Earlier this week I received the dreaded email. My esteemed employer, the omnipotent Douglas Nunnally, informed me that my time was nearly up, the deadline date was closing in, get a column out soon or else your out on your ass!
In my three months of absence I made a conscious decision to stay away from the IWC. I wanted to distance myself from narrow minded opinion, dirt sheet internet news sites and all the other grubby excess that can only be described as an unsightly boil on the ass of pro-wrestling.
My aim was simple. To wash away my informed and educated smart fan influence and allow myself to return to the womb of wrestling fanism. I was a born again ‘mark’. Or as I like to label it, a wrestling fan.
So what does such a devolution involve. Well its ultimately quite simple. I tuned in, sat down, opened my eyes and took it all in. My main focus was Raw. When you revert back to your early days as a fan, you watch because you enjoy. You watch because you know what you like and can’t bear to miss it. You don’t want your friends telling you what happened, you double then triple check that the DVD recorder is set to the right time. Is the channel correct? If it doesn’t work what time are the repeats? All this relates to one simple fact. You want to watch.
Its very refreshing to see things from a casual fan’s point of view. I found myself paying less and less attention to what I would have previously considered as poor booking or a badly worked match. What I began to notice was that I was more bothered about who would do a run in and make the save, opposed to being annoyed because of the lack of clean finishes.
My new viewpoint allowed me to really enjoy wrestling again. I got excited whenever DX’s music hit. I wanted to see Cena beat the bones out of Umaga. I got hairs on the back of my neck watching Jeff Hardy destroy Johnny Nitro. Not because I thought it was clever booking, not because I felt it was good for the evolution of their characters and angles, and not even because I was watching well developed wrestling matches, I enjoyed it for the sheer satisfaction of the emotion. Put simply, it made me feel good. It gave me that feeling of living vicariously through these fantastical and quite unrealistic characters.
That is the positive side of being a casual fan. The negative side is born from the same rule that a casual fan of anyone or anything lives by. If you enjoy it, you watch it, if you don’t, you switch off.
So while I couldn’t bear to miss a second of Raw, I couldn’t bear to watch a second of Smackdown. Maybe this is a result of the brand extension finally beginning to work, or perhaps its just a crap TV show. Whatever the reason, my basic rule still applied. I simply didn’t enjoy it, I felt it was a waste of my time. I didn’t care about Batista, I was bored of watching Kennedy and Miz was the straw that broke he camels back. I went straight for the off button.
After two months of my casual involvement in wrestling I quickly began to realise something very important. My current mindset was a perfect way to gage how the WWE wanted me to feel. From their perspective they want me to watch their TV shows. I’m the kind of fan that they want to attract to their product. Tony Hudson the wrestling columnist who’ll watch as much wrestling as possible whether its top class groundbreaking action or bottom of the barrel slime, is not necessarily their top priority. However Tony Hudson the casual armchair fan who’s viewing loyalty is up for grabs, he’s a prime target. Once I’m hooked I’ll watch. Then I’ll spend my money, then I’ll spend some more money.
The casual fan will sooner or later make a choice. They’ll either get bored and switch off or they’ll get on the internet, voice their opinion and sooner rather than later they’ll watch because they want their next opinion. This may lead to your criticism and voiced distaste of the product, but at least you’re still watching.
To put it simply. If you buy burgers from a burger bar, but you’re constantly saying how bad they are then logically you should stop eating those burgers. However as long as you keep handing over your cash, the guy in the burger bar isn’t ever going to listen.
Once again I’ll bring it back to basics. Until causal fans turn off the WWE will never change its ways. A catalyst for fans to stop watching is either because the product gets steadily worse, which is the general consensus within the IWC, or competition takes your viewers away from you.
In the UK TNA Impact has recently moved channels. It was previously on The Wrestling Channel., A low budget and poorly produced television experience that simply needs more money to keep hold of products such as TNA. The promotion now resides on Bravo. A channel who’s demographic and target audience is largely adult males. The channel also hosts UFC events and other MMA divisions. What this shows is that TNA is slowly being regarded as a financial entity. It is being seen as worth an hours timeslot. Whether you’re a TNA fan or not this can only be good for the industry.
As a casual fan, who’s viewing habits are still their for the taking, I’m far more likely to take in the TNA product on a channel like Bravo, where I may have been watching a different programme, left the remote on the other side of the room and through sheer laziness landed on TNA Impact. It only takes Sonjay Dutt bouncing around the six sided ring to hook the average twenty to thirty something male. On The Wrestling Channel I would already have to be a fan of wrestling, I would have to sift through the listings, overlook the poor production values and still be hooked in.
In my current state of casual fanism I couldn’t care less what channel TNA is on. If I can’t be bothered tuning in, then its irrelevant how good it is compared to WWE. From my point of view TNA has crowds of 1000, whereas WWE fills those big Arenas, logically, which one will I take as ’better’.
The IWC is a brilliant thing. it’s a place where true fans can share their opinions, actively enjoy their past times and feed their passion. However passion and opinions often fall on deaf ears. The nature of television culture means those who it means most to, meaning the IWC, are at the bottom of the priority list. Ratings is the Queen and money is the King. Offering opinions to better the condition of professional wrestling is a small and hopeful pauper that lives in a straw hut outside the city. As long as the population don’t stop listening to the King and Queen, the hopeful pauper remains as insignificant as the dirt on his own feet.
As a casual fan I can’t deny that I have enjoyed the experience. Enjoying the product at face value has been refreshing and at times uplifting. It has made me realise why I enjoy wrestling in the first place. I don’t want to know its staged, I don’t want to know about backstage politics or the latest WWE firings. I just want to know who’s music going to hit while Edge is running his mouth, or how long it will be until Jeff Hardy performs the Swanton bomb, a move I’ve seen a thousand times but for some reason, as an impressionable viewer, is so much more exciting.
While I have returned to the IWC to spread my opinions. I do so in a positive way. I want others to take my advice and simply take some time out. We don’t get paid for this, alls we have is passion. When that passion gets infested with niggling critique it takes away the very reason we’re here in the first place. The enjoyment.
If you hate the product, criticise then switch off. That’s how we change the industry.
Its time! The Wrestlemaniac is coming to podomatic.com! Wrestling discussion, Sci-Fi news and arsing around till the day is done!
Tony Hudson
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