- Aug 18, 2009
- 7,234
- 6,736
- AFL Club
- Richmond
Who says that’s the barometer? And do you know anyone who doesn’t watch wrestling that saw it? What did they think.
Catering to the smart fans hasn’t killed the WWE base at all, catering to tell them what they want instead of listening to what they actually want is what killed the fan base.
It was the most creative and different thing we’ve ever seen in WWE, let alone on a wrestlemania show. Of course it wasn’t real, none of it is! But I was actually lost for 20 Minutes suspending my disbelief because it was interesting
The very definition and origin of wrestling says so. Wrestling was a carnival feature designed to lure people in to either wrestle the performers or watch a wrestling contest. If the performers didn’t lure people in to pay to see the contest, they failed in their job. That’s where you get terms like mark. A mark is someone you want to lure in to watch the contest.
If you don’t capture the imagination or interest of new wrestling fans, then you’re not doing your job.
SuperCena killed off what was left of Attitude Era fans and since then it’s just been rusted on fans and kids (even that group seems to be fading too). Since CM Punk, they’ve clearly catered to rusted on internet fans, that’s why we don’t get storylines anymore, people are excited just to see a twenty minute match between Ziggler and Zayn.
I think it’s a shame if you don’t think believability is important to a wrestling match. To me that blurred line between what’s real and what’s fake is what makes wrestling so great. The funhouse match didn’t have that balance, it was just unashamedly 100% fake. It’s that sort of Russo mentality of “let the fans know that we know it’s fake” that started the culling of casual wrestling fans.