NJPW has the blueprint to WWE’s dual-branded future, but is it feasible?
If WWE wants to keep their inter-promotional pay-per-views fresh, it might have to look at the booking styles of one of their rival promotions.
After watching both of Ring of Honor and New Japan Pro Wrestling’s cross-promotional Honor Rising shows on Friday and Saturday, two things came to mind. First, both shows effectively packed stellar in-ring action and storyline drama into separate two-hour windows. Second, both promotions pulled this off without using all of their respective top stars.
NJPW and ROH managed to construct two quality events without the following names: Tetsuya Naito, Kazuchika Okada, Minoru Suzuki, Hiroshi Tanahashi, Will Ospreay, The Brisco Brothers, The Motor City Machine Guns, Silas Young, EVIL, and SANADA, to name a few. Most of the singles stars that did wrestle were placed in either a tag team or a multi-person match. Heck, the main draw of the two events were tag team matches, earning a higher billing than any of Friday or Saturday’s title bouts (including one for the ROH World Championship).
As I sat and enjoyed both Honor Rising cards, I thought about WWE announcing that both RAW and SmackDown talent would appear on every pay-per-view after WrestleMania, not just the “Big Four”. I thought about all of the potential matches the company could burn through in a handful of months. I also thought about the lackluster builds to their final two brand-specific PPV’s: Elimination Chamber and Fastlane. Then, I had an epiphany; what if WWE booked their post-WrestleMania shows like New Japan does?
Of course, there are several justifiable reasons why WWE can’t straight copy NJPW’s format. However, they can employ some of their competitor’s strategies to save big matches and create intrigue for their non-Big Four shows.
Less is More
There are plenty of arguments for and against WWE consolidating their RAW and SmackDown Live PPV schedule. I understand that WWE has struggled to fill arenas for their single-brand shows (their regular TV shows too) and they believe that these dual-branded supershows will get some needed star power to bring fans into the building. This should boost intrigue for WWE PPV’s in the short term, but the company only has so many big matches to promote over the next year.
The truth is that WWE doesn’t have enough stars to go around. Most of that is their fault; nobody forced their creative team into parity booking the midcard. No matter who’s to blame, this affects the number of marquee matches the company can promote. How many times is WWE going to book Roman Reigns vs. Seth Rollins? Or Joe vs. Rollins? Or Joe vs. Roman Reigns? Or Rollins vs. Reigns?
The move would also further depress the value of their championships. Adding more title matches to these PPV’s might make the shows look more important on paper, but the novelty of seeing numerous championship bouts on one show would eventually wear thin.
Compare this to the way New Japan books their big shows. In 2018, the promotion has built shows around the following main events:
Kazuchika Okada vs. Tetsuya Naito
“Switchblade” Jay White vs. Kenny Omega
Minoru Suzuki vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi
Kazuchika Okada vs. SANADA
Kenny Omega/Kota Ibushi/Chase Owens vs. Cody/ “Hangman” Page/ Marty Scurll
Omega/Ibushi vs. Cody/Scurll
Only TWO of those matches were for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. Plus, the undercard was filled with tag team matches, though they usually mean more than WWE’s “I’m just here to fill time” multi-person frays.
This isn’t to say that New Japan’s style is perfect. They don’t put every title in the main event slot, and some of their belts don’t mean that much (the NEVER titles come to mind). Also, many of those multi-person matches can begin to blend after a while (especially during the G1 Climax or Best of the Super Juniors). But most of their belts carry more credibility than almost all of WWE’s titles and the tag matches are used to move wrestlers into title contention (for instance, “Hangman” Page won a couple tag matches at Honor Rising, now the company is grooming him for a U.S. Title match against Jay White). There’s a logic behind their booking.
If WWE can spread out their feuds and highlight a different title match each month, it would boost the value of each championship and provide fans with fresh faces at the top of the card. It would also send the message that wrestlers don’t have to be WWE World or Universal Champion to earn top billing on PPV.
Can WWE replicate this?
As I mentioned earlier, WWE can’t fully replicate New Japan’s (or Ring of Honor for that matter) booking philosophies based on just the quantity of shows Vince McMahon’s company produces each year.
Not including NXT, Main Event or the Mixed Match Challenge, WWE produces five hours of television every week; an obligation no other wrestling promotion has to worry about. WWE probably wouldn’t be able to book an endless parade of tag and multi-person matches since that makes up most of their programming already. Eventually, the matches would feel redundant (well, more redundant).
That said, WWE can certainly pull back a little on some of their bigger matches on television and PPV. Doing so would benefit both their stories and the talent. As the saying goes, less is more.
Next: WWE Raw Review, Highlights, Grades, and Analysis
Would WWE do this?
Unfortunately, “less is more” doesn’t appear to be in WWE’s vocabulary. That’s why RAW is three-hours (well, partly). That’s why all of their PPV’s may last for four hours each in the near future. But in order to keep their match-ups from growing stale and the talent from being overexposed, WWE needs to rethink the way they structure their super-card shows. Well, more than just combining the rosters once per month or adding an extra hour.