Back in 2005, I wrote an article entitled “Shut up and Wrestle,” which basically laid out all my gripes about the state of the professional wrestling industry. Here we are, two and a half years later, and things have gotten worse. Much worse. On a recent installment of SRD Radio, Al Creed, John Gohlson and myself discussed why the WWE is in such shambles.

Note: I have resigned to calling Vince McMahon’s disastrous promotion the WWE instead of the WWF because that organization now bears no resemblance to the once-great organization that brought us the original incarnations of Hulk Hogan, Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, The Rock, Kurt Angle and Stone Cold Steve Austin. To continue to call said organization the WWF would be insulting to both classic professional wrestling and panda bears.

The consensus on SRD Radio that night was that the whole thing started going down the crapper in late 2003, early 2004. I myself stopped watching the WWE regularly after Wrestlemania XX, where I was grossly disappointed with most of, if not the entire card. Since then it has been hard to take Vince McMahon seriously.

Vince is a lot like George W. Bush in the fact that he is only as good as the people he surrounds himself with. He has a lot of good ideas, but he needs a good team around him in order to filter out all the crap. When he listens to people like Paul Heyman, Jim Ross, or even Shane and Stephanie, his brands do well. But when he listens to the likes of Johnny Ace and television writers who have no interest in professional wrestling (and don’t care to learn much about it,) that’s when the product takes a serious nosedive. When you think that girls showing their big, fat, plastic tits is a better main event than a kick-ass World Championship match, than you have no business even booking house shows, let alone a live broadcast like Raw. Sadly, this is what the Raw and Smackdown brands have degenerated into for the most part. But it isn’t just the tits. The people that Vince surrounds himself with haven’t the first clue about in-ring compatibility and long-term rivalry matches. I’m sorry, but Cena vs. Batista vs. Edge vs. vs. Undertaker vs. Orton vs. Triple H times fifty has gotten pretty old over the last four years. Hit us with something new for crying out loud, or at the very least something we’ll care about!

So what should be done about it? We had a few ideas.

#1: ROSTER MERGER! In 2002, in the wake of the WWF needing to redefine itself after the flop that was the WCW “Invasion,” and also having more wrestlers than they knew what to do with, Vince split his roster into two brands: Raw and Smackdown. Both shows had their own sets of champions and their own pay-per-views. Surprisingly, it worked for a couple of years. But after they started screwing around with the rosters and began moving everybody around, they effectively killed the awesomeness they had going for them, especially on the Smackdown side. This was around Wrestlemania XX time, and, you guessed it, the product has been crap-nuts ever since. The rosters have gotten thinner as wrestlers have jumped off this sinking ship and headed to where the grass is greener over at NWA-TNA (or so it seems at first. TNA has been having many of the same problems that the WWE has been having, only the names are different. But I digress…) In order to save his brand, Vince needs to bring everybody back under one banner.

#2: Championship Consolidation! Just like after the Invasion, there are way too many championships flying around. This probably goes without saying when you have a roster merger, but this organization needs to have only ONE World Champion, TWO Tag Team Champions, ONE Women’s champion, ONE Second-tier (i.e. Intercontinental) Champion, and maybe a Cruiserweight Champion. The titles have more value when there are less of them amongst a large number of wrestlers.

#3: Define Your Stars! In the last four years, the WWE has been pushing four guys to the max: Edge, Batista, Randy Orton and John Cena. The problem these guys face is that they are just good, not great. None of them can measure up to the Hulkster, Bret, Shawn, Rocky, Kurt or Stone Cold, and John made a good point that this is because they haven’t had the blockbuster rivalries that defined them as professional wrestling superstars. The only real opposition they have thrown at these guys are WWE mainstays Triple H and the Undertaker. Triple H seems to have a self-esteem complex and refuses to put anybody over. Sure he’s lost, but in the end he always seems to be the one who ends up back on top. He has lost a lot of good will with the fans over the years. The Undertaker, however, is the exact opposite. He is always a crowd pleaser and has always been willing to do his part to put up-and-coming wrestlers over. He’s main event material, but he has no problems working the under card when he is needed. My opinion is that Edge, Batista, Orton and Cena are all trapped in Triple H’s shadow. If the WWE wants to be a respected organization again, it will begin booking matches that define these wrestlers in the same light as the greats.

#4: Improved Roster! Another problem that the top tier and even the rest of the WWE roster faces is that they just aren’t as good as they are made out to be. Sorry. That’s just the way it is. The ones who are worth watching two hours of garbage for are lost in the under card and stupid gimmicks. The WWE needs to fire wrestlers who suck and bring the diamonds-in-the-rough (so to speak) out of the dark matches and into the upper-middle card and main events! Damn, you think this shit would be so obvious!

So, in conclusion, I don’t have much hope that things will change in WWE-land anytime soon. I can’t speak for Al or John, but is a sad time to be a pro wrestling fan. At least on television it is. If you want to see some real talent, go to some local independent and developmental shows. That is, hopefully, where the future of this industry is.