TLDR in bold.

It's no secret that pro wrestling ratings have decreased ever since the Attitude Era. Right now, AEW is dealing with a massive ratings drop thanks to the loss of CM Punk (another story for another day), and I believe, also due to the lack of creative. WWE does okay, but they've always been the big boy on the block.

I want to turn your attention to some of the top rated wrestling-themed programs in the past few years: Dark Side of the Ring, Glow, and Wrestlers. What do these all have in common? They're all episodic programs that are more about story than the wrestling. They are drama, they are comedy, they are horror. And what's interesting, is that these story elements are what professional wrestling (particularly WWE/WWF) was built upon.

These days, professional wrestling seems more about athletics and acrobatics. Sure, the first time I see a tope suicida from Swerve Strickland, it's exciting, but by the 15th time now from Bryan Danielson, I've lost interest. And why does literally everyone in the world need to do a superkick? Movesets used to be reflective of a character and their personality or gimmick. Now, moves are just moves.

So, what's my idea exactly? A binge-able Netflix Series. Lucha Underground did try this, but I believe that a). it was before it's time, and b) they were not a recognizable name, and c). It was a very gory endeavor, and that likely led to their downfall. However, I believe Lucha gained a ton of following BECAUSE it was on Netflix. I think with some tweaks, a company like AEW could strike gold with a Netflix series.

The way this would work is to have each episode be 20-30 minutes, with one 2-hour finale each season. The way this would work is to have Episodes in A-B-C format. For example:

Episode 1A: spend 15 minutes introducing character A, and 5 minute squash match.
Episode 1B: spend 15 minutes introducing character B, and 5 minute squash match.
Episode 1C: 10-minute good match, where B gets involved against A, remaining 10 minutes are story/promos of setting up A vs. B in finale.

Episode 2A: spend 15 minutes where a wrestler is corrupting minds to create a faction. 5-minute match where Faction leader is aided by his new member.
Episode 2B: Spend 10 minutes with The announcement of the Faction. 10-minute tag team match with the new faction members against a tag team, only one of the babyface tag partners turn to the faction, betraying his partner.
Episode 2C: Spend 5 minutes with a "flashback" of how faction leader corrupted tag partner. 10-minute match between the former tag team and 3-on-1 beatdown. Last 5 minutes is babyface finding 2 tag partners to face faction at finale.

And so on.

Rather than only cutting promos, it's more of a docudrama style, only reserving true promos for episode C.

You'd probably want a total of 8 episodes (24 twenty-minute shows) per season, resulting in 8 matches in the finale (probably 2 hours).

Most of us old school fans never fell in love with athleticism or acrobatics. If that was the selling point, we could have watched cirque de soleil or gymnastics. We all fell in love with gimmicks and stories, no matter how silly they were. We enjoyed the squash match, and the heel bullying the jobber, and then the babyface making the save. Nowadays, if we get stories, they're just rehashed over and over (cue Swerve Strickland going to Hangman's house). Say what you want about gimmicks, but the one thing they provided was creativity and originality.