The average episode of Raw is full of mind-boggling decisions and things that don’t appear to make sense or benefit anyone. This week’s big question is, “Why would WWE bring up their dominant, second-generation women’s champion from developmental to promote Thursday’s NXT live special and have her lose clean in two minutes to Natalya?” Follow up questions of “what was the point,” and “no, seriously, what was the f*cking point” are also valid.
Triple H held a media conference call this morning to hype R Evolution and addressed the situation. The short answer? They didn’t have time to give her anything better, it doesn’t matter and nobody will remember it. Uh, okay?
“One of the difficult things about live programming is it’s live and times are crunched, times are tweaked. Having been in a million different things going on that night, I can’t speak to the exact amount of time that they were given or had. But the show is in flux, it’s live. I’m sure they were, just having seen what happened that night, I know they were given more time than that but by the time they get there things go over, things get crunched, we’re trying to… you know, we have a lot of responsibilities to make within that show of commercials, and it’s not just… we can’t just throw things on the air and they are what they are. Would we have preferred to give them more time? Hell, I would have loved to have given them the time I gave them at the NXT special and be able to showcase what they do.
“As far as the decision of who went over, Nattie or Charlotte or anything like that, those decisions are heavily debated and made. It is what it is. At the end of the day, for me, it’s about promotion. When you look at what they have done in NXT and every place else, the amount of people that see them there compared to the amount of people that will see them on Monday Night Raw with the whole world watching… the difference is mind boggling. Just for them to be exposed in that way is massive. It isn’t just to give Charlotte… a lot of people were like ‘oh, it’s her debut’ and all those things. Well, it was, in some way, but it’s not like she’s going to be on there again next week and by the time she is back on Raw and ready to be competing on Raw on a regular basis and performing on Raw, you’ll see a different Charlotte and you’ll see her presented in a different way. It was really just exposure. As far as what the outcome was, that could be debated. But it is what it is. … You can go back and pick apart bits and pieces of it all but when you overall look at it in the big plan six months from now, a year from now, two years from now, whenever it is, no one is going to be like ‘yeah, but they killed her on her debut.’ The bigger picture is involved.”
Things to remember:
1. They didn’t have time because they were giving out Slammy Awards, and it is apparently more important to hand out worked awards to wrestlers and celebrities who aren’t on the show and in some cases don’t even work for you than to have a constructive or entertaining show. You “would’ve loved to have given them” time? Why not cut Rob Van Dam giving Extreme Moment Of The Year to Chris Jericho and having a guy who feuded with Jericho a year and a half ago and otherwise has jack-shit to do with him breathe through an acceptance speech? Was that Adam Rose and The Bunny appearance too crucial to cut?
2. Didn’t Vince McMahon just say you shouldn’t be doing wrestling for the sake of wrestling? If so, why are you doing wrestling you KNOW nobody will remember? Couldn’t you, I don’t know, make your shows memorable? Even if you can’t, shouldn’t that be a basic intent? If nobody’s going to remember Charlotte losing and nobody will be swayed to watch the NXT special because they just watched its most dominant woman lose to reality show comic-relief, what IS the reason? Also, if you are saying nobody will remember her and the results don’t matter, how is that exposure? That seems like the opposite of exposure.
I guess the answer continues to be, “nobody’s paying attention behind the scenes, in the ring, at the announce table or in the crowd.” That’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever written about wrestling, and the guy in charge just told me it’s true.
[h/t to Cageside for the transcription]
