport. Vince McMahon hates being called a "wrestling promoter" so he created the nonsense phrase "sports-entertainment" to describe his product. Ever since kayfabe was destroyed (courtesy of WCW), wrestling has been presented as just another show on television instead of a sport. When Eric Bischoff hosted Nitro in the early days, he shattered kayfabe by giving away taped Raw results and revealing storylines on his live show. While there was certainly no law against doing this, there was always an unwritten rule that promotions don't give away other promotion's results. What separated WCW from the WWF in the mid-1990s was their willingness to be realistic in their storylines and characters. They moved away from the cartoonish Hulk Hogan stuff and embraced the reality of the New World Order. Hall and Nash were allowed to be real people with real conflicts and speak like real people. The storyline got so realistic that residents living around the MGM Studios (the home of Nitro) called the police to report a gang fight between the nWo and WCW wrestlers. The segments weren't overproduced or staged, they seemed spontaneous and real. Wrestling has regressed in recent years though. WWE has decided that marketing to children is more profitable than producing an actual entertaining product and that has produced some of the worst Raws in the company's history. While you don't have to make the show R-rated, there needs to be a certain danger and edginess to the product. At its core, wrestling is about two large men fighting in the center of a ring. That shouldn't be presented as funny, goofy, or corny.