Inside Pulse Wrestling | To Be Determined â€“ Did PG Hurt WWE?

To Be Determined â€“ Did PG Hurt WWE?

by Raffi Shamir on May 24, 2010

For nearly two years now WWE has toned down their programming and rate their programming PG rather than TV14. Since then we have heard a lot of complaints that WWE’s product is suffering because of the PG rating, that PG means that there is no content suitable for adults on WWE shows anymore and it’s all too child friendly. Allow me to disagree.

A significant change brought by the PG ratings was that WWE stopped showing blood. While I don’t think blood is such a vital element of wrestling, and if we look at many of the greatest matches of all times we will not find a single drop of blood, it can add a lot to the visual element of wrestling. Would Hart-Austin from Wrestlemania 13 be remembered in such a glorious dramatic fashion if Austin had simply collapsed without the blood pouring all over his face? I doubt it. We certainly wouldn’t have that classic image. And while WWE seem to do just fine when it comes to match quality without blood, they have taken things to the ridiculous extreme by stopping matches because wrestlers were bleeding for real. It’s also absurd to have an event called “Extreme Rules” and not have at least one bloody brawl.

Another change is that we no longer see bra and panties pillow fights. There are many who see the lack of this thing as a sign that WWE’s product is getting worse, that it’s too childish. I think that those who miss bra and panties matches are anything but adults â€“ they’re childish fans who try to act like adults by talking about boobies. We all went to school with these kids. I’d be happy if I never see another bra and panties pillow fight.

When it comes to writing, WWE showed that they can deliver good, mature storylines that do not insult our intelligence, and keep things within the PG rating. I dare anyone to claim that CM Punk’s character and the feuds that he had with Jeff Hardy and Rey Mysterio are not suitable for mature audiences. Scary ass Punk singing “Happy Birthday” to Rey’s daughter is still one of the creepiest things ever seen on WWE TV. The feud between The Miz and MVP earlier this year also delivered some good, mature promos between the two, last year’s pre-Wrestlemania feud between Randy Orton and Triple H was also well written and there are more example of good writing that is not harmed by the PG rating.

So where is the problem? I believe that the real problem with the PG rating is that WWE often confuse “family friendly” with “infantile”. I get this frustrating feeling every time I see Hornswoggle on my screen. Every time someone insults a female wrestler because she looks healthy rather than anorectic. Every time I see an idiotic segment with a Raw guest host that involves Santino and Jillian Hall. These bits are not suitable for children. They are suitable for brain-dead infantile idiots. When I saw both Hornswoggle and Vickie Guerrero on Christian’s Peep Show last week I cringed in my seat, I felt that my intelligence was insulted. They did not need this stupid setup for a feud between Christian and Dolph Ziggler, they could have done it differently. And speaking of Ziggler, who the hell came up with the Mr. Ziggles line that John Morrison used last year (Yes, I know I moaned about it in my last column). It’s that kind of things that make people curse the PG rating and think that it’s the cause of WWE’s problems.

So it’s not the PG ratings. WWE can still deliver excellent matches and compelling feuds. It’s not the attempt to be family friendly. When PG becomes infantile â€“ that’s the problem.

Tags: Bret Hart, christian, cm punk, Dolph Ziggler, Hornswoggle, Jillian Hall, John Morrison, mvp, randy orton, Raw, rey mysterio, Santino, Smackdown, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Miz, triple h, vickey guerrero, wrestlemania, WWE

Raffi Shamir

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beezknees

I gotta disagree slightly with them even calling themselves PG and not PG-13…

As much as I like Punk’s character (one of my favs) he constantly references drinking and drugs. Just the mention of that should render it PG-13. Not that it is the end out be all of exact definitions by any means but even the US rating system out at Wikipedia uses the phrase “No drug content is present”. By talking about it as much as he does, it becomes omnipresent wherever his character is concerned… And that’s not even going into when the real and story line cross such as the Jeff Hardy promos… Or the rediculous crap like the The Cheech & Chong “Lucky Charms” high etc.. That is what PG-13 was made for.
S D

As for bra/panty matches.. True, perhaps we can do without.. but if that’s the case.. they need to get women who can wrestle.. instead of just having a Hot Bod. I think with the current crop of divas.. Bra/panty matches Might be what they are best suited for… (that’ll all change if they bring in Kong to squash every diva that doesn’t belong) otherwise you are correct that they it doesn’t matter much between PG and PG-13 in reality.. but that doesn’t stop the Stupidity that WWE has been using (thank goodness for WWE on Demand) and stopping matches because of blood is plain out stupid.. especially if theres no Blading going on.
http://www.wrestling.insidepulse.com Sebastian L not H

You also have to consider that when WWE was tv-14 it was drawing 4.3 on a bad night, now their getting like 3.5 on a good night.
http://djjoedubb.tumblr.com Joe Dubb

I am all for the PG stuff for two reasons:
First, WWE has been PG for a better part of it’s exsistance. The Attitude Era was only a small slice of the company’s history. When I see people crying about how they miss that era, it is clear to me that they may not have a deep knowledge of the WWE’s history past 1997, because if they did, they would realize that this is simply WWE returning to normal. And bad writing has been around forever, regardless of what era your in. For every Stone Cold Steve Austin there is Maye Young birthing a hand. For every Rock, there is a Mark Henry making it with a tranny. There is just as much horrible stuff back then as there is today, we just chose to remember the pluses and negate the neagtives of the late 90′s

The other reason I’m cool with PG is when I have kids in 2 years, I want them to be able to watch WWE with me, the same as I did with my Granfather when I was young. There is no way that would happen if the Attitude product was on right now, so I am thankful that I will be able to share something as awesome as professional wrestling with my kids and create fatherly memories of my own.

For those that miss blood, TNA bleeds buckets every Thursday night.
Jordan P.

Grew up on wrestling in the 2001-2002 NWO phase so I’m not sure if it’s considered Attitude era or not… I always thought when wrestler A made Wrestler B bleed it always added a dramatic element to the match. Kept your eyes on the screen to see who would win in the end. Shame on you Joe Dubb trying to get people to watch TNA.
Rob S.

I’d question the logic that WWE’s default setting is PG. Up until ’91/’92 that argument might work, but around then they started flirting with more adult themes. Flair claiming to have nude photos of Liz, Sherri getting on her knees and offering to feel the full force of Warrior’s destrucity, and the Roberts/Savage feud were all very much adult (I believe they still don’t show Roberts attacking Liz on DVDs). The steroid scare tempered those ideas but they never fully disappeared. Shawn’s ass was featured pretty prominently throughout the mid ’90s (in addition to his Playgirl shoot which provided Bret with some great lines), Goldust popped up pre-Attitude, and Sunny pretty quickly usurped almost all of the roster in popularity for obvious reasons.

The Attitude era then lasted from about ’98 to ’01, but the adult themes continued on until late ’07/early ’08. That’s basically ten straight years of adult content with the previous six of a mixed variety. So it’s pretty even both ways. And even during WWE’s PG golden years there was always stuff of questionable taste. Jameson letting loose into a pillow? Bobby Heenan’s constant racist jokes? Hell, most of Warrior’s promos involved him promising some form of murder, torture, or extreme violence like when he promised to send Hulk Hogan’s plane into a nosedive after killing the two pilots. He was basically Patrick Bateman in facepaint.

I’m not saying it’s better but it’s a pretty even split between the two. I can see why they wanted to make the switch ($$$) but it’s naive to expect the adult audience you’ve been dealing with for the last 10 years to go right along with it.
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Michael L

I think that you can go too far in either direction. Fortunately we haven’t gotten to the inanity that was the “new generation” era of the mid 90′s (93-95 or so). There, unless you already were established in the WWE, you were given a lame character to try to get over (TL Hopper, Dean Douglas, Godwins, the Goon, etc). They haven’t gone to that extreme–with the exception of Hornswaggle.

On the other hand, people often forget just how juvenile the attitude era often was, particularly with the antics of DX. And the hardcore wrestling, blading, and crowd-brawling almost became a cliche (though not as much as ECW). They seemed to often use it as a crutch, to jack up the intensity of matches that didn’t need it.

While I certainly don’t want to see them go back to the ECW lite of the late 90′s and early 00′s, they certainly could occassionally break out the red when the angle calls for it. For example, the intensity of the feud between HBK v. Jericho pretty much demanded someone do a blade job in their street fight. And what the hell is the point of having Hell in the Cell without some color? Finally, this bullshit of stopping a match for legit blood (aside from MAJOR problems) pretty much kills any momentum the match has going for it. And as we’ve seen, the live fans certainly aren’t going for it. Once you stop the match and have to restart it again, it’s just that much more effort to bring the fans back in.
Jamie K

Come on people. We all know the real reason behind them going PG is because Linda McMahon wants a chance to become a politician. It certainly isn’t because they want their ratings to drop just so they can get a more family atmosphere. It’s damn wrestling!! Everyone knows what it is. It isn’t the 70s where people think its still real, it’s the 21st century where people know its fake, that the wrestlers take steroids to look big and after you go through an era where dick and fart jokes are the centre of attention and necrophilia is used in a major feud, there really is no going back. Why bother changing now?? People aren’t suddenly going to change their minds about what it is.
Walter Kovacs

In some cases, the stoppages make sense (specifically, they are going to go out into the crowd, and bleeding on fans isn’t something you want to be doing).

In the two matches on the last PPV with blood, one was Punk with a RIDICULOUS cut (and he basically jumped Rey as soon as the boring chant started and was still bleeding a bit for the rest of the match), and Cena, who was just about to brawl into the audience. In both cases, it made sense for them to stop it. It hurts the flow of the match, but if they can keep it quick, it becomes part of the match, like when a ref has to hold someone back when their opponent is in the ropes/corner, etc.

The general lack of blood makes the instances of “legit” blood more interesting (and, if/when they decide to start blading again, they can use it less often and to greater impact just by making it a rare occurance).
http://www.onlineworldofwrestlingandwww.wrestlinginsidepulse.com sebasitan

When WWF was around it was pg, but like Rob was saying it wasn’t AS toned down as today. Rob gave a bunch of examples, but think of WWE today, and think of WWF before (don’t kill yourself now). Honestly WWF didn’t really have a rating intill like 1996 or 1997, because the FCC wern’t trying to “protect the community watching TV” also throughout 1994 to 1996 the whol steriod angle was going on, and Vince was busy with that, and didn’t really give a s*it what was happeing on tv. You also have to consider that when 2001 rolled around the show was called tv-pg D,L,V, but then the FCC went no kids can’t watch this, so theey turned up the rating to tv-14, if they really hadn’t have done that in the first place we wouldn’t b*tch about the ratings change, and instead (rightfully) b*tch about the stupid angles and no blood. We would notice it was waterd down, but not everyone would be like oh it’s g@y now, because it’s pg, because it was always pg D,L,V.
http://itaintthatserious.wordpress.com ReyTheHussein

I’m gonna go ahead and cosign this, and add the following: The Attitude Era was largely crap. After spending enough time on YouTube watching clips from back then, the majority of it was really, really dumb–just as infantile and juvenile as today is, only instead of catering to the Teletubbies crowd of today, they were catering to the boob’n'fart joke crowd of 1999-2000.

Overall tho’, I agree.
http://(none) Jason

I didn’t even have to read the post!!! PG affected WWE greatly! It’s so boring now. The only reason I keep watching is for John Cena, Randy Orton, Edge, Chris Jericho, and Triple H, who’s out of action now. Since they banned all this stuff, they can’t do stuff like chair shots, use ladders, and put people through tables on the regular show. No Superstar can be the same.
Brandon

PG is Crap. The main thing that effects me with PG is the fact that the audience is all kids now. Look up RVD vs. John Cena on Youtube, it’s one night stand ECW in 2006. That crowd was one of the best crowds i have ever seen! and do you know who made up 95% of that crowd? older teens and adults! The Crowd is responsible i’d say for at least half of the electricity in the building, and when it’s full of kids who cheer for no one except Cena and Rey mysterio, you have a problem.

Also The 80′s was PG yes, but during that time you saw them get hit with chairs and bleed brotha! Hulk Hogan Vs. Sgt. Slaughter for instance! so no one can hand me that crap oh the 80′s was PG too!!! yeah it was a MUCH better PG! WWE is G, it isn’t PG, and it needs to be TV 14! they have done nothing but suffer from this, and despite the “did you know facts” at teh end of a commercial break, their ratings are down and they are losing money.

Here’s the best quote that applies to WWE right now
“If ur not gonna go all the way why go at all!” And they certainly aren’t going all the way!
erik

I will say this i would take 1989-1996 pg over 2008-2010 pg anyday. The reason is in 1989-1996 you had alive tag teams like demoliton, lod, rockers, steniers, headskrinkers, guns, body donnas, quebecers godwinns etc now they throw any mid carder together and there team lol. I would love to have great tag team divison back. Is it ever going to happen?