Does anybody get cheered?

[Stickman]

Am I the only one noticing that guys dont' get cheered much anymore? Heels get no reaction either. Carlito, WGTT, Cade & Murdock Umaga, Masters, Lashley, Kalhi ect get zero reaction when they come out.

Does this have to do with the lack of star power, lack of reason to care? It's not like they get XPac heat either, they get no heat. I think this is a problem the WWE needs to realize. Especially since their main event heels get no reaction.

[IC Champion]

It has to do with a lack of general interest, and the fact that most of there fans have to be 14 or under, and not to mention, I wacth this weekly shows, and I dont see much of a reason for the crowds to go crazy, not to mention with all the recent injuries and what have you, they are lacking in star power.

[Kane Knight]

IC's got it. It's hard to get cheered when things aren't generally exciting.

[Mercury Bullet]

The WWE has tried to force feed us stars and expect them just to be received that way. And it doesn't work and now we're seeing the result of that. People don't like the "big" faces. People could care less about the "big" heels. And John Cena is going over all of them regardless.

[IC Champion]

Vince has the preception that since in the past he gave the fans what they wanted see, mostly because it was what he wanted to do, so I'm assuming after what doing whatever he liked and having the fans eat it up in the 80's and again in the mid-late 90's he thought that there gonna like whatever he tells them to, which is when he says it in character on RAW, I dont think its 100% a kayfabe. After years of knowing whats great, and leading the way throught the greatest era in wrestling, Vince forgot that hes just one man, I dont know if its because he claims to do the job of 5 or 6, But I honestly beleive that Vince thinks he knows whats best and what people are gonna like, and the way he books faces and heels is the proper way, and that people will boo or cheer, depending which he wants.

Basically, Vince is Vince and thats that.

[Stickman]

I get that Vince is stuck in the past but do they not here the lack of reaction? If I'm one of those guys getting no reaction, I'd ask management what I can do better to get over with the crowd. Not that they'd know, but I"d bring it to attention.

[IC Champion]

I get that Vince is stuck in the past but do they not here the lack of reaction? If I'm one of those guys getting no reaction, I'd ask management what I can do better to get over with the crowd. Not that they'd know, but I"d bring it to attention.
And If your not someone whos been in the company for a while, you'll be told to go fuck yourselve, and then told that your jobbing to HHH.

[Dorkchop]

It's funny because in the Attitude Era, the fans cheered and booed a lot. It's surprising going back and watching some old Raw clips.

[Volchok]

I'm watching the Rock/Mankind World title match from Raw in 99' and holy shit it was awesome back then. The crowd was so involved in the matches and now it just... sucks. WWE really just needs that next "big" star, someone to take them into the new era.

And another thing is there is really no star power, I mean yeah you have Triple H, HBK and Undertaker but still it seems so void compared to how it used to be. I mean you use to have Mankind, Austin, Rock, Kane (when he actually meant something), Taker, Triple H, plus tons of upper mid-carders all gunning for the title. I know this has been said countless times but it's still my two cents.


Side note: Like seriously Austin came out and the pop was huge for him, now you can't pay the crowd to pop like that.. I miss the Attitude Era.

[IC Champion]

I have all the RAWS from from April-June on DVD, some great shit.

[Stickman]

My opinion is it's because they lack the star power, but it also seems like they're not trying. For the love of god why is Umaga and Kahli main eventers?
Hell, their top guy, Cena, gets booed every second week. Find a damn star and no it's not Kennedy.

[The One]

Reason no one gets cheered...

Wrestlers who people dislike are pushed as super babyfaces.

Wrestlers who people like are pushed as heels.

Wrestlers who people give a flying rats ass about are buried in the midcard.

Wrestlers who people could care less about and are boring are pushed as Main Eventers.

The problem is all the people on top are put there artificially and the people who the crowd naturally likes are made to look weak to the people who WWE likes. As a result, no one gets cheered cause you're not going to cheer someone boring and your not going to cheer an entertaining person who is doomed.

[Kane Knight]

It's funny because in the Attitude Era, the fans cheered and booed a lot. It's surprising going back and watching some old Raw clips.

It's funny because Attitude Era II Cool got a better reaction than most matches do these days. Everything was better because the show was electric.

[Crossrine]

Keep in mind here that chants died. The most crowds give out now is a "You suck" chant. WWE crowds have seemed dead to me for some time now because of the lack of interaction. Another reason why I miss original ECW...

[Kane Knight]

Keep in mind here that chants died. The most crowds give out now is a "You suck" chant. WWE crowds have seemed dead to me for some time now because of the lack of interaction. Another reason why I miss original ECW...

WWE has ignored the fans for a long time and tried to stifle them. You could say WWE's broken the spirit of the fans.

But what's there to chant about?

[Crossrine]

True there isnt much to chant about, but when the marks chant "You suck" to a heel EVERY TIME I die a little on the inside..

[IC Champion]

WWE has ignored the fans for a long time and tried to stifle them. You could say WWE's broken the spirit of the fans.

But what's there to chant about?
Lol, Im gonna agree.

[Kane Knight]

True there isnt much to chant about, but when the marks chant "You suck" to a heel EVERY TIME I die a little on the inside..

Look at it from their point of view: How many different heels are there really? Orton and Edge have the same persona, and....

...Shit, I was going to point out how meidocre the heels are, and then I realised I could only name like 4 heels. Period.

There's no creativity amongst the different characters, so there's not much to work with. That's all I'm saying.

[mrslackalack]

I believe its because the lack of interest in the product and the star.

[Innovator]

WWE has ignored the fans for a long time and tried to stifle them. You could say WWE's broken the spirit of the fans.

But what's there to chant about?"change the channel"

[KingofOldSchool]

Reason no one gets cheered...

Wrestlers who people dislike are pushed as super babyfaces.

Wrestlers who people like are pushed as heels.

Wrestlers who people give a flying rats ass about are buried in the midcard.

Wrestlers who people could care less about and are boring are pushed as Main Eventers.

The problem is all the people on top are put there artificially and the people who the crowd naturally likes are made to look weak to the people who WWE likes. As a result, no one gets cheered cause you're not going to cheer someone boring and your not going to cheer an entertaining person who is doomed.

Yeah.

They go out of their way to piss off us intraweb marks because "we know too much of their carnie speak" so they punish most of our favorites and they continually push characters ass backwards because of it.

But the thing is, they are so wrapped up in "outsmarting the smarks" that they don't bother to listen to the negative or non-reaction of the live audiences.

[The One]

Good business isn't nearly as important as showing they run the business and the fans are just there...

[KingofOldSchool]

Good business isn't nearly as important as showing they run the business and the fans are just there...

Yeah who needs fans? All they do is complain! It's like they expect to be entertained!

[Kane Knight]

Of course, they seem to ignore ALL the fans, so they're not outsmarting to smarks. They're cutting off their nose to spite their face.

[KingofOldSchool]

But but but what do we know? We are just mindless fans. We are suppose to be sitting in our trailers watching our 12 inch black and white TV scarfing down WWF Ice Cream bars and taking ICOPRO.

[The One]

I think in WWE's mind, smart marks are like a cancer, the problem is in order to kill the cancer in their toe, they've elected to chop off the entire leg, as well as the other leg just to be sure, and since their in a cutting mood, get ride of those damn arms as well. :roll:

[KingofOldSchool]

I think in WWE's mind, smart marks are like a cancer, the problem is in order to kill the cancer in their toe, they've elected to chop off the entire leg, as well as the other leg just to be sure, and since their in a cutting mood, get ride of those damn arms as well. :roll:

And while they are at it, take out the heart, too. I mean who needs a heart for survival?

I mean look how long Eric Bischoff survived.

[The One]

No heart, hell look at Vince, he hasn't had a brain since the dawning of the new millenium...and he's still on top.

[KingofOldSchool]

No heart, hell look at Vince, he hasn't had a brain since the dawning of the new millenium...and he's still on top.

Ehhh it's been proven years ago that you don't need a brain to do anything on television.

Look at the cast of Saturday Night Live.

[The One]

That's true. It is a fucking sad day for SNL when you can hear people say, "Yeah, I mean I liked it more when Jimmy Fallon and Chris Parnell were on."

[Kane Knight]

Ehhh it's been proven years ago that you don't need a brain to do anything on television.

Look at the cast of Saturday Night Live.

Or the executives at Fox.

[Mr. Nerfect]

There are a lot of good posts in this thread, and I have also made the observation that crowds are just less hot these days. Event he guys people used to care about, like Chris Benoit, are getting only smattering applause in their fucking billed hometown. I guess that supports Kane Knight's theory that the crowd not only cares about specific characters, but the general aura around the show.

The One hit the nail on the head when he talked about how all the top stars are artificial. It is rumoured that Stephanie McMahon, since she has grabbed power in the WWE, has made the ruling to take focus away from mid-card acts, and put said focus solely on the main event. I think this can be blamed for the general quality of the shows. A show needs to build. For people to see John Cena as a man standing on top of the mountain, they need to actually see a fucking mountain.

It should also be pointed out that when the WWE does have a hot commodity on their hands, they drop the ball with them, and badly. I'm not trying to say either guy should have main evented WrestleMania the next year, so don't take it as this, but rather the WWE should have listened to the fans and not tried to sour them on their choices. The two men I am referring to are Matt Hardy and CM Punk.

When Matt returned from his brief absence away from the WWE, the fans were fucking rabid for him. Instead of having him calling Vince out for firing him in the first place, he shook his hand. Instead of having Matt get disqualified in their first match, trying to end Edge's career, they had Edge beat Matt Hardy to a pulp. By the time Matt Hardy hit the Leg Drop off the top of the cage to Edge's throat, it was pretty apparent the WWE were trying to stop Matt from looking too good against Edge. Then they shipped him off to SmackDown!. I still remember people doing Matt Hardy's "V1" hand signal in school circa mid-2005. The WWE dropped the ball there, and badly.

CM Punk had a great debut, immediately being accepted by the old-school ECW fans. This snowballed, and by the time we got to Survivor Series 2006, the fans were more into CM Punk than DX and The Hardys. Considering Shawn Michaels and Triple H both helped usher in the Attitude era, and played a big part in classic main events, and that The Hardys were tag team draws in 2000/2001, this is pretty damn impressive. So CM Punk is arguably the most popular guy in the company, what does the WWE do? They have him eliminated first in the big Extreme Elimination Chamber the following PPV, and then they have him lose one-on-one to fucking Bob Holly. As I said, they didn't need to put him in the main event of WrestleMania, or anything, but jobbing him out so badly was just asinine.

The WWE has been pretty much dropping the ball with elevating talent since around 2001, which is where the Attitude era died, surprise, surprise. Stone Cold Steve Austin turned heel, and The Rock left to pursue film. They needed to elevate talent to take those two positions. The Undertaker and Kane were given a shot, but things didn't really work out there. They were still Rikishi and Haku's rivals, and The Undertaker and Kane, while being over as shit, and great big men, were probably too hindered by their size to have epic main event matches. Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho were given shots, but the WWE just wasn't ready to commit to either guy.

We also saw the rise of Rob Van Dam in 2001. He made his WWE debut that year, and like CM Punk, he caught on like wildfire. The fans were itching for him to take the WWE Championship off Stone Cold Steve Austin during the later half of the year, but it never happened, because the WWE were too stubborn about giving the new guy a push. You also saw Booker T, Chris Kanyon and Diamond Dallas Page all play pussy heel roles, and turned into enhancement talent for the WWE guys.

I admire the WWE for having Chris Jericho become the one to unify the WWE and WCW Championships. That was a ballsy move, and almost smarky in its execution. But I don't think the WWE has washed that event out of their mouth just yet. Chris Jericho had just turned heel, and his run was a snooze. Everyone was hard for heel Jericho, but I just felt he had become bland. In retrospect, I know why people loved heel Jericho. When he was allowed to be heel and have character, he was phenomenal. The WWE turned him into a pawn for Stephanie McMahon, and they had him play the pussy obstacle for Triple H to climb upon his return. To be honest, I think they should have booked the feud using their incident in 2000, where Jericho had the WWE Title won, but then the decision was reversed, as the instigator of the feud. Triple H is back, has the title shot at WrestleMania, and Jericho cuts promos about how this time, Triple H will not rob him of his moment. Triple H just tells Jericho there is nothing he can do to stop him from winning his first WWE Championship in over a year and a half.

Anyway, my point is, the WWE fucked up Jericho's rise to the top. It wasn't Jericho's fault the execution was done so badly, nor was it the fans'. The WWE needs to accept responsibility for this. Other smarky rises to the top since then include Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit, Randy Orton and Dave Batista. Guerrero, Benoit and Batista were all done fantastically. You can see that reflected in the product at the time. The fans cared, and the product was good. Randy Orton was fucked up, not by Randy Orton or the fans, but by the WWE, who turned him into a Stone Cold Steve Austin wannabe.

The WWE pretty much let their own incompetence sour them on pushing guys the fans want to see pushed. Jericho and Orton were bad experiences, but not because of those guys, but because the WWE made them either a generic heel, or a generic face. I don't know, it just seems to me that the WWE needs to stop being pussies and blaming the guys the fans wanted to get behind for being failures, and not pushing others because of that.

When he returns, Mr. Kennedy is the obvious choice for a big push. A lot of people are expecting him to beat Edge for the World Heavyweight Championship. I wouldn't go that route. I'd have Mr. Kennedy cost Edge the Championship to Matt Hardy. Then have Kennedy and Edge feud, to test the waters of face Kennedy, and to delay his World Title win until they can be sure it will be most effective. It also gets the belt onto Matt Hardy, who has been putting on great matches and still has large face support. King Booker would return around this time, and he could feud with Matt Hardy over the World Heavyweight Title. Booker has really become kind of an MVP since his King of the Ring win, and it rights the wrong of the WWE dropping the ball with him in 2001. Rey Mysterio would return, and although the WWE botched his push last year, they can make it up to him by using him correctly now. It would be a mistake to have Rey Mysterio in the main event without the man who put him on the shelf joining him there.

Yes, there I said it: SmackDown!'s main event scene should consist of: Edge, Mr. Kennedy, Matt Hardy, King Booker, Rey Mysterio and Chavo Guerrero. They should also hold another King of the Ring tournament, and use this to remind the fans why they cared about CM Punk in the first place, by having him win. Montel Vontavious Porter is also gaining stock on SmackDown!, and he will definitely be ready to get elevated soon.

On RAW, John Cena needs to lose the WWE Championship. I guess Randy Orton would make a great choice as Champion, as he has that former connection with the fans to play off, but he really should be punished for his recent behaviour. I'd honestly go with either Batista or Chris Benoit as the new WWE Champion. Neither man has held the Championship before, and Benoit really should get a chance to hold it before he retires. Both are WWE success stories, and are only held down by the current WWE product. A move back to RAW could really help one of them. I think Batista would be the better choice, as he seems a better fit for RAW. Chris Benoit would suit ECW more, where he can help get Bobby Lashley, Elijah Burke and Marcus Cor Von ready for the main event, by leading that brand as its ECW World Champion.

I'm getting carried away now, but I think the important thing for the WWE to do is to go with the guys the fans have proven they can latch to, create a logical main event scene from that, elevate talent to make things fresh, but to listen to the fans. They don't want Khali or Umaga. They want CM Punk or Matt Hardy. If something doesn't work, like the WWE at present, you can refresh things instantly by listening to the fans.

[Mr. Nerfect]

I actually wanted to make a short post, but I just kept writing. So before anyone complains, my point is that The One is correct, and the guys the fans want to care about are being jobbed out for clods no one cares about.

[Mooияakeя™]

Fuckin hell Alienoid. You need to loosen up on the coffee. Though I did skim it, I saw some good stuff in there. I agree about Kennedy. Simple as. The man has it all, he jsut needs to use it.

Kenton > Swanton

[Outsider]

Part of the reason is about just how shite the main eventers are. There is a reason no-one cares about Lashley. He is bollocks.

[Kane Knight]

Part of the reason is about just how shite the main eventers are. There is a reason no-one cares about Lashley. He is bollocks.

You just described more than hald the main event, too.

For some reason, Batista still gets some massive pops. But most of the top faces don't, and most of the top heels don't get heat.

[RVDmark]

Find a damn star and no it's not Kennedy.

I think it will be kennedy. He can do it, he has decent promo skills, he gets a reasonable reaction and he has some decent looking moves.

I get the feeling he'll get cena'd or orton'd in that they were prepared to drop the title on him after Undertaker got injured. Now that he is injured then perhaps it could be a good thing for him. If he comes back and it takes them extra time to get the belt on him (with Edge being told he'll get a long run) it could build him as a star other than being rushed to the top. Of course if he gets moved to Raw and takes the belt off Cena then he'll become a god overnight.

Then again there are several guys in the WWE who could do well if they were booked properly, like uh, the roster.

[KingofOldSchool]

Or the executives at Fox.

Or anyone appearing on MTV.

[JJT420]

I agree with everyone saying nobody wants Umaga and Great Khali, there are many reasons for this, one of the big ones being they dont talk, they just ramble on in their native tongue that the vast majority do not understand, and that translation shit that Khali has got going on does not count, a good second reason is the most obvious one, they are just boring and predictable, every week, they come out, do the same two or three shitty moves, 1..2..3 its over, it was beastly the first couple times, but *yawn*, that alone is not gonna generate fan heat, not at all.

Edge is an established heel, and he has the potential to be a great heel Champion, if they use him right, they need to get on the ball with that one...

Randy Orton just needs to die.....

And yes, the product is really hurtin with all these injury's this summer, hopefully things will pick up by the Survivor Series.

John Cena, *seigh* what can I say about him, I have nothing against the guy, but again its the whole predictable situation, and his prolonged championship runs are just too much, too much Cena, and speaking of too much....

Pardon my French, but for Christ sakes, enough with the McMahon's, I am getting sick of seeing that crazy old man and his damn son taking up so much camera time, sticking their fucking nose into everything, stay behind the scenes dammit, arrggh, and Steph, her having as much power as she does these days, not a good thing at all......

And oh yes, the lower card needs a push, yes yes yes.

[Theo Dious]

There are a lot of good posts in this thread...

and then a bunch of stuff I'm not wasting space quoting.

Good God man, you seriously need help.

[311]

I must spread reputation before giving it to Alienoid again. Meh.

[Fox]

Its the same problem WCW had in 2000. For a few years, they only focused on a few particular guys (Hogan, Nash, Piper, Flair, Goldberg) and they paid absolute shit attention to everyone else. Nobody beneath that upper tier got a push and nobody got over.

When those upper card guys started to wain with the crowds, there was nobody to like.

WWE has focused for far too long on Triple H, Shawn Michaels, and John Cena, and Vince McMahon. Nobody else has been made into a believable star. Bobby Lashley's first main event feud is with Vince McMahon? WTF? Randy Orton was killed off in 2005. Batista is a great, big, waste of size. Undertaker is out. Kennedy, who actually was getting over, out with an injury. Edge is mired in sub-stardom on Smackdown, bringing him down a notch.

It's just a boring show. Hopefully the brand draft will make things more interesting.