It's not that I have a problem with them wanting to be more than a wrestling company, I'd like them to at least admit that they are a wrestling company. Or at least that wrestling is their primary subsidiary.
Vince does have ambitions of being Mr. Olympia-cum-World's Greatest Entertainer and always has done. Kind of like Rupert Murdoch on steroids. Fine, he's free to pursue that but the disownership of the wrestling aspect doesn't fool the fans who care, and doesn't appeal to the public who don't care. Gosh, I've been reading far too much about Kevin Dunn lately but it actively makes the product less enjoyable the more they branch away and try to present their wrestling as not being wrestling. "Entertainers with significant athletic prowess". Puh-lease! Again, it fools nobody who cares and doesn't trick people who don't.
And, if they are so insistent about being a legitimate 'entertainment' conglomerate, it would help if their other interests were even successful or critically received. WWF New York lost $36,000,000, the XFL was at least another $35,000,000, the WBF was in the red to the tune of $15,000,000 (note - televised frigging bodybuilding, seriously?!) and that brings us to WWE Studios. So bad, it has been exclusively straight-to-DVD releases since roughly 2006-2008. WWE's film studios has never made a profit and loses money every year. $42,000,000 and counting.
All that just tickles me so much because their revenue sources are propped up by the wrestling promotion. Yet they're embarrassed to be associated with it.
If they came out of the damn closet and were open and passionate about the wrestling, and then they have these other projects on the side, I think they would make much more money. Marks mean money. However they're losing money everywhere else as it is, but if they had the smarks on their side I honestly believe they'd get more revenue coming in and better critical reception via word of mouth.
My parting shot is this; who has ever had conversations like this:
"Hey, do you want to come to mine to watch the sports entertainment tonight?"
"Do you have tickets to the sports entertainment show at the Colosseum?"
"Yeah, watching some sports entertainment sounds like a good idea."
"My favourite PPV is SportsEntertainmentMania."
I know I rant on about this a lot, and it could definitely go on a lot longer, but I do love wrestling and all this is a fundamental problem which very, very much stops be being able to suspend my disbelief. And that's before we get to the awful, awful commentary which is of course restricted by what they are told in their earpieces.
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But still, Night Of Champions. Who wants to see Lesnar vs The Boston Brawler again? I'd rather it be a good chance for someone new/different to get a chance to fight Lesnar and look good on the main card. Obviously Lesnar would retain the title, but Lesnar vs Cesaro or Lesnar vs Rusev would be good matches to have. Cena got utterly destroyed. It's not like he came so close to winning, why is he getting a rematch?!
Loving this Ambrose-Rollins duel though. If they can keep this momentum up, the blowoff will be spectacular. My favourite thing to watch at the moment.