Yeah it's an average joe fest nowadays, might aswell watch some reality tv. Everybody should have a gimmick imo.

 

You're right, and it obviously stems from the lack of diverse and unique gimmicks. It gets old sometimes watching regular dudes come out with a first and last name as a gimmick.

 

It's impossible, they're all average guys, most of them are also bland, uncharismatic, generic talentless clones who are there by default, not because they're something special.
This is the worst WWE roster of all time by far.

 

I agree.. I know all AE haters bash Attitude era and all.. but the truth remains. EVERY superstar back in that era was charismatic as hell! Every main eventer, every mid carder.. even Val Venis!

Today.. except for 3-4 wrestlers, no one really has that it factor.

 

its to do with over exposition and lack of characters. but more to do with buildup and presentation

hell, the early 90s had characters but you wouldnt want to see that shit again

the only person with true mystique nowadays is Taker

 

I don't mind characters with a first and last name.

I blame the performers for the most part. They aren't able to connect with the audience most of the time. And the guys who manage to connect are jobbed out or fed to Cena. So the problem is two-fold.

 

Ya think? There aren't characters anymore they are all just 'wrestling dudes'. I can count on one hand the newer guys who could have hacked it 20 years ago. I think Shamus has a unique enough look and character (Lucky for him he was born with it). I actually think Del rio would have been better off in the past when there were better people to work off of.


Put Jack Swagger in the ring with Ravishing Rick Rude, and compare talents, He would have been a jobber, as would a lot of other guys. Hell Put mr 'perfection' ziggler in there w/ the real mr. perfect, it would have been instant ownage.

I will say a lot has to do with the fact that the culture of the business has changed. You know these guys today are relatively normal guys outside the ring, and are just blatantly doing bad acting when the cameras are on. A lot of the old guys were goddamn nuts, and it wasn't that much of an act. Randy savage was a ridiculous crazy person, as was warrior, The Kliq lived their shit, and It was still real to bret hart dammit. Dibiase really traveled the world like a millionaire, on vince's dime. And Zack ryder has a shitty apartment in LI, and collects action figures of these legendary wrestlers. Who do you think would come across as more intriguing on TV?

 

Be risky WWE. Evan Bourne...The son of Matt Bourne. DOINK JR! Lol, but seriously, I agree. They need more diversity in there gimmicks and whatnot. There should be more surreal personalities like R-Truth around. Seriously.

 

I completely agree. I don't want to watch some 5'7" try hard vanilla midget performing acrobatics. I want to see epic stars who are drenched in charisma alongside hideous psychotic monsters and rough looking nutters with attitude. What is the point in trying to suspend your disbelief for the sake of watching some of todays workers who look like they would get their arses handed to them by 25% of the audience? I want to see wrestlers who can project themselves through the screen and can captivate the audience. Even a perennial late 80's to early 90's midcard guy like Jake Roberts had 1000% of the presence that any current WWE 'superstar' has.

No offence to Christian marks but there's a reason Vince held out on him getting a World title run for so long. The guy is only suitable to fill that spot in the current climate, he'd have been drowned out by the presence of guys like Austin, Rock, Taker, HHH, HBK, Lesnar and Batista. I also have my doubts about whether Punk would have been able to get past the mid card jobber tier in the Attitude era. Apologies to all you Punk fans.

 

I completely agree. I don't want to watch some 5'7" try hard vanilla midget performing acrobatics. I want to see epic stars who are drenched in charisma alongside hideous psychotic monsters and rough looking nutters with attitude. What is the point in trying to suspend your disbelief for the sake of watching some of todays workers who look like they would get their arses handed to them by 25% of the audience? I want to see wrestlers who can project themselves through the screen and can captivate the audience. Even a perennial late 80's to early 90's midcard guy like Jake Roberts had 1000% of the presence that any current WWE 'superstar' has.

You are 100% right. I had hoped that since the whole Benoit thing died down that they might stop with the pushing of the undersized guys and go back to pushing larger than life wrestlers as the O.P described, but that doesn't seem to be the case unfortunately.

 

Yeah, everyone now is basically just generic FCW guys. About the only guys I can think of who have their characters cranked up to 11 right now are Ryder and Rhodes. Everyone else is a slight variation on the generic babyface, a Jericho cocky heel clone, or a dude with no character whatsoever.

 

100% true.. and the times the wrestlers do have the mic... like with cody rodes insulting Orton, ugh. They've actually done it right with Cena, they were doing it right with punk IWC wise, now they're turning him into a face for the casuals, abut the rest of their full time talent, I just don't connect with any of them.. Not Orton at all, Henry just a bit, but other then that, meh. Rikishi never said very much, but he had a gimmick, the stinkface, that the announcers made larger then life and everyone loved. Plus he wasn't a half bad wrestler. It just worked.

As for Rock, HHH, etc... they need no introduction. They made themselves larger then life. I still remember the dumb gimmicks like the ho train and others that worked.. they turned a faceless wrestler into something memorable.

I just wonder which it is.. that the wrestlers don't stick up for themselves and give Vince ideas, or if that Vince is just more closed off to ideas then he was in the past. Clearly we are in a new era, but their creative is so.. lacking. They could do so much more, even with PG.

 

I wouldn't blame it on the talent level of the roster becasue I think there's no denying that WWE has its fair share of talented performers as long as they are booked correctly. "Larger than life" feel is something that makes Wrestling special to me and something that attracts me more than anything. It's the main type of characters I want to be entertained by and the main characters I looked up to as a kid. They don't even necessarilly have to have the most creative out of this world gimmick or character, I just dislike it when I see a Wrestler who is cutting a promo or Wrestling and they appear to be the type of guys who are just working to work. Almost like it's a 9 - 5 job the way they present themselves and I think those are the worst type of Wrestlers.

As much as people bash Cody Rhodes on this forum he at least has a gimmick and is building some character depth. I personally would much rather watch Cody Rhodes do his bag gimmick with his mask and see him cutting a promo than watch somebody like Jack Swagger walk around acting like a normal person in your neighborhood. Rhodes stands out to the casual fan at the very least and standing out is definitely a good thing in this business. I'm just hoping he can take it all the way with the character and add more depth to become one of the most over the top out of this world bigger than life characters in the history of Wrestling. It's going to take improvements and some work in some of the holes he has now but over the last year or so Rhodes has significantly improved overall so I have faith in the guy and will continue to have faith in him until he shows me that he's not working on trying to become a unique personality in Wrestling.

 

Everybody these days is just a First and Last name. There are no gimmick characters, excluding Sin Cara. They feel like average joes, like expendable people who could be replaced by anyone. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think guys like The Undertaker or HHH would be as big if they were just known as Mark Calaway or Paul Levesque. There's so little separation of reality these days.

 

It's definitely to do with the era, partially. Some random OTT guys aren't cool any more, but the 'person' gimmick is. No idea why. Looking at HHH I'd say he's one of the last larger than life guys left. Sheamus is one, too. There are many highly entertaining guys on this roster, but for some reason they don't strike me as larger than life like the guys I mentioned. Whether that's purely because of physical appearance I'm not certain. But to be fair, many faces from previous eras (attitude) I don't consider larger than life at all. But I do agree that it is a great feeling simply to be in awe of the presence of one superstar.


Boom, there you go. Sin Cara is larger than life, so it isn't a size thing.

 

i think this is a big problem the WWE has now. i was a kid during the early 90's, and while i look back now and laugh at some of the gimmick's they had, most had me captivated as a kid because they were different. i was never a hogan fan as the america shit had no effect on me, i'm english and couldn't give a shit about someone who came out with an american flag. although he shoudlnt have done, the undertaker fascinated me. then there was jake the snake, macho man, ultimate warrior, the legion of doom. people at every level to get behind. and i'm sure during that time there was still enough for the older fans to get behind. trouble is people want different things, and expectations get higher.

To me, the overall general audience of wrestling seems similar to when i first started whatching, but i'm sure the crowd was more vocal then. even into the early 2000's, midcard faces and heels would get big reactions.

i think the current crop are capable of getting reactions, but i think a biiiig mistake is trying to make a heel from facing cena. he may be the '#1 face' but he gets massive negative reactions too.

you can make great heels from facing great faces, and vice versa, which is why i think orton is the key for making new heels.

i digress, but yes, the characters seem to not be the same as they used to be, and so does the crowd reaction. maybe one is the cause of the other. i think depth of character is the problem. for example, Mr Perfect, was, well perfect. his promos and interviews played up on the fact that he was perfect. Dolph Ziggler, great in the ring, what's his actual character?

lots of words with no sense, but hey, i'm drunk

 

William Regal is a great character. I think Goldust should still be in the WWE. He was amazing on the mic and put on good matches.

 

Personally I welcome the change in a sense. Look at Shawn Michaels, Ric Flair, Bret Hart, Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guererro, Chris Jericho. These guys all were able to have characters while at the same time maintaining some sense of realism. They didn't have to have jobs, or superpowers, they're regular people with normal names. We don't need a world where ridiculous personas like Scotty 2 Hotty, Road Dogg, and the Godfather are what is expected from pro wrestling.

But I know what youre getting at, and I think the reason everyone seems a bit generic and faceless right now is because WWE is at a kind of crossroads. It's similar to when guys like Hogan and Savage left in the early 90s - and they didnt know where to go or who to push. We have people to fill the void that's being left, alot of them just havent been given the ball to run with. Even someone like Punk, who has had a fantastic year, isnt being given as much creative liberties as say a Steve Austin or Rock was in 98.

It's been often said in wrestling, the cream always rises to the top eventually, and it's true. Watch Shawn Michaels in his early years. There was a time where Marty Jannetty was actually the better talker of the Rockers. But if you fastforward 5 years from then, you can see the HBK we all know starting to form. Same goes for "Rocky Maivia". Granted he developed a bit faster but he was as generic and green as they come for his first year or 2. He just happened to come into pro wrestling at a different time, where wrestlers could have an idea for their character and be given a chance to just go out there and try something new.

 

Agreed. It's not so much about guys having a cheesy gimmick to make them stand out with ridiculous brightly coloured ring attire, it's more about having high amounts of natural charisma, swagger, confidence, likeability and a presence that can captivate an audience. Look at Austin and The Rock, two guys who wore black boots and trunks and had generic hair (or none in Austins case) styles. Yet these two were the epitome of larger than life and stood out by a mile. It's this kind of presence that a guy like Punk lacks, he's completely ordinary even down to the tattoos which are a cliche in todays modern society. He has most of the tools in his locker but lacks that extra edge or presence to take him completely over.

The biggest problem is WWE's feeder system, FCW is not developing young rookies in the correct manner. When they were running OVW they had numerous guys break through and eventually end up main eventing. Lesnar, Cena and Batista are all examples of larger than life characters produced by OVW. Something has obviously changed in WWE's developmental policies since moving to Florida. Some of these possibilities may be training quality, WWE demanding poor or inappropriate training methods or haphazard scouting (looking at you Ace) policies.

 

Yeah... There aren't many gimmicks. Majority of heels are just cocky assholes.

Look at the 90s. Bret Hart wasn't a big guy, but he had the 'larger than life' feel. Hell, he was like a real hero, without the over the top character.

 

I don't know if this is even slightly accurate, but I always kind of felt that this 'era' of technically okay-to-solid wrestlers with similar, average gimmicks is a reaction to the over-the-top, silly gimmicks of past eras. It's like back in the past eras things were so over-the-top, and they know people know it's fake, so they think that scaling back the characters and making them more serious and less cartoon-y will make people take it seriously as a sport.

I must be wrong, though, because then they wouldn't be calling their talent 'Superstars' instead of 'wrestlers'.

Some of these guys are very talented, but to the casual viewer are indistinguishable from the next 6"1, 200 pound guy. Very few of them have a gimmick that makes them stand out.

 

I think any sense of a lack of larger than life comes down to the booking.

I think the raw talent is there in today's scene, and when you look at guys like Ziggler, Morrison, Tyson Kidd, Garbriel whatshisface etc, the ability and the physicality is great.

For these guys and other talented lower/midcarders there's just no good booking for them anymore to bring them up right.

For example in the past if WWE had guys who were lacking in mic skills, they gave them a manager mouthpiece to get them over. That's a huge thing missing in today's scene. I truly beleive if JoMo had the right hot chick talking for him, then the moon would be the limit for that guy.

When you look at stars from the past like Shawn, Bret, Rocky, Austin, Mankind, Jericho, Guererro they all had meaningful mid card feuds that got time and logic poured into them before they made the big time.

WWE just doesn't seem to follow that system anymore. They pick a guy to win MITB and then slap the big belt on them before the crowd gives a crap.


Ultimately it's the lack of competition for the WWE monster that causes this, and the fact that if you're over 14 you're just not their target audience anymore.

 

I think its "in my day" illness, pepole form the 70's 80's compalinedf about it in the 90's
evrey Era is wrong in someone cause its not how it was in their day

 

You're totally right. I got a gimmick I'm working on but at first it was really hard getting started because just about everyone has done it. Plus you can't be a badass character if you don't believe you are. Steve didn't really hit Vince but he damn sure believed it. I miss the blurred line of kayfabe and reality. Now a days they may as well admit it's a work.

 

They messed up Kane's character. He should've been the true elite monster of WWE.

 

I think what is missing is creativity, proper training and something that should re-invent wrestling. The 80s were extremely "larger than life" the 90s were filled with characters with Attitude. We go to 2011 and we have FCW talent working the ring with no personalities and just so generic like Johnny Curtis, Titus O Neil,Kofi Kingston, Ekekiel Jackson and Ted Dibiase etc....WWE back then had multiple training facilities and talent would be more diverse because of this. I think WWE perhaps needs a new direction, re-inventing pro-wrestling again. There are some good talent in WWE but most seem to be given nothing exciting to work with or everything just seems too scripted, and half assed.

 

Yep alot of metrosexuals, I too miss those characters of old.

 

I don't think it's gone. I just think no one has come along who has that larger than life feel. Someone will eventually and then they will be up there with The Rocks and Stone Colds of this world.

 

I'll be shocked if anybody becomes as big of a star as Stone Cold or The Rock in the next three or four years. As much as I'm sure WWE does not want to admit it, The 'sport' of Wrestling isn't half as popular as it was at that time and the way they are going it probally never will. I'll be satisfied if a guy can at least take Cena's spot just in a more positive light regarding the fans.

 

Welcome to the reality era... where a far-fetched gimmick and nickname would be horrendous, but threatening puppets is normal every day behaviour.

It's a pointless discussion though. The business has changed completely since then and it's never going to be like that again.