Start with the top star. Will John Cena continue to be the centerpiece? I have mentioned many times in the last few weeks that John Cena is currently taking a rest from bigger matters. I have also said that guys like Daniel Bryan may deserve a better chance to be pushed as centerpiece. I brought up the idea of separating the centerpiece from the face, so you can still have John Cena doing all the charity stuff and talk shows and being awarded for it with solid pushes, while the guy actually connecting best with the fans gets pushed as top star. I am looking for change to happen. I still don't think it is guaranteed that Cena is out of the main spotlight on a consistent basis for good. Who will get pushed as the top stars in the Reality Era? Vince and Triple H's goons? Or the fan favorites?
The tone also seems to have changed. Vickie Guerrero was not exactly too PG in her promo on Raw. Batista was his usual self. At the same time, you had Scooby Doo coming out. The WWE has tested the limits of family-friendly entertainment for a while now. Will they be doing that even more now that they are embracing this new era? I don't like it. Yeah, I don't exactly want my nephew, who sometimes watches wrestling when I'm watching it, to be hearing the word "bitch" too much. But it's more than that. What the WWE is doing is just arrogant. They want to have everything. They want to appear to be family-friendly entertainment, but then they do things where you pretty much need parental guidance. It is not simply suggested you have parental guidance, you need it. Some people had a problem with Daniel Bryan getting destroyed by Triple H last week. They say Triple H went too far. I didn't even bother bringing the issue up. It didn't bother me in terms of going too far. I just thought it lasted too long and it wasn't believable that no one would come out to help Daniel Bryan in all that time against just Triple H. But it's just another example of the WWE testing the limits. It irritates me.
What does this mean for storylines? Will they be taking advantage of real issues more often to make storylines out of them? Will they try even harder to make people think what is going on is real? Will injury angles look more realistic? The reason a lot of people bought into Cena's injury a few weeks ago, including me, was because of how awkward the whole thing was. Usually, an injury angle would actually make the attacker look strong. That injury angle, if it was an angle, looked like it was just dumb luck that Cena got injured like that. And what does this mean for larger angles than that? For the sake of argument, let's say CM Punk walking out was a work. It was part of a plan. The WWE sure fooled a lot of people. They got them to believe it was real. But will it pay off for them? Will it draw? Will it cause big buzz when CM Punk returns to get a ton of viewers? That is the question for all the storylines they try to sell as real. Will it draw?
Tie it all in back to John Cena. Let's say they keep him as centerpiece. Will changing the tone of the product and how they approach storylines change him? A lot of fans hate Cena for being this family-friendly guy. If he was more edgy, would that help? If they did more storylines about his personal life, would that make him seem like more of a normal guy? It would be pretty funny of things change all around John Cena, but the WWE keeps him exactly the way he is.
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