All About The Mon-nay?

I watch wrestling. Sometimes. I watch WWE Raw as my back up channel on Monday nights because The Hills on MTV takes priority #1. I watch TNA Impact as my back up channel on Thursday nights because The Office is funnier (narrowly). WWECW is on Tuesday but I skip that and Smackdown is on Friday but lets be serious. Wrestling used to be the popular thing in 1998. The WWF vs. WCW Monday Night War turned every person at school into a Steve Austin or NWO fan. It has fallen a long, long way since that time. There’s no threat to WWE and because of this, WWE doesn’t try. Well now they’re trying.

WWE is trying to get back their old viewers and gain new viewers by giving away one million dollars (or the sum of one million dollars) every Monday night. Vince McMahon makes no bones about it. He’s bribing you. Instead of using that one million dollars to hire better writers, he would rather give it to the fans. How sweet. As mentioned, the whole goal of this is to bring back old fans or get new fans. I don’t know how they expect to do this. Ok, I do. They want the current fan to tell their friends that they could win one million dollars by watching wrestling on Monday nights. Pass. Why would I tell my friends to watch and try to win the money when that does nothing but decrease my chances of winning the money? Unless I can get a written statement from my friends that they’ll give me 100% of the money if they win, I’m not telling them a thing. Plus if they don’t win, they’ll probably want to kill me for having them waste two hours of their Monday night life watching a crappy wrestling program.

Vince McMahon losing his mind happens once a year and it’s the grandest time in wrestling. Last year when he lost his mind, he blew himself up. When Vince loses his mind he pretty much thinks of the craziest thing he can do and then he does it on national television. It’s like a reality show but it’s a fake reality that’s real. They should actually make a reality show starring Vince McMahon. I can’t imagine what a day in the life of Vince is but I bet it’s great. If a movie was ever to be made about Vince McMahon, only Vince could play Vince. I believe that no one else in this world, except maybe Vince’s son-in-law Triple H, could pull off the role of Vince McMahon. That’s a list I need to sit down and write: People so over the top great who can only play the role of themselves but no one can play them. Vince McMahon could never be James Bond but not even the great Sean Connery could be Vince McMahon.

Hell of a tangent there. Lets get back on course.

Vince wants everyone to watch his wrestling program despite the fact that there’s just no luster in wrestling anymore. The last time non-wrestling fans actually wanted to talk wrestling with me was when Chris Benoit killed his family. Ironically enough, that was the same time Vince lost his mind last year and blew himself up on television. Wrestling isn’t what it once was and it will likely never be again. Wrestling has its moments of greatness but they’re only great to wrestling fans. When Edge won the WWE Title a few years ago, wrestling fans cares but no one else did. When Steve Austin was hot, everyone cared. WWE doesn’t have a character like Steve Austin or The Rock. They try to push John Cena as a combination of both but it obviously isn’t working.

WWE is still making money hand over fist. Outside of the television ratings, business is still very good for the company. The problem is, WWE has fallen into the trap of caring about the ratings. Ever since the Monday Night Wars where, if you won the ratings you were the better week, WWE has cared about the ratings. In reality though the ratings really don’t matter. WWE can give away one million dollars a week to get people to watch one television show but if those people who are watching don’t buy PPVs or merchandise or start enjoying wrestling, what does it really accomplish? Nothing.

WWE does care about more than just the ratings though. They made you go to WWE.com to register to win the money because traffic is down on the site and for some reason, they feel that traffic on their website is important. Again, if they’re just going to the website to register and then getting off the site, what does it really accomplish? Nothing.

I hope that Vince’s plans to give away money fails and the ratings stagnate because then he’ll lose his mind even more and that can only be a good thing.