‘Everyone’s a critic’, a statement which really couldn’t be any more true with regards to the current WWE audience. It seems to me that wrestling fans nowadays devote more of their time critiquing the quality of the material that they are watching than actually enjoying it. I honestly don’t understand how anybody can expect to truly enjoy themselves while watching a show if they spend all of their time criticizing the quality of the storylines and gimmicks existent. You don’t switch on an episode of Family Guy, only to criticize Stewie’s out of place British accent and the ethical implications of a talking dog. Of course, some critiquing can lead to interesting debates with fellow fans and can enhance your viewing experience, but why waste time trying to find the reasoning behind the WWE’s comedy characters?
Am I the only person out there who just sat back and laughed at the debut of the Funkasaurus? Following the ‘long anticipated’ debut of the ‘Gyrating Giant’, Broadus Clay, all I have heard in response from various fans so far is “WTF”, “lame” and “epic fail”. Personally, I honestly thought that this gimmick was a clever move from the creative team. Now bear with me for a second here. Amidst all of the talk of WWE becoming too predictable and boring, the sight of a 370 pound man gyrating in a 10XL Adidas tracksuit has got to be one of the major surprises of 2012. It would have been far too easy (and predictable) to put out a series of video packages with Brodus Clay cracking his knuckles and delivering warnings to the locker room with an accompanying slow hip-hop beat. It would have been far too easy to get yet another big guy to make his debut as a heel; crushing some pipsqueak local jobber to the dismay of the home crowd. In other words, it would have been far too easy to reproduce the same Brodus Clay that we have already seen on NXT.
I feel the exact same way about the ‘push’ of Santino Marella. Okay, so in my personal opinion, there should be someone funnier and fresher ready to take his place as the WWE ‘clown’ now that the repetitive cobra jokes have become incredibly boring, but, you have to admit that his entry into the Elimination Chamber was unexpected. And it is this ‘anything could happen’ aspect of the WWE that keeps us watching week after week in spite of all the insults that we may give it over bad storylines and poor content. If we were all hardcore pure wrestling fans then we would just go out and watch Smackdown instead of Raw or even just go and watch ROH, but we’re not. We all love the entertainment factor of the WWE and a huge part of that is the slightly ridiculous aspect, whether it’s Sexual Chocolate, Kurt Angle drowning Stone Cold in milk or the Spirit Squad getting covered in sewage, we love these moments because we have to have an opinion on them, whether good or bad.
It’s this same concept that makes every Cena hater secretly love him. You say you love to hate him, but it’s that so-called hate that makes you come to live events sporting your ‘Cena Sucks’ t-shirts and chanting against him. If you really hated him, you would ignore his matches and go to the toilet when he grabs the mic (like I’m sure many of you do when the divas start to wrestle), but you don’t…you are more than happy to voice your opinion about him and that’s all the WWE corporate team care about- that you have a strong opinion making you come to live events and watch paperviews. It’s ironic that so many fans feel that they are cheating the WWE system by cheering for edgy anti-hero’s and booing face superstars when all they are really doing is providing a new market for the WWE to exploit, and exploit they shall so long as we have opinions to share and money in our pocket (or parents’ pockets).
My point? There is no use whining and complaining about everything that you see in the WWE. It’s quite clear that you all love it in some way, so just embrace the love. You can cheer or boo whoever you want but why not make sure that you are enjoying yourself while you’re at it? That’s the difference between attitude era fans and many modern fans. One group came to shows to have fun and be incredibly vocal about what they thought of you, while the other comes to try and pick holes in storylines and matches. So before you go out and once again make calls for the attitude era to come back, try and remember that it isn’t only the company that has changed, the fans have changed too and only you can try and fix that problem.
