2015 was a year of ups and downs for WWE. While Wrestlemania 31 was a huge success and NXT has been home to tremendous programming all year long, there’s been a lot of flaws and set backs which has really hurt professional wrestling as a whole.
Believe it or not, all of professional wrestling relies on WWE to succeed and thrive. If WWE performs, attendences at independent promotions rises. If WWE performs, everyone in the wrestling industry gets richer. If WWE performs, SLTD’s viewership numbers boom. If WWE performs, my blog “The Armbar Express” booms. I want WWE to succeed and you should too. But more importantly, the WWE should want to perform as well.
The motivation is there for WWE to want to improve things on the Titanic before it sinks. The WWE is not actually in a financial disaster at the moment but the biggest hinderance to their success will be the drop in ratings this year for RAW. They’ve turned things around at the moment but what happens if in a year from now the ratings are as bad as they were a few months ago? It would be determinental to business, especially the WWE Network. If the fans aren’t tuning into the free-to-watch RAW every week as much as they should be, how can you possibly convince them to pay and subscribe to the Network?
I’m pretty sure I’ve had articles in the past for SLTD sing the same tune but the point is, a few weeks of good ratings should be enough to motivate the writers to put on a better product. Now that they’ve got a lot of new viewers, they need to keep them and bring in some more. Lazy writing is not going to be enough for the ratings to hold. WWE has to put effort into the product in 2016 and I think it’s going to cause the writers to pull their finger out, to do something about it. It just has to unless they want to see more reports from Dave Meltzer about how Vince is having a frenzy backstage over ratings.
When WWE actually try, good things usually come from it. The ascension of Roman Reigns in December was a great example of this as WWE was up against the wall and had to try. What happened? Roman is now the ACTUAL top face of the company now. They achieved in one month something that they couldn’t achieve in the whole year. Another reason to be optmistic is that now WWE are starting to figure out what works with Roman. With that in mind, there’s little reason to believe that the fans will turn on him like they did in 2015. As long as they have the Roman do what he’s done in the last few months all the time, a new star could finally be made in WWE.
New top talent I think is an inevitabillity in 2016. Again, the reason is because they’ve got no choice. Look at all the top stars that have been out of action with injuries or breaks in 2015. They rushed Daniel Bryab back into the ring and now he might never be cleared to compete in the company again. When Seth Rollins got injured, the creative team were in a panic. Randy Orton has been in and out of action during the year and according to Ric Flair, maybe taking on a much lighter schedule when he returns. John Cena took time off and it couldn’t have come at a worse time for WWE because of Rollins.
WWE will have to start elevating new talent. Dean Ambrose could finally become an established main-eventer in the company. There’s already talk of Kevin Owens taking on Brock Lesnar which could only mean great things for the man. Antonio Cesaro, Dolph Ziggler and Bray Wyatt may finally get a proper opportunity. Even NXT’s top talent like Finn Balor, Samoa Joe and Sami Zayn could become WWE main eventers by the end. I say could but a lot of this is wishful thinking. However, WWE have to try and the talent is already there that they can give the ball too.
I think 2015 has been a neccessary evil for WWE for a number of reasons. The ratings dropping to their lowest in 20 years is a message for the company to get it together in the creative side of things. The injuries sustained is a message for the company to get behind new talent so they can make new stars. The reports of low attendences for RAW and live events is a message for the company to go the extra mile to get those attendences back up. No matter what anyone thinks about the fans that chant “This Is Awesome” every five minutes for any above-average thing or the fans that boo Roman Reigns all the time, these fans mean well. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have paid top dollar to show up and chant about the stars they want to see given a chance.
They’re not chanting “We Want Sasha” just to hear themselves speak. They’re not booing Roman Reigns strictly because they hate him. They’re chanting because they want have the most fun they’ve had in years whenever they attend an event. They want to come out of a show thinking, “That’s the best event I’ve been to in a while. We should go back.” WWE and its wrestlers should want to come out of an event hoping that they made all their fans think that way.
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