The Best Way To Stay A WWE Fan Is To Avoid Watching WWE

2017 has been a strange year for WWE in terms of the quality of the actual in-ring product.

WrestleMania 33 was a stellar show despite a lukewarm build up and the Royal Rumble pay-per-view was delivering in spades until an abomination of a Rumble match itself, yet outside of this there’s been little to shout about. Fastlane and Battleground were both poor efforts but the other major events so far this year have lingered in mediocrity, with shows like Payback and Great Balls of Fire being largely forgettable affairs with only one or two brighter spots mixed in. Add on top of this the sheer amount of weekly content split between WWE’s television deals and its own Network and trying to watch it all would be akin to gorging yourself on a mountain of stale bread. So how do you stay a fan of WWE and not find yourself overstuffed with a bland product?

The answer is simple – try not to watch too much.

It’s a widely held thought amongst fans that three hours of Monday Night Raw each week is simply far too long. The show has lost any sense of urgency, unpredictability and excitement and even a good episode still has to have a lot of filler mixed in to pad out the run time. With two hours of Smackdown Live, an hour of NXT, an hour of 205 Live and any on demand and original WWE Network content you like added on top there’s simply too much wrestling to digest – and most of it isn’t delivering.

NXT is, once again, the highlight of the line up. Takeover Brooklyn was, as always, a stellar affair and the weekly show is finding its stride once again. Fresher faces and matches, a return to a more grounded booking approach and high quality matches on a weekly basis make it more than worthy of your time. It’s only an hour long and so a 60 minute blast of solid storytelling and good in-ring action is a brilliant weekly wrestling fix. 205 Live has stepped up with most talent at least having a storyline and something to do, however it still suffers from a lethargic post-Smackdown crowd and has unfortunately never managed to rekindle the magic of last year’s sensational Cruiserweight Classic tournament. Again, its shorter run time is a mark in the show’s favour making it worthy of a look but whether or not the action will be enough to hook a viewer and ensure they come back each week is debatable. Unfortunately for WWE, it’s the flagship shows of Raw and Smackdown that are the main problems.

Smackdown hit a hot streak immediately after the brand split last year but has since substantially cooled. Too many quality stars have been stuck in midcard feuds while the main event scene has continued to disappoint ever since AJ Styles lost the WWE Championship to John Cena at the Royal Rumble, in one of the matches of the year no less. Over on Raw the vast majority of the talent has an angle and a direction, you only have to look at the fact that they’ve managed to find a way to feature Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel heavily. Despite this direction and a solid roster, the show is still overly long, convoluted and padded out with whatever matches are deemed necessary to fill the run time. PPV matches are regularly given away on both shows which makes it difficult to even invest in the larger, more important events like SummerSlam when they arrive. The best way to combat this? Don’t watch the weekly shows.

The easiest way to stay up to date with and excited about WWE’s product in 2017 is, sadly, to not watch it. WWE themselves posts highlight videos to key moments of their weekly shows on YouTube and, if you simply look for other highlight videos yourself you’ll find 20-30minute condensed versions of the show. These essentially give you everything you need to know without dragging you through the drivel and potentially ruining all the personal relationships in your life by setting aside a ridiculous amount of time each week to watch a show that is almost guaranteed to drag. If there’s a match or segment on these videos that looks particularly good then fire up whatever television provider you’ve used to record the full show on and check it out in full. This way 5+ hours of content is cut down to about an hour, the product remains fresh and major PPV events can still be watched in full length and feel like the special attractions they should be.

The next key step is supplementing the viewing with podcasts. Sure the wrestling podcast market is now seriously oversaturated but if you keep up to date with the likes of Talk is Jericho, The Ross Report and The Steve Austin Show you’ll still find great insights into the business, PPV build discussion and reviews and interviews with past and current stars. Much like watching the weekly shows, the best thing to do is to pick and choose episodes rather than listening to each and every one to keep the listening experience fresh. Unlike the head-pounding monotony of listening to Michael Cole for three hours a week, the voices on these shows have a genuine passion for the industry which is difficult to not get wrapped up in yourself, along with great analysis founded in years of on the job experience. An hour of listening to Austin give his take on the business is a hell of a lot more entertaining than three hours of Raw.

The other key feature in not being completely bogged down in WWE is to watch other wrestling products. At times this can have the negative effect of making WWE’s output pale in comparison, there’s simply no way that WWE will put on a match as good as Kenny Omega vs. Tetsuya Naito from the G1 Climax Finals this year, but mixing up the viewing experience means that the WWE style isn’t the only thing you’re watching. NJPW and its serious, sports-like presentation is a perfect counterpoint – as is Lucha Underground, yet for very different reasons. Where New Japan presents itself as a sport and a genuine athletic competition, Lucha is a storyline-driven television show which happens to feature wrestling matches.

Essentially, neither one makes you feel like you are watching “wrestling”. Lucha has the added benefit, much like NXT, of only being an hour long so there’s no chance of drag. NJPW, if you watched every single show, couldn’t be farther from this with 4+ hour shows being commonplace. The easiest thing to do here is to keep an eye out for certain wrestlers or feuds and focus in on them and then expanding as much as you want from there. As good as NJPW can be, and at times this year it has been nothing short of staggering, there can still be too much of a good thing.

Coming off of a 4 hour SummerSlam (6 hours if you watched the Kick Off Show), this entire approach has never been more prevalent. The show touted by WWE as its second largest of the year was another mammoth slog, albeit this time with a brilliantly insane main event which stopped the show from leaving too bad a taste in the mouth. Both Tag Team Championship matches also excelled, Naomi vs. Natalya exceeded expectations and it was great to finally see Finn Balor re-emerge as the Demon but, as has become far too common with WWE this year, the rest of the show was an exercise in mediocrity. Try surviving a bland show of this excess on top of watching every bit of WWE weekly content and you have a recipe for disaster, burnout and fans simply finding something better to do.

It’s a sad state of affairs but by not watching much WWE and instead simply keeping involved with the product (and the business in general) through the other means discussed above, being a fan has become much easier. No Mercy is WWE’s next pay-per-view on the calendar and it will be great to only catch the highlights, the podcast discussion, the NXT action and other wrestling from around the globe en route to Brock vs. Braun and the rest of the card. In an ideal world this would all change sooner rather than later and the weekly product would become must-see television once again. Until then the best way to be a fan of WWE is, essentially, to not watch WWE.