Dear World Wrestling Entertainment,
I regret to inform you that you are blowing a solid opportunity. Despite my repeated attempts at dissuasion, my three boys insist that professional wrestling is God’s gift to boys. They watch your shows religiously. They trot down the stairs shouting Yes!Yes!Yes! and performing F5’s on various stuffed animals. They buy in to your brand. The problem is that they are starting to see through your story lines.
This is not about wrestling being fake. The kids are smart enough to know that the moves being performed are incredibly high risk and have tried them on each other enough to know that there might be more than a little fabrication at work here. They don’t care. What makes them care is a good storyline with a guy they can cheer for and a someone worth booing. That is really beginning to fade in the WWE. In truth, the only thing keeping them tuned in is the hopes that some aged superstar will pop up and remind them that the legends in the video game are still at their old tricks.
The new breed of wrestling story lines do not work. My boys age from 5-10 and are already tired of the authority. Brock Lesnar is Yeti–they’ve seen glimpses and one real match but nothing worth becoming fans over. John Cena is, well, nobody here has a clue what you’re trying to do with that guy. The boos are confusing the 5 yr old and he is quickly loosing interest.
I get it. The story lines are up to the final say of Vince McMahon, a man that once fueled his trump-like ego by actually becoming a wrestler and defeating the superstars he helped prop up. Thankfully he’s too old for that so he sends out Hunter Hearst Helmsley to do it for him. Seriously, nobody wants to ‘Play the Game’. What these kids want is clearly drawn lines and a variety of superstars and matches that propagate the two main shows. They want to see multiple tag teams fighting for something that matters. They don’t want to see the same two teams battle every single night. They want to see new stars and old mix it up. They want surprise and mystery and comedy. They want to be wowed.
In the words of your rising superstar, ‘Feed me More’ and make sure what you’re feeding me isn’t more of the same. I’m done trying to make my kids give up wrestling and tired of explaining why the WWE brand sucks.