Putting The “Sport” Back In Sports Entertainment

Grow­ing up I watched a lot of wrestling. Over the past ten years or so I’d drift in and out of it, watch­ing for sev­eral weeks in a row and then not, mostly because the prod­uct was not con­sis­tent. Clearly, dif­fer­ent peo­ple watch wrestling for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. Some watch for a cer­tain wrestler, oth­ers love the amaz­ing high-risk moves, and peo­ple like me enjoy a good story mixed with good performances.

When there is noth­ing else on TV, I have recently found myself watch­ing the WWE again, and to be blunt, it is abysmal. Yes, they have tremen­dous ath­letes with all of the phys­i­cal skill and act­ing poten­tial in the world, and the high points are truly amaz­ing, but the other 1:56 of the show is bor­der­line unwatch­able. What they need are bet­ter writ­ers, or at least a more struc­tured for­mat that the fans can iden­tify with. Maybe Vince is jump­ing in on the writ­ers meet­ing and say­ing “this is my show, and this is what we are going to do,” (which would explain the whole Batista end­ing which Rich dis­cussed in his last show). But let’s move for­ward and keep the Vince run-ins to a minimum.

While the WWE has amped up the “Enter­tain­ment” it has some­how lost sight of the Sport. Yes wrestling is scripted, but that doesn’t mean that what got you to the dance, one man fight­ing another for vic­tory and the crowds ado­ra­tion, shouldn’t still be a major focus.

I pro­pose set­ting up a sim­ple rank­ing sys­tem, sim­i­lar to box­ing where all wrestlers in the WWE would be given a rank­ing based on where they stand in title con­tention. For exam­ple, if Batista is the WWE Cham­pion, Cena would be #1, Orton would be #2, Triple H #3, etc. The same would be done for all of the belts.

Rules would need to be estab­lished to main­tain order. Title holder must fight num­ber one con­tender within a cer­tain period of time, or for­feit the belt. Only the cham­pion can sanc­tion a match with a con­tender that is not #1. “Unbi­ased” com­puter sys­tem deter­mines rank­ings, not Vince or any­one else (This is on air, not behind the scenes of course). This means, use the jum­botron and act sur­prised when the rank­ings don’t come out the way you want them to. So I think you see where I am going with this.

The ben­e­fits of a ranked sys­tem are that the fans will con­stantly know where each wrestler stands in the pic­ture. Num­ber 9 fight­ing num­ber 8 doesn’t sound that excit­ing, but if 9 wins, that moves him up a spot and now 7 is involved and so on. Make the sto­ry­line bet­ter by con­stantly hav­ing guys choose between fight­ing to move up in the rank­ings, and set­tling per­sonal feuds. It also gives impor­tance back to the belts, which has been sorely missed. It makes being a cham­pion mean some­thing. So Batista is cham­pion. What does that mean? I don’t know. Do you? I bet you knew what it meant when Hogan beat the Iron Sheik.

The rank­ing sys­tem offers so many addi­tional story options and stream­lines the shows so that the fans can keep track of what is going on week to week. You can still have your crazy over the top soap-opera style gim­micks, but now peo­ple will be tak­ing a look at the guys that are not top stars because you are giv­ing them a clear path to get to the top. Fight your way up to num­ber 1 and you’ll get the title shot you always dreamed of. This is a sim­ple and effec­tive way of build­ing the next Superstars.

Josh

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