6 Jobs That WWE Must Create

6. Wrestling Historian / Fact-checker

Wrestling is a messy business. It's carnival roots guarantee that everything exists in dirty shades of gray. Rarely there's absolute truth. And as WWE has grown, they've absorbed the remains of the wrestling companies left in their wake. We've seen wrestlers fired, defecting, leaving on their own terms, returning. Some performers have grown up before our eyes. We've cried when they retired and knowingly nodded when they subsequently un-retired. Right now, WWE stands on the precipice. They have the unfettered rights to the largest collection of wrestling content in the world, and they have a platforms (WWE Network and Home Entertainment) to make that information available. As the victor, they are able to write history. But as time goes on, it's more and more important that the stories and tales of past wrestlers and dead territories don't fade away forever. It's short-sighted to ignore history. WWE needs to invest more in preserving wrestling. With their enormous resources and massive library, WWE should be committed to respecting and maintaining memories of their craft. Can you imagine if WWE aired expansive tribute pieces when a wrestler died? WWE Network could have been brodcasting specials on Nelson Frazier Jr (Viscera/Men on a Mission's Mabel/Big Daddy V) and Billy Robinson as appropriate memorials and fascinating material. But you can't get there over night. WWE needs to enshrine permanent, funded, academic positions in their company which can truly explore the roots and rich history of professional wrestling. This would probably be more than one person and more than one position. There's a lot of lessons to be learned, memories to collect and memorabilia to obtain. If WWE ever hopes to open a physical Hall of Fame, retaining the most important objects (former title belts, important territorial documents, legendary gear) will be the key to bridging today's Sports Entertainment with last Century's 'rasslin. Also, WWE needs to focus on fact-checking themselves. Granted, this is the "sport" of 7-foot giants and miraculous comebacks, but small gestures that don't insult your audience's intelligence - getting win/loss records at Wrestlemania right, offering truthful rumble elimination statistics - go a long way to earning trust & respect from your viewer. Offering a serious liaison to the creative and announcing teams so that facts and figures are right will keep your fan-base engaged. You want them to be watching a real competition and promoting that suspension of disbelief. Consistency matters. Imagine if WWE took a page out of Baseball and began publishing yearly almanacs jammed with statistics. Granted, it's a niche market, but professional wrestling is already appealing to a subset of the population. The publishing sector has always been targeting kids with the magazine. This would be an interesting alternative that might skew more towards older fans. WWE has the resources, but do they have the will?