As has been discussed here in the past, WWE today has never gotten out of the habit from the late 1990s during the Monday Night Wars of displaying its top talent on every major show every week in the ring. Cena wrestles practically every Raw. Unthinkable in the pre-MNW era.

On this topic, TNA’s booking right now is–surprise, surprise–downright horrid. Everything Scott says against this latest Impact is on the mark. They’ve even botched the very promising Angle/Nigel… er, Desmond Wolfe build. That phone call from Angle was hilariously bad. Tara/Awesome Kong is still all right and it’s kind of amusing to see them try to use Scott Steiner to make Lashley seem appealing–it seems like something Vince would try to do with Lashely from a few years back–and they’ve finally made Samoa Joe seem like a serious heel, but aside from those few bright spots, TNA’s Russo-rific booking is suffocating their product.

As others said earlier, the PG product of WWE is not necessarily a bad thing. The Punk/Hardy feud from this summer showed that PG does not need mean simplistic or stupid, much less immature. It also showed that when WWE is good, it can be truly fantastic. Watching WWE every week is a bit like sifting through all of the boring crap to get to the occasional great stuff. For a long while, it doesn’t seem worth it, and then they finally pull the trigger on something (like Kofi on Raw, or the intricate build to DiBiase’s face turn) and they inspire fans’ imaginations again.

I understand if the first few shows set you off but the recent stuff has been more in line with traditional wrestling shows. You get angle advancement (the A-Double L-double), good to great matches (Aries/Danielson from two weeks ago), and some interesting vignettes (Skullcrusher Rasche Brown channeling, of all people, Baron Von Raschke). It’s not amazing but it’s more hit-than-miss than most episodes of RAW or Impact.

“Tune into our new Monday show”

Not to mention, Hogan/Flair despite its one sided-ness did good business. The old WWF guys who showed up still had a shelf-life. I think this attributed to when Hogan left the WWF, ALOT of fans did as well. And when he showed up in WCW, it piqued interest, then you saw the different product WCW put on.

Plus the WCW die-hards wanted to see Sting/Hogan Vader/Hogan etc. so that held interest.

And as a 15 yr old kid, the Macho/sting/hogan/luger thing had me. Tweener Luger was awesome.

then the NWO happened.

A theory I read somewhere said that the Attitude Era was simply ECW on a global stage and that Shane was the one that talked Vince into doing it. So it raises a few questions (for me anyway):

If we accept that as true, that means Vince himself has only come up with the driving idea behind the first boom and not the second. Does Vince have it in him to reinvent the business again? Whether he would want to or not is a different matter as ably pointed out by nwa88.

With Shane gone, is there anyone left in WWE that could get Vince to change the way he does things if someone else was to come up with a different, possibly better way of doing things?

Is there anyone out there that could change the game?

I suppose I’ll just put this out there–if he would agree to work with Bischoff and wanted to come back to wrestling (big IFs, I know), would Paul Heyman be the man to reimagine things? I think Heyman running a federation with someone else looking after the money could be a force to be reckoned with but maybe I’m wrong?

On many occasions, I’ve pictured him wrestle Mysterio and saw good things. Maybe not “main event” or “red hot” levels of big, but certainly a good mid-card character.

So what do you think contributed to this? Had WCW already made some substantial gains in overall popularity throughout 1994 and 1995 and pulled closer to the WWF then they had ever been before? Or was it more that the WWF had fallen so far since 1992, and at a faster rate then WCW’s audience? Clearly WCW’s buyrates and overall attendance went up a lot in 1994 and 1995 (for Hogan PPVs at least, pretty crappy house show business still vs the WWF).

As a work rate fan, of course this is not my preferred way of doing things; but Cena is the type of guy that I believe can carry the promotion. I am by no means a huge Cena fan; but I totally get the appeal. Back when Hogan was champ, all kinds of different guys challenged for the belt on SNME and ppv’s. Same with Flair over at the NWA. For God’s sake, Hawk got a title shot on a major show.

Having the PG rating probably even helps this formula. I always laugh at HHH, especially that interview he gave, about putting over talent. The funny thing is Jericho and Cena have taken more pins in the last year than HHH has in the last 10 years. Now i’m guessing here, but I might be pretty close to the truth.