The Forzese View - Difficult Decisions
Submitted by Jim Forzese on Wednesday, October 29, 2003 at 6:57 AM EST



Difficult Decisions

They are the type of things that can change your world in the blink of an eye, so what do Vince McMahon, Grady Little, and the New York Yankees have in common? Everbody loves you when you are on top of the world but as soon as the winning stops you become the ultimate scapegoat. The fans expectations of you are high, so high that failure is inevitable because you have nowhere else to go but down. One bad decision could mean your career and your livelihood, as the fans that revered you now want your head on a silver platter. WWE is the number one wrestling company in North America, and much like The Yankees, the WWE was built to not only compete every game but to win on a regular basis. As soon as a few bad decisions are made, fans want everyone on the roster fired when, as early as the day before they were the love of the fans life.

Vince should call Grady Little and discuss what it’s like to continually have to look over your shoulder and see the knife about to be plunged into your back. I personally hate the Yankees but does the team deserve to have the fans turn on them after a big dissappiontment? Did Grady Little make the right decision in game 7? Should Vince McMahon always need to blow you away every time he puts on a wrestling TV program? Vince is faced with certain innate problems that he must face every day and always having armchair bookers (including myself) question everything he does most definitely must get tiresome. Vince unfortunately creates most of his own problems because of his utter disregard for what the fans want at times.

If the majority of fans want to see wrestlers like RVD and Eddie Guerrero as the World Champions why would WWE question their size as it relates to the fans perception? WWE believes that these two wrestlers are to small to be believable as World Champions but Randy Orton, who is about twenty pounds heavier than all of the cruiserweights on the roster, is acceptable as a possible World Champion, but not RVD or Eddie? There is definitely a fan’s perception of size but ability and fan support has to play a major role in deciding who should carry the company on their respective shoulders. To quote Jim Ross “Batista is bigger than Goldberg” but I would not want to see Batista as World Champion anytime soon. This is a decision that fans question Vince on regularly. Should ability and fan appeal win out over physical mass?

Another thing that fans question Vince’s decision making on is his non-push of the younger talent to the main event level. Now the problem is that all I am hearing is that a lot of the rookies are starting to get an inflated ego. The youngsters are starting to try and get their own political push behind the scenes so that they can solidify their spot atop the WWE.Vince is now forced to decide whether he should take a chance on locker room turmoil by pushing young talent over the established talents and possibly creating monsters in the process. Either way Vince seems to have detractors in whichever decision he makes. A wrestler is either too old to hold that top spot or a wrestler is far too green to deserve that top spot. Pretty tough decision making if you ask me.

Yet another topic of debate is the McMahon TV dominance. The word I am getting is that since Vince realizes that business is down right now, Vince thinks he and his family should try and pull the company out of the doldrums themselves or take the blame if the McFamily cannot. That is why as of the 10/20/03 Raw, Vince and Shane McMahon both had prominent matches announced for Survivor Series and it took a week later to announce a match for the World title. Vince, Shane, Austin, and Bischoff all non-wrestlers have matches at the upcoming PPV and only one title period is announced for the PPV. That is a bad decision that gets fans extremely upset at WWE.The WWE and World titles should have been the first matches announced for Survivor Series not three matches later. Titles should always take precedence over anything including Vince.

HHH is now a member of the McMahon family after his wedding this past weekend to Stephanie. Vince must now decide whether or not to let HHH dominate Raw per usual or should Vince force HHH to move away from the spotlight since his spot is now secure forever. HHH getting pushed to the moon again, regardless of his loyalty to Vince is going to be one of the biggest topics of concern to the Raw roster. Vince must decide if his son-in-law is more important than his entire company because more and more wrestlers will get ready to jump to TNA if they are assured that now Raw is exclusively a monopoly within a monopoly. If Hogan helps get TNA a national cable TV deal then Vince is going to have a mass exodus if he does not make a decision to turn things around for the better as it pertains to HHH.

Above are all decisions that would probably make 90% of us turn tail and run if we were held accountable for every decision that we made and then put onto TV to garner ratings. WWE is giving us a lot of good things lately but the bad decisions seem to always outweigh what it is that WWE does well. Fans like to take a what have you done for me lately attitude and failure to perform week after week leaves fans questioning everything WWE does. Putting on that much TV every week without time off makes me think that the chance of failure or bad ideas would certainly outweigh the possibility of hitting a homerun every episode of either Raw or Smackdown.So I think we should be happy with the good things that we get every week as opposed to continually harping on the negative.


Bottom Line:

Nobody can be number one forever. No wrestling company, musical act, sports franchise, or TV show can always be the best forever and nor should that be expected because that is unjustifiable pressure put on the company by the fans. The flip side is that when you do slip from the top a finger of blame needs to be placed in the appropriate direction and adjustments need to be made. I personally like what it is I am seeing lately on both Raw and Smack down overall but there are things that need adjusting. A few things that need addressing are as followed. WWE cannot have the Taker wrestle Brock Lesner for the WWE title at No Mercy and then the following week have Taker get to wrestle anyone he wants at Survivor Series and Taker chooses Vince over the WWE title.

If Taker put in a stipulation that if he wins at Survivor Series in the Buried Alive match Vince disappears from TV for the rest of the year and Taker gets a title re-match then fine, but to choose a regular no stipulation match over the WWE title is deplorable. Why not hold up a sign that reads titles are only props. To have HHH place a bounty to cripple the World Champion so that Goldberg cannot defend his title at the next PPV is totally non-sensicle. Doesn’t HHH want to win the title back? Why would he put the champion out of commission so that HHH cannot get a re-match? Obviously Bischoff could not hand the belt back to HHH without Austin putting a stop to it so what was the point? Does Batista get a shot at Goldberg first? Lastly for Austin to win the right to kick wrestlers asses without being provoked when he is provoked every week anyway is asinine. Make decisions that are going to appeal to the masses at home watching not just the people in attendance. Most fans will pop for the ring crew when they are caught up in the energy of being live on TV.WWE can not mistake that for being over.

Just like fans cannot condemn sports teams for one bad decision that cost them dearly, fans should not condemn wrestling for a few bad decisions either. What fans should expect and demand however is some form of correcting the problem. WWE needs to decide what it is that is good for the company in the whole and the business overall. WWE should not make decisions based off a single person who they think should be getting rewarded even when in reality he shouldn’t be (read HHH). If the MLB playoffs taught us anything it taught us that rebuilding to greatness does not take too long, and ratings are made when fans are watching what it is that they are asking for, a fierce, historied rivalry. The Red Sox and Yankees did a 64 share Neilson rating while the World Series was the third lowest rated Series ever. Did baseball fans stop watching because they no longer liked baseball? No, they stopped watching because the teams or players they wanted to see were no longer fighting for the championship.

So fans want smart decision-making as it relates to storylines, coupled with watching their favorites battling for wrestling supremacy and some form of logic where wrestlers are positioned on the roster appropriately. That sounds like a winning recipe to me but then again it’s not my money so maybe I’m wrong. But as a fan I am thankful that we are at least getting some positive things to keep looking forward to every week. Vince, you are only a couple of good decisions away from reclaiming your ratings and one really bad decision away from your demise. So for all the good I see on TV, Thank you WWE I am forever a fan. Until next time that’s just my view.

Jim Forzese
forzeseview@yahoo.com









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