The WWE Board Of Directors

[PlayTheGame]

So John Laurinaitis gets to keep his job. Why? Because the WWE Board of Directors said so, that's why.

The WWE Board of Directors have been involved in quite a few storylines lately. They seem to be making quite a few substantial decisions as of late, such as replacing Vince with HHH, being mentioned in relation to other storyline developments, and now have decided to go against HHH's wishes in regard to JL's firing, keeping JL as Raw GM (according to WWE.com).

At first, I didn't mind the WWE Board being used in storylines. It made sense in the overthrow of Vince (I guess). But now it seems that the WWE is using the "Board" to make all these decisions, without much explanation... just to serve the purpose of the story. This faceless, far-away, unconnected, mystery group. In other words, it's pretty much the Anonymous Raw GM rehashed, just without the annoying laptop. I mean, it pretty much started right after the Anonymous Raw GM thing anyway.

At first, I thought it was kind of cool to have the WWE Board of Directors involved in the story... but now they seem to be involved in pretty much every thing... why hire HHH as COO if you're just going to make your own decisions anyway? I liked the concept of having this mystery group making a big decision here or there... but now it has boiled down to just cheap writing that the WWE can get away with, just 'cause "the Board says so" without any explanation or motive. I mean, WWE.com pretty much said "even though JL was going to be fired, and the WWE Universe wanted it along with HHH, the Board has decided to keep him." ..............Why?

It's pretty much just lazy writing at this point. Booking certain things to happen without any worry as to "would this guy to do this, or would it make sense for this guy to make this decision?" It's pretty much now: "the Board has spoken, no explanation necessary, deal with it." I don't like it, and it's beginning to be overused.

What do you guys think of the WWE Board of Directors? Do you like their involvement in all of these storylines, or do you too feel "they" are interfering too much with little to no reason behind their actions?

 

[AwesomeRko]

Completely agree dude, I wasn't against the idea at first but it should be used sparingly and is only really worth it if theres gonna be a pay off, which to be completely honest I don't see happening. Although a corporate struggle for control between HHH/Vince and say a Shane Mcmahon led boardroom would be interesting. Something which culd also work and would perhaps be more realisitc could be having JL really play up to being the boards man having him play the kind of company lackey enforcing unpopuar demands on Raw kind of similar to Cyril I think it was in ECW with the tv company. It would make him seem slightly less spineless and the relisation that he is backed by the boards authority would serve to make him more of a legitimate threat to HHH and Punk than the jokes he is atm.

In saying that they should just have had HHH reinstate him to get the ball rolling for his heel turn which has to happen, hes a horrible face and authroity figures are usually much more interesting as heels. It seems to be going that way with taker already i suppose but how are we supposed to take him seriously as COO, if any decision he makes can be easily overturned by his betters? It severely limits our perception of HHH's ability in a corporate sense and makes the job of attempting to match upto Vince as the uncompromising boss character even more difficult.

So yeahh as of now it is just another excuse for lazy writing.

 

[maddogrox55]

I sure hope they get to the meat of this storyline soon......it is starting to get boring watching the same old silly soap opera-type garbage that's been going on lately. If I was interested in that, I would rather watch some of the "Reality" shows....like Bachelor/Bachelorette, or Survivor.......lol.

 

[ECWcyrus]

It's ok at times, but I do agree that it's getting to appear as lazy booking. I don't know why, but it reminds when TNA did the whole network angle. They were somehow able to overturn Hogan and Bischoff's decision.

Anyway, if we get a pay off for the board of directors recent involvement, then it's fine, but if not, i guess it's just lazy booking

Although.....if you think about, since keeping Laurinaitis as GM was kinda expected, having the board not firing him makes the most since, as opposed to if they had HHH not fire him

 

[Raiden46]

It would be nice if the actual WWE BOD appeared at WM28. I know that will never happen (probably cause some of them are butt-ugly) but at least we would be able to put names to faces.

 

[PlayTheGame]

It's ok at times, but I do agree that it's getting to appear as lazy booking. I don't know why, but it reminds when TNA did the whole network angle. They were somehow able to overturn Hogan and Bischoff's decision.

Anyway, if we get a pay off for the board of directors recent involvement, then it's fine, but if not, i guess it's just lazy booking

Although.....if you think about, since keeping Laurinaitis as GM was kinda expected, having the board not firing him makes the most since, as opposed to if they had HHH not fire him

How was keeping JL expected though? If anything, everything pointed to him getting fired- he had been sucking for quite some time, no one liked him, not even the on-air talent, and HHH was coming to fire him (as the announcers had hinted at). The logical thing was to fire him in the storyline for numerous reasons... he's not adding much to anymore, and whatever feud he has had with Punk, he has completely lost all steam, if he ever had any to begin with. The logical next step would for him to be fired (what else can he do of interest?), but the WWE Board (for no reason) decides to keep him on. Lazy, lazy booking/writing, whatever you want to call it. Obviously the WWE has more in store for him to do... but then that would make his near-future endeavorment just an attempt at a shocker for no reason, just to be hastily written around later. A cheap twist just to add a twist, I guess. One that they easily wrote themselves a get-out-of-jail free card for.


"It would be nice if the actual WWE BOD appeared at WM28. I know that will never happen (probably cause some of them are butt-ugly) but at least we would be able to put names to faces."

Interesting thought. That'd be interesting if one, some, or all of them did appear at some point, namely Wrestlemania... but, I don't see this happening... If the Anonymous Raw GM never appeared, why would the WWE even think about "revealing" the B.o.D.'s? I don't see it happening unfortunately.

 

[ECWcyrus]

How was keeping JL expected though? If anything, everything pointed to him getting fired- he had been sucking for quite some time, no one liked him, not even the on-air talent, and HHH was coming to fire him (as the announcers had hinted at). The logical thing was to fire him in the storyline for numerous reasons... he's not adding much to anymore, and whatever feud he has had with Punk, he has completely lost all steam, if he ever had any to begin with. The logical next step would for him to be fired (what else can he do of interest?), but the WWE Board (for no reason) decides to keep him on. Lazy, lazy booking/writing, whatever you want to call it. Obviously the WWE has more in store for him to do... but then that would make his near-future endeavorment just an attempt at a shocker for no reason, just to be hastily written around later. A cheap twist just to add a twist, I guess. One that they easily wrote themselves a get-out-of-jail free card for.

I completely agree that he's not really adding to anything anymore, i think if he were to be fired, it should happen on TV not via wwe.com. so when they said the announcement would be on the website, i just kinda expected he wasn't going anywhere.

 

[George Steele's Barber]

My favorite thing about the BOD is that they seem to meet at odd times and no BOD is going to be making such trivial micro decisions as the GM of Raw. Chairman yes, GM of Raw no. Raw may be their flagship show but WWE is a multi-billion dollar company with far more important issues to discuss.

I would like WWE to explain JL keeping his job by basically finding a humorous way to show us that JL slept with a very powerful, influencial and old member of the BOD. Punk could expose it. Might make for a funny segment, if not at least it gives us some explanation of how JL kept his job.

 

[Azane]

The anonymous Board of Directors have sent me an e-mail.

Anonymous storylines, GTFO please, please, please WWE, stop giving us faceless powers to be that have no personalities. Give us a heelish power hungry corporate asshole, give us a savior fan favorite that makes everything right, stop giving us a void of emotion for our main storylines.

Give us faces to connect, you could create an entirely new character, basically an "evil" force that's behind Lauranitis, I could see someone emerging that is even more hated that make's the marks wish Johnny Ace was still at the helm.

They're squandering a memorable storyline, and possibly a whole new on air personality with another anonymous story. Nobody liked the Anon GM because they dropped it with no explanation.... A good mystery story is GREAT.... except when you decide to not give us the ending, which just makes it shit.

 

[yoda's nose]

The anonymous Board of Directors have sent me an e-mail.

Anonymous storylines, GTFO please, please, please WWE, stop giving us faceless powers to be that have no personalities. Give us a heelish power hungry corporate asshole, give us a savior fan favorite that makes everything right, stop giving us a void of emotion for our main storylines.

Give us faces to connect, you could create an entirely new character, basically an "evil" force that's behind Lauranitis, I could see someone emerging that is even more hated that make's the marks wish Johnny Ace was still at the helm.

They're squandering a memorable storyline, and possibly a whole new on air personality with another anonymous story. Nobody liked the Anon GM because they dropped it with no explanation.... A good mystery story is GREAT.... except when you decide to not give us the ending, which just makes it shit.

Sometimes you dont get an ending because it leaves questions unanswered that can be picked up again at a later date.

Laryngitus is a great heel authority figure, as terrible as he is, but its being terrible that makes him so good.

Having the board of directors make this decision provides a sensible explanation as to how laryngitus kept his job when he was a second away from being fired.

We now have a face authority figure (Triple H) a heel authority figure (laryngitus) and an unseen authority that can overrule both of them (BOD).

Almost everyone who has posted here has completely missed all of these points.

Sometimes, when you think something through, you can see all the facts. This is preferable to crying because you dont understand what is happening or getting annoyed because things dont happen the way you expect they should.

 

[drobs85]

I agree with most on here, but I have a question. If triple haytch was relieved of his duties, how is he still COO? Maybe I just missed something along the way. But yes WWE uses Fake GM's Board members we have never seen etc to cover up there screw ups, sad.

 

[King Patrick Star]

In my mind / my WWE 12 Universe, the WWE Board of Directors consists of Vince McMahon, Linda McMahon, Shane McMahon, Stephanie McMahon, Ted Turner, Eric Bischoff, Vince Russo, Tod Gordon, Paul Heyman, and Dixie Carter. These 10 people are running the Wrestling World...well, at least in my Universe anyway.

My General Manager of WWE SuperStars (my Monday show) is Vince McMahon, himself. My General Manager of Nitro (my Friday show) is Jim Ross. My General Manager of Raw (apart of my Monday show) is Jerry The King Lawler. My General Manager of Smackdown (apart of my Friday show) is Michael Cole.

Exactly.

It doesn’t matter if it’s one anonymous Raw GM, or Teddy Long, or 10 anonymous WWE Board of Directors. All that matters is that the show is still running. I don’t mind the “lazy booking” as some would say, only because I’m more interested in the whole F’n show and not just little details here and there. What exactly would happen if they revealed who was on the Board?? Let’s say they add some SuperStars and some no name, not related to WWE TV in anyway whatsoever, except for the fact that they are actually on the Board. How do you think this would come across on TV?? We’ll have Hall Of Famers, Legends and people we don’t even know on TV wasting our time, debating with one another as to who is right and who is wrong, etc. The way they have it now is perfect. Let’s focus on what’s more important, the WWE / World Heavyweight Championship.

 

[boywithbluehanger]

I agree with most on here, but I have a question. If triple haytch was relieved of his duties, how is he still COO? Maybe I just missed something along the way.

Triple H was relieved of his duties as acting RAW GM at the time. He still maintained his role as COO of the company. He was holding both responsibilities. The biggest plothole regarding this is the fact that Triple H kept making it clear that the power of his title allowed him to fire JL. But obviously in a fictional storyline, we all overlooked the realism of an actual BOD wanting involvement in making such a big decision affecting their flagship show.

I think showing the BOD on screen would be effective if done in a way to show each of the members as stern no-nonsense figures. The fans need to feel as if it's hopeless to contend against a force of decision-making people who they in no way relate to.

 

[kokoBawesome]

Its "the powers that be" all over again! all joking aside, using the board of directors essentially as a character is an interesting idea when choosing a GM of a show, but they aren't actually booking matches so i don't think its time to get upset yet. Plus we all know who the board of directors really consists of... Vince. He's not stepping down anytime soon, he's a control freak and will never really give up on his baby.

 

[Pedigree1]

As we all know JL keeps his job because the BOD said so!! Technically he was never fired in the first place takers music interrupted that part of trips speech!! Seems lately and to others that the BOD is in the business every week and week out!! The bod should appear once in awhile not every week. I want them to get to the point of this story soon and explain why the reason why Johnny ace keeps his job. So far they havent explained the reason on why JL keeps his job!! Hope they explain it soon

 

[Jack-Hammer]

It doesn’t matter if it’s one anonymous Raw GM, or Teddy Long, or 10 anonymous WWE Board of Directors. All that matters is that the show is still running. I don’t mind the “lazy booking” as some would say, only because I’m more interested in the whole F’n show and not just little details here and there. What exactly would happen if they revealed who was on the Board?? Let’s say they add some SuperStars and some no name, not related to WWE TV in anyway whatsoever, except for the fact that they are actually on the Board. How do you think this would come across on TV?? We’ll have Hall Of Famers, Legends and people we don’t even know on TV wasting our time, debating with one another as to who is right and who is wrong, etc. The way they have it now is perfect. Let’s focus on what’s more important, the WWE / World Heavyweight Championship.

I agree completely with this statement. I honestly don't see why we have to nitpick at every single little thing that takes place. Not every single aspect of a storyline has to be explained in some unnecessarily drawn out way. It's implied that the BOD are powerful corporate officers of the WWE, why do we have to know who they are? As King Patrick pointed out, actually introducing the BOD as on screen characters will only be taking up valuable television time. Instead of bogging the show down with unnecessary characters, that television time can be devoted to things that actually matter like the WWE Championship picture, the ongoing CM Punk/JL/Triple H situation, the continued build for Cena's steady character change, the hype for the EC ppv, the continued build towards WrestleMania, showcasing good promo segments & wrestling action. To me, that's the stuff that ultimately matters. That's the stuff that's important.

 

[BaconBits]

They're going with the BoD angle because it's something many Americans can relate to currently. There are tens of millions of people in this country working for a mega corporation who have their fate decided by a bunch of stuffed suits who have no idea what real work is. These boards are raking in inconceivable amounts of money while the works on the street or whatever are barely scraping by or, even worse, getting laid off.

It's an easy way to get serious heel heat without having an actual heel do it. It's quite brilliant actually. They don't have to pay a superstar/personality millions to be the "evil force" running things and remain current in one fell swoop.

It's some of the best writing they've done in years.