The WWE bias within the wrestling industry

[scottyshowman82]

Damn what a difference a decade makes. Y know there was a time for me, when pro wrestling and the WWE was absolutely synonymous. That would have been when I started watching the WWF hardcore just as the "New Generation" started to usher themselves in. I couldn't care less what happening outside of the WWF. Japan and Mexico were too far away and I couldn't see them nor did I want to, WWF was #1. I knew WCW was out there but at the time I thought it was crap I honestly did. And I didn't even know what independants were. Pro wrestling was Bret Hart, Razor Ramon, Yokozuna, "Big Daddy Cool" Diesel, HBK, Undertaker, "Made in the USA" Lex Luger and Doink yes Doink, this was all I needed.

Fast forward through the Monday Night Wars, Old school ECW, WWE buying WCW, WWE after the attitude Era and lots of things have changed. I am still
a big WWE fan but damn it's not the way it used to be. I remember during the Attitude Era, Eric Bischoff was the villian, he was the uncreative bastard stealing all of Vince's ideas and stars and bullying the little fireball ECW. And it was ECW and WWE that stood for what was right in pro wrestling. And now it seems like since Vince took everyone out, he just doesn't try as hard as he used to. It's almost like sometimes he doesn't care and just sat back and put a once always entertaining, cutting edge company into cruise control.

WWE does not give me everything I need anymore, I've grown, my tastes have grown. I crave luchadores, and fast paced action. I crave 30 minute wrestling clinics and stiffer japanese style wrestling. I crave german suplexes and submission skills. I want wrestlers with passion, that not just want to make their character well known and better but the company they work in as well. I just want something new and fresh and exciting to make me fall in love with pro wrestling all over again. I'd be a big liar if I said WWE gives me all those things. Maybe it's just a case of me watching the product too long but when people say everything has been done before, I don't want to say I agree I want to say well maybe you should think a bit harder.

If the WWE was a sports team they would be the New York Yankees. And ya the Yankees are powerful team and a safe bet if you want to go with a winner that's your team. But there's more to baseball than the New York yankees and there's more to pro wrestling than the WWE. TNA may not be as big as the WWE and I may not even like them as much as the WWE but I'm always watching and keeping an eye on TNA, you know why? The reason is I like TNA, TNA is good for the wrestling business, to their credit their trying to be creative with X Division and the Knockout and emphasis on good tag team wrestling.

I don't understand people who bury TNA, refuse to acknowlege it or even cover it within the industry. Sure sometimes they make mistakes and fall on their faces but you damn well better want that company to succeed cause you know what's worse than a wrestling business with TNA... a wrestling business with just the WWE.

I say watch TNA, watch ROH, in this day and age of the internet and youtube watch CMLL and AAA. Go out and support your local indy. Pro wrestling is a business but sometimes people forget that it's an art form, and we should encourage pro wrestling to branch off in all these new and different and wild directions, because at the end of the day we want this artform to grow and be alive and vibrant just like, the movie industry, just like pro sports and just like the music business because no one likes to listen to same old tired song over and over again.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

I don't see any particular bias towards WWE. When it comes to criticisms aimed towards pro wrestling in general, internet fans pissing & moaning or dirtsheet writers trashing this or that, WWE is the one that tends to catch most of the hell.

The thing is that most of the pro wrestling audience likes WWE. You might not think so after spending a few days on an internet wrestling forum, but the IWC truly does represent only a small fraction of wrestling's audience. But if someone just isn't into WWE, it's understandable. There's no pleasing everybody after all.

As far as criticism of TNA goes, up until the past 6 months or so, I feel TNA has deserved every bit of it. Up until roughly 6 months ago, or around that general time period, TNA flat out sucked in my view. Their long, drawn out, uninteresting & repetetive faction wars/corporate power struggle storyline dragged the whole product down. Most of the matches we'd see on TNA iMPACT!/Impact Wrestling consisted of 3 minutes of forgettable hodgepodge, 3 minute gimmick matches that did nothing more than kill the special novelty of said gimmick matches, Hulk Hogan & Eric Bischoff being the center of attention each week or being featured in every other segment of the show, older veterans being put over at the expense of younger stars that needed the rub more than the older guys, generally making former WWE and/or WCW wrestlers the overall focus of the show instead of trying to build stars of their own, etc. I mean, to me, it was damn near unwatchable most of the time. However, TNA has come a long way in recent months. They've fixed several of their biggest problems and, as a result, it's a much better overall product than they've had in years. However, some fans just still aren't into it.

I've tried watching AAA in the past and it just doesn't do anything for me. The wrestlers are so incredibly hokey at times that they make John Cena when he's being all cutesy look like the baddest man on the planet. As for the action, it just doesn't do much for me. Of the matches I saw, they tended to consist of about 6 or 8 wrestlers running around all over the place in one massive clusterfuck with the offense tending to consist primarily of one variation of a head scissor take down after another, suicide dives, leaping off the top rope onto guys outside, virtually no selling going on, the ref standing around with his thumb up his ass and, to top it off, I don't speak Spanish. So yeah, it's just not my thing. Much of it just strikes me as flat out ridiculous.

As far as ROH goes, I generally enjoy the wrestling action but since I've been able to watch it, I've not really run across anybody that impresses me on the mic. While the action can be fun, there's also a lot of the "doing this crazy move just for the sake of doing it" action. Those sorts of matches usually don't tell stories and without a story, it's just mindless to me. That's one reason why I'm not really a fan of spotfests because the spot monkeys tend to be guys that have little to no charisma or real personality to speak of, don't know how to tell a story in the ring and has little to no understanding of in-ring psychology.

The thing about the indy scene in a lot of ways is that, out there, it seems like everybody is a star. Every wrestler on the indy circuit ranging from the very talented to the spot monkeys to the overrated "stars" to the biggest scrub all have their own followings proclaiming each of them to be the greatest thing to ever happen to wrestling. Those same fans will practically bust a nut whenever they see someone do a suicide dive and start a "this is awesome" chant at the drop of a hat for some of the most mundane things.

As I said, I don't really see it as a bias. WWE is the biggest wrestling company in the world and it didn't happen by accident. Sure, the taste of some has changed and led them into other areas but that doesn't mean that WWE is any less fun to those that still watch it.

 

[scottyshowman82]

I don't see any particular bias towards WWE. When it comes to criticisms aimed towards pro wrestling in general, internet fans pissing & moaning or dirtsheet writers trashing this or that, WWE is the one that tends to catch most of the hell.

The thing is that most of the pro wrestling audience likes WWE. You might not think so after spending a few days on an internet wrestling forum, but the IWC truly does represent only a small fraction of wrestling's audience. But if someone just isn't into WWE, it's understandable. There's no pleasing everybody after all.

As far as criticism of TNA goes, up until the past 6 months or so, I feel TNA has deserved every bit of it. Up until roughly 6 months ago, or around that general time period, TNA flat out sucked in my view. Their long, drawn out, uninteresting & repetetive faction wars/corporate power struggle storyline dragged the whole product down. Most of the matches we'd see on TNA iMPACT!/Impact Wrestling consisted of 3 minutes of forgettable hodgepodge, 3 minute gimmick matches that did nothing more than kill the special novelty of said gimmick matches, Hulk Hogan & Eric Bischoff being the center of attention each week or being featured in every other segment of the show, older veterans being put over at the expense of younger stars that needed the rub more than the older guys, generally making former WWE and/or WCW wrestlers the overall focus of the show instead of trying to build stars of their own, etc. I mean, to me, it was damn near unwatchable most of the time. However, TNA has come a long way in recent months. They've fixed several of their biggest problems and, as a result, it's a much better overall product than they've had in years. However, some fans just still aren't into it.

I've tried watching AAA in the past and it just doesn't do anything for me. The wrestlers are so incredibly hokey at times that they make John Cena when he's being all cutesy look like the baddest man on the planet. As for the action, it just doesn't do much for me. Of the matches I saw, they tended to consist of about 6 or 8 wrestlers running around all over the place in one massive clusterfuck with the offense tending to consist primarily of one variation of a head scissor take down after another, suicide dives, leaping off the top rope onto guys outside, virtually no selling going on, the ref standing around with his thumb up his ass and, to top it off, I don't speak Spanish. So yeah, it's just not my thing. Much of it just strikes me as flat out ridiculous.

As far as ROH goes, I generally enjoy the wrestling action but since I've been able to watch it, I've not really run across anybody that impresses me on the mic. While the action can be fun, there's also a lot of the "doing this crazy move just for the sake of doing it" action. Those sorts of matches usually don't tell stories and without a story, it's just mindless to me. That's one reason why I'm not really a fan of spotfests because the spot monkeys tend to be guys that have little to no charisma or real personality to speak of, don't know how to tell a story in the ring and has little to no understanding of in-ring psychology.

The thing about the indy scene in a lot of ways is that, out there, it seems like everybody is a star. Every wrestler on the indy circuit ranging from the very talented to the spot monkeys to the overrated "stars" to the biggest scrub all have their own followings proclaiming each of them to be the greatest thing to ever happen to wrestling. Those same fans will practically bust a nut whenever they see someone do a suicide dive and start a "this is awesome" chant at the drop of a hat for some of the most mundane things.

As I said, I don't really see it as a bias. WWE is the biggest wrestling company in the world and it didn't happen by accident. Sure, the taste of some has changed and led them into other areas but that doesn't mean that WWE is any less fun to those that still watch it.

I appreciate you answering my thread and I know one cannot help what kind of pro wrestling they enjoy but I hear responses like this all the time and it really makes me angry. Again no two wrestling fans are the same and pro wrestling is not black and white and we all like certain types of styles which is totally fine. If you find CMLL or TNA not quite to your liking that totally fine. But what makes me angry is people not delving into the product and giving that same old swoop over answer. I'm not a big fan of the Garett Bishoff saga, I think it got importance over more valid storylines once, when they came from the UK but to say that is always the case, especially in the last 6 months is wrong. You mentioned "older veterans being put over at the expense of younger stars that needed the rub more than the older guys" Ya that was happening like 6 months ago. The world champion is Robert Roode. The home grown guy that has the look, the personality and everything. He's been holding the title since last October when he won it off his former tag team partner Cowboy James Storm, another home grown guy. It's not 2007 in TNA anymore. In 2012, The top 4 guys in at the top read Robert Roode, James Storm, Jeff Hardy and Bully Ray, who is a veteran but I don't really consider him an old guy because he's got a new character and he's busting his ass to make it work.

All ROH matches are not "spot fests" their style is more of CM Punk, Daniel Bryan style rather than a guys doing flips and cartwheels for no reason. And you're not the only one who says this. Most fans do. And I don't mean to pick on you because a lot of people do this but what makes me mad is the work and effort that these companies are putting out there to clearly be different from the WWE is being short changed. And I'm not trying to pick on you but someone's gonna come in here see your long bar of green rep points and take your word for it and not give these non WWE companies a second glance and that would be a shame.

My favourite pro wrestling magazine is Pro Wrestling Illustrated and in the beginning I didn't even want to read that magazine because I was a pro WWF guy. The only reason I started reading it was a cover story they had back in the day called "WWF vs WCW:Which is better?" And I just wanted someone eles to tell me WCW was crap. To my suprise in that issue back in 1995 they said WCW was better. But what I respected about that magazine was every month they had stories about WWF, WCW, ECW, USWA and even a sections based on what's going on in Japan and Mexico. They wanted the sport to grow they wanted people to know about all wrestling. And their staff of writers covered the ECW and USWA with same passion they covered the WWF and WCW.

I'm a big fan of Chair Shot Reality, it pisses me off they don't want to talk about TNA more. I'm a big fan of Arda Ocal's radio show as well and it pisses me off they only talk about WWE. I thought when I came on this board, on man this was the internet, these guys are going to be so educated and all over the everything. This place is as mainstream as it gets. An article on ROH is actually a special attraction here. Am I going to have become the ROH guy? There are way bigger fans of ROH out there than me.

It really dissapoints me that wrestling fans can't find one good thing to say about TNA, it sucks that wrestling fans have to force feed themselves to get through an episode of iMPACT. It's not that bad. Honestly some weeks the show is a better product then what Raw and Smackdown put on. I'm talking match quality, promo quality, and overall bang for your buck. I'll end by saying... AJ Styles lights up the ring every time he's in there, Joe and Magnus are A HELL of a lot more justice to legacy of tag team wrestling than anybody who has held WWE Tag team gold in the last year. If you haven't seen Gail Kim wrestle in TNA shame on you, Davey Richards could probably lay a bad licking on CM Punk and I'm a CM Punk Mark, and for pete's sake someone pick up a issue of Pro Wrestling Illustrated and read the darn thing cover to cover. Wow.

 

[HBsam31]

I gotta agree with the poster totally. I used to read those magazines as a kid, and they used to rank the wrestlers in each promotion. I had no idea who Carlos Colon was, but he was a champion of i believe WWC. When i would play with my wrestling figures I would pretend they were Carlos Colon and the champions of each promotion Carlos Colon sticks out in my mind for some reason and the other champs at the time escape me. Anyway my point is when I finally learned who the other champions actually were I was pumped and wanted to see more of them. During the New Generation I was also a fan of WCW, I could tell I didn't like it as well, but I still tuned in every week. I watch TNA and ROH every week. I don't think TNA is as bad as everyone else seems to think, and I really think it is a good alternative to WWE. The have their stutter steps, but lately have really been putting together good shows, and the younger homegrown talent is starting to shine. ROH so far is not my cup of tea, but I watch it, and can start to see certain things that I like about it. I like that they will give you a thirty minute wrestling main event. Jay Lethal and Davey Richards this past week was great back and forth action. You could tell they gave every ounce they had in the match, and quite frankly the guys in the WWE do not give me that impression week in and week out anymore. Competition is a great thing, and I think all the other promotions should be given a fair chance to compete. Watch the other shows, invest yourself in them for a time, it will only make pro wrestling as a whole more successful.

 

[DirtyD79]

This is why I try to follow more than just one particular fed. After a while I just get tired seeing the same people doing the same stuff all the time. My favorite food is pizza yet if I ate pizza every meal every single day I'd eventually be sick of it.