Jim Cornette gave his thoughts on how to improve WWE’s television ratings on his Drive Thru podcast.
Cornette thinks believability is at the heart of WWE and all of wrestling’s problems:
“Not only does nobody believe this sh*t anymore, they don’t believe the people involved in this sh*t. And the programme that they are putting on in the WWE with the people that nobody believes in or cares about is also boring. It’s homogenised and pasteurised and cleaned up and scrubbed up and all the talent, except the few that stand out, move the same way and talk the same way because they are written for and trained the same way.”
“The creative sucks because it’s not anything that anybody gives a sh*t about, it’s these hokey f*cking entertainment stories. All you need to give wrestlers is a believable reason to be mad at each other. You don’t need to have 16 writers concocting a goddamn feature-length motion picture backstory, just make it something that people can get into. Then let them go out and say some sh*t and do some sh*t on their own like we used to Vince.”
Cornette’s advice to Vince McMahon would be to make a better product:
“The advice that I would give him to make a better wrestling product would probably be the antithesis of what the homogenised and pasteurised entity in corporate America that is going to purchase this thing and turn it into a Cirque Du Soleil theme park would want to begin with.”
“They don’t care about what wrestling fans want to see, and they somewhat consider themselves the only game in town, which they used to be and still are on a worldwide basis, and they are not going to change it. To change it would offend some sponsors and was real enough that someone got upset, or someone said something that they shouldn’t say.”
“It would be to fire three-quarters of the creative team and just let the boys find some guys that can do their own sh*t and just let them do it. But they don’t want to do any of that stuff that would make it easier for wrestling fans to watch. They have I guess cornered the market on the amount of people that are going to watch boring sports entertainment, and they are serving those people well.”
H/T to Fightful for the transcript