I've been saying it over and over again to anyone who'd listen since the start of the year: 2011 is the year WWE becomes awesome again.
HOWEVER, after last night, and the last month in general it's become very clear to me exactly how smart Vince McMahon is! The PG era, the phasing out of the word "wrestling"; it's all been leading to this!
Just before the PG era began, we all know it, Vince knows it, the WWE product stank, and that's why TNA was getting the following they were getting. The wrestling fans were turning off of the product. So Vince it PG, he caters to the kids, because they're easy to cater for and they're gonna buy the t-shirts and the toys, and so the PG era begins. John Cena becomes SuperCena. He becomes the guy that every parent wants their child to grow up to be like, and he becomes the face of the company.
WWE over the next few years overdo the PG and they make it all so kid-friendly, but the smarks keep tuning in because we wanna bash the product.
Roll on 2010. WWE eliminate the word wrestling from their vocabulary. They stop referring to the fans as fans, but rather the WWE Universe. We've got the same few guys carrying the company, and all the best guys getting injured, or leaving. ENTER CM PUNK ON COMMENTARY.
Suddenly we've got the voice of the smarks on the microphone every week on RAW! We've got someone putting across the views on air that we want heard. Then CM Punk heals, he comes back to the ring, and we're at 2011. The quality of the shows is suddenly and rapidly improving.
Most of the stuff coming up to this point has been due to WWE being WWE and not listening, but suddenly, we're seeing PPV rematches the next night on RAW, based purely on the fact that they had a brilliant match! We're seeing a great match every PPV, and WWE are quickly regaining the viewers they once lost to TNA.
Week by week, the shows are getting better, we're seeing great promos, we're pointing out more and more "non-PG" stuff all the time, and we're seeing better booking! WWE are booking long term stories once more! AND THEN. COMES. THE PUNK STORYLINE.
Holy shit. That worked shoot. That worked shoot was the moment I knew that the Super-PG Era was coming to an end. I realised that everything WWE told us was a dirty word, the fact that they took the emphasis off of the quality of the wrestling, all of the stuff that made the smarks rage was INTENTIONAL. Because in six minutes, CM Punk said WWE's dirty words, he acknowledged that there was a world outside of the WWE Universe, and he had people glued to their screens!
The weeks following that worked shoot only proved this to me even further. Super Cena was saying saying WWE's dirty W-word. Vince McMahon was back on TV and he was swearing.
And then came Money In The Bank. The night this has all been leading to. The night that in my view (I'm hoping RAW tonight proves me right) The PG Era died. Every match on the card was of PPV level in terms of psychology, wrestling and booking. Even Kelly Kelly vs Brie Bella wasn't horrible! Every finish was well booked, and every aftermath was amazing! AND THE PG ERA CHAMPIONS WERE BOTH UNCROWNED!
It's all been leading to this point, and I think that what started out as WWE putting out a shit product, turned into Vince McMahon's best laid plan. Tonight's Monday Night RAW will either enforce the theory I just laid out, or it's gonna completely crush me.

yea,,like you mention a couple times in there,,,it may be overlooked and forgotten from time to time but Vince certainly knows what hes doing

Here's a little update concerning my above post, and proving me right. The following is a sound byte of Vince McMahon at the 2011 Shareholders meeting explicitly stating that going back to Super-PG was all a part of getting WWE back to where it used to be. When asked whether WWE is going to one day go back to their more adult oriented product, he says how sometimes you need to go backwards in order to go forwards, and backwards meant going back to the pre-attitude super PG era.

http://geeksnow.com/vincepgera.mp3

While I agree with your post, I don't think that this genius plan is either an excuse or a good reason for some of the terrible booking we have seen from WWE. There is no excuse for not following up on major things or randomly nixing good angles for no reason:
The McIntyre-Kelly Kelly angle was dropped for no reason, and McIntyre taken off of TV. There was no follow-up to the Nexus split (especially as pertains to Punk vs. Barrett). SO MANY random pairings won the tag team titles, then lost them and split up to feud... without even a PPV match (Dashingly Sinister, the Hart Dynasty, Show-Miz, Jeri-Show)... NXT has been a colossal failure simply in that it did not do what it kayfabe promised (show us the next breakout star- Kaitlyn has barely been used and Johnny Curtis has not received his title shot yet).

What about Nexus helping Kane to bury Taker? Otunga hinted that there was a secret reason for it, but nothing happened with that, either.

Other angles have just been so horribly botched it's not even funny. They threw the entire SES under the bus just to promote Big Show's movie. They completely destroyed Swagger, too, in his title reign. Dolph Ziggler is now considered a former World Heavyweight Champion just because he was awarded the belt, and then lost it THAT NIGHT. The smarks who complained would have complained anyway (especially as pertains to the vocabulary changes)... WWE didn't need to tank their booking for three years in order to do create the atmosphere that they wanted.

Big Red Machine wrote:While I agree with your post, I don't think that this genius plan is either an excuse or a good reason for some of the terrible booking we have seen from WWE. There is no excuse for not following up on major things or randomly nixing good angles for no reason:
The McIntyre-Kelly Kelly angle was dropped for no reason, and McIntyre taken off of TV. There was no follow-up to the Nexus split (especially as pertains to Punk vs. Barrett). SO MANY random pairings won the tag team titles, then lost them and split up to feud... without even a PPV match (Dashingly Sinister, the Hart Dynasty, Show-Miz, Jeri-Show)... NXT has been a colossal failure simply in that it did not do what it kayfabe promised (show us the next breakout star- Kaitlyn has barely been used and Johnny Curtis has not received his title shot yet).

What about Nexus helping Kane to bury Taker? Otunga hinted that there was a secret reason for it, but nothing happened with that, either.

Other angles have just been so horribly botched it's not even funny. They threw the entire SES under the bus just to promote Big Show's movie. They completely destroyed Swagger, too, in his title reign. Dolph Ziggler is now considered a former World Heavyweight Champion just because he was awarded the belt, and then lost it THAT NIGHT. The smarks who complained would have complained anyway (especially as pertains to the vocabulary changes)... WWE didn't need to tank their booking for three years in order to do create the atmosphere that they wanted.

I will definitely agree with that. And after tonight's RAW, I'm holding my "new era" for another week...

Also, is it safe to say that the kids who were tuning in at the height of the PG era have grown up, so they're switching it to more of an adult product? That's been used as an excuse for the transition from the Federation Years to the Attitude Era in the 90s.

As much as I would love the PG Era to end, I'll believe it when I see it.

Which probably isn't going to be soon since I'm still without a TV.

NWK wrote:Also, is it safe to say that the kids who were tuning in at the height of the PG era have grown up, so they're switching it to more of an adult product? That's been used as an excuse for the transition from the Federation Years to the Attitude Era in the 90s.

I think that Donna Goldsmith (one of their marketing execs) used the term "from the cradle to the grave" to describe WWE's marketing strategy. This certainly fits into that.

The Awesome One wrote:It wasn't that a rise. The WWE reached where it is now by rising slowly.. 2008 was total s**t for WWE, but 2009 was good, Christian returned, made ECW entertaining, the Y2J/Mysterio feud was entertaining, as was Punk/Hardy, and then the first few monthes of the SES were entertaining as well. Enter 2010 we have NXT, The Nexus, The Miz and Kane. Really Kiel, were 2009 and 2010 total s**t?

To be honest, throughout late 2008, 2009 and until late 2010 I rarely watched any wrestling. I went without it in my life at all from 2008 until 2010 when I joined WA. And even then, it wasn't WWE that brought me back in. It was me watching my old WWF tapes that rekindled my love for wrestling. Every now and again I would check if anything noteworthy had happened while I hadn't been watching and there was not a single thing that made me want to watch WWE again. Not even NXT.

So yes, 2009 in my opinion was total shit, and 2010 while it may not have been as bad, wasn't good enough to bring me back in.