Do Fans Honestly Suck Today?

[Nick Black]

Note: Not sure if this belongs in General, but I put it here because I'm directing it at WWE in general.

What happened to the thrill of seeing your favorite superstar? What happened to the excitement and the atmosphere of being in the aura of a WWE Ring? What happened to the POPS?!

Looking back, and watching older videos of superstars, I'm confused. The current era fans are godawful in my opinion. The biggest pop I've seen between 2010 - 2012, was CM Punk's from MitB:
[YOUTUBE]5OfSR68tEzs[/YOUTUBE]

It's a great pop for a great superstar, but seriously? That's the biggest I've seen in years?

In the same arena I've been in before to see shows, Rikishi, undoubtedly a huge star in his own right, but not a returning superstar or one in a pivotal match, gets a ridiculous pop that you don't see anymore:
[YOUTUBE]nORokKyPNK0[/YOUTUBE]

What happened to the fans? Where are the ones that really care about the whole roster and not just the top 4 people?

 

[NegativeFeedback]

This is a side-effect of the product as a whole being a watered down boring suck-fest.

Sometimes we get great things like the Summer of Punk, Christian's World title win, The Rock's return, etc.

But most of the time, we get boring crap like the John Cena vs. Kane or the even worse Randy Orton vs. Kane feud.

The writing sucks and the fans are getting used to just not caring. Unless the writing changes, the reactions won't get any better than that.

 

[latinoheat8979]

The only thing I can think of is that perhaps it's the city where the event is being held at. As your video of CM Punk portrayed he got the biggest pop of the last couple of years. Myself being from Chicago I can honestly say that the Chicago crowd is ALWAYS hot and not just for CM Punk and it shows on TV really well as you can feed off their energy.

 

[Rcole83]

Yes, we do suck. It's not just us though. Like the last guy said, the watered down writing hasn't helped.

I blame a lot on the lack of "characters" in wrestling today. I don't mean the lame gimmicks of years past, but people that are actually over the top, larger than life "superstars." These are just well-built guys in tights giving run-of-the-mill promos in feuds that are thrown together to fit matches on the next pay per view. I get that they want to be more realistic to counteract the appeal of MMA, but realism is not what drew us into professional wrestling in the first place. Look at a guy like Santino...we love that crazy bastard, because he's over the top, he's crazy...he's ENTERTAINING.

What if Randy Savage wore a suit and came out talking slow and monotone (bad example, he'd have still rocked it), but you get my point. These guys in years past were so energetic, so off the wall at times, but they were exciting to watch. I like the Miz, but when he comes out, you know you may get a good promo, but you're not excited by it, it won't be something you're quoting 10 years from now. If you were to go to a live show, people aren't yelling "AWESOOOME", they're still yelling "WOOOOOO" or "HOOOOOOOOO". (Though Woo Woo Woo has been catching on!)

Couple that with ridiculously uneven booking, where we're trained not to care about a superstar because he may have picked up a good win on Monday, he'll still be squashed on Friday and all will be forgotten. Nobody ever slowly works through the ranks now, the secondary titles aren't treated as stepping stones to the "next level" and never defended on ppv, the titles will change hands with no build - it's just hard to get behind someone and stay behind them. Look at Ryder, he was actually built up, the fans were chanting for him, they blew up when he actually won the US Title...then lost it to Swagger who proceeded to not get booked on Raw until he lost it to Santino...with no build. Now Ryder is floundering in a weak storyline with Eve that has almost no direction. Swagger is as inconsequential as ever. No reason to care, therefore we don't care.

That ran on longer than intended...another reason why I, as a fan, suck.

 

[RANSOM]

The product as a whole makes wrestling fans suck. If the product didnt suck, the fans wouldnt. Although there will always be those that criticize every little detail but critizing is also what makes being a fan fun & being on forums talking about it.

 

[Rampage Bentley]

It's an interesting question... I think it's one of either two things, as mentioned in posts above, the product is watered down and not as good. I don't think this is the case... we have a tendency to look back at our past with rose tinted glasses. Yes, the attitude era gave us some big stars and great matches, but it also gave us crap stars and in-ring abortions... people tend to forget the latter.

I personally think, we've become too jaded. In our era of the internet, having every source of information at our disposal, we stopped being fans and we've started being business men. Just look on this very forum, people get trashed for defending or wanting a push for a wrestler who doesn't "draw." Who does or doesn't draw is neither our business nor our concern, our job is to sit back and be entertained, and we're not doing it.

I've been wrestling with the idea of conducting a little experiment... shutting myself off from any wrestling site that's not run by WWE or TNA for six months, and seeing the difference in how I feel about the product.

 

[chadmarkmurray]

The biggest pop I can remember for a long time ironically was Elimination Chamber when Santino almost pinned Bryan, ironic in the sense that the "Comedy Jobber" was getting bigger pops than the main eventers. The crowds seem tamer now but, I think that's because it's a less respected business now, I'm not sure how it's seen in America but, in the UK once you reach high school people actually get laughed at for liking Entertainment. (Though some how Films and Television is still ok...) The fact of it being PG shouldn't really be an argument though if someone needs a couple of swears and a bit of blood to excite them they should just walk into a bar or something instead of sitting at home watching tv.

 

[browngiant]

Storylines dude...that's it. You can't blame the fans for not cheering loud when they have nothing big to cheer about. It's as clear as that. I was watching old videos of wwe and it was amazing...I was feeling it just watching it on my computer. But now? There's nothing to cheer about...it feels like fans cheer now only because they have to. It's really sad.
Plus, the crowd having a lot more kids now then it used, that has a factor in it as well. They're just now as loud as us adults are...and let's face it, the product is not geared towards us anymore. My 2 cents...

 

[OneTooManyPunts]

I don't think fans 'suck' per say these days, but there is a definite disconnect between the fans and the product in certain promotions.

WWE has continually drifted away from wrestling as the main focus of the product, in exchange for a more diverse brand of entertainment. Raw, SD are both more heavily flooded with promos and non wresting moments, probably more so than ever before. The Rock and Rap concert are a perfect example. While it may be 'entertaining', it's not what wrestling fans are really looking for. This years WM season's hype has been promo after promo for all the matches announced thus far. It makes it incredibly hard for the fans to connect or invest in programs with zero to little physical interaction. That is what brought fans to the product in the first place, the in ring aspect. When you eliminate that in exchange for hype and 'entertainment', you drive a lot of fans away, and create cynical fans out of those that remain.

TNA has it's own issue with a 'sucky' fan base. Their product is far too stationary, pulling in people at Universal that many times don't even know the product, storylines, or wrestlers involved. The canned heat and canned fan fare is very apparent in a lot of the Impact broadcasts, and it highlights that too many people attending the tapings are fair weather at best. It doesn't mean those fans 'suck', it just means they aren't truly connected with the product.

If you look at ROH, Chikara, Evolve, these are promotions with a rabid fan base, because they focus soley on the in ring product. With little to no production value, and limited media access, they have created a fan bases that enjoy the in ring product and as a result help to keep those promotions alive and held to a standard.

Aside from all of that, and not digging at the IWC or dirt sheets, but pro wrestling has been forever altered by the internet. When you can log on to a site, and read the results for a show a week, sometimes weeks in advance depending on the promotion, the drive and incentive to tune is lost.

I think every real pro wrestling fan out there cares about the industry, and the promotion(s) they choose to support. It is simply that some fans no longer have the hook needed to make them crave the product like they may have once did. It is the ultimate game of cat and mouse...can the promotion meet the needs of the fans, and can the fans show the promotions that they are getting what they want. It's a revolving door that will continue for as long as pro wrestling is around.

 

[Champ1432]

I don't know if fans in general "suck". Certainly, some do. There are many fans out there who are pretty much incapable of being satisfied at this point. Fans who aren't happy with anything, who will boo and say, "boring" to anything that's put in front of them, and who won't be even close to happy with anything short of a full return to the Attitude Era and violence even greater than ECW. I mean the real ECW. For these fans, unless there's 15 chair shots to the head and someone flying off the top of a cage every show, it's not worth watching. Of course, that calls into question their status of "fan" in the first place.

I think the problem with the main portion of the fanbase in general is more along the lines of impatience. It goes hand in hand with how our society in general is these days. Everyone wants everything right now. Wrestling fans are no different, in general. I think they get impatient with stories and angles too quickly. When something new and fresh comes up, like with Punk last summer, it gets big pops immediately. But as soon as two or three weeks go by, and heaven forbid something hasn't happened to outdo the original event, the impatience and boredom comes back.

Other posters have brought up the booking of events and matches, and how it goes so quickly these days and nothing is given proper build. While I agree that this often is the case, I'm not sure if it would be any better if it were the other way. I think a lot of fans would be even more unhappy with that, as it would take even longer to get to the payoff of a storyline, and many fans simply don't have the attention span for it any more, IMO.

That's not to say the booking and storytelling can't improve, I definitely think it can. I'm sure there are ways the writers can improve on the overall storyline, like using champions better (Swagger), doing a little more to keep people hot when they get hot (Ryder), and just overall hold people's interest a little better.

I'm never one of the "Bash WWE all the time, they suck and they're boring" people. Do I think it could be better sometimes? Sure. Do I think it must be a pretty tough job to come up with interesting stuff every single week to try to please an increasingly fickle fan base? Definitely.

Wrestling fans seem to be a pretty tough group to please, and getting tougher. To try to keep their interest and still keep the show withing a PG/PG-13 rating is no doubt tough. The internet has only made things tougher on them as well. Now wrestling fans know everything ahead of time, there's no more surprise factor. It al ties back into impatience. Many fans don't wait for a show to be put on TV, they read the spoilers if available. They know about a big superstar returning ahead of time because they see it online. So, in essence, a big event is already old news when it happens, because many fans knew what was coming. So they're already bored with it, already waiting for the next big thing.

There are other issues that play into this as well. Someone mentioned the lack of "characters", I think that's a good point. Many people were spoiled by the Attitude Era, and the Ruthless Aggression Era. But I think impatience is the number one reason why fans of today may "suck" more than fans of yesterday.

 

[Chadmw]

I have to disagree with the poster that said people want more wrestling and less promo's etcc. The era that all the fans still wet themselves over the attitude era was probably 70 percent promo's and only 30% wrestling at that time.

As for the OP's comments, I do agree with him, and I do partially blame the Internet as well. There was a time when you just sat back and followed the storylines wether good or bad, because you had no idea where they were going with them. Now thanks to wrestling sites, you know month in advance where the storyline is going and what the end result is going to be.

 

[multiverseman.com]

Yeah the fans do suck sometimes. They're just lazy and confused.

They went from not liking John Cena and half booing, to now liking him for being the unlikable underdog against the Rock. Weirdos.

I blame WWE too, they can't book anything clean and correctly, so people don't know what to do.

 

[gwarren]

I think it depends where you go. American fans seem to be complacent, knowing that they'll get another show relatively soon. So they don't go nuts.

Here in the UK we get 1, maybe two televised shows per year. They sell out almost straight away and the crowd is red hot. Why? Because its a luxury we hardly ever get.

 

[shooter_mcgavin]

Ironically the pop CM Punk got a MITB was more to do with his own initiative rather than any bookers or backstage people. Giving Punk a platform like that paid off since Punk does have the indie experience to really understand how Wrestling fans and to work the crowd. Shows how masterful he is as a talent.

The Rikishi comparison is valid. Rikishi got a big pop but does not have the same level of talent of Punk. What Rikishi had though were more competent people backstage in getting talent over. Sure the Attitude Era brought some lame angles but they creative knew how to work the crowd.

Problem with most talents now is they really can't stand on their own two feet in getting themselves over. The WWE, being a monopoly, and their Development Promotion has pretty much filtered every future WWE star into their system.

Austin, Triple H, Mr. Perfect, Bret Hart, Foley, Jericho, Benoit, Guerrero, Undertaker and even Hogan all improved their craft in other organizations, countries, etc. They honed their own talent and individuality and not by one system.

If a time when you are only exposed to one system (the WWE).

Let's say you don't get over in the WWE based on what they taught you in OVW/FCW/etc. What is the support structure to help you get over? If Person A's mentoring, creative work, advice, etc does not help, what makes you think Person B will do any better since they both belong in the WWE system?

Swagger, Kingston, and McIntyre are a victims of this. Going in circles because its the same people with the same mindset giving them gimmicks or storylines with meager results. And neither are seasoned enough to stand on their own two feet.

Look at Austin ... with the WWF system he was the Ringmaster. That bombed so he created his own character and becomes Stone Cold. Triple H was a given a WWE gimmick as a Rich Snob ... that wasn't flying too well and eventually became "The Game" and "The Cerebral Assassin". Austin and Triple H both had prior experience and instincts to know what can work.

Look at the two most over guys last year? Punk and Ryder, neither were over because of WWE management, it was because of their own imitative. For Punk it was that promo for Ryder it was that Youtube Channel.

 

[trashboy]

Yes, the fans suck. They just don't get into the shows like they used to. I was watching some WWF from the late 90s and the fans went crazy. Also, go back and watch some WCW from he late 90s, same deal, they went nuts. Now not so much.

Also, speaking of fans, does it irritate anyone else when a fan is on camera, they don't really pay attention to what's going on in the ring, you see half the audience looking at the titan tron, hoping to be on camera. Then when they're actually shown, they act like ******s.

 

[Arsenal]

Only a complete mark for the current lackluster wrestling era would ask if the fans suck. It's not the fans job to cheer for a product that's weak. If the fans aren't reacting strongly and making noise, it's because the product sucks, PERIOD.

Do you clowns blame consumers for not supporting/buying/cheering sh!tty products? The WWE over the last several years is a mere shadow of it's former greatness.

And no, I'm not just talking about the Attitude era, because the mid 80's - early 90's Golden era was even better than the Attitude era IMO, nevertheless both are far superior to the current watered down product with its weak / non-existent storylines, illogical booking, start-stop pushes, and boring generic clones instead of interesting characters filling out the roster.

 

[Xumer]

Fans always sucked. Think back in the 50s-80s, they actually attacked and assaulted the wrestlers they didn't like. Watch the shoot interviews and they are full of stories of fights and even gunshots and stabbings. I think in the 90s things were so awesome because the internet was really starting to heat up and it wasn't so much the spoilers and news sites as it was the wrestling community coming together online that really made wrestling more mainstream that it had been before. It was like back in the 80s, the only wrestling fans you could talk to were the ones you knew in person. If only a few people in your hometown were really hardcore fans, it wasn't much of a "community" but then you got online and were suddenly hooked up with the GLOBAL wrestling fan base. It felt like in 90s we were all in it together, the fans, the wrestlers, and the promotions. But now it's all like a "product". Even wrestlezone itself has changed so much. During the 90s, it was pretty awesome and a genuine gathering place for all fans but now it's more like a corporate news site that deletes alot of posts. Doesn't really feel like a community anymore.

 

[The Suplexer Perfecter]

Because everyone knows it is fake so they don't act and go crazy whenever a face goes on offense against a hated heel, like they would in the 80s.

Also because now the majority of fans at most events are not older guys who have big voices. Women and kids aren't as loud as thousands of 18-20whatever year olds.

 

[IHW]

Do we suck?
Yes
Is it our fault?
No

Vince, the bookers, and all who tell the wrestlers what to do and exactly how to do it... it is their fault. We don't pop like we used to simply because the product we are getting isn't worth it.

 

[WCW_Sting]

Only a complete mark for the current lackluster wrestling era would ask if the fans suck.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this. It's obvious it is intended to be an insult, but I'm failing to see how asking if the fans suck equals "a complete mark." I think being a fan equals being a mark, but that's just me.

It's not the fans job to cheer for a product that's weak.

I agree. But some fans don't even cheer for strong aspects of the product. For example, when I go to wrestling shows, I rarely cheer. I clap for wrestlers and parts of a match that I like, but don't cheer. The only time I've cheered (and by cheered, I mean absolutely lost it) was RAW in Tulsa in July 2009, when Bret Hart surprised us as a member of John Cena's Summerslam team against Nexus.

If the fans aren't reacting strongly and making noise, it's because the product sucks, PERIOD.

Nope. Like I said above, I don't cheer, and there are probably others like me. When I go to a wrestling show, I like to sit back and enjoy it, stand only during the entrances, and maybe join in a chant or two. My lack of cheering doesn't make me less of a fan, nor does it make the product weaker.

But does the lack of cheering make me suck as a fan? Maybe. I agree that a hot crowd makes the show more enjoyable on TV, so maybe I suck. But consider this...the ECW crowd is very entertaining to watch, but if you were to put someone like Dolph Ziggler (who is among the top five performers in WWE today...period) in front of them, I'm pretty sure they would boo, tell him he sucked, and chant obscenities, and I don't mean in the "he's a bad guy so we have to boo" kind of way. They only want violence, a technical match where it's 15 minutes before someone throws a punch, or something foreign (Japan, Mexico). They don't suck as ECW fans, but because they seem to refuse to like anything that's new and mainstream, they suck as wrestling fans in my opinion. That's a generalization, but you all get the point.

I don't think we need to directly relate whether fans suck or not to the "pops," but after roughly three years of reading these forums, I have to say that, yes, we as fans suck.

Get over yourselves and enjoy some wrestling, and happy 50th post to me!

 

[Rockyfolifebo!!!]

I swear, watching that Rikishi video gave me goosebumps. Also there's one on Raw is War when Austin comes in to fight The Rock and Kane or something like that, but it was massive! The crowd was jumping, signs flew up instantly, the roar was huge! They just used to go ape shit! But, the fans now are ignorant. For example, they were doing the "What?" thing during Undertaker's and Michael's promo on Raw. How disrespectful! Two of the greatest of all time in the ring, giving a promo. They should be privaledged. These hardworking superstars get no pop nowadays. Shame, shame shame. . .

 

[TheHeartbreakPunk]

The fans don't suck, its just that the fans have nothing to cheer for anymore. The wwe has lost that surprise factor. The biggest surprise in the last couple years was the nexus. The biggest pop ive seen in awhile is when santino won the us championship, and that was huge.Those are the kind of things that the wwe needs to get the fans involved and want to tune in next week to see what happens. The fans are good, the wwe needs tweaking

 

[Hardymania]

GoldBerg! GoldBerg! GoldBerg! GoldBerg!

Remember when the fans shouted his name as he made as entrance. Goldberg got one of the best crowd reactions ever.

 

[WunNightStan619]

The fans dont suck, the wrestlers do. The Rock gets a massive pop still, Taker, HBK, HHH, all get pops. But there's really nobody on the current roster besides the guys i just named who are worth a huge reaction. They certaintly dont do anything that calls for one, imo

 

[c13vyper]

Speaking of Crowd reactions i thought Cenas return to Rap gimmick on Monday drew little response, granted not once during that whole promo did we hear many boos and not one Cena Sucks chant, but there was no roof blown off reaction.

I put some of the blame on Superstars not connecting with the Audience and getting them involved. Rock has Finally, the rock.... and if ya smell where they would chant along, plus they would always scream Rocky Rocky Rocky

SCSA had Gimme a hell yeah, WHAT!, Austin 3:16 says

These days weve got what, Woo Woo Woo. I just think they would get bigger responses from the crowd if they got to participate.