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Now that he’s reached his 30th birthday, Jeff Hardy is planning to tone down his traditionally over-the-top in-ring style, which has in the past invovled acrobatic backflips and jumps from heights at which few other wrestlers would attempt. Perhaps he’s looked at how toning his style down will affect his life insurance rates.

Whatever the case, Hardy the high-flyer will slowly be giving way to Hardy the in-ring storyteller, according to Jeff’s recent interview with the Winnipeg Sun.

“I know what I can and can’t do,” Hardy said. “I go back to when I was watching wrestling as a kid. Macho Man, Hulk Hogan, and The Ultimate Warrior could have great matches by telling a story in the ring. They didn’t have to do backflips.”

Jeff Hardy is one of many top WWE talents who could be switching brands tonight on USA Network’s three-hour RAW broadcast, featuring the WWE Draft, which has become an annual event in which the company shakes up its respective rosters to freshen up storylines and feuds.

You don’t need an HDMI cable to see clearly that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has left the pro wrestling stage of his career in the past. With “The Rock” nickname now dropped completely from his on-screen billing, Johnson seems set on making a clean break from McMahon and company.

To his credit, Johnson is the best actor the WWE has ever produced. Terry “Hulk Hogan” Bollea was only passable at best, and never knew how to disappear into a role; he was always “The Hulkster.” Steve “Stone Cold Steve Austin” Williams had an easier time fitting into roles, but his in-ring injuries interrupted his momentum at launching a post-wrestling acting career. And current WWE superstar John Cena is promising, but untested in a total of one film to date.

By comparison, Dwayne Johnson fits into this summer’s Get Smart movie starring Steve Carrel like a glove; he’s no longer a wrestler showing he can do a little acting. He’s now an actor who at one time did a little wrestling.

R.I.P., The Rock. Long live Dwayne Johnson.

The ratings are in and McMahon’s Million Dollar Mania didn’t evidence any ratings improvement for the WWE. In fact, the numbers slipped to 3.0 after hovering around 3.1 to 3.2 in recent weeks. So, giving away oodles of money isn’t going to make people watch pro wrestling. That’s pretty much settled, right?

So, quick, before Vince McMahon starts hawking anti wrinkle cream on the air, let’s make this clear one more time: wrestling is what makes people want to watch wrestling. As a recent entry from me showed, with about 90 broadcast minutes to work with on Monday, Raw featured about 30 minutes of in-ring time and over 60 minutes of non-wrestling content.

That mix needs to switch polarities. At the very minimum, a two-hour-plus-overrun Raw broadcast should feature 45 minutes in the ring 45 minutes of other stuff; and wrestling was never as popular as when the mix was 60 minutes in-ring, 30 minutes out.

Actual wrestling matches are what boosts ratings, Vince. Learn it, live it, love it.

The last true “holy sh-t” moment I remember on SmackDown was years ago, when Big Show back body-dropped Brock Lesnar and the ring collapsed. Moments like that create buzz and buzz creates an interest in watching, which boosts ratings. As for RAW, it’s been a while, which is surprising since I generally prefer RAW to Smackdown.

Maybe I’m just in an old-school mode tonight, but last Monday’s RAW was a perfect example of what’s wrong with WWE programming at the moment. Typically, RAW is a two-hour-plus-overrun broadcast, right? Right.

So, in the entire first hour of the program, we were treated to only 17 minutes of actual wrestling in the squared circle. Now, of that, 11 minutes went to a somewhat solid JBL vs. John Cena match. Yet the remaining six minuts was taken up not by one, but two other matches that involved superstars crushing superstars.

In a broadcast hour, minus commercials, WWE has approximately 42 minutes to work with. That means while 17 minutes were in the ring, 25 minutes were spent doing in-ring promos and interviews, wrestler entrance music, backstage interviews and skits, and hyping product for WWE and its advertisers.

Folks typically enjoy wrestling because of the wrestling.

It gets worse; the second hour and overrun ran about 1 hour and seven minutes in broadcast time; of that, only 15 minutes were spent in-ring with wrestlers battling each other, and eight of those minutes were spent on a highly abbreviated main event.

So in the second hour, we had probably more like 49 broadcast minutes with the overrun, and only 15 minutes were spend in the ring. The other 34 minutes was all the same non-wrestling stuff the first hour featured, plus Vince McMahon doing the Million Dollar Mania thing.

So let’s do a final analysis, shall we? In about 90 broadcast minutes, we only got six matches total, ranging in length from two mintes to 11 minutes, totaling 32 minutes of wrestling altogether. The remaining 58 minutes was all promos and extraneous content. We’re getting twice as much “other stuff” as we’re getting in terms of real wrestling.

Something has to change about that, and fast, before so much of the audience goes away, we have to nail closed the exterior shutters and call it a day. On the bright side, if you still have friends who say they don’t like wrestling, now you can honestly tell them, “Don’t worry. Raw doesn’t feature much of that stuff anymore, anyway.”

With the foreclosure rate in the country today, here’s some good news: simply by watching WWE Raw, you might find a way out of your current crisis! The company seems serious about this Million Dollar Mania idea, so here’s the press release I received on it.

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McMahon to Give Fans $1 Million Cash on Monday Night RAW

That was not the only bombshell that McMahon dropped on the RAW audience. The Chairman also announced that a Draft will take place at the end of June, and that all performers from RAW, SmackDown and ECW will be eligible. Every Superstar, Diva and announcer can be drafted to any brand, and the unpredictable nature of the Draft is sure to keep the respective locker rooms abuzz in the coming weeks. “I think our fans deserve new Superstars, hot new Divas, new rivalries,” said McMahon in announcing the upcoming Draft.

The ever-declining ratings of Raw, ECW and Smackdown may, in fact, be part of an overall audience erosion due to the writers strike, but those excuses are wearing thin. The bottom line is that WWE hasn’t really changed or revolutionized its television product in the past decade, and the audience is getting bored with it. It’s time to stop looking like a bunch of used Harleys, and put some fresh product out there.

I don’t mean replacing the Top 4 dawgs in each promotion with a new Top 4 dawgs, either. I mean completely remaking the way pro wrestling storytelling takes place in each weekly broadcast. I think the latest ratings decline for the current format was sparked when Raw GM William Regal literally pulled the plug on a Raw main event, a few weeks back. That wasn’t compelling television; it was a cheat to loyal viewers, and became a “Jump the Shark” moment. Now, the trick will be to radically undo the damage.

Here are some tips and strategies for the WWE’s perusal. Hopefully someone’s actually listening.

1) Once the WWE Draft is over, seal up the brands tightly this time; the idea of Raw, ECW and Smackdown as separate brands only works if the talent stays on the shows they’re supposed to be on.

2) Go back to single-brand PPVs. By having stars from all three brands appear in every PPV, what you lose is the ability to build up your mid-card guys with meaningful resolutions to fueds. PPVs need to stop being the domain of just the top four guys in each brand; only SummerSlam, Survivor Series, Royal Rumble and WrestleMania should be multi-brand PPVs, so that it’s meaningful when it happens. The rest of the time, the smaller-scale PPVs should be opportunities to build up the profiles of each brand - including and especially the midcard guys.

3) Make title pursuits central again. Your midcarders should all be pursuing (depending on brand) the US or Intercontinental title, with the title holder using their reign as a launching pad to reach the next level; or they should be involved in a reinvigorated tag team division. Your headliners should all be pursuing that brand’s respective world title, with a lot more guys than just the top four dawgs involved in that pursuit.

4) Give the midcarders meaningful storylines and motivations that help each TV match mean something. Develop storylines that take a long time to develop, and start planning longer story arcs. While injuries and suspensions may make revisions necessary, each broadcast should leave the viewer feeling confident that ever match advanced both wrestlers involved in a specific, planned direction.

5) Cut down the overlong in-ring chatter and backstage skits; re-embrace the importance of sharp interviews and in-ring storytelling over juvenile humor and stupid skits. The Mick Foley-Rock stuff was golden, but it was also about eight years ago. Time to move on.

6) Reduce the on-screen roles of the GM and the McMahon Family. Use this as a symbol that the way WWE broadcasts tell a story has actually changed.

7) Treat traditions, like King of the Ring, with a whole lot more respect than the most recent edition did. Book these things right, or don’t book ‘em at all.

Cut back on the theatrics and instead of modern “heels” and “faces,” all of whom are on incredible ego trips anyway, try letting the crowd decide who to cheer and who to boo based on who wrestles clean and who breaks the rules. Sounds like a return to a simpler era? It doesn’t have to be in execution, but it’s clear the “male soap opera” thing has run its course.

9) Try something fresh and unexpected, like posting a wrestler’s won-loss record for the month, the year, and career. Yes, we know results are booked and scripted, but something like this would appeal to sports stats geeks, and would reinject a sense that wins and losses mean something.

10) End the “pass the main title between a handful of guys” tradition and open the gates wider to all the established guys. Having Triple H and Randy Orton and John Cena at the top of the card all the time wears out the welcome of those fueds. If you book Jeff Hardy to be on a hot winning streak, it should earn him a title shot at the next PPV.

11) Stop giving away so many PPV-level matches on broadcast TV. The Monday Night Wars are over, and you can save matching up your top contenders for PPVs. Make people want to see Triple H vs. Jeff Hardy because it’s something they won’t see, in any variation, until the next Raw PPV.

12) Building on point 9, establish gimmicks like a Sizzling 7 list for which superstars are winning and closing in on title shots, for the main titles, the second-tier titles, the tag titles and so on. Having people move up and down that list could be made into a regular segment each week, giving the Raw, ECW and Smackdown broadcasts more of an ESPN SportsZone type feel.

These are just some basic ideas, but I feel more than a few of them would be fresh, new ideas that could reinvigorate WWE broadcasts, given a decent chance. The branding catchphrase could be along the lines of, “WWE. Putting the sports back in sports entertainment.”

What does WWE have to lose?

Continuing to increase their output of PPV events, the next WWE PPV will be the former WCW-branded Night of Champions, later this month. The basic idea is that every match is a title match. All titles will be defended.

Sounds fun, actually, and the way more WWE PPVs should be run. Instead of a bunch of meaningless matches over who gets to do the next hoodia commercial, each match means something.

I only hope that the matches in question are not replays of the last few PPVs, but actually introduce some new storylines. After all, the Triple H/Randy Orton thing had a satisfying conclusion, and it might be nice to see Triple H face off with a new challenger. The Age of Orton is over for now; let’s see who else has some main event potential.

First of all, let me stress that I hate how One Night Stand has changed in recent years. Initially debuting as an all-ECW event, then used for ECW vs. WWE matches, the PPV has devolved into just another WWE PPV event, in which the ECW brand is an afterthought. Keep in mind that the only match with current or original ECW members in it was the second match of the night; any other match on the card could have taken place at any other WWE PPV throughout the year.

That being said, the only remnant of ECW remaining in One Night Stand is that all the matches were “extreme rules” matches. Well, not really. More like they were all stipulation matches. Some of these dust-ups were pretty lackluster, but the match of the night has to go to the main event match between Edge and Undertaker for the World Heavyweight Title.

As a TLC (tables, ladders, chairs) match, the stipulation played to Edge’s strengths, as he made a living a decade ago, along with the Hardys, at putting on injury-defying TLC matches that almost shortened the careers of Matt and Jeff Hardy, as well as Edge and his then-partner, Christian Cage.

While Taker is nowhere near as acrobatic, fast and flexible as Edge is, well, Edge isn’t as nimble as he was a decade ago, either. Still, the two men put on an amazing show that proves why TLC matches are so popular… and so rare. If you ever get a chance to see one live, buy a bus and make sure you get there and take a bunch of friends along with.

The excitement was enhanced by having Taker’s career “on the line” based on the outcome of the match; since Edge won, that means that Taker conceivably has been “retired” by Edge, though it is widely expected that this is either an excuse to give Taker an extended vacation, which he takes periodically over the past few years, in order to minimize the abuse on his aging body, or may simply set Taker up to “reappear” on the Raw roster at the WWE Draft, due in three weeks during a special, three-hour Raw episode on USA.