KB’s Review: Scheduling Conflict

Whether you celebrate the holiday or not, the Christmas season is a very busy time of year for everyone. A lot of people are running around, trying to deal with a little bit of everything at once. Ok so mainly it’s shopping, but there’s a lot of it and people can be a little busier than usual as a result. This can mean that they don’t get everything done that they need to, which can be a little annoying. When it’s a problem for an international media company though, it’s an even bigger issue.

As this is being written, we are less than eleven days away from Tables, Ladders And Chairs. That’s the final pay per view of the year and the decade, as well as a show that is designed to finish some feuds once and for all (or at least it is supposed to be, though a TABLES LADDERS AND CHAIRS MATCH isn’t always a feud ender these days because wrestling has lost its mind). There’s just one problem.

While we currently sit eleven days from the show, we also currently sit at ZERO matches officially announced for the card. Yes zero, as in absolutely nothing has been set up for the pay per view, with a grand total of two SmackDowns and a single Monday Night Raw left to go. Do you know what you currently see when you go to the Tables, Ladders And Chairs page on WWE.com? Results from 2018, featuring Ronda Rousey, Dean Ambrose and Heath Slater (yeah he did something on the show last year and I don’t remember it happening either).

This is what you get today:

This has become a major problem for WWE in recent months and it is getting very, very annoying. For reasons I can’t comprehend, they just do not (or cannot) announce a card in advance. Remember Hell In A Cell from about two months ago? The show where they added FIVE matches to the card from Friday to Sunday, including FOUR on the day of the show. Then there was Survivor Series, where the NXT women’s team was not announced until a few days before the show and the men’s team was announced the day of the show, with Shawn Michaels fixing the issue on the Kickoff Show.

For the life of me I don’t understand this. How in the world can they not have the card announced so close before the pay per view? In theory they know what they are going to put on, as the venue can put out some matches early (so far, the Target Center has advertised three matches for Tables, Ladders And Chairs, putting them miles ahead of WWE), but for some reason we can’t get those announcements on the SEVERAL hours of television that WWE has at its disposal?

I get that there are only so many things that can be announced at the same time, but this makes it seem like one of three things is going on. First, it seems like WWE is saying that the gimmick of the show (lots and lots of violence) is what sells the show. That seemed to be the case at Hell In A Cell, where the Cell matches themselves were the big selling point. That’s all well and good, but the Cell means a little bit more than a big ladder match (or at least it did until it ended in a referee stoppage, because that is now a thing that you can do in the Cell). That’s all well and good, but it ties into a second possibility.

A lot of this was thrown together on the day of the show:

Full WWE Hell in a Cell 2019 results: WWE Now

Having so little announced for the show makes me wonder how much WWE really thinks its wrestlers matter. We have heard for years that it is the brand itself that matters and not the wrestlers, but it comes off like WWE is saying that as long as their logo is on something, the fans are going to come no matter what they throw out there. That may not be the case, but it certainly seems like a possibility. It isn’t that hard to get to a card like this and you can see where some of the stories are going, but wouldn’t it help to put some actual people on the card?

That leaves us with what is probably the worst possible option: the company is so inept and unorganized that they can’t figure out what they have planned in advance this far out. I know that the Survivor Series build was a big one, but with the thirty plus writers that they have in the company, they can’t have a team setting up Tables, Ladders And Chairs before we get this close?

They announce the show months in advance so it’s not like they have no advance warning on something like this. But, again, it’s like these shows just pop up on them out of nowhere, like some distant relative showing up at Christmas unannounced and you have no gift for them. Instead, it’s time to rush around and put something together at the last possible second and it rarely works out all that well.

Whatever the mixture of problems that it is, the whole thing causes a lot of issues for everyone, but most importantly of all it makes things rough on the fans. If WWE wants a fan to pay for one of its shows, be it on pay per view (because some people still use it) or on their Network, it might be nice to know what you’re getting. I know it’s a tired analogy, but you wouldn’t put up a bunch of blank screens at a restaurant would you? It kind of helps to be able to advertise something concrete and with the card literally being put together the day of the show on occasion, there isn’t much of a chance to do so.

It’s like this was more true than it seemed:

The whole thing makes WWE seem completely arrogant. It’s like they’re just saying “we know you’re going to watch no matter what we put out there so just come on and give us your money because you’re a bunch of mindless sheep who buy everything we put out.” That has been the case for a long time now in a lot of different areas and it has a lot to do with how low their audience is these days. WWE treats its fans like they’re going to be there no matter what they put out there and it gets annoying to see. If they don’t care, why should I?

That has become so much of the problem: it’s like WWE doesn’t care. You have a lot of options for entertainment these days and WWE has been a very big one for a long time. However, the fans aren’t going to be around forever, and that’s what AEW has shown. Whether they really are or not, they talk about how important the fans are to them. The difference is that they don’t do so many things that contradict that stance and it makes a big difference.

What might make it even worse is how easily it could be solved. The solution to the whole thing is really simple: plan these things ahead and have the matches ready. Then announce them as soon as possible after Survivor Series is over. You know, instead of showing replay after replay and airing matches like Andrade squashing Matt Hardy or having Seth Rollins come to the ring to tell everyone that they are terrible at their job. As in saying that the show is awful, thereby making the fans seem stupid for wasting their time on it. Again.

For the life of me I don’t get how it is possible. WWE has all these people working for them, both in front of and behind the camera, and yet they can’t get a pay per view card together two weeks before the show? It’s such a mess and yet it seems like they can’t get the hang of making it any better. That’s the kind of thing you would expect from some nothing promotion, not the biggest in the world. Get it together already, because it’s a problem that needs a higher priority.