A spiel on Wrestlemania.

Have you been watching Monday Night Raw, ECW, TNA Impact or Smackdown lately? There's a probably not somewhere, and it's not impossible to see why. The product's shit right now. I hate harping on the obvious smark excuses about the good old days of the Attitude Era where wrestling characters slept with their storyline mothers and hands were being born. But it's committed the worst sin that the art of men doing choreographed fighting can do, which is to be unbearably boring.

Monday's Raw program started off the week's downward slide of disinterest, by managing in two hours to suck up all the excitement for the WWE's largest event of the year. The Triple H/Orton confrontation was cemented by Triple H beating up on Cody Rhodes in a cage for whatever reason. The John Cena/Big Show/Edge storyline has erupted into a silly soap-operatic storyline where two heels are fighting for the love of another heel, while Cena's merely there to do a wacky expression, so there's an all around dislike there. Rey Mysterio Jr. is fighting for a midcard title, that sells nothing. The Money in the Bank sells nothing. The Undertaker/Shawn Michaels story sells slightly more than nothing, but this whole angling business is so unnecessary. Taker getting angry over Shawn taking his pin is downright stupid. Why the hell does the Undertaker care? And more importantly, other than Shawn kicking him in the face, how has this 15 minute segment (which applies to the former two storylines as well) helped sell pay-per-views? 

Wrestling's entire optimum goal is to sell the product to sell pay-per-views to then make the money off of them. In 2009, WWE has shown a complete failure in attempting to sell their own product as worthy of spending money on. The Royal Rumble was sold on the mere draw of the Rumble, and it's come in abysmally low. No Way Out had such a poor build to its matches, that the pre-show merely replayed a Smackdown match rather than a big video package, and the Chambers can't possibly be increased in buyrate over last year. And Wrestlemania has all but destroyed its build, almost forcing its audience to order because "it's Wrestlemania", which does not work these days.

Without getting into the whole detailed explanation, Wrestlemania will do lower than expected buys because in this post-"in this economy" world, people can't be sold on brands. They have to feel it is a life or death thing that they are missing, or that the concept is so unique, that it's worth spending money on. This isn't even a sole problem with wrestling, as sports in general can't sell themselves on their brand any more, with the exception of the NFL or the pure uniqueness of the NCAA tournament, which even isn't nearly as fun after about the third round.

Yet for three consecutive pay-per-views, World Wrestling Entertainment has told their audience that they should buy their pay-per-views merely by their name, and not because the fans are to expect something out of it. There have been all of ten matches total combined on the last two PPVs run by WWE, which even if one of them was the beloved Royal Rumble and the other two were fine Elimination Chamber matches, you have to sell a loaded card to the customer. WWE learned this the hard way through the terrible December 2 Dismember show merely having two matches announced. Five matches total on a three-hour show isn't much better. And neither is the lax build that's become constant at Titan Towers.