10 Things Japanese Wrestling Does Better Than WWE
4. Ridiculously Long Matches And Feuds
Because of the highly-controlled environment on RAW, every single match has to be timed down to the second. Furthermore, since WWE’s booking philosophy appears to involve cramming as many people onto a single show as possible (which over-exposes them), you end up with multiple short matches that don’t really do anything at all for either party involved.
In Japan, it isn’t uncommon to see matches that go beyond the 30-minute mark. But these matches are seldom boring; they’re presented in a way that makes each match feel unique, with repetitive matches telling slightly different stories and adding more onto an ever-growing larger rivalry that becomes more impressive as it goes on.
For example, Kenta Kobashi had a rivalry with Jun Akiyama that spanned over twelve years and countless matches that went between 25 and 45 minutes. Not once did this rivalry ever get boring, as the commentators, wrestling press, and the wrestlers themselves managed to weave a complex tale that made every single match they had more interesting and worth watching.
Contrast this with the Orton-Sheamus feud, which has been going on for less than a quarter of that time, and is already a running joke among wrestling fans. Clearly WWE doesn’t know how to present long matches or storylines, and so they’d learn a lot from studying how it’s done in Japan.