How often have we heard Vince McMahon claim that UFC isn?t competition?
A couple of years back while speaking to the Hollywood Reporter he said: ?Most people thought at one point that we would be competitors. But it turns out they are not competition to us at all, or hardly at all. They are sport, we are entertainment; it?s a huge difference. The revenue they have cut into is that of boxing.?
Vince, mate. Bullshit. Utter fucking bullshit.
The truth is, pro-wrestling fans are turning to MMA in droves, PPV buy-rates are down and WWE (and, by constantly copying them, TNA) are heading the wrong damn way on a slippery slope.
What MMA offers viewers that WWE isn?t providing at the minute is the sense of unpredictability. You tune into an Extreme Rules or an Over The Limit then odds are you are buying the event in spite of what the results are going to be ? not to find out what they are.
Fifty dollars is a lot of money when you know Cena is going to win in the main event. A couple of years ago even that was acceptable, but the quality of his matches ? which was never that high compared to most workers ? has dropped rapidly as he has moved into the veteran role, leading less experienced workers ? a position he is ill-equipped for.
Compare and contrast that to a UFC event where pretty much anything can happen.
Such is the beauty of sport.
And it is sport that McMahon has shyed away from for so so long. The mid-eightes expansion saw the coining of the phrase ?sports-entertainment? and in recent months even that has been dropped. WWE is just pure entertainment now.
Which would be great if it was capable of being consistently entertaining. Like, you know, sports are.
WWE would argue that by heavily scripting and laying out matches they gain more control of the ebb and flow of each presentation, something which would not be possible in competitive sport.
But is there anything more exciting to watch than a gladitorial sporting contest?
Take for example, the last 16 match between Andy Murray and Victor Troicki at the French Open earlier this week. How could that possibly have been any better if it was scripted?
You had Murray, the world number 4 go into the match carrying an injury and, for days leading up to the match the question of whether he would even make it was on everyones minds.
Then you had his opponent, Troicki, who had never beaten Murray before but was a guy who was on the best run of his career and had climbed to number 15 in the world.
Straight away, that real-life situation had a ton more potential and a much better story than ?John Cena has never said I Quit but Alex Riley can take part in the match alongside The Miz to make it two-on-one.?
Now obviously I?m not advocating that they throw the scripts out the window and let WWE Superstars legitimately fight it out. That would be horrible.
But was it any coincidence that at Over The Limit the crowd was noticably louder for the enthralling back-and-forth encounter of Randy Orton and Christian, than it was for the tepid, glorified angle that was John Cena vs The Miz?
WWE presentations would improve ten-fold if the matches were afforded the added realism that would come from being presented as real?competitive?sporting contests rather than the overly considered and planned efforts we see now.
The most bizarre, most deluded thing about all of this is that I would imagine the majority of WWE fans are sports fans too.
Seriously, I would love to know how big a section of the WWE audience doesn?t watch any competitive sport.
I am sure that worldwide there is more cross-over between WWE and all kinds of different sports than there is between wrestling and the day-time soap operas that WWE creative keeps hiring from.
Ah well, there?s always Ring of Honor?
KJ Porteous is the founder of The Heel Crowd??Wrestling?s Foul-Mouthed Reactionaries?. Head on over to see much more of his writing as well as his take on all the weeks wrestling broadcasts from WWE and TNA and a multitude of other features.
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