After two episodes of the new WhatCulture wrestling show, entitled “Loaded”, it’s fair to say that I’ve been critical of the WCPW product. Whilst week two was much better, there’s still weaknesses – and for the sake of those who want to get my take without reading match results, here is “a note to WCPW”.
Throughout my reporting of WCPW, I’ve made it crystal clear: I want to see this promotion succeed. If only for the sake of the wrestlers who’ll be able to get another payday, and particularly wrestling fans in the North East of England whom have gone through something of a barren period when it comes to being able to see quality wrestling, save for the 5* Wrestling tour earlier this year.
As a live show, the WCPW events come across as a success, but the big issues I’ve had with this promotion from its very inception have had nothing to do with what happens from bell to bell.
When WhatCulture announced their creation, my biggest fear was “oh God, it’s going to be a vanity promotion”. In the weeks leading up to their debut TV show, those fears were certainly cemented, particularly when the promotion for those shows were centered around “Adam Blampied has found a wrestler to represent him in Rampage (Brown)”, and “who’s going to represent ‘Jack the Jobber’ in this?”
In last week’s debut, my main criticism was really underscoring the whole “vanity promotion” aspect of WCPW – in that almost half of the talent on the show were affiliated in some way to WhatCulture. Take a look at this
- Adam Pacitti (storyline general manager)
- Adam Blampied (heel manager)
- Suzie Kennedy (heel manager)
- James R. Kennedy (heel manager, who is a WhatCulture guy but isn’t portrayed as one due to his prior wrestling experience)
- “Jack The Jobber” (sympathetic babyface manager – a combined phrase that doesn’t work!)
- Simon Miller (babyface play-by-play)
- “King Ross” (heel colour commentator)
- Stevie Aaron (backstage interviewer)
- Kenny McIntosh (backstage interviewer)
- Jennifer Louise (backstage interviewer)
Granted, I’m stretching things by including Stevie and Jennifer in this list, but nine non-wrestling personalities is a lot by any means. Using just the wrestlers who appeared on-screen in the first two shows, we had:
- Rampage – managed by Adam Blampied
- Noam Dar
- El Ligero
- Jay Lethal
- Martin Kirby
- Joseph Conners
- Joe Hendry
- Big Damo – eventually managed by “Jack The Jobber”
- Prince Ameen
- Alex Gracie – managed by James R. Kennedy
- Lucas Archer – managed by James R. Kennedy
- The Primate – managed by Suzie Kennedy
- Drake
- Gabriel Kidd
Fourteen wrestlers, nine “personalities”, most of whom are tied to WhatCulture in some way other than this promotion. What’s wrestling’s purpose, from a business sense? To sell tickets to fans who want to see two performers fight each other. Whilst managers and other personalities have a place, they have traditionally been kept on the back burner, as a window dressing for the main act, rather than being the main act.
Nevertheless, creative can be fixed. Storylines run their course, and eventually the “Adam vs. Adam/Jack” storyline via proxy will be replaced, even if we never see a physical fight between the Adams (and dear God, unless all three have been doing wrestling training on the side, that’s going to be horrific if and when that happens).
But what about the show itself?
Week one was lampooned online for the over-use of the green screen effect.Not that a green screen is a bad thing, but when every backstage segment is held in front of a different-looking brick wall, you know that either a) they’ve filmed in a lot of different segments, or b) someone’s trying way too hard to make it look like they have. But again, that’s something that can be fixed by either limiting the number of fake backdrops, or creating a new one – be it a real set or a custom backdrop. They’ve done it for the commentary “table”, so I don’t get why they can’t do that for the interview area.
Perhaps my biggest concern from the first two episodes was that there was no visible quality control. Sure, there was a quick turnaround (ten days) between the first show being taped and being broadcast, but even with an extra week for the second show, it’s clearly evident that nobody has sat down and watched this before it’s broadcast on YouTube.
From this week’s show, we saw the following lay-out for episode 2:
- Show open with a commentary table segment
- In-ring interview segment
- Backstage interview
- Commentary table segment
- A match!
- Backstage interview
- Commentary table segment
- Backstage interview
- Commentary table segment
- Backstage interview
- A match!
- Commentary table segment
- A match!
- Backstage interview
- Backstage interview (back-to-back with the same interviewer)
- Commentary table segment
- A match!
This many segments in an hour-long show is overkill, to say the least, but if they’re all well produced, you might have been able to forgive them. Unfortunately, almost all of the backstage interview segments were plagued with some sort of screw up, whether it was an interviewer messing up their lines, or pitching to the ring (only to return to another segment involving themselves).
As such, WCPW’s television show just comes across like a product that has been designed by committee. Are different people making the call that “we need this many backstage interviews”, before leaving it to someone else to stitch them together without the opportunity to ask “hey, can we not use a different interviewer if these are going to air back-to-back”?
On commentary, the stylings of Simon Miller and “King” Ross (Tweddell) haven’t gotten rave reviews as a pairing. I must say that Miller, whose fame has come mainly from his work on video game channels on YouTube, has performed surprisingly well given that this is his first gig as a commentator. And no, I’m not saying that because he’s built like someone who could eat me if he wanted to!
Unfortunately, “King” Ross, who is more of a familiar face on the WhatCulture videos than Miller, just doesn’t work. If he were visibly spoofing the “King” gimmick of Jerry Lawler as a commentator, it’d be one thing, but he really isn’t. Add in the references to other groups, the talking over interviews in the ring, and an overwhelming desire to establish sayings and catchphrases, going well beyond the point of annoyance. Tone it down, eh?
Sure, as debutants, there’ll be plenty of screwed up lines on commentary, but that’s the beauty of having a taped show. You can just re-record the messed up parts, right? Well, unless WhatCulture are still working with expensive tape, it seems that re-recording commentary and backstage scenes just isn’t an option, given by the number of flubs left in the final product.
On top of that, across the entire show, the volume levels were all over the place. Listening through headphones became a trial and error exercise between parts, as one part would end quietly before the volume was jacked up for the next.
Given that WhatCulture’s made their name with YouTube videos picking apart WWE and other promotions, you’d think they’d have thoroughly checked their product before taking it to air.
The promotion’s next set of tapings are at the end of July. Hopefully by the time those shows make it to YouTube, they’ll have learned how to lay out a show and avoid the schoolboy mistakes that have littered their opening shows. Once that’s done, we’ll then be able to look at a promotion that’s got a chance of long-term success!