Post by edgehead on Jan 24, 2009 2:15:08 GMT -5
First off, I’d like to wish you all a belated Happy New Year and I hope 2009 will bring you everything you ever dreamed about. So, for the 2008 (yeah, I know, I’m kinda late for that) season finale of Rated Real, once again, I called an audible for the original plans based on something I saw on the web a couple of weeks ago. I think it was a couple of days after Armageddon when CM Punk won the #1 contender tournament for the Intercontinental Championship. An upset fan wrote a letter to the very “unbiased” DeclarationOfIndependents.com website about how CM Punk was a dickhead for being rude to him and other fans but what I found out by speaking to other people that knew the guy was that this guy actually behaves like a stalker as he goes to every possible airport possible in hopes to snatch a picture or an autograph from a wrestler. This prompted me to ask myself the question: how much gratitude a wrestler needs to show to a wrestling fan when he meets him outside the ring.
I won’t lie to you; despite my (short) experience in the business, I always remained in awe when I saw a pro wrestler. I marked as much by attending a live WWE event or TV taping than when El Generico worked one of our shows a couple of years ago. For some reason, the 7-year old kid comes out of me and I barely am able to get a coherent sentence out of my mouth (boy, did it get embarrassing when I met Lita for an autograph signing a couple of years ago, but I’ll spare myself the humiliation of recalling all this and move along.) Honestly, I think that this candour about the wrestling business is probably why I still watch it every week with a passion. While people nowadays are mostly jaded by what professional wrestling has become ever since the death of WCW and ECW, it would’ve made sense for me to do the same but that’s not the case. More often than not, I’m diving myself under hundreds of fantasy bookings just in case that this would be useful to me once I’d return as a booker. Over the years, I realized that I wasn’t the only individual who somehow felt like a little kid whenever I was attending a wrestling event. People from all ages feel that way too. And you can often see them at your local indy event every month. Those fans are harmless, if I could use that term. Because, believe it or not, some fans can be dangerous. And I don’t mean that in a they’re-gonna-jump-over-the-barricade-and-hit-you-in-the-back-with-a-chair kind of way. But they could really bring more harm than good to a promotion. Let me follow up with an example.
I don’t know the kid’s name but I had several encounters with him over the years because we were pretty much attending the same events. I quickly found out that he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. Some jokers would probably say that this is the particularity of most wrestling fans (to which I would respond with the F word with a big capital F in bold) but there’s some fans that still believe into the magic of wrestling big time. I’m pretty sure that you’ve encountered at least once in your life the “IT’S STILL REAL TO ME, DAMMIT” kind of wrestling fan at a local event. Those usually fall in the “harmless” category. And truth be told, they’re as important as the kid demographic and hell, they’re looking up to some wrestlers as much as your little nephew or cousin does. So, even if the smarter wrestling fan would discard that target audience in developing that product, you can’t forget about those. These people are the reason why you’re a wrestler in the first place; you’re soaking their adulation and they make you feel like a star, which you probably will never be in your lifetime. Then, there is the wrestling fan that thinks he got this all figured out and believes that he knows as much about wrestling as an insider does. 20 years ago, the worst that could happen is that he would’ve been laughed at by his friends because of his so-called knowledge but today, with the Internet and the Internet wrestling community, the consequences can be far more damageable.
The first incident with this fan goes back to 2003. The main event for Canadian Championship Wrestling’s final show (the promotion folded and EWR came along one month later) was a tag team match featuring Extreme Revolution members “Mr. Wrestling” Kevin Steen & Sunny War Cloud against Keven Martel, nephew of Rick “The Model” Martel, and former WWF Tag Team Champion Pierre-Carl Ouellet. The name of PCO wasn’t to be announced until a few days before the event but if my memory serves me well, clues were left on the promotion’s website hinting that it would be PCO. Every smart fan pretty much figured it out but we were very careful not to spill the beans, not to cut the grass under the promotion’s foot and not spoil the surprise. Well, guess what “fan boy” did? Yeop. He spoiled the surprise. He didn’t go as far as to actually name but he wrote a message on a board saying that “Martel’s partner would be _ _ _ __ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _....which of course spelled PCO’s name if you followed my hint correctly. Of course, the kid got ripped apart by everyone and the promotion was forced to unveil Martel’s tag team partner much quicker than expected. With everything that went on, we thought that “fan boy” would leave it at that and stop humiliating himself. Boy, was I wrong.
During my stint as a booker in TUW, Fan Boy decided like every people that aren’t talented to wrestle or to do anything in the business that he would open up his own promotion. But, no, he didn’t want to open just 1 promotion…HE OPENED 2 PROMOTIONS! At first, I was like “Meh, he’ll just bomb like most of the new promotions and he’ll learn the lesson”, so I pretty much laughed it off. I wasn’t laughing that much when I saw on his first card that he booked MY guys without me having any knowledge of it. Or the actual wrestlers booked for that matter. I was quick to confront his business partner about the situation and he candidly told me that the guy was just messing everything up and he was sorry for all the inconveniences Fan Boy caused us. Sure enough, about 3 days later, his project folded without even one show taking place. Once again, Fan Boy got ripped for his (lack of) efforts. At that point, I thought that he had figured it out now. Not everybody is cut out for it. At least, if you’re not cut out for the business or in the learning process, just stick to what you’re told and gain the boys’ respect. But I guess some people never learn. Fan Boy is one of them.
A couple of weeks ago, Fan Boy struck again as he left a derogatory message towards a wrestler on a board regarding an upcoming show. The wrestler being my friend, I was quick to point out that unless he felt he was a much better wrestler than him, that he just keep his mouth shut and move on to another topic. And apparently, I wasn’t the only one feeling that way since the same remarks were made to him. However, things took a wild turn as the aforementioned wrestler publicly dissed Fan Boy during a show a couple of days later and was forced to apologize by the promoter for his comments. You never want, as a promoter, to see something like that happen but in this particular case, I thought that FINALLY he would learn his lesson and just shut up. Once again, I was proved wrong. About 1 week ago, a promotion had to cancel its event (the event was scheduled for this weekend I believe) due to undisclosed reasons. As it turns out, Fan Boy happens to work as a referee for that promotion. And once again, guess what happened? Yeop, you guessed it. Fan Boy actually disclose the reasons why the event was cancelled, while it was something that was none of our business and that concerned only AND ONLY the promotion. The golden rule in pro wrestling goes like this: what happens backstage STAYS backstage. No outsider needs to know what goes on in a wrestling locker room, cause it’s pretty much the only sacred room that kayfabe still allows us to use. At that point, I said to myself “Screw it. The kid’s gonna never learn.” It’s like the kid is a masochist. He seems to almost enjoy the fact that he’s drawing attention, even though it’s in the absolute wrong way. Honestly, that’s a very frustrating situation for anybody that’s been involved in the wrestling industry. Incidents like that made us realize that we can’t sugar coat it; pro wrestling isn’t doing very well right now. When I was a kid, the mentality of the promoters made sure that Average Joe couldn’t be part of the inner circle. You need to look the part because you have to be credible as a professional wrestler. Today, the Rey Mysterios, the Eddie Guerreros, the Chris Jerichos and the Dean Malenkos paved the way for smaller wrestlers to achieve some success in the industry and that isn’t a bad thing in itself. However, that doesn’t mean that anybody who watches wrestling on TV every week for the past 10 years actually “gets it” and can run World Wrestling Entertainment tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, some people truly believe they can. Fan Boy believed it. And the frustrated CM Punk fan who complained about his attitude also falls in that category.
The bottom line is this; first of all, fans need to be aware that there are boundaries that you cannot cross in the wrestling business. Whether it is at the airport or at a restaurant meeting your favourite star or on the Internet discussing about your local promotion. You’re all entitled to your opinion and you have every right to express yourself and I’m sure that wrestlers and promoters are always happy to get feedback from fans. However, outside of the ring or in between shows, these people are like you and me; they’re human beings. And they’re more than often doing this for little to no money. They do this to entertain us. They don’t owe us to be nice with us as much as we owe them a little respect when we meet them outside of scheduled meet and greets or Q & A sessions. Secondly, wrestling is a lot like magic; it’s a lot more fun when you don’t know the tricks and you try to figure out “Where is this all going?” In an age where the Internet has exposed almost the totality of the wrestling business, it is our duty as wrestling fans to at least let the promotions maintain the last fragments of kayfabe that the industry has to offer without any smartasses trying to play Mr. Know-It-All and screwing everything up. If you wanna be part of the wrestling industry, do it the right way. Stick to what you’re told. Gain the respect of your peers by behaving like they did when they were in your shoes. In any way, shape or form, all of us who have contributed to the wrestling industry have done it for the same reason: because we are fans. Feel free to send me any feedback by e-mail or MSN (patdx@hotmail.com) or just do it via the Wrestling Afterlife board. In the meantime, I’ll watch the Royal Rumble this weekend with friends, chips and beer!
See ya later!
I won’t lie to you; despite my (short) experience in the business, I always remained in awe when I saw a pro wrestler. I marked as much by attending a live WWE event or TV taping than when El Generico worked one of our shows a couple of years ago. For some reason, the 7-year old kid comes out of me and I barely am able to get a coherent sentence out of my mouth (boy, did it get embarrassing when I met Lita for an autograph signing a couple of years ago, but I’ll spare myself the humiliation of recalling all this and move along.) Honestly, I think that this candour about the wrestling business is probably why I still watch it every week with a passion. While people nowadays are mostly jaded by what professional wrestling has become ever since the death of WCW and ECW, it would’ve made sense for me to do the same but that’s not the case. More often than not, I’m diving myself under hundreds of fantasy bookings just in case that this would be useful to me once I’d return as a booker. Over the years, I realized that I wasn’t the only individual who somehow felt like a little kid whenever I was attending a wrestling event. People from all ages feel that way too. And you can often see them at your local indy event every month. Those fans are harmless, if I could use that term. Because, believe it or not, some fans can be dangerous. And I don’t mean that in a they’re-gonna-jump-over-the-barricade-and-hit-you-in-the-back-with-a-chair kind of way. But they could really bring more harm than good to a promotion. Let me follow up with an example.
I don’t know the kid’s name but I had several encounters with him over the years because we were pretty much attending the same events. I quickly found out that he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. Some jokers would probably say that this is the particularity of most wrestling fans (to which I would respond with the F word with a big capital F in bold) but there’s some fans that still believe into the magic of wrestling big time. I’m pretty sure that you’ve encountered at least once in your life the “IT’S STILL REAL TO ME, DAMMIT” kind of wrestling fan at a local event. Those usually fall in the “harmless” category. And truth be told, they’re as important as the kid demographic and hell, they’re looking up to some wrestlers as much as your little nephew or cousin does. So, even if the smarter wrestling fan would discard that target audience in developing that product, you can’t forget about those. These people are the reason why you’re a wrestler in the first place; you’re soaking their adulation and they make you feel like a star, which you probably will never be in your lifetime. Then, there is the wrestling fan that thinks he got this all figured out and believes that he knows as much about wrestling as an insider does. 20 years ago, the worst that could happen is that he would’ve been laughed at by his friends because of his so-called knowledge but today, with the Internet and the Internet wrestling community, the consequences can be far more damageable.
The first incident with this fan goes back to 2003. The main event for Canadian Championship Wrestling’s final show (the promotion folded and EWR came along one month later) was a tag team match featuring Extreme Revolution members “Mr. Wrestling” Kevin Steen & Sunny War Cloud against Keven Martel, nephew of Rick “The Model” Martel, and former WWF Tag Team Champion Pierre-Carl Ouellet. The name of PCO wasn’t to be announced until a few days before the event but if my memory serves me well, clues were left on the promotion’s website hinting that it would be PCO. Every smart fan pretty much figured it out but we were very careful not to spill the beans, not to cut the grass under the promotion’s foot and not spoil the surprise. Well, guess what “fan boy” did? Yeop. He spoiled the surprise. He didn’t go as far as to actually name but he wrote a message on a board saying that “Martel’s partner would be _ _ _ __ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _....which of course spelled PCO’s name if you followed my hint correctly. Of course, the kid got ripped apart by everyone and the promotion was forced to unveil Martel’s tag team partner much quicker than expected. With everything that went on, we thought that “fan boy” would leave it at that and stop humiliating himself. Boy, was I wrong.
During my stint as a booker in TUW, Fan Boy decided like every people that aren’t talented to wrestle or to do anything in the business that he would open up his own promotion. But, no, he didn’t want to open just 1 promotion…HE OPENED 2 PROMOTIONS! At first, I was like “Meh, he’ll just bomb like most of the new promotions and he’ll learn the lesson”, so I pretty much laughed it off. I wasn’t laughing that much when I saw on his first card that he booked MY guys without me having any knowledge of it. Or the actual wrestlers booked for that matter. I was quick to confront his business partner about the situation and he candidly told me that the guy was just messing everything up and he was sorry for all the inconveniences Fan Boy caused us. Sure enough, about 3 days later, his project folded without even one show taking place. Once again, Fan Boy got ripped for his (lack of) efforts. At that point, I thought that he had figured it out now. Not everybody is cut out for it. At least, if you’re not cut out for the business or in the learning process, just stick to what you’re told and gain the boys’ respect. But I guess some people never learn. Fan Boy is one of them.
A couple of weeks ago, Fan Boy struck again as he left a derogatory message towards a wrestler on a board regarding an upcoming show. The wrestler being my friend, I was quick to point out that unless he felt he was a much better wrestler than him, that he just keep his mouth shut and move on to another topic. And apparently, I wasn’t the only one feeling that way since the same remarks were made to him. However, things took a wild turn as the aforementioned wrestler publicly dissed Fan Boy during a show a couple of days later and was forced to apologize by the promoter for his comments. You never want, as a promoter, to see something like that happen but in this particular case, I thought that FINALLY he would learn his lesson and just shut up. Once again, I was proved wrong. About 1 week ago, a promotion had to cancel its event (the event was scheduled for this weekend I believe) due to undisclosed reasons. As it turns out, Fan Boy happens to work as a referee for that promotion. And once again, guess what happened? Yeop, you guessed it. Fan Boy actually disclose the reasons why the event was cancelled, while it was something that was none of our business and that concerned only AND ONLY the promotion. The golden rule in pro wrestling goes like this: what happens backstage STAYS backstage. No outsider needs to know what goes on in a wrestling locker room, cause it’s pretty much the only sacred room that kayfabe still allows us to use. At that point, I said to myself “Screw it. The kid’s gonna never learn.” It’s like the kid is a masochist. He seems to almost enjoy the fact that he’s drawing attention, even though it’s in the absolute wrong way. Honestly, that’s a very frustrating situation for anybody that’s been involved in the wrestling industry. Incidents like that made us realize that we can’t sugar coat it; pro wrestling isn’t doing very well right now. When I was a kid, the mentality of the promoters made sure that Average Joe couldn’t be part of the inner circle. You need to look the part because you have to be credible as a professional wrestler. Today, the Rey Mysterios, the Eddie Guerreros, the Chris Jerichos and the Dean Malenkos paved the way for smaller wrestlers to achieve some success in the industry and that isn’t a bad thing in itself. However, that doesn’t mean that anybody who watches wrestling on TV every week for the past 10 years actually “gets it” and can run World Wrestling Entertainment tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, some people truly believe they can. Fan Boy believed it. And the frustrated CM Punk fan who complained about his attitude also falls in that category.
The bottom line is this; first of all, fans need to be aware that there are boundaries that you cannot cross in the wrestling business. Whether it is at the airport or at a restaurant meeting your favourite star or on the Internet discussing about your local promotion. You’re all entitled to your opinion and you have every right to express yourself and I’m sure that wrestlers and promoters are always happy to get feedback from fans. However, outside of the ring or in between shows, these people are like you and me; they’re human beings. And they’re more than often doing this for little to no money. They do this to entertain us. They don’t owe us to be nice with us as much as we owe them a little respect when we meet them outside of scheduled meet and greets or Q & A sessions. Secondly, wrestling is a lot like magic; it’s a lot more fun when you don’t know the tricks and you try to figure out “Where is this all going?” In an age where the Internet has exposed almost the totality of the wrestling business, it is our duty as wrestling fans to at least let the promotions maintain the last fragments of kayfabe that the industry has to offer without any smartasses trying to play Mr. Know-It-All and screwing everything up. If you wanna be part of the wrestling industry, do it the right way. Stick to what you’re told. Gain the respect of your peers by behaving like they did when they were in your shoes. In any way, shape or form, all of us who have contributed to the wrestling industry have done it for the same reason: because we are fans. Feel free to send me any feedback by e-mail or MSN (patdx@hotmail.com) or just do it via the Wrestling Afterlife board. In the meantime, I’ll watch the Royal Rumble this weekend with friends, chips and beer!
See ya later!
