Guest Column
An article submitted from one of the viewers of The Wrestling Roundtable! Want your voice heard? Email us some of your work and maybe your views will be shared here on the Roundtable! Want to respond to this guest's piece? Sign up for the message board, start a thread and share your thoughts!
An article submitted from one of the viewers of The Wrestling Roundtable! Want your voice heard? Email us some of your work and maybe your views will be shared here on the Roundtable! Want to respond to this guest's piece? Sign up for the message board, start a thread and share your thoughts!
Submitted by : Pat, Elk Grove Village, IL, 2/17/10
Negativity And Why It Exists
During the course of time watching The Wrestling Roundtable, and our time in the Forum, most of us have been extremely negative about the quality of product both TNA and WWE have given us. While not everything is terrible, only a handful can find a diamond in this pile of excrement. I know I am among the worst, as I find nothing good
with WWE at this point...well, I find nothing good about their Monday programming to be sure.
The question though is how did we get to the point of hyper-negativity? Is it just a byproduct of negative
experiences? Do we just get off on being negative? Are we all just being sensationalistic by making more out of
things than what actually exists? I think to know the present, one must always study the past.
I had a day off today, so I decided to watch three wrestling DVD's, and since the "Rise and Fall" series are so slanted,
I thought I would watch three PPV's from the "Big 3" of the 1990's. I watched Starrcade 1999, ECW Living
Dangerously from 1998 and WrestleMania 18 from 2002. To be honest, the match quality of the three weren't all that different. The matches were all passable, and the wrestlers all garnered significant audience participation.
So, what separated these guys from what we see today? Let's examine ECW first. The main event of the show was Al Snow and Lance Storm against 2/3 of the Triple Threat, Shane Douglas and Chris Candido. The wrestling was unspectacular, and the match was not all that long, but the story compelled the audience. Tammy Lynn Sytch (or Sunny, as most may know her) claimed Chris Candido was being abusive, and she sought out longtime friend Lance Storm to help her out. So into the match, Sytch turned on Storm, and her, Douglas, Candido and Francine beat him
up, humiliated him.
Sure enough, Al Snow came out to Prodigy's Breathe, and the roof exploded. One Snow Plow later, and ECW fans believed their new star was born. Al Snow, a little thought of indy wrestler, transformed himself with a mannequin head's help and got over. There was no marketing or PR person to create Al Snow. They just went with what worked, and the crowd told them they had it with Al Snow.
We move to Starrcade 1999. Some of the pairings for the night were just awful (HWWDNSO vs. Jarrett in a ladder match comes to mind). But WCW still got reactions for things that never should've gotten over, like Norman Smiley beating Meng in a hardcore title match. Plus, Bill Goldberg was still at the top, and he was facing Bret Hart mere months after his brother Owen's passing. There was no storyline needed here.......people knew this would be huge.
Finally, we move to WrestleMania 18. Hulk Hogan returns to WrestleMania for the first time in 9 years, and he is to square off against the biggest face in the company at that time, the Rock. Nothing was needed to be written. This
was instantly a classic waiting to happen, and people knew right away who they would cheer or boo. No one told
Rock to be a heel.......it just happened. But down on the card, you had not much. DDP vs. Christian was a poorly written battle of the guru against his student who turned on him. No real heat, and the match showed. Same with Edge and Booker T, fighting over a hair commercial......IN JAPAN! And this definitely went for RVD (Rob Van Dam) against William Regal, where both wrestled fine, but the heat of RVD winning the IC title seemed kinda bland by the crowd reaction.
So, what exactly did I learn? Well, the biggest thing I learned was that stars are not created by a booker or writer. Al Snow got his most over with ECW, and no one told him how to create that character.......it just happened. WCW and Eric Bischoff have admitted to not knowing what to do with Goldberg.......they didn't have to. Goldberg, by not
uttering a word, became a star capable of being in the ring with one of wrestling's best technicians ever and creating
a wonderful match. And WWE proved that their biggest show was a dud when they tried to create moments, but
when they let the talent just shine through and the audience dictated what they wanted, WWE got it right.
Now, this brings us to the core of this article: Why are most of us so negative about the current product? Well, the first reason is that we have gotten away from the foundation of what wrestling is: fan driven. Fans now don't always know what they want, but they do know what they don't want. When the crowd is consistently quiet during matches and promos, you're simply not doing your job. And this is not due to family friendliness either. This is due to harnessing a person's ability to perform by putting words into their mouth and dictating a style of wrestling they must adhere to in order to be over with the hierarchy, not the fans.
This brings me to another problem: treating the fans like idiots and imbeciles. We are in a new age of wrestling.....
the Internet Age. Fans have more access than ever to tapes, footage and bios of all the wrestlers that perform both here and abroad. From "indy guys" like Bryan Danielson to international stars like Mistico, fans can see all of these men perform both in the ring and on the mic (if they do speak). Fans are far more sophisticated than during the days
of Papa Shango and Doink. People could look up the career paths of Matt Bourne and Charles Wright and know what they bring to the table.
The biggest example of WWE ignoring this was what I title, "The Christian Fiasco." Christian had been a star for rival TNA, and he was returning to WWE after being gone since 2005. Well, the fans got hold of exactly how Christian was going to return. Jeff Hardy, WWE's most over face and at-time current WWE champion, was going to be facing Edge, Christian's long time friend and on-screen brother. Jeff was having a slew of accidents happen to him, from falling down stairs to being hit in the face by his pyro. The plan was for all this to be because of Christian. It makes sense, and the fans would buy into this. Of course, WWE found out people knew, scrambled to change it, and thus the bumbled Matt Hardy heel turn ensued.
So, sometimes writers get in their own way, and they are so protective of their work that if it leaks out in any way,
they must change it. And sometimes, writers will dictate how a fan should react to a certain situation or promo. It
just doesn't work that way......never has and never will. Fans cannot just be told to cheer or boo a guy. This is why wrestling in the early to mid 1990's started to suffer. Hulk Hogan was starting to get booed on WWF shows, and yet
he went over as a face against Sid Justice (Vicious, Sycho Sid, etc.), who was even more over than Hogan at the time. The fans tried to tell them by their cheering of Justice, but Vince and the WWF just didn't listen.
And thus, the essence of negativity is born. Negativity arises when there is so much indifference to a product, and yet the indifference of others angers you to act and react. We as fans have been groomed to accept mediocrity and to embrace whatever is sold since there are no alternatives. Now, TNA will go head to head on Monday nights with WWE,
& ROH will still have their Monday ROH on HDNet program, but the question remains if WWE can really shut out
their most loyal fans and continue to have guest hosts & comedy acts on their show. Can they continue to do "stunts" like having people hit by cars, guys dying in exploding limos and collapsing stages anymore, or will the competition
rise once more, forcing WWE to go in a broader direction more universally acceptable?
And the main question here is: Is it too late? Are fans so jaded now that they just cannot accept anything they see anymore? Well, in this man's eyes, it's not up to us to just accept them, but rather the job of the wrestling companies to accept us real wrestling fans back. It's up to them to get with the times and embrace wrestling with entertainment, rather than the other way around. And finally, it is their job to turn all this negative into a positive, so that wrestling will have a place in the media market for decades to come.
Negativity And Why It Exists
During the course of time watching The Wrestling Roundtable, and our time in the Forum, most of us have been extremely negative about the quality of product both TNA and WWE have given us. While not everything is terrible, only a handful can find a diamond in this pile of excrement. I know I am among the worst, as I find nothing good
with WWE at this point...well, I find nothing good about their Monday programming to be sure.
The question though is how did we get to the point of hyper-negativity? Is it just a byproduct of negative
experiences? Do we just get off on being negative? Are we all just being sensationalistic by making more out of
things than what actually exists? I think to know the present, one must always study the past.
I had a day off today, so I decided to watch three wrestling DVD's, and since the "Rise and Fall" series are so slanted,
I thought I would watch three PPV's from the "Big 3" of the 1990's. I watched Starrcade 1999, ECW Living
Dangerously from 1998 and WrestleMania 18 from 2002. To be honest, the match quality of the three weren't all that different. The matches were all passable, and the wrestlers all garnered significant audience participation.
So, what separated these guys from what we see today? Let's examine ECW first. The main event of the show was Al Snow and Lance Storm against 2/3 of the Triple Threat, Shane Douglas and Chris Candido. The wrestling was unspectacular, and the match was not all that long, but the story compelled the audience. Tammy Lynn Sytch (or Sunny, as most may know her) claimed Chris Candido was being abusive, and she sought out longtime friend Lance Storm to help her out. So into the match, Sytch turned on Storm, and her, Douglas, Candido and Francine beat him
up, humiliated him.
Sure enough, Al Snow came out to Prodigy's Breathe, and the roof exploded. One Snow Plow later, and ECW fans believed their new star was born. Al Snow, a little thought of indy wrestler, transformed himself with a mannequin head's help and got over. There was no marketing or PR person to create Al Snow. They just went with what worked, and the crowd told them they had it with Al Snow.
We move to Starrcade 1999. Some of the pairings for the night were just awful (HWWDNSO vs. Jarrett in a ladder match comes to mind). But WCW still got reactions for things that never should've gotten over, like Norman Smiley beating Meng in a hardcore title match. Plus, Bill Goldberg was still at the top, and he was facing Bret Hart mere months after his brother Owen's passing. There was no storyline needed here.......people knew this would be huge.
Finally, we move to WrestleMania 18. Hulk Hogan returns to WrestleMania for the first time in 9 years, and he is to square off against the biggest face in the company at that time, the Rock. Nothing was needed to be written. This
was instantly a classic waiting to happen, and people knew right away who they would cheer or boo. No one told
Rock to be a heel.......it just happened. But down on the card, you had not much. DDP vs. Christian was a poorly written battle of the guru against his student who turned on him. No real heat, and the match showed. Same with Edge and Booker T, fighting over a hair commercial......IN JAPAN! And this definitely went for RVD (Rob Van Dam) against William Regal, where both wrestled fine, but the heat of RVD winning the IC title seemed kinda bland by the crowd reaction.
So, what exactly did I learn? Well, the biggest thing I learned was that stars are not created by a booker or writer. Al Snow got his most over with ECW, and no one told him how to create that character.......it just happened. WCW and Eric Bischoff have admitted to not knowing what to do with Goldberg.......they didn't have to. Goldberg, by not
uttering a word, became a star capable of being in the ring with one of wrestling's best technicians ever and creating
a wonderful match. And WWE proved that their biggest show was a dud when they tried to create moments, but
when they let the talent just shine through and the audience dictated what they wanted, WWE got it right.
Now, this brings us to the core of this article: Why are most of us so negative about the current product? Well, the first reason is that we have gotten away from the foundation of what wrestling is: fan driven. Fans now don't always know what they want, but they do know what they don't want. When the crowd is consistently quiet during matches and promos, you're simply not doing your job. And this is not due to family friendliness either. This is due to harnessing a person's ability to perform by putting words into their mouth and dictating a style of wrestling they must adhere to in order to be over with the hierarchy, not the fans.
This brings me to another problem: treating the fans like idiots and imbeciles. We are in a new age of wrestling.....
the Internet Age. Fans have more access than ever to tapes, footage and bios of all the wrestlers that perform both here and abroad. From "indy guys" like Bryan Danielson to international stars like Mistico, fans can see all of these men perform both in the ring and on the mic (if they do speak). Fans are far more sophisticated than during the days
of Papa Shango and Doink. People could look up the career paths of Matt Bourne and Charles Wright and know what they bring to the table.
The biggest example of WWE ignoring this was what I title, "The Christian Fiasco." Christian had been a star for rival TNA, and he was returning to WWE after being gone since 2005. Well, the fans got hold of exactly how Christian was going to return. Jeff Hardy, WWE's most over face and at-time current WWE champion, was going to be facing Edge, Christian's long time friend and on-screen brother. Jeff was having a slew of accidents happen to him, from falling down stairs to being hit in the face by his pyro. The plan was for all this to be because of Christian. It makes sense, and the fans would buy into this. Of course, WWE found out people knew, scrambled to change it, and thus the bumbled Matt Hardy heel turn ensued.
So, sometimes writers get in their own way, and they are so protective of their work that if it leaks out in any way,
they must change it. And sometimes, writers will dictate how a fan should react to a certain situation or promo. It
just doesn't work that way......never has and never will. Fans cannot just be told to cheer or boo a guy. This is why wrestling in the early to mid 1990's started to suffer. Hulk Hogan was starting to get booed on WWF shows, and yet
he went over as a face against Sid Justice (Vicious, Sycho Sid, etc.), who was even more over than Hogan at the time. The fans tried to tell them by their cheering of Justice, but Vince and the WWF just didn't listen.
And thus, the essence of negativity is born. Negativity arises when there is so much indifference to a product, and yet the indifference of others angers you to act and react. We as fans have been groomed to accept mediocrity and to embrace whatever is sold since there are no alternatives. Now, TNA will go head to head on Monday nights with WWE,
& ROH will still have their Monday ROH on HDNet program, but the question remains if WWE can really shut out
their most loyal fans and continue to have guest hosts & comedy acts on their show. Can they continue to do "stunts" like having people hit by cars, guys dying in exploding limos and collapsing stages anymore, or will the competition
rise once more, forcing WWE to go in a broader direction more universally acceptable?
And the main question here is: Is it too late? Are fans so jaded now that they just cannot accept anything they see anymore? Well, in this man's eyes, it's not up to us to just accept them, but rather the job of the wrestling companies to accept us real wrestling fans back. It's up to them to get with the times and embrace wrestling with entertainment, rather than the other way around. And finally, it is their job to turn all this negative into a positive, so that wrestling will have a place in the media market for decades to come.
