WWE needs a new idea. The Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania season is one of excitement for WWE and its fans. Everyone is hyped to see how everything breaks down for the big shows and business goes up in a huge way. Unfortunately, right after Wrestlemania, business goes right back down. There is a way to stop this, however, and it is to steal from professional sports, specifically, the NFL.
WWE should spend the months after Wrestlemania holding a several month long tournament. I know this seems crazy and WWE has King of the Ring, which they do in one night, but that isn’t what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a huge tag tournament broken into three-parts. I know, I know, Vince hates tag wrestling. But it doesn’t matter; this idea is money.
First, post-Wrestlemania you announce Raw and Smackdown will be holding a tag tournament. The winning team gets not only the tag titles, but also each member gets a WWE Title shot on a PPV, this way, we can get all the big names involved. Up until Backlash, the first PPV, we have the regular season. On Raw and Smackdown, for that month, we have regular season games. Records will be kept and storylines will be promos and angles for the week to set up these matches. Imagine the storylines, turns and drama that could come from this!
Every team will not have time to face every other team in the month before Backlash, so instead of just stopping there, Backlash will be the show for “interleague play†or Raw Teams vs. Smackdown teams. As one PPV, this might not be enough for a full “interleague†schedule, so we can do an 8-man match or two, along with the next 3-hour Raw, the one usually devoted to the draft (which we’ll get to later) being devoted to finishing interleague. What do we do with the WWE and World Champion at this point? The same thing we do every year, of course. The champions get to have their standard Wrestlemania rematches.
Post-Backlash, we will again, go back to “regular season†matches, culminating now with a 3-hour show immediately before the next PPV. This will be the seeding show, where the top 6 teams from each brand move on to the playoffs (in Real World Tag League terms, the end of Round Robin and moving on to the finals and semi finals).
The teams that move on would face one another in two tournaments (one Raw and one Smackdown) on the next PPV. The potential, again, for angles and turns to come out of this is never ending. Finally, we would have nothing left but one team for Raw and one Team for Smackdown (with the two World Titles ideally kept off the show- the playoffs are enough to draw- maybe keep the champions on commentary throughout the night).
Finally, we would move to the Superbowl. Ideally, this is one of the times where WWE has a PPV about 3-weeks after the last. The show will be built around the Raw Team vs. the Smackdown Team with one champion as guest referee and one as guest enforcer (the idea being neither one wants to face the winning team to add intrigue). This will headline the show, but the rest of the roster will, by now, have gone back to their regular storylines to fill out the card.
Coming out of this, you’d have a WWE Tag Team Championship that meant something, a huge amount of fan interest, and even a new star or two (from upsets and turns). Now, around the start of the Summer, it would be time to head into the draft. The champions who were so worried about the title shots could find the challengers switching brands and plenty more intrigue. It isn’t an off-season, but it gives us something to do during the three-month doldrums after Wrestlemania and before Summerslam. From the draft on, new storylines and Summerslam set-up would dominate the remainder of the year and, with the shorter year to plan for, it would be far easier to set up coherent storylines straight through to Wrestlemania.
So, to sum up, the idea is a three month long tag tournament for both the tag titles and a World Title shot.
Round 1 is Round Robin, or Regular Season. That goes through Backlash, where the Raw and Smackdown teams face off, continuing into a three-hour Raw.
The next month is the Playoffs on PPV, with 6 teams from each brand making it, 2 from each with a bye from the first round (actually, have the “Wildcard Round†on television, come to think of it).
The final month, on PPV, will be the finals, the last Raw team vs. the last Smackdown team in the WWE Superbowl (naturally with a different name- WWE does own Superbrawl). This will immediately be followed by the Draft and the set up for Summerslam and a new year’s storylines.
Some of you might think this is confusing, but, well, it’s modeled after the NFL format and even the Bible Belt can figure out how that works. So, the format being hard to follow aside, what do you think? Would this work? Would you be more interested in the months after Wrestlemania with this? Less? Sound off in the comments below.
