Post by greenjack1992 on Jul 21, 2016 7:15:44 GMT -5
Don't know if you lot will take this seriously or not, but I'd like to gauge opinion.
Sorry in advance, this is going to be a long one.
Would you watch a wrestling show that was structured more like a league?
Like footy, a defined season, wrestlers are in leagues based on points, and there's no champion until the end of the season.
In football, you have the Premier League, Championship and League One, League Two & National League.
In wrestling, using WWE for example, you could have the World Title, IC Title, US Title, Tag Titles and Women's Titles as different leagues.
At the end of the season a champion is crowned in each division and the top three contenders from the IC league get promoted to the World Title league, the top three from the US title get promoted to the IC title league and the bottom three contenders from the World and IC leagues respectively get sent down to the league below.
The bottom two guys from the US league must form a tag team and make a go of it in the tag league next year. The top team in the Tag league would have the option to move into the US title league as singles competitors or stay in the Tag league for another year and defend their title.
Instead of belts, we'd have cups/trophies.
We'd still have storylines, and every guy in each league would have to face each other a number of times per season. So, we'd still get grudge matches, but we'd have to wait for them instead of rushing storylines.
Also, just like we get the FA Cup, Champions' League, Europa Cup etc in footy, we can have specialist titles periodically through the year - so those weird themed PPVs could actually come in useful.
We already have the Cruiserweight Classic, but we could have things like the Royal Rumble being for a title open to everyone in every league like the FA Cup, we could have a "Champions' League" esque title where the winners from the three singles (male) divisions can face off in three sets of best-of-three matches. For the "Europa Championship" equivalent you could have the guys who all finished second in their leagues doing the same thing. The finals for every cup that's not the league championships can take place at PPVs, so instead of 12 (or 19 as it's soon going to be), we'd have 4 major PPVs in the year centred around the trophies and one big one at the end of the season (WrestleMania) that's about the crowning of the league winners.
This would mean that debuting talent couldn't just jump into the World Title scene, everyone would have to be built over time, storylines will last longer, every match will be worth something, wins and losses count, everyone gets equal TV time and absolutely everyone is working towards something.
The leagues could be like this:
World Title League (36 Matches per season total)
AJ Styles
Big Show
Bray Wyatt
Brock Lesnar
Chris Jericho
Dean Ambrose
John Cena
Kane
Randy Orton
Roman Reigns
Seth Rollins
Sheamus
IC Title League (42 Matches per season total)
Alberto Del Rio
Cesaro
Darren Young
Dolph Ziggler
Finn Balor
Jack Swagger
Kalisto
Kevin Owens
Luke Harper
Neville
Rusev
Sami Zayn
The Miz
Zack Ryder
US Title League (48 Matches per season total)
Apollo Crews
Baron Corbin
Bo Dallas
Braun Strowman
Curtis Axel
Erick Rowan
Fandango
Goldust
Heath Slater
Mark Henry
Mojo Rawley
R-Truth
Ryback
Sin Cara
Titus O'Neil
Tyler Breeze
Tag Team League (30 Matches per season total)
The Ascension
The Dudley Boyz
Enzo & Cass
Shining Stars
New Day
American Alpha
The VaudeVillains
Gallows & Anderson
The Revival
Gargano & Ciampa
Womens' League (42 Matches per season total)
Alexa Bliss
Alicia Fox
Becky Lynch
Carmella
Charlotte
Dana Brooke
Emma
Eva Marie
Naomi
Natalya
Nia Jax
Nikki Bella
Paige
Sasha Banks
Everyone in each league has to face each other three times, totalling 198 league matches per season. If a season ran for ten months, that's five matches per week. If each match is allotted 15 minutes per programme, That's 1 hour and 15 minutes of wrestling. When you consider that Raw is currently producing around 35 minutes of wrestling per week, over the course of Raw & SmackDown each week, you'd see a slight increase in the amount of wrestling and still allow the same time for stories and it would be completely impossible to hot-potato the belt and injuries/suspensions would not effect storylines. The other four/five tournaments could take place in the off-season. So, we're still getting year-round content, but it's more concentrated and varied.
So, after about six months of writing all this out, what are your thoughts?
Sorry in advance, this is going to be a long one.
Would you watch a wrestling show that was structured more like a league?
Like footy, a defined season, wrestlers are in leagues based on points, and there's no champion until the end of the season.
In football, you have the Premier League, Championship and League One, League Two & National League.
In wrestling, using WWE for example, you could have the World Title, IC Title, US Title, Tag Titles and Women's Titles as different leagues.
At the end of the season a champion is crowned in each division and the top three contenders from the IC league get promoted to the World Title league, the top three from the US title get promoted to the IC title league and the bottom three contenders from the World and IC leagues respectively get sent down to the league below.
The bottom two guys from the US league must form a tag team and make a go of it in the tag league next year. The top team in the Tag league would have the option to move into the US title league as singles competitors or stay in the Tag league for another year and defend their title.
Instead of belts, we'd have cups/trophies.
We'd still have storylines, and every guy in each league would have to face each other a number of times per season. So, we'd still get grudge matches, but we'd have to wait for them instead of rushing storylines.
Also, just like we get the FA Cup, Champions' League, Europa Cup etc in footy, we can have specialist titles periodically through the year - so those weird themed PPVs could actually come in useful.
We already have the Cruiserweight Classic, but we could have things like the Royal Rumble being for a title open to everyone in every league like the FA Cup, we could have a "Champions' League" esque title where the winners from the three singles (male) divisions can face off in three sets of best-of-three matches. For the "Europa Championship" equivalent you could have the guys who all finished second in their leagues doing the same thing. The finals for every cup that's not the league championships can take place at PPVs, so instead of 12 (or 19 as it's soon going to be), we'd have 4 major PPVs in the year centred around the trophies and one big one at the end of the season (WrestleMania) that's about the crowning of the league winners.
This would mean that debuting talent couldn't just jump into the World Title scene, everyone would have to be built over time, storylines will last longer, every match will be worth something, wins and losses count, everyone gets equal TV time and absolutely everyone is working towards something.
The leagues could be like this:
World Title League (36 Matches per season total)
AJ Styles
Big Show
Bray Wyatt
Brock Lesnar
Chris Jericho
Dean Ambrose
John Cena
Kane
Randy Orton
Roman Reigns
Seth Rollins
Sheamus
IC Title League (42 Matches per season total)
Alberto Del Rio
Cesaro
Darren Young
Dolph Ziggler
Finn Balor
Jack Swagger
Kalisto
Kevin Owens
Luke Harper
Neville
Rusev
Sami Zayn
The Miz
Zack Ryder
US Title League (48 Matches per season total)
Apollo Crews
Baron Corbin
Bo Dallas
Braun Strowman
Curtis Axel
Erick Rowan
Fandango
Goldust
Heath Slater
Mark Henry
Mojo Rawley
R-Truth
Ryback
Sin Cara
Titus O'Neil
Tyler Breeze
Tag Team League (30 Matches per season total)
The Ascension
The Dudley Boyz
Enzo & Cass
Shining Stars
New Day
American Alpha
The VaudeVillains
Gallows & Anderson
The Revival
Gargano & Ciampa
Womens' League (42 Matches per season total)
Alexa Bliss
Alicia Fox
Becky Lynch
Carmella
Charlotte
Dana Brooke
Emma
Eva Marie
Naomi
Natalya
Nia Jax
Nikki Bella
Paige
Sasha Banks
Everyone in each league has to face each other three times, totalling 198 league matches per season. If a season ran for ten months, that's five matches per week. If each match is allotted 15 minutes per programme, That's 1 hour and 15 minutes of wrestling. When you consider that Raw is currently producing around 35 minutes of wrestling per week, over the course of Raw & SmackDown each week, you'd see a slight increase in the amount of wrestling and still allow the same time for stories and it would be completely impossible to hot-potato the belt and injuries/suspensions would not effect storylines. The other four/five tournaments could take place in the off-season. So, we're still getting year-round content, but it's more concentrated and varied.
So, after about six months of writing all this out, what are your thoughts?
