I know WWE is sort of viewed as the big bad monster that ate professional wrestling in the eyes of some people. At the same time though, WWE is the obvious & easy target because it's the only big dog left in the game in the minds of most American fans. As a result, it tends to get blamed for all the various woes affecting pro wrestling as a whole. If WCW had won the Monday Night Wars and WWE had gone the way of the dinosaur, if even ECW had somehow risen to great prominence and toppled both titans to become #1, I think we'd almost certainly have the same complaints, griping, criticism and general hate directed towards WCW or ECW.
Its not an easy target and its a target because it earned that. ECW didn't have to rise to the top but if it had been legally left intact after its collapse and Paul Heyman or whoever who got its remains from bankruptcy court had reopened it out of nowhere in say 2008 or 2010 with a lot of the same roster, the same fed name, the same mentality and style it had in the late '90s and of course its open door policy for dimming stars that we seen in the Eastern Championship Wrestling days then it would had been stronger and more stable in the post Attitude Era because it wouldn't have the WWF and WCW who were both at their zenith and prime to compete with. ECW can compete with WWE, the WWF was a different situation.
ECW would get less criticism because be it Todd Gordon or Paul Heyman we know both men either liked wrestling or respected wrestling and had no shame what so ever in promoting it. They always worked with the younger guys and gave the wrestlers some freedom to develop themselves. If ECW had writers, their authority was not iron clad and their logic was never questionable.
As for WCW I was upset with them for holding back guys in the name of older stars and at all costs. Even though it was too little too late I see them begin to reverse that policy c. 2000 like when Benoit won the title. IRONICALLY THE DEATH NAIL FOR WCW was being apart of a conglomerate that had the same attitude towards wrestling that WWE has. Because WCW was Southern fried tv I don't think the people in these parts would had allowed them to move too far away from "rasslin" regardless..
WWE is to wrestling what O.J. Simpson is to the Black Community, he's only apart of it when he needs to be or has to be.. We can't respect WWE if it doesn't respect its heritage and if it doesn't respect its heritage its gonna have to replace fans with viewers who dont know what wrestling is or was. They outsourced fans from other corners of the entertainment world, you don't get mad props for that and making bank still aint gonna get you props for that move.
Like a few others pointed out, there are alternatives to WWE out there on the indy scene. But, to be totally honest, the vast majority of fans in the states don't really give a shit about them. WWE is a company that's had international television exposure and renown for decades. That's the company that springs to mind when the VAST majority of Americans, whether they're fans or not, think of pro wrestling. WWE is viewed as the big time while the others aren't. I see no reason to vilify WWE because other pro wrestling companies are unable to get themselves to that next level.
They aren't alternatives and thats not completely their fault. How do you know the vast majority of fans aren't interested if they don't know they exist or can't find them easily or just watch whats on? ROH for example is on a cable or satellite system that I think serves less then the U.S. so even if they were a ratings success you'd only have the HDNet base to tap.
When the WWF rose through he ranks it was a bit unprecedented in a sport with regional and state strongholds. I think that you think that companies that were in WWE's position in say 1958 or '63 can do what WWE began doing in the '80s but they seized a spot no one held anyway. When they took it they bogarted it. Thats not wrong necessarily. WCW made headway because its forerunner was already on TBS. When Ted Turner took over Mid-Atlantic and turned that into WCW the reason that territory was able to make it to the big time is because they had access to the networks owned by Turner and Turner's personal backing and support. How do you get out of the gym or armory without name recognition? How do you tour on a regional level with a monopoly preying on you? If I put some of these indy feds on a station with national reach like WCW on TBS in 1988, could you tell me with 100 percent confidence that would not jump start or bring their feds out of obscurity? If you can't say that your just using the lopsided power structure WWE has created in wrestling as an easy critique of these smaller companies.
And then you see ECW on TNN being shown at 3am and you see the WWF on TNN getting shown at 9pm.. You probably would still want to make the comparison both were on the same station pushing the same product so there are no excuses for the small company..
The problem is two fold, one WWE is occupying and holding the top spot hostage and at this point they are nothing more then a charlatan.
If you read various statements, such as statements put out by ROH or PWG brass congratulating some of their former wrestlers for signing with WWE, they themselves give the impression that WWE is simply on that next level. A year or so back, I read an interview given by Cary Silkin, former owner & current president of ROH, basically called ROH a training ground for wrestlers to get to that next level.
If they are using an independent company as a training ground when they aren't even apart of the WWE farm system all you have highlighted is a breakdown in leadership. Maybe they also meant they were happy more people knew guys that they were close to? Maybe they were happy alumni now had more financial resources to work with in life? That doesn't even mean that was their intent or that they are happy with the fact their company can take care of its guys like that? Maybe they were happy someone had to struggle less, don't take that out of context.. Thats not a nod of the hat to WWE..
There are various definitions these days in the minds of some as to what "pro wrestling" is. If you're a genuine traditionalist, then there's pretty much nothing left of "pro wrestling" in the modern market. While some fans refer to themselves as "real wrestling fans" because they prefer certain promotions over others, they're forgetting or conveniently ignoring history. When you look at "real wrestling" in my eyes, that was back in the days when you had guys like Frank Gotch and Georg Hackemshmidt wrestling each other for 3 hours. Over the coming decades, professional wrestling was transformed from a legit sport into, for all intents & purposes, mock combat with the outcomes predetermined. From the 40s through much of the 70s, "real wrestling" consisted of greats like Lou Thesz, Vern Gagne, Danny Hodge, Nick Bockwinkel and various others spending 20-60 minutes trading arm bars, side headlocks and spinning toe holds.
There are different camps in all sports who promote a variant of a style or rules or customs. Just because you have divisions doesn't mean every camp is equal or right. I'm interested in seeing real wrestling with random outcomes, the worked styles that existed after that or the '80s style with all the glitz or the '90s style with all the grits. Any combination of those or just one period is fine. I still argue that if booking sets up the right matches based on probable outcomes then the wrestling we seen in the '30s could in theory also have characters and plots we seen in the '90s. Those are all equal schools of wrestling, WWE placing sports entertainment over wrestling isn't. WWE is trying to join in on fads and the mainstream. WWE is trying to be cultural at too great a cost to its history. WWE is attempting to use its wrestlers and wrestling show as an attempt to prome unrelated endeavors like movies, football leagues, social media gadgets, and so on. Instead of being pop culture, WWE attempts to jump on to pre existing pop culture. WWE and the WWF are very divergent in that sense because eventhough the Attitude Era featured followers who werent always into wrestling they were still givin nothing but unabashed wrestling, no fronts, no posing, just the WWF being the WWF which meant wrestling being wrestling with that edge that you had with everything past the early '90s in this country.
I get that some people aren't into WWE anymore. People's tastes can change over the years whether it be the kind of food they eat to the music they listen to or the programs they watch on television. I've never looked at pro wrestling through rose colored glasses because the same perceived problems that plague WWE have plagued pro wrestling as a whole. There's never been a "perfect" era for pro wrestling. There have always been angles, storylines, feuds and matches that simply just don't click with some people. That's how it was 30 years ago and that's how it'll be 30 years from now. As I said, WWE just happens to be the most convenient target, thusly being a convenient scapegoat, to blame for shortcomings that every wrestling company had, has or ever will have one way or another.
WWE shares problems with other companies past and present but has had unique problems too.
You say tastes change but WWE doesn't technically have that hurdle because WWE appeals to a group of small children using a repetitive appeal to a young kids brain that doesn't see things that we see or catch issues that are obvious.
To break it down to YOU ALL AND NOT JUST JACK HAMMER, WWE Universe has a kid slot. I'm not sure if it makes up 50 percent of the fan pop. or more or less. This slot finds certain basic plots or aesthetics appealing. There is no real complexity to that since its easy to get a kid in aww. Because of the basicness of that older fans like us become upset with the product because we see the holes kids can't and we see other complex problems or redundancy. This adult group we are in his divided between those who can walk away after not seeing reform and those who need a wrestling fix period. We here are mostly the latter.
Going back to the kid slot though, you basically have 25 million kids watching it because it stimulates them like Elmo or Dora the Explorer, when these kids who are 5 to 10ish are four or five years into their wrestling experience they may leave, they are then immidietly replaced wih people in their age group who are stimulated by the exact same basic stimuli. The U.S. population basically grows WWE fans, WWE makes use of a kid phase by appealing to that too hard. That hurts the older fans.
If he goes in reverse, he can circumvent this. He appeals to older people, they take pride in it, they stick with it and watch it well into adult hood the way a fan of '60s wrestling would still had been watching in the '80s atleast but maybe longer. When you appeal to this group you can still get the kid slot because kids look up to older siblings, parents may bond with their kids by showing them wrestling or going to events with them, or the kids might have a need to watch mature programming simply because it isn't kid programming. You come out with the same amount of audience in this 2nd dynamic but its less Sesame Street and degrading. Its less of a spectacle in the sports world too. Its annoying seeing kids that are 11 year after year with a Cena shirt then too years later you mention wrestling and they laugh at you because they no longer watch it.. WWE has created those situations and that deserves unequivocal condemnation.
