WWE’s debut on Facebook Live brought WWE fans a unique tournament featuring wrestlers from RAW and SmackDown Live. How did it come across?
On Tuesday, WWE presented the first episode of the Mixed Match Challenge tournament on Facebook Watch. As a whole, the single-elimination tournament has an interesting concept: teams comprised of male and female wrestlers face off in Raw vs. SmackDown mixed tag matches (so I guess Survivor Series ISN’T the only time of the year when wrestlers from the two shows compete against one another). To give the bouts some semblance of stakes beyond bragging rights, the tournament winners get $100,000 donated to the charity of their choice, similar to a celebrity edition of a game show.
WWE heavily promoted the tournament for several weeks via social media. Fans voted on Facebook for the pairings they wanted to see. WWE then announced the participants and the pairings on YouTube. The company went all in on the social media aspect of this new show.
As for the show itself, the inaugural Mixed Match Challenge episode lived up to its name in the sense that it was a mixed bag in terms of its presentation. WWE did some things right, but the show still has room to improve.
The Good
WWE couldn’t have asked for a better opening match to pique the fans’ interest than Finn Balor and Sasha Banks (representing Raw) vs. Shinsuke Nakamura and Natalya (representing SmackDown Live). All four wrestlers are as smooth in the ring as a Sade album and it showed in this match. It wasn’t a match of the year candidate, but the bout was well paced, cleanly worked and held the audience’s attention. If nothing else, the match made me yearn for another Balor vs. Nakamura singles match in the future. Heck, I wouldn’t mind seeing a Banks vs. Natalya feud either, provided that the “Queen of Hearts” doesn’t cut any promos about her cats.
The commentary was the usual combination of salient analysis, rambling nonsense, and unabashed corniness. However, new color analyst Beth Phoenix provided a breath of fresh air in the booth. She was a little rough around the edges but she did a nice job for her first time out. Phoenix occasionally used meaningless cliches and tangential nonsense that all announcers use. That said, she also supplied plenty of cogent points and gave good comebacks whenever Corey Graves went on one of his wannabe-Jesse Ventura heel screeds. Perhaps she can replace Booker T on RAW.
What needs improvement.
Overall, the match presentation wasn’t much different from what WWE viewers see throughout the week. While that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it was a little disappointing to see the same type of production. WWE doesn’t have much to lose with this concept, so it would have been nice to see them try some new things. Just look at what WWE did with their ECW revival in 2006 as well as the first season of NXT (pre-Full Sail). Now both of those shows had a laundry list of other problems, but WWE tried some different things aesthetically and camera-wise, making those respective shows feel different from Raw and SmackDown. Aside from a few wrinkles, the Mixed Match challenge feels like the same old, same old.
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That included the announcing. While the presence of Phoenix in the booth was a welcome change, WWE didn’t go far enough in adding new voices to the show. Michael Cole is a decent announcer when Vince McMahon isn’t screaming in his ear.
Corey Graves is really good too, especially when he isn’t trying too hard to be an over-the-top heel announcer. That said, they don’t need to grace the viewing audience with their voices on nearly every show.
I would have said the same thing if they used Tom Phillips instead. They don’t need to overwork their announcers, particularly when the fans don’t like them in their normal roles.
WWE could have used anyone else for this show. Nigel McGuinness was in the arena, why not use him? Maybe give Vic Joseph a chance to call something other than 205 Live. Heck, use Mike Rome and see if he has any announcing chops. Or Renee Young.
The worst case scenario is that they stink at it and you can simply go back to Cole, Graves, or Phillips. Instead of taking a chance on someone new in a low-stakes environment, WWE went with the usual suspects and it made a unique concept feel a little stale.
The new wasn’t memorable enough
The slight deviations from the WWE norms the creative team did try failed to leave a lasting impression. Renee Young and Byron Saxton hosted the tournament, but they didn’t add much to the webcast. The pre-match promos that WWE showed before the contest were a nice idea, but the actual verbiage was only slightly more hollow than the match itself.
The promos didn’t do much to get fans excited for the match outside of the allure of seeing Balor and Banks team up. The same goes for Nakamura and Natalya. The SmackDown pairing also failed to play on their heel/face dynamic, a problem that was also noticeable with some of the other teams. There’s no tension; the heels are just cool with teaming with the babyfaces and vice versa. I shouldn’t be surprised–this is the same company that airs Total Divas commercials showing Lana speaking without her accent right before she appears on SmackDown as “The Ravishing Russian”–but it doesn’t make it less disappointing.
On a show that won’t depend on stellar workrate to catch the fans’ attention, presentation means everything. WWE had a chance to make the show stand out. They tried a couple of new things, but they ultimately fell short.
Can the show improve?
Of course, the show can improve. For a largely meaningless tournament separate from the WWE canon, this was a good first outing. The show’s success was mostly due to the fine work from Balor, Banks, Nakamura and Natalya. Unfortunately, the other five matches likely won’t be as good. When the workrate isn’t top notch, the other aspects of the program have to make up for it.
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So far WWE hasn’t done that. However, the first episode gave them a good starting point to fiddle with the format. The Mixed Match Challenge has no bearing on storylines, is cheap to produce, and is not particularly long. Those are ample reasons to move away from the monotonous presentation fans see every week and try some new things.