Pro Wrestling as a Serialized Drama

[Mr. Tambourine Man]

Companies like WWE and TNA try really hard to be creative and come up with interesting stories. Unfortunately, more often than not, they come as unbelievable and uninspiring.

For example...when Hulk Hogan marched out into the ring and demanded some answers from Brooke on Impact. Immediately I thought to myself "hello! you didn't bother to call all week dad?"

Or in WWE when every single time we hear there is a "board of directors meeting" it is happening during RAW. You are trying to tell me that a multimillion dollar company could not help themselves but to schedule their meeting of the board on the same day as their flagship show?

But what can they do really? If a storyline revolves around a certain plot device, they have to pretend like the other six days of the week don't exist. There is no choice.

If you are a company like New Japan Pro Wrestling or Dragon Gate Pro Wrestling and you try to keep things simple, then you avoid all of these plotholes because you're presenting yourself more as a scripted UFC or boxing, but when you are a company that is more story orientated on a weekly basis, then it becomes very hard to be creative while still not looking phoney.

Anyone remember when The Warrior snuck up on Hulk Hogan in the infamous WCW mirror angle, where all of us at home could see Warrior just as Hogan could, but nobody else on TV could? Or hearing Jeff Hardy's thoughts during the LIVE Impact Wrestling show? Or my absolute favorite...when someone is going behind someones back on live TV and doing something devious, yet the victim does not find out until much later. If everything is happening in real time and there's millions of people watching on a monitor, shouldn't someone have mentioned to the guy that his supposed friend is out to get him?

I think for that reason it would be great if wrestling (at least a segment of it) could evolve into this weekly, serialized drama show that has the premise of a pro wrestling company, but is sort of self contained in its own universe; pre-taped and produced like a hit TV show. Like a Sons of Anarchy or Breaking Bad. You know so when Vickie Guerrero and Paul Heyman are arguing over "business" they aren't doing it in front of an audience like a circus act. The characters dont have to live with the consequence of revealing themselves the prior week, because in the show everything has been done in private. It happens to be something that goes on in the story of the show and comes off more realistic.

Jeff Katz was apparently trying to do something like this. I think he called it Pro Wrestling Retribution. Unfortunately it never got up off the ground, but personally I would love to see a pro wrestling TV show like this. How about the rest of you?

[CT Baker]

Great idea. This is what pro wrestling should evolve into. Pro wrestling is, after all, basically just a serialized weekly drama. Promoters just need to become smarter with their presentation.

Although, to be fair, ECW, Memphis and Mid South did some of the things you mentioned at times.