Wrestling Spoilers & Rumors

It has been reported and is becoming increasingly evident that the WWE creative team has decided to slow down the development of storylines, with the intention of stretching them out over several months at a time.

Over the last couple of years, primarily since the inception of the famed attitude era, storylines have been faced paced with them lasting for around four weeks, culminating with a match, or follow up match at a pay per view event.

This was a key aspect of that Attitude era, with the storylines progressing at such a rate that fans would do everything they could to watch every episode. The boom of wrestling’s popularity in the late 1990’s is long over though and the audience
figures have been in a decline for a few years. Many fans now tend to pick and choose the weeks that they tune into the program and with this in mind, the WWE creative team is going to allow fans to keep up with storylines, even if they miss a
few episodes.

This could be difficult for many wrestling fans to take, as many of them aren’t accustomed to consistent long feuds or drawn out storylines. Those who were fans during the 1980s, or early 1990s will recall that feuds would be drawn out for a few months at a time, but that was in an era of limited pay per view events.

The recent feud between Chris Jericho and Shawn Michaels is typical of the timeframe of feuds from those generations, it has been played out over a number of months. Although fans don’t appear to be complaining about a long feud between two superstars at the top of the roster.

In recent times there have been longer term story lines, such as Steve Austin Vs Vince McMahon and Bastista’s development and feud with Triple H after leaving Evolution.

Some feuds should be given time to truly develop, but other’s, especially those lower down the card should not. For example the feud between William Regal and Jamie Noble is drawn out over a number of months, it is likely to be met with a negative response, resulting in even lower viewing figures!

We hope that the feuds that deserve to be given time to develop won’t be rushed (ala John Cena & Batista’s meeting at Summerslam this year), but the feuds lower down the card will have a short life span to help keep the programming fresh and dare we say exciting?!