Shining a Spotlight 11.17.08: The IWC and the Fanbase

That being just how big in the wrestling community is the IWC? And has it really been that good for the fans?

Ever since the Internet came in the mid 1990’s, there have been so many people elevated from simple fans to writers and even seen as influential voices. Of course, with this has come a major change to the entire fanbase of the business. The biggest change is that the reports of the backstage goings on, the plans and the business practices pretty much killed off kayfabe. Yes, there are still a few marks out there but the fact is, most fans who get into wrestling young now from the start it’s all planned out and such. It’s not like when I got into it in the 1980’s and you really could spend years until it sunk in how it was fake, even with the wildness going around. After all, besides the TV shows you also had the magazines selling it all as real with backstage stories and interviews that kept the illusion going. But the Internet has mostly killed that off.

It’s also given rise to an over-exaggerated emphasis on just how good the matches are. I put some blame on Scott Keith, who was one of the first to emphasize the star rating system, going so far as to take away stars for botched moves or such. It’s gotten to be that guys want utter perfection and if they can’t get that, they’ll figure the match stinks or at least doesn’t deserve a great rating. To me, that seems rather unfair to the workers involved. They’re the ones taking the risks, they’re the ones putting themselves out, they’re the ones who are trying to entertain us so to criticize for making a small misstep here and there isn’t right.

Now I don’t want to sound like you have to be a wrestler to properly judge the moves. I mean, how many film critics have actually directed a movie? It’s like the fandom of every other sport, you’ll always have guys who have never stepped on a field but still appoint themselves experts on how to run a team. The wrestling community is filled with such people but the IWC specializes in them. I admit, I slide into it a bit as well but I like to think I recognize that I don’t know everything about the business or how to run it. But so many guys will act like if WWE or TNA listened to them and did exactly what they say, everything would work out fine. It reminds me of the mentality among sci-fi geeks of “yeah, give me a hundred million, I could make a better Star Wars or Matrix Revolutions” (okay, I could have made a better Matrix Revolutions).

One of the most brilliant observations about wrestling ever came from RD Reynolds: That so many times, the angles that make perfect sense on paper bomb while the ones that look incredibly stupid draw big money. That’s because all these dream bookers and planners forget a major component that can make or break an angle: The rest of the fans. If there’s one thing that’s true for every matter of entertainment (and let’s face it, wrestling fits into that), it’s that as much as they say otherwise, the people running things really don’t know what the public is going to go for. How many seemingly “can’t-miss” movies or TV shows end up flopping? That includes ones the Internet themselves seemed ready to make hits like Snakes on a Plane. Wrestling is full of the same stuff, so many great bits that the fans don’t click for while the stuff thrown out there at random takes off huge. I was just watching the “One Night Stand” 2005 DVD and remember Joey Styles’ comment on the BWO: “If any gimmick never deserved to make a dime and made a boatload of cash, this is it!” That’s the perfect example of how the fans will go for the last thing you expect them to. Yet so many of the IWC dream bookers truly believe that their plans will work out perfectly, ignoring the fact that the regular fanbase might not like what they’re putting out.

Now when I refer to the IWC, that, in itself, can be a problem. The label of simply “the Internet” is a bit different than labeling just television or media because of the huge range of opinions around the place. 411 itself is a great example as I’m a major Cena defender when there are a couple of guys down on him and when you spread out beyond, you get even more opinions that range all over (like those who claim ROH is just a lightweight company with no real action). Thus, when the term “the Internet” is bandied about, it makes it sound like the entire IWC is united in things when in truth, we’ve got more divisions of opinions than the entire ESPN talk lineup. We rarely really agree on that much so it can be annoying to hear some wrestlers refer to the Internet as a united front.

When the Internet first came around, the main sports organizations were a bit behind realizing how effective it was going to be. Wrestling was especially hit as overnight, fans were giving out the results of shows, backstage gossip and, as I said before, helped raise the curtain of kayfabe. One of the biggest examples was in 1993, when WCW, in their infinite wisdom, decided to do three months worth of shows for syndication in one weekend. Audience members were told specifically who to boo and cheer as WCW gave away months of title changes and storylines. That had been done a few times over the years, albeit not to such a grand extent, and the results weren’t that bad. Here, however, the fans who attended and had Internet access got on to give away the next three months of stuff before it hit the air. Among them was that the Hollywood Blondes would lose the tag team titles to Arn Anderson and Paul Roma before Fall Brawl. The change was going to happen at the “Beach Blast” PPV in July but WCW instead tried their first ever Internet swerve and had the Blondes retain the belts. The change was now set for the August Clash of the Champions card but Brian Pillman got injured so they had William Regal sub for him with Austin to lose the belts so the tapings could be kept up, a change not necessary had the results not been leaked via the Internet.

Since then, promoters have tried to use the Net in various ways, some more successfully than others. Let’s face it, “Taboo Tuesday” and “Cyber Sunday” are not successful shows but it is fun to give the fans a chance to pick matches. TNA has actually been able to work their “TNA Today” shows on You Tube to give them exposure and boost house show stuff and, lacking a TV deal, ROH has done well with their weekly highlights recaps via You Tube. I know some may criticize WWE for giving away results of Smackdown shows like big title changes before the show airs. However, WWE is savy enough to know that the other sites do that already and are telling their own fans of big changes to enhance ratings, which does seem to work.

However, this still gives the idea that the IWC is the majority of the wrestling fanbase and I don’t think that’s true. A good example is Vince Russo’s reign in WCW as Russo seemed to believe every wrestling fan was as attuned to the Internet as he was and made constant inside references that went over the heads of those watching. The best one is when Eric Bischoff stripped Sid of the WCW title and joked that it’s a good thing Sid didn’t have scissors. The announcers went nuts at Eric referencing Sid stabbing Arn Anderson with a pair of scissors back in 1993 but the audience (99% of whom had never heard the tale) just reacted in confused silence. Russo also went the further step by openly talking about shoots and works, ruining the illusion that fans had long built in and thus hurt the entire company on a whole. WCW was always more “real” than WWE and the fans loved that so to have the reality thrust in their faces constantly was not a good thing and helped drive so many fans away.

There’s also issues with how wrestling is presented in the various sites. While most are much better at it than others, too often you’ll get blogs reporting backstage gossip as fact with no real confirmation. This has led to slews of myths becoming accepted by the IWC as utter fact (Eric Bischoff basically running the AWA is but one of them) and makes it harder for new fans to tell what really happened. It hardly helps that so many will present their own opinions and perspectives as utter fact as well (again, Scott Keith is the biggest culprit of that mentality) and so many will take on the aura that they and they alone speak for the entire fanbase. Again, there are many more level-headed types who back up their opinions with facts and explain why they feel that way but you still get guys whose writing has the feeling of “I say it’s so and it’s so.” Again, that sort of “opinions over facts” style hurts the credibility of the IWC and just adds to the varied opinions around.

It’s partly thanks to this attitude that the “smarks” have risen higher in the last decade. While they’ve been around for a while, I think ECW really gave them a wide base to build from. Philadelphia has always had the hardest, loudest, most abrasive fans in any sport and the wild action of ECW was perfect for them. They were the ones who started the chants of “you fucked up!” and “you sold out!” and all that. It’s been added on to with the comments of wrestlers that ECW belonged to the fans and the fans were even part of the show. Because of that, they began to think of themselves as true smarts, really knowing what was going down and ready to fire on anyone who didn’t conform to their expectations. Of course, that caused them to believe they were too smart to be taken in which Paul Heyman used. I remember Raven once saying “These are the easiest fans to con because they think they know everything and what’s going to happen.” That’s a great point, that it is easy to swerve folks who accept they’re “in the know” and part of the product but so many of the “smarks” refuse to see that, thinking they’re smarter than most fans and have that slightly superior attitude to match.

It’s that attitude that led to the reaction against McGuiness. Again, it makes no sense to hear folks yell “you sold out!” as he wasn’t leaving the company at all, just had to take time off from an injury suffered entertaining those very same fans. It sadly points out a major problem ROH is facing with the wrestling fanbase, which is that too many people think of them as the second coming of ECW. Yes, they have some great action but it’s more in-ring technical stuff, not over the top violence and in-the-stands brawls. Of course, ROH themselves put together that video emphasizing such action which just sells that “new ECW” idea. As such, fans expect to take the same attitude the ECW fans did, going over the top, yelling at every flawed move and reacting bad when they don’t get what they want. I can understand them being upset at not getting the main event advertised but to turn on the guy when he comes out just makes them look like idiots. As I said last week, it was disappointing to me as ROH fans have always struck me as rather respectful so for them to sink to such smarky behavior makes them and the product look poor.

This brings me again to my main point, which is how big a majority of the wrestling fanbase is made up of the IWC? I do think ROH has more Internet fans as, lacking a TV deal, they depend on the Internet to get the word out on cards and events. TNA has a good presence as well but when you watch Impact, you get the feeling that a lot of fans (and this has become more apparent lately), are more tourists to Universal Studios who just wandered in to kill some time and get on TV a bit. As for WWE, that’s a different animal as they’ve been around the longest and so many of their fans are from the pre-Internet days. As for the younger ones, yes, they use it but they also pop well for who WWE would like them to and don’t act too “smarky” for the most part on shows. WWE does use the Internet for stuff and fans do respond to it (Matt Hardy in 2005 is a great example) but for the most part, you get the feeling most of the fans truly are taken by surprise at some of the stuff they see and respond to it as they want rather than go for the easy “smark” responses. Even when Cena was often booed by crowds, he’d get cheers from others and use that effectively.

It may be impossible to truly tell how much of the fanbase is the IWC but I don’t think it’s as huge or as effective as we would like to think. I do believe we’re in the minority for the simple reason that so much of the time, the promotions will keep doing whatever they want instead of what the IWC wants. If we were the majority, the promoters would surely be reading our opinions and we’d be seeing fresh talent pushed in TNA and the cruiserweights given more respect in WWE among other changes. Russo pretty much lived and died by Internet stuff back in WCW but it’s pretty clear he’s not listening to fans about TNA now. I don’t think ROH really does that much with the responses but does respect the fans opinions for it. And Jim Ross does answer questions in his weekly blog that include criticisms of angles and shows. But I believe that the IWC, while not as small as many wrestlers feel it is, still isn’t the true majority of the wrestling fanbase and the rest of it is doing pretty good with or without us.

Let’s face it, wrestling survived long before the Internet came along and it’s likely to go on a while longer because there will always be fans for it. No matter what else, no matter the companies or the TV shows or the presentation, the fans will come. As hard as it is to believe, there are people out there who rarely use the Internet and some who don’t read results on shows or backstage goings-on as they want to keep the illusion going. In the end, that’s what it boils down to, something that so many of the “smarks” don’t get. Some of us don’t want to be “in the know” or “part of the show.” We want to be worked, we want to be surprised, we want to enjoy wrestling as we always can. I think that despite the influence of the Net, we’ll still have people like that for a long time to come which is good for the business.

Also around 411mania:

What Were They Thinking examines TNA.

Why I Love/Hate Wrestling jumps on the award bandwagon.

The Shimmy does a nice bit on the last guys eliminated from the Royal Rumble.

Piledriver Report and Thoughts from the Top Rope also do Rumble previews.

Hey, Fink’s Payload is back!

The Way I C It continues its look at tag team moves.

Julian counts down the Top 10 RAW matches.

Don’t forget Column of Honor, Triple Threat, 3 R’s, Hidden Highlights, Fact or Fiction and all the rest.

For this week, the spotlight is off.