BY MICHAEL GOODPASTER
“Worst Case Scenario” is a new take on the concept of “fantasy booking”. For years professional wrestling fans would spend endless hours of thinking up the coolest things that could happen. Why waste the energy? This only leads to high expectations. “Worst Case Scenario” flips that. Instead of looking through rose colored glasses, let’s take a bi-weekly look at the worst possible scenarios in professional wrestling. I’m not going to be malicious or anything too mean, but I will not refrain from letting my brain come up with the worst possible shit I can. Sadly, it seems the writers and producers of mainstream TV wrestling and the mainstream iPPV level indies are doing the same thing but charging us for it. And now…
“The WWE Network Arrives!”
The dream of many wrestling fans for years has been the mumbles of “what if there was a channel that showed NOTHING BUT WRESTLING!” Every wrestling fan that’s been a wrestling fan long enough to dream that dream stopped breathing for a few seconds when the WWE announced they were going to be starting their own network.
This was a few years ago. Since making the announcement the WWE has really slowed their promo for it. At first it was coming soon and had some cool dub step promo advertising it. They even shot some promos, shows, and content for the channel. The Surreal Life rip off with old wrestlers was apparently shot and we’ve never seen it. In the mean time of the WWE announcing this new network they’ve added shows to the internet, to ION, and now to Bravo. They’re spreading themselves out across different networks which makes me think they’re slowing down their progress for the network.
If it does happen, great. It’ll have tons of awesome content and I’m sure a lot of people will get lost in their programming and will never be seen again. If the WWF had it’s own network when I was a child I’m fairly certain I’d have given up on speech and social contact all together. A lot of diehard fans will watch TNA or whatever else they can for the sole reason of “I’m watching it because it’s wrestling”. If there is a network, where do we “watch just to watch” fans go for help? There is going to have to be a rehab specifically for the WWE addicts.
But what if it sucks? The WWE doesn’t ALWAYS deliver the good. Sometimes shit just doesn’t work out. What’s the worst the WWE could do?
How about a John Cena show? Who wouldn’t want to watch a reality show of John Cena going around signing autographs, kissing babies, and taking meetings? If the Divas show on Bravo is any indication, their “worked shoot” idea is going to go reaaaaaally far.
There is also a content issue. It’s true that the WWE had a billion hours of wrestling in their archive, but that doesn’t mean they’re just going to start playing random matches for no reason. They’ll have to produce everything into neat programming that they can fully control the content of. If they don’t want us to see John Cena lose to Umaga they’re not going to show it. It’ll be heavily edited and censored. Smaller channels on Direct TV seem to cycle their programming. They’ll show a few hours of content a day and just repeat it a few times to fill up space. I’m sure the WWE would do better than that, but why should we get our hopes up?
Remember how people used to bitch about MTV never showing music videos anymore. Let’s fast forward a decade for wrestling fans. How unsettling is it that it’s REALLY easy to imagine snarky wrestling fans bitching with stuff like “Remember when the WWE Network actually showed wrestling! Gah! All of these reality shows suck!”. The only hope we’re going to have is if they go the VH1 route and still put out a WWE Classic channel for super nerds.
I can’t wait to see all of those unedited ECW promos…. Right?
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