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View Full Version : What Elements of Pop Culture Should WWE Incorporate into their Storylines?



The Law
May 17th, 2013, 2:02 PM
So the discussion of Vince being out of touch with pop culture led me to think about what constitutes "cool" in modern culture, and what types of pop culture stories WWE should be emulating. Here are a few of my ideas:

CM Punk makes a perfect Batman villain. He could be the Joker, Bane, or Ra's al Ghul. The Shield has kind of taken the Ra's role, so let's focus on Joker and Bane. Punk could come back and have been driven insane by his losses-so he just wants to destroy WWE. He can start interfering in everyone's matches, interrupting the show to cut insane, rambling promos, and make it his mission to turn Cena to the dark side. Or he can be Bane, and lead a revolution of the undercarders against the establishment: he makes a rabble-rousing speech about how it's time to overthrow the existing order, and the jobbers all slowly join his cause. Imagine: the Usos, 3MB, Tyson Kidd, Justin Gabriel all just start beating the piss out of Cena, Ryback, Orton, Ziggler, Sheamus, and all the other top stars. And then they destroy the arena. It would be like Nexus redux, but with a much more charismatic and interesting leader.

Or they could emulate "Game of Thrones" and have an epic war for control of WWE between different factions. This could literally be for control of WWE, with a faction led by Triple H representing the establishment and a faction led by Paul Heyman and CM Punk representing the insurgents. Or it could be a couple teams: a group of good guys led by John Cena, a group of edgier good guys led by Randy Orton, a group of anarchists led by CM Punk, and a group of more standard bad guys led by Dolph Ziggler.

I would like for there to be a Walter White type character, a good guy who has a tough stretch of luck and breaks bad. Maybe somebody like Zack Ryder, who is told that if he doesn't start winning matches he's going to get fired. Desperate, he starts cheating and becomes a bad guy. This one could use a little bit more polish.

I was trying to think of a way to emulate "The Walking Dead," and the closest I could think of was what they did in 2008 when the stage collapsed on Vince and they had no one in charge. Chaos reigned on Raw as there was no one to make matches or keep the stars in order. They could do the same thing again, like have Brock Lesnar destroy Vince, Teddy, Booker T, Brad Maddox, and Triple H (Vicki can just flee since WWE doesn't do violence against women anymore). Then there can be no one in charge of the show and we can see what WWE is like after the apocalypse.

Andy
May 17th, 2013, 2:10 PM
They should emulate The Following by having Brock Lesnar slowly and gruesomely murdering Ryback, Sheamus, Orton and Swagger.

Excel
May 17th, 2013, 3:06 PM
I like that Breaking Bad idea, but it needs someone better than Ryder. And someone the fans truly love. Mysterio maybe?

Mills
May 17th, 2013, 3:25 PM
They need a rave team

Kneeneighbor
May 17th, 2013, 4:36 PM
Swagger should claim to have been unfairly audited by the IRS

casselmm47
May 17th, 2013, 9:36 PM
Fandango needs to drop the ballroom shit and go Gangham Style.

OD50
May 18th, 2013, 2:59 AM
I think Sweet-T has dibs on that one..

Newf
May 18th, 2013, 3:54 AM
I definitely don't think you'd ever get that "Walking Dead"/apocalypse scenario, as much as I'd love to see it. I don't even think you'd get a BIG faction war either. They play things WAY too safe these days.

I've always wanted to see second- and third-generation superstars come together like a much larger Legacy, to eventually try and combat the rest of the roster. It's insane how many they have under contract. You could have some interesting scenarios where Tyson Kidd has to choose whether to side with Nattie or not, a chance to be the "Hart" he never was. You could have Cody and Sandow torn apart (admittedly that would work better if they hadn't already split and then got back together and seemingly split again)... I think it would be really interesting to see all sorts of alliances broken and new ones formed on the basis of "wrestling blood", so to speak.

JP
May 18th, 2013, 4:14 AM
Not a single thing.

Heyman's said it before and got it spot on; they need to be ahead of the curve, not behind it desperately trying to look cool. When things are going well they are that pop culture magnet and it rolls on from there.

Look at the New Age Outlaws, without direction to or because being told it was cool they started wearing South Park t-shirts and it resonated with people. It was brand new, edgy and they were ahead of the curve by publicly embracing it.

OD50
May 18th, 2013, 4:45 AM
Agreed. Jumping onboard things 12 months after it's the "in thing'' just looks lame and desperate. It's kind of what old people do.. And then the youngsters quickly hop onto the next thing.

Cewsh
May 18th, 2013, 1:38 PM
Considering their new, larger Twitter presence, it's weird that they have so much trouble staying on top of what is really relevant. Twitter is basically the easiest fucking way to see what people won't shut up about at the moment.

The Law
May 24th, 2013, 2:18 PM
So the "Rocky" movies are pretty much the gold standard for using movie stories in wrestling. Each of the plots:

-Rocky I: Scrappy underdog battles cocky champion and pushes the champion to the limit. Ultimately, the champion survives but the moral victory is won by the challenger.

-Rocky II: The rematch between the champion and underdog ends with the underdog defeating the champion and winning the title.

-Rocky III: The champion gets complacent and is defeated by a hungry, vicious challenger. The dethroned champion regains his edge with the help of his former rival and wins back the championship.

-Rocky IV: A new, even more dangerous challenger emerges on the scene. He destroys and ultimately kills the champion's friend and former rival with a vicious beating and shows no remorse. The champion agrees to a dangerous fight against the challenger and undergoes an intense training regime to prepare for the fight. Ultimately, he defeats the challenger in the challenger's home country and wins over the crowd in the process.

-Rocky V: Never happened.

-Rocky Balboa: The now retired former champion comes out of retirement for an exhibition fight against a new, arrogant champion. He pushes the champion to the limit and the champion emerges from the fight as a better, humbled fighter. Rocky loses the fight, but wins the larger battle in life.

Okay, so here's how to do each of these in wrestling:

Rocky I: Daniel Bryan plays the role of Rocky, John Cena is Apollo Creed. Bryan challenges Cena and pushes him to the absolute limit, winning the backing of the crowd in the process. While he fails to win the title, Bryan wins the respect of everyone by giving Cena a great challenge.

Rocky II: Bryan wins the rematch against Cena and becomes WWE Champion. Honestly, "Rocky II" kind of sucked.

Rocky III: Playing out on our screens right now with Cena and Ryback. Ryback is Clubber, Lang, the younger, hungrier fighter. Cena has grown complacent after defeating Rock. "Rocky III" began with a montage of Lang knocking out his opponents, and Ryback is doing the equivalent right now with his ambulance stuffing.

Rocky IV: They did this back in 2002 with Rock and Brock. Brock was Drago, Rock was Rocky. Lesnar killed Hulk Hogan, Rock's equivalent of Apollo Creed. They did training montages, contrasting the training methods of the two as they prepared for their big fight. The difference is that here Drago won and won over the crowd in the process, as the fans at Madison Square Garden backed Lesnar over Rocky.

Rocky V: Maybe they're going to have Triple H lose all his money and end up cleaning toilets are part of this concussion angle.

Rocky Balboa: The two most obvious guys for this are Triple H and Undertaker: vaunted legends looking to make one last run at the title. They can push a young, arrogant champion (probably Punk) to the limit and win his respect in the process, even as he defeats them.