Nobody Gets It Anymore

It's been quite a while since one of my columns has appeared on the Internet. Ill health and other matters have kept me away from both the world wide web and the world of wrestling.

But during this time I've done quite a bit of thinking. Lying in my bed with chronic headaches and stomach complaints left me wondering about certain things in my life, one of them being the wrestling industry. And during these many hours of contemplation, time and time again I came to just one conclusion - nobody seems to get it anymore.

Defining what I mean by "it" may take a long time. Way back when I first got into wrestling, back in the good old days of watching Kendo Nagasaki and Big Daddy on a Saturday afternoon, I watched wrestling purely as a form of entertainment, nothing more. I didn't care about anything that happened outside the ring. Hell, I was only a child at the time. I didn't care much about anything.

As the British wrestling product departed our screens and the WWF proved to be one of the biggest reasons Sky secured a large number of subscribers in the late 1980's and early 1990's, I rediscovered my love of wrestling. Larger than life characters and over the top story lines grabbed my attention week in and week out, as we all anxiously waited for the big events, hoping that certain feuds would come to an end and that new feuds would start their lives off with a bang.

But this now seems like a long time ago. It's plainly obvious to everyone just how much the wrestling business has changed, and although what I'm about to say may make me sound like an old codger, I feel it's something that I've got to say.

When I think about the wrestling business of today, I think of many things, and sadly, most of these thoughts are negative.

I think about the way that some companies try to portray themselves. There are even a few companies who seem to book just for the fans who follow the business on the Internet. For me, this isn't right. By focusing on what is really a minority, they may end up alienating those who don't give a damn about what's said on the Internet.

Many have said that this is the way of the future. Hey, I know we are in the 21st century right now, and that we should use all means possible to promote the wrestling business, but do companies really have to devote all of their time promoting themselves purely on the Internet?

It's not just the companies who seem to spend all of their time on the Internet these days. Individual wrestlers and tag-teams also seem to put a lot of stock with what is said on the Internet. This is all well and good, and I'm all for the men and women who work their backsides off day in day out promoting themselves with their own personal homepages. I'm all for wrestlers using their sites as a means of staying in contact with their fans, of keeping their fans informed about what they've done in their careers.

The thing that disappoints me the most is that sometimes many of these wrestlers hold the opinions of fan forum regulars and Internet reporters far too highly. It only takes one bad review of a match, or one fan saying that a wrestler is in their opinion not that good, to get them going. They go off on a tangent, and some of them seem intent on confronting the people who have made these comments at future shows.

This doesn't just happen with the veterans of this industry. Sadly, a great number of men and women entering this business today as trainee wrestlers seem more intent on impressing the guys on the Internet, when they really should be trying their hardest to impress the people who could do far more for their careers than any web geek, their trainers and their promoters.

When Shawn Michaels ran his wrestling school in San Antonio, one of the first things he told his trainees was to stay away from the Internet. Old HBK was right. If a young rookie, just after his first match, goes onto the Internet and finds a review of the match, one of two things could happen; if it's a bad review, he'll be disheartened, his confidence knocked, or, if the review is good, things could go to his head. Egos are easy to develop in this business, and the one thing you don't want to do is suddenly go around doing the "big I am" bit and annoy the people who have busted their asses for years.

In my opinion, I think it would be a good idea if wrestling schools actually made dealing with the Internet a part of their training. You can learn about the psychology and the physical side of things, but how much emphasis should be put onto the Internet side of things? Maybe this is one area in which the wrestling industry needs to catch up on.

The fans of wrestling are also a totally different breed than they were many years ago. Ten years ago an arena would have been filled with men, women and children who went to the show just for the sheer pleasure of it, just so they could be entertained by a night of wrestling action. In 2003, wrestling fans can be split into two groups.

Like their counterparts many years ago, there are people who still go to the wrestling just to be entertained. They go to the shows to shout at the bad guys and to cheer on their heroes. They don't care what happens backstage, if wrestler A refuses to lose to wrestler B, or anything like that. To me, these people are the genuine fans of wrestling.

And then we have the Internet brigade, the people known as "smart marks", who spend the majority of their time visiting various fan forums, analysing and overanalysing every single aspect of the wrestling business, from what happens in the ring to what happens backstage to even what happens in the car park and the catering stands, Everything is discussed, broken down bit by bit until it becomes less and less enjoyable.

And they even take a great deal of time insulting the other groups of fans.

A perfect example of this was seen recently on the UK Fan Forum. All-Star Wrestling promote monthly shows at the Fairfield Halls on Croydon, and always seem to draw a good crowd. ASW has never played up to the Internet that much. They use their website to inform fans of their upcoming shows, but they never use it to forward story lines or anything like that.

The Croydon shows draw a great deal of both groups of fans. It seems to me that the Internet guys always seem to get front row seats, and when the genuine fans sit near them, booing the bad guys and cheering for their heroes, the Internet guys are far from happy. So unhappy, in fact, that the following day they log onto the fan forums and, while overanalysing everything that happened the night before, they derive a great amount of pleasure by calling the genuine fans "retards" and "mentally disabled".

I'm left to wonder just why this is. Perhaps someone can explain this to me, because I can't even begin to fathom just why this is.

It's not just the fan forums I find hard to fathom at the moment, it's the websites that claim that all they want to do is promote the wrestling business.

The Internet is a massive place. There's room for everyone in the world. So why is it that certain webmasters and so-called Internet reporters seem to spend a great deal of time sending insulting and abusive emails to fellow writers and webmasters in an attempt to stop them from doing what they enjoy?

A great number of websites and newsletters are run strictly for fun. Men and women spend countless hours each and every week updating their sites just for the sheer hell of it. They don't get paid to do this, they do it because they love wrestling, and they enjoy what they do. Yet that enjoyment is spoiled by a mindless bunch of morons who claim that they love wrestling, that they are more important than they really are. All they want is to get themselves a bit of cheap heat at the expense of others, so their websites and newsletters can get a few more hits. So what if it stops some people from doing what they enjoy?

For me though, it's not just the Internet that doesn't seem to get "it" anymore. Even some of the top experts in the magazine field just don't seem to get it anymore.

A perfect example of this came last August, after Summerslam. Cast your minds back if you can to the Elimination Chamber. For the first time in his WWE career, Goldberg was portrayed perfectly, as an unstoppable force as he ploughed through three of the biggest WWE stars ever. As Shawn Michaels, Chris Jericho and Randy Orton were dispatched, Triple H cowered in the corner as his nemesis proved to be the ultimate tool of destruction. The only way that Triple H could defeat the mighty Goldberg was by taking him down with a sledgehammer, inserted into the mix by Triple H's allies.

This was booking at it's finest. Every part of this match was well executed, well planned. However, for weeks before the show, the world seemed to cry out, demand, if you will, that Goldberg be crowned World Champion that night. Vince McMahon, being the great promoter that he is, had other plans. He knew that if he continued to build up the feud the fans would still be interested when Triple H and Goldberg finally went one-on-one four weeks later.

Yet in the days and weeks after the event, I read countless reviews of the show on numerous websites and in various magazines. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people, the number of so-called "experts" who agreed with me. Nobody, not even those who try to make a living writing about the wrestling industry could understand why Goldberg was not crowned champion at Summerslam. Everyone seemed to be telling the few of us who actually got what that match was all about that we were wrong, dead wrong.

The wrestling business certainly has changed over the years. Has it changed for the better? I really don't know, and to be honest with you all I don't think I'm in a position to say. We keep hearing how bad the wrestling industry is, how poor the product is, and this is why attendances are down all over the world. But tell me this - would everyone believe that wrestling is in such a poor state if we didn't constantly read how bad it was on the Internet and in the magazines?

Then again, is the Internet to blame for the way wrestling is portrayed these days? Coming from someone who made his name on the web, who has spent nearly four years telling stories and giving his views on the industry, this is going to sound a little two-faced when I say that perhaps the Internet is to blame for the majority of things wrong with the business. Those in the industry, in my humble opinion, listen to what is said far too much. They seem to be losing their way a little.

I'm not going to sit here in front of my laptop blaming the Internet for the drug-addictions or the deaths or the injuries that occur in the wrestling business. I'm not going to sit here and preach about how you, the wrestling fans should stop visiting the fan forums and stop offering their views. The Internet is a wonderful invention, and if used properly can be used, to great effect, to promote the more positive aspects of the wrestling business. If we spent our time focusing on the positives, perhaps things would seem a little better.

But then again, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for this to happen. Vince McMahon is credited with inventing the phrase "sports-entertainment". Wrestling is just that, entertainment. Off the top off my head, I can't think of any other aspect of the entertainment industry that is panned or criticised in the way that wrestling is. We may be clued-up on things now, but things were better when we were clueless.