Let It Snow - Wrestling, 'Smart Fans' and other stuff
Submitted by Winter on Thursday, June 24, 2004 at 11:29 AM EST



Hello, and welcome to the latest edition of 'Let It Snow',, brought to you as always by Winter. I haven't written a column in while (3 weeks for anyone that cares), due to a number of reasons which I may as well explain right now. Firstly, I've been busy with my 'bridging course' at college (basically a 4 week introduction into the 2nd year of college) and my social life in general. Secondly, it's Euro 2004, and being the English football fan that I am, I've been spending every night of the last 2 weeks watching hours upon hours of world-class Football. Seriously, I don't know if any of the North Americans reading this understand how big the European Championships and World Cup is over here (and in countless other countries). Let's just say it's the only thing 90% of Europeans are concerned about right now. So far 'big name' teams such as Italy, Spain and Germany have bitten the dust, while England have advanced to the quarter finals, If we manage to defeat the host nation Portugal tonight there's no stopping us. 40 years of hurt, no more need for dreaming....

And the third and probably most important reason for me not writing recently is pretty simple, I just haven't been watching wrestling. Since I posted my last column 3 weeks ago, I've only spent 3 hours watching any form of wrestling (Bad Blood). I've been keeping up with all of the goings-on in the WWE by reading the news and results on LoP, but nothing has inspired me to watch. I won't be buying the Great American Bash PPV this Sunday, because I honestly have no desire to see 2 mid-card wrestlers brawl over the WWE title in a 'bull-rope match'. As much as Eddie Guerrero deserved to win the WWE in February, I think it's safe to say that he's been a failure as champion. PPV buy-rates are still down, television ratings remain embarrassingly low, and no matter how much the smarks want to deny it, most fans only view Eddie as a mid-card wrestler, not the main man of Smackdown. And what's worse, I see no one on the Smackdown roster who seems capable of becoming a credible main event wrestler who'll help the WWE re-establish itself as a widely popular form of entertainment. The Undertaker is stale and near retiring age, Booker T doesn't have star power, and John Cena must be the lamest rapper I've ever seen in my life. Remember back in 2003 when his raps were edgy and entertaining? These days it seems as if he's been hired to perform at a 12 year olds birthday party. And as sad as it is to say, the rest of the Smackdown roster has nothing, and I do mean nothing when it comes to helping the WWE achieve good ratings. Don't get me wrong, some guys such as Chavo and Haas are great talents, but they don't appeal to the casual fan, and as we all know the casual fans are in the majority.

RAW on the other hand is okay. Bad Blood was an enjoyable PPV featuring at least one great match (Benjamin/Orton) and several good ones. The RAW roster is jam-packed with superstars who are able to not only deliver great matches, but also great promos. Sadly, this obviously isn't enough, as much like Smackdown, RAW is also having difficulty when it comes to ratings and over-all interest in the product from fans. It just seems to me that people aren't interested in watching wrestling right now. RAW has been a quality show for a while now, but the only time people decide to watch is when The Rock makes an appearance. Despite the hard work of Vince, Triple H, HBK and others, RAW hasn't really done much in the last 2 years.

The only real explanation for this is that people simply don't care for wrestling anymore. Let's face it, it can sometimes be embarrassing to admit that you're a fan of the WWE. If a couple of my mates came round to my house and saw me watching some ridiculous soap-opera style angle involving Kane and Lita, I'd be laughed at, and rightfully so. I still have quite a big interest in wrestling despite most of my friends viewing wrestling as 'immature' and 'something they watched when they were 12', but I've no doubt that there are some people out there who have given up on the WWE all together due to having their peers laugh at them. And the WWE is partially to blame for this, as they've given fans plenty of reasons to be embarrassed over the last couple years as we all know, but I don't want to discuss Al Wilson, Katie Vick or HLA right now. I hate to sound like your generic "wrestling is crap" columnist, but I really can't see many positives right now. I'm not going to give up on wrestling, and with the exception if G.A.B I'll continue to watch the PPVs at the very least, but other than that, I'm really not too bothered about missing the other stuff.

Moving on, if there's one group of people that's really pissing me off right now, it's these so called 'smart fans' or 'smarks' as they now like to known. Any of you that have ever visited wrestling forums will have come across these guys at one point or another. You know the type - "PLZ DIE HHH", "A.J STYLES IS GOD", "TNA IS GOING TO KICK WWE'S ASS" and all the other redundant crap they type hour after hour. Seriously, why do these guys have such a huge problem with almost everything wrestling related? If someone's over 6 foot tall, he's considered a 'hoss', and therefore must be a terrible, slow wrestler undeserving of a push. If a wrestling fan shows admiration for someone such as the Undertaker or Triple H they're labelled as 'marks', the most unintelligent life form on the face of the Earth. What these smart fans fail to understand is that marks aren't foolish or stupid, they're just normal wrestling fans who happen to not take the WWE too seriously. While the smart fans sit there munching away on hamburgers, over-analysing every match they see and show nothing but hatred for anyone who isn't a cruiserweight, marks are able to just sit back and enjoy the action, and if they happen to dislike what they're seeing, they don't write a 12 page report on 'why the WWE needs Christopher Daniels' or some other guy 99% of the population care nothing for, nor do they feel the need to blame everything that's wrong with the industry on Triple H, JBL or any other veteran.

Marks don't do this because they tend to have an overall more positive attitude when it comes to wrestling. If they don't like something, they simply change the channel and watch something else, or go out and do something and just hope that the show's better next time. I suppose the main difference between smart fans and marks is that smart fans just tend to take wrestling a little too seriously, despite it being one of the more immature forms of entertainment around. If you want to watch something serious, try the BBC news channel or programs such as The Shield. If you want to see a competitive sports game try watching Euro 2004, Wimbledon, the AFL, rugby, basketball, or whatever sport you happen to be in to. But please, don't tune in to WWE TV and expect to see anything serious or competitive, because you know that you aren't going to get it. Watch the WWE for entertainment and the occasional great wrestling match (you can't expect wrestlers to produce magic every week), and if you don't like it, just turn it off and hope that it gets better next week.

Look, I know wrestling isn't great right now, and there really isn't a lot of interest in it from the public, but things will get better eventually, like they always do. We've seen this happen before in 1995. Back then wrestling (in the WWE anyway), was awful, and I really do mean dreadful. Ratings, PPV buyrates, interest, merchandise sales, everything was down and it seemed as if things would never improve. But things did get better over time, much better in fact, with wrestling seeing it's arguably greatest period ever from 1997-2001. Although wrestling isn't as bad as it was in 1995 the situation is very similar. Champions aren't drawing, the same people are always in the main events, it's no longer guaranteed that a PPV will be worth your money, and so on. All we need to do is have patience and wait, and things will improve. And when I say wait I don't mean 1 week or 1 month, I mean a few years at the very least. It's going to take a long time for the WWE to reach glory once more, but if we wrestling fans really are as loyal as we claim to be then we'll stick with the product until we see better times. And smart fans, no matter how much you believe it, the WWE doesn't need A.J Styles, Christopher Daniels, Low-Ki or any other guy who's able to perform 5000 moonsalts per match. Sure, these guys may be entertaining, and could be used greatly in the mid and under-card, but if these guys really were the cure to the slump the WWE has found themselves in don't you think cruiserweight wrestling would be big business already? The fact that it's not, and that organisations who have based their entire style on high-flying wrestling have gone bust tell me that the majority really don't care if there isn't a cruiserweight division or not, and that these guys definitely aren't the answer to any of the WWE's problems. Just try and enjoy the program for once, and if you really, really dislike it then stop watching, it's as simple as that.


MELTED

Alright, I think I'll end it here for now. England are playing Portugal tonight, and I'm just too excited (and nervous), but it should be a good game no matter what the final result. I hope this column made sense and apologies if it didn't, but I really didn't have much time to write this. I was going to comment on my last column but I was advised to leave that subject alone, so I guess I'll be leaving it alone (I don't really have time to go into it anyway). Please send feedback to Jerichoholic113@hotmail.com. Sorry again if this column wasn't up to scratch, I was a little rushed, but I'll try and do better next time. I'll probably be back in 2 weeks time with something else.

Take care and thanks for reading

-Winter








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