The problem is that pro wrestling isn't a movie. They're pretending to be a sport. Imagine watching ESPN and they had promos all the time hyping the finals and treated some of the games as throwaway contests.

Not every match needs to be crazy but every match does need to matter.

It is a Pretend Sport, that's why you need the story telling elements because it is Pretend. When you don't have any focus on it and just focus on being a pretend sport people will be like. "Why am i watching the Pretend stuff when I can watch the real stuff with UFC or College wrestling". yeah the can be cool to see the moves and such...but

Wrestling is Theater, it is an art form of that. Hero's, villains. Stories of friendship, love, Comedy, back stabbing, the little guy being held down by the "Boss". You may want to believe it or not...Pro Wrestling is a Soap Opera!

When you get people with a mindset like that you get a promotion like TNA.

I'm not entirely against the type of storytelling you're talking about but when has stuff like that ever been a major draw for a promotion.

To this day the highest selling pay per view in TNA history was Lockdown with Samoa Joe vs. Kurt Angle. And what was the build to that? They had a UFC type of hype where they showed them working out and they didn't touch each other before the match. It certainly drew more then having a girl pregnant with a crack baby.

That's isn't TNA's issue with drawing, It's the fact no one knows who the fuck they are.

And There was Story to Joe vs Kurt. Kurt came into Joe's show and pretty much sucker head butted him and he felt disrespected. They talked shit about eachother during the build up to their match in a UFC style yes, but they where talking about eachother.

It wasn't just match, match, match. No you had reasoning why these two where after eachother. Kurt wanted to make a big debut and attack the biggest bad ass TNA had. Joe hated Kurt for that, and the fact this son of a bitch from a different company is walking into Joe's company thinking he owns the damn place. 

When it comes to story telling in wrestling it has to match what is going on in today's world so people can relate to it.

I agree that I would much rather see a good story and decent match than a shitty story and a 5 star match.

BlueTista wrote:

And There was Story to Joe vs Kurt. Kurt came into Joe's show and pretty much sucker head butted him and he felt disrespected. They talked shit about eachother during the build up to their match in a UFC style yes, but they where talking about eachother.

It wasn't just match, match, match. No you had reasoning why these two where after eachother. Kurt wanted to make a big debut and attack the biggest bad ass TNA had. Joe hated Kurt for that, and the fact this son of a bitch from a different company is walking into Joe's company thinking he owns the damn place. 

That was years after Angle debuted. He was also the TNA World Heavyweight Champion at that point.

And that type of build is far different from the soap opera stuff you're talking about.

It's still storytelling, which Wrestling imo needs a lot more of these days

I've literally never seen someone advocate cutting storylines from wrestling, either in the ring or out of it. This feels like a straw-man argument meant to make anyone who criticizes an overuse of promo spots look stupid. Wrestling is best when there's a balance between storytelling and competition, and anyone who argues otherwise represents a very minor subsection of the fanbase that I have no reason to believe actually exists.