Shining a Spotlight 04.30.09: The Realities of Booking

Posted by Michael Weyer on 04.30.2009

Examining why booking and writing wrestilng is nowhere near as easy as some may think.

A surprisingly excellent Backlash card overall. Swagger and Christian pulled out the stops and the Christian/Edge encounter sets up some future fun for them. The title bouts were truly terrific as Edge and Cena once again brought everything to the table and the six-man was damn good too. It shows that WWE can still provide terrific bouts that pay off on setups. Which, ironically, brings me to my topic this week.
　
By now, I'm sure many have seen Jim Cornette's commentary on booking vs. writing in regards to wrestling today. It's an excellent piece from the always outspoken and intelligent Cornette. I do agree with a lot of what he says on WWE today but I also feel that some of the points he makes aren't quite as clear and that he does miss some understanding of the business and fan base and I feel I have to comment on that.

The most obvious point to make about the commentary is that Cornette completely avoids talking about TNA. While the company has seen some improvement lately, they are still prone to stupid angles and bits that are as bad, if not worse, that what WWE puts out. I mean, it seems a bit hypocritical to complain about some WWE angle and yet completely omit something like Joe pulling a knife or Don West vs. Mike Tenay or such. It's hard to take totally seriously someone ranting about the evils of "writers" with no prior experience in wrestling when he's working with one of the most notorious culprits of that mentality. Most will forget that Russo and those with him are capable of coming up with good ideas. The problem is, they too often go way too far with them and give in too much to the "swerve" twists.

Putting the TNA stuff aside, Cornette raises excellent points on the inexperience and all. I agree that a knowledge of wrestling is important. The thing is, the points he seems to make about how an observer can do better than the guys doing it now…well, that's something that's a bit hard for me to swallow. It's not the first time such a point has been raised and I know plenty who will agree with Cornette. You can't throw a rock without hitting someone who's got a year's worth of wrestling stories planned out in his head and convinced each will work perfectly. But in actual execution…well, that's something else all together.

I think a weakness in Cornette is that the man is really an old-styled guy. That's not all bad to be sure as the old territories were home to brilliant work. But that mentality has several problems and faults in today's world. The biggest is how so many old-timers will grouse about "sports entertainment" ruining the "purity" of wrestling. Let's get this straight: Wrestling has always been entertainment. The day the first promoter decided who was going to win a match and the first guy took on a different persona in the ring, it ceased to be a legitimate sport. It would take a long while before the smarts outnumbered the marks but that wrestling was fixed was always known openly. It was always about entertaining people through matches. Excellent entertainment, yes, but entertainment nonetheless so talking about how pure things were is a bit over the top.

Let's not forget that the territories weren't all sunshine and roses. Many of these guys could make Vince McMahon look like a candidate for sainthood with their hard-nosed tactics regarding talent. The system was always going to fall, with or without Vince, it was just its time. Entertainment all over the ‘80's was changing so wrestling would be no different with new audience tastes and the advent of cable spreading things out. If it wasn't Vince, it would have been someone else, it was always going to happen. Fritz Von Erich was getting pressure to do it and Jim Crockett was making strides in that direction too. Believing the territories would still exist without Vince is like believing Hollywood studios would still be in the mogul era or TV would be only networks.

One link between sports and entertainment is that each have their "experts fans." Every local bar or other hang-out has that guy who's never played a game of football in his life but is convinced he knows better how to coach and play the local teams. In entertainment, we always see fans of TV shows complain about dumb stories and guys convinced they could have written a better Episode I or Matrix sequels. (Okay, I probably could have written a better Matrix sequel). Of course, these TV and movie "experts" will overlook the tiny fact they have to handle massive budgets, on-set troubles, actors and of course, studio and network chiefs who are constantly giving their own input in that can ruin these "perfect" plans.

It's the same with wrestling because so many of the IWC fans are outsiders who don't quite understand how things backstage really work. In his latest book, James Guttman said that in 2005, he was convinced if WWE listened to his ideas, "they'd be rolling in gold." But after a few years interviewing wrestlers for his radio show, Guttman realized that half of what most fans "know" about the business is either overly exaggerated or just flat-out wrong. The reality is that the politics of the locker room are unbelievably dense and complicated and that will effect any move bookers will attempt to make. And even if the ideas are good, the execution of them and the reaction may not be as expected.

One of the single most brilliant observations about wrestling comes from R.D. Reynolds: So often, the angles that make perfect sense on paper bomb while the ones that sound incredibly stupid go on to draw big money. Reynolds knows this himself as he sells a DVD of his time promoting a small independent company that he himself says makes Russo at his worst look like a genius of the highest order. It's all well and good to jot down ideas on booking for your own but actually getting the talent to go along can be a lot harder. Almost half of the angles shot down are because the wrestlers themselves don't want to do them and the fact is the on-air talent has more weight with promoters then the guys writing. There's also the fact that you can't predict stuff like injuries which can really mess up plans.

Let's not forget the number one problem of these "armchair bookers" that can undermine
any angle: The fans. It never ceases to amaze me that the collective mentality of the IWC is unable to understand that we are not the vast majority of the fan base. The folks in the arenas who pay tickets, the ones who see this stuff unfold in person, they're the ones WWE caters to, they're the ones who make or break these things. They don't care about backstage intrigue or hour-long matches or stuff, they'll often roll with a lot of stuff. One of the biggest mistakes Vince Russo made with his WCW run was to pepper his angles with inside jokes and old Internet stories that went over the heads of 99% of the arena audience. WWE recognizes that the Internet crowd can't carry the company by itself and it's the arena folks who buy merchandise that are the ones to cater to.

Getting back to why WWE is the way it is, I think it may be fallout from the Monday Night War and how they went really too much with some guys like Austin and Michaels and such. In fact, Austin should have been done after his neck injury but he kept on going because he was so massively over and thus cut his in-ring time down immensely. So now, recognizing that danger, WWE is trying to cut back a bit with lighter stuff that can also lengthen careers. Edge has been suffering from serious neck injuries over the years that would have been really exaggerated with the schedules of a decade ago and Cena faces some injury stuff as well. By making things a bit easier, WWE is able to hang on to these big names while still developing new guys.

I know that brings up the whole "not doing enough to create new stars" stuff but let's not forget how WWE has hit problems there, due to no fault of their own. Brock Lesner and Bobby Lashley are two prime examples of guys who were pushed from the start and got huge breaks only to walk out on the company. That will naturally make WWE wary over giving new guys pushes although they are able to get some guys going like Swagger. At least, they're trying to create new stars now and then while TNA's roster is, with the exception of the Knockouts and Creed, almost exactly the same as it was three years ago.

A lot will agree with the talk on how WWE needs to listen to the veterans on how to make angles work. I do believe that it's true guys in deep with the business can come up with excellent ideas. However, let's not forget, a lot of them may be too much into the past. Ole Anderson was an old-timer whose time booking WCW is infamously horrible and let's start on Dusty Rhodes. In his last book, Mick Foley talked about how in 2006, he proposed a big storyline with Terry Funk feuding with Vince McMahon and seemed disappointed Vince wouldn't go for it. I get how Foley and Funk are friends but I think Mick is going a bit far assuming 2006 fans wanted to see Terry Funk in a main-event level feud with the owner of WWE. It shows that sometimes, these guys can come up with ideas just as out of touch with fans as the "outsiders."

Indeed, that's the key issue, changing tastes. Cornette is bright and has great insight but his long experience in wrestling does seem to ignore that fan tastes today are no longer the same as they were in the ‘80's or even ‘90's. Bill Watts' WCW tenure is infamous for his throwing back to old-style ways which alienated workers against him and led to his ouster. And most agree that the reason the AWA fell apart had less to do with Vince and more to do with Verne Gagne's inability to see the changing tastes of crowds. That vast majority of fans out there today have, for better or worse, become inclined to the type of matches WWE does, the "main event style" to use a term I think has been overdone a bit. It's not to say they can't appreciate amazing matches. The Shawn/Taker battle at Mania showed they can. But they still respond to the usual styles and Vince has always been a man influenced by those surface reactions.

It's not like quality automatically means ratings. I've lost count of the number of brilliant television shows that never were "hits" because audiences preferred to watch something else. It's the same with movies and music as well and wrestling is no different. Just look at the constant backlash against ROH. That's a company that's excelled at storylines and booking as Gabe Sapolsky did what few other bookers do, which was not push his own vision down fans' throats but let it unwind on its own. Of course, ROH was still home to some bad angles and stuff that didn't quite click as well. They're a successful company but nowhere near as huge as WWE or even TNA despite that great work which shows again that quality doesn't always succeed on a grand scale.

His comments on Stephanie do seem a bit harsh but then I recall he and Steph didn't really get along well. Of course, I do have to point out that Cornette is no longer working for WWE because he slapped a guy who wouldn't go along with an angle which is a serious crossing of the line. Whatever else Vince has done, he's never actually hit a guy which is a pretty unprofessional move. I know Cornette has always been a bit high-strung and that comes up a bit in his rants and commentaries. The man is a sharp mind but as I said, he does seem a bit too stuck in the past, unable to really grasp that this is a whole new generation of fans with a different set of tastes. A lot of them have been influenced by that "Attitude" era of soap over action and recognize that's where ratings often lie. So most of them take it to follow in that trend and ignore the possible benefits of some real action.

I'm not saying Cornette was wrong with his speech, far from it. I just want to point out that he seems to ignore the way audiences of wrestling have changed in the last several years and may not respond to the "old days" as well. A lot of the IWC fantasy bookers feel the same way at times and are also convinced their plans will work perfectly. That ignores injuries, problems backstage, politics and of course that the true majority of fans may not respond to these angles the way expected. These "outsiders" in the booking committee do have some understanding of wrestling and the politics backstage which is more than we IWC folks do. Whatever else he is, Vince McMahon is not a fool and would try to at least make sure the people hired to run his shows have some intelligence to make them work.

There's always been this tendency (and I admit to being guilty of it myself) that we automatically dismiss some movies/shows simply because it's not what we ourselves would have done which means it's horrible. From Star Wars to Matrix to Heroes or Watchmen, that's still around in entertainment. Since wresting is entertainment, it pops up even more, especially with fans who range in as huge a field of opinions as around here. So of course, we'll have guys who are convinced they can do better but just as you'd have problems in Hollywood with studios, you'd have massive trouble making your "perfect" visions reality for wrestling. Let's not forget Vince Russo was a fantasy booker who eventually got a job for real and while he was good at first, he's more known for going way too far with his ideas to the determent of the product. I highly suspect that if some fans got their wishes, they'd realize quickly that it's a hell of a lot easier writing this stuff in your head than it is having to actually make it work.

I agree with Cornette that an improvement in writing is good and needed. And input from veterans who really know wrestling can help as well. However, you should remember that some veterans can ignore the tastes of audiences today and fail to make things work for a modern crowd. As pointed out above, wrestling is tricky in what will and will not work and a long experience in the business is no guarantee that plans can gel with the majority of fans. Like it or not, it's a new audience of fans out there and while we can hope they respond to the in-ring work, wrestling has always been entertainment. As such, you have to make a tricky balancing act but when it works, it's wonderful. When it doesn't…well, just don't assume you can do that much better no matter how big a fan you are.



Also around 411mania:

Bond asks us not to hate Cena

For the Record argues about Edge and Jericho both on RAW

The Shimmy offers yet another Draft look

Five Star imagines the new booking ideas with the draft

Thoughts From the Top Rope looks at Edge

Piledriver Report looks at fading legends

Brooklyn Brawlin looks at Smackdown post Draft

Don't forget Column of Honor, Triple Threat, 4 R's, Fact or Fiction, Ask 411 and the rest.


For this week, the spotlight is off.