FreaXTVChannelE & Mo: WWE Monday Night Supershow part 1 of 2

Mo – A couple of months back Addie and I were contacted by the uber talented FreaXTVChanelE about taking inspiration for a reboot of WWE’s Monday Night programming we felt was needed to shake up a stale project. After seeing the work done on the TNA reboot we gladly told him to absolutely go ahead and couldn’t wait to see what he’d turn up!

Well it’s here and it was worth the wait as it has FreaX has surpassed all expectations. So here now for your pleasure is his work with some little side commentary from me. If you want to see his fabulous work without my annoying chatter visit FXTVE-Rebooted

And now on with the good stuff 

WWE #REBOOTED Section01- A Super New Monday Night

Welcome back Wrestling Fans to Laced Up & Rebooted. After a short Summer break from Rebooting, I thought it was about time to take on the big guns of Wrestling, with the mighty Machine that is the WWE.

We Talk Wrestling

So after the previous #Rebooted Sections of TNA, I was determined to find an angle on how I could reshape the well established universe of the WWE (no easy task) and the way it was presented. At this point I just so happened to stumble across the superb Podcasts of WeTalkWrestling.com, presented by the talented and very entertaining Mo and Addie.

In a podcast, recorded back on May 28th, Mo & Addie discuss the idea of replacing RAW with a whole new Show, and go into detail on the workings and reasons for a new approach.

So before I go into it, here’s a link to that particular show; Check it out HERE. You can find the New RAW discussion at around 1hr 46mins into the podcast. And if you like that show you can find many more gems on their other WeTalkPodcasts. My Fave Podcasts out there!

A New WWE Monday Night Show

Here are the pointers discussed by Mo & Addie for a New Monday Night Show;

1. To kickstart the interest and Freshen up the Product

2. Draw Bigger Ratings than Raw is right now.

3. Give a fresh approach to the Booking, Filming, Graphics and overall Look          and  Feel.

4.  More of a Sports-Type of Show

5.  An NFL Football-style Desk and Commentary

6.  NFL-style Analysis, Hype and Build to matches                                               (Training/Promos/Interviews/Vids)

7.  Ranking System for different Categories

8.  Fewer Matches- But with advance Build, Hype and Structure

I think this covers the main points, but please give the Show a listen if you can. So to give credit to Mo & Addie (& thanks for their support in this), here is my interpretation of their ideas (with a touch of the #Rebooted in for good measure) for a New WWE Monday Night Show. Enjoy!

1.1 Logos

So the first task for me in this whole exercise was to come up with the Name for the show. After looking over the RAW logos it quickly hit me- The obvious title was staring at me from the recent title editions with the inclusion of the words Super-show. SUPERSHOW! So with that it all fell into place with the full title of, WWE Monday Night SUPERSHOW. Simples!

I also felt, (and with the intentions of integrating the WWE logo into the Supershow logo) that I needed to start with the initial WWE logo, or just the W as it is presented.

Taking some pointers from the old 80’s WWF logo, I’ve given my new ‘W’ a semi-retro feel, a sporty colour scheme (to go with the Supershow theme) while hopefully adding a more modern graphical style.

So in this presentation, I’ve made one theme for the WWE pre-show intro (in blue) and one for the main Supershow (red, white & blue). The Intro examples below go on the idea of bringing the product back to life and kickstarting the whole look and feel .Here’s how it goes:

The two contrasting colour schemes will come into play throughout the show, with the blue tech-like graphics for caption Displays and commentary Stats and the red, white & blue giving a sporty theme for the Main Arena Show.

For the Cover Poster or DVD, I wanted to give it the whole feel of bringing everything in the mighty WWE Universe together, combined into 1 show and all under one roof. This gives it the big sell of all the elements working together, rather than just 1 show of many. So here is The BIGGEST SHOW, The MAIN SHOW, where everything else revolves around…The Universe Will Be Watching:

The 3 colour schemes of the Title, Red White & Blue, signify the 3 elements or ‘type’ of Stars coming together in one (Red for RAW Stars, White for Management & Blue for Smackdown Stars).

Mo – This is a brilliant start to what the WWE product needs, and has a kinetic energy that only FreaXTVChanelE can bring. One look at this will tell fans it’s new and exciting, but also a top notch high end presentation like they’ve never seen before

 

1.2 The Show Mechanics

As you can see at the bottom of the main poster, the Commentary Team would be sat behind a Sports or NFL-style desk in a backstage Studio setup rather than at ringside, though this setup is built into the Entrance Ramp to the right of the stage, giving a view of the ring and the crowd (as illustrated in the Arena shots further on in this section).

The blue Techie Graphics are the theme for the Commentary segments, with Head-up-displays of Stats and Names, showing all the vital information to illustrate and accompany the discussions and interviews.

And to give this a reliable team (IMO) the main host and interviewer here would be Josh Mathews, with Michael Cole and Jim Ross giving opinions and commentary:

The Supershow Stats section here, hosted by Josh Mathews, would show a structured analysis of the Wrestlers and Matchups, with the Wrestlers presented on Trading card-style graphics, showing Rankings and Stats.

Mo – One of the things that bothers me about the current WWE presentation is the sameness of it all for so long. If you look at RAW when it debuted in 1993 it had a strikingly different look than Prime Time Wrestling that it replaced. Similarly by 1999 it had a completely different look than in 1993.

But if you watch RAW from 1999 to now it has almost the exact same look, and that’s a big part of my problem.

One change from FreaX I would make though, I would still have the NFL-style desk in a backstage Studio set up near the ramp but would reserve that only for Josh Mathews and the analysis team, and have a traditional ringside commentary team. Since we’re basing this on an NFL style model Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long provide before and half time analysis of games and Joe Buck & Troy Aikman call the actual play, so I’d personally go in that direction

And that’s it for part one but keep an eye out for part 2 coming later this week.