Wrestling fans could be
forgiven for having a feeling of deja vu the morning after the 2015 Royal Rumble.
Following the mauling the live crowd gave the 2014 edition of the event, surely
2015 couldn’t be any worse? Alas , not only was the said crowd as unreceptive
to the PPV, but the Twitter hash tag #cancelWWENetwork trended worldwide for several hours after the event, forcing
the WWE to rush out an anniucement claiming that Network subscriptions had hit
the 1 million mark.
Obviously much has been written
about the events and what they portend for the WWE; the following is no attempt
at an exhaustive analysis, but rather addresses a few things that stood out for
me from the whole affair…
The Court of the Tsar – much
has been made of how it’s now clear that ‘Vince is out of touch’; but the truth
is this has been the case for years. Like many dictators, Vince lives in a
bubble, surrounded by yes-men such as Kevin Dunn. The only ‘resistance’ that
the real world provides to what he’s told largely comes in the form of TV
ratings and stock prices. If it is indeed the case that the WWE Network has hit
1 million subscribers – and personal I’m not entirely convinced about those
numbers – then Vince’s attitude is likely to be “what’s the problem? A few
local difficulties in Philly?” This idea that Vince is purposely sabotaging his
product just to piss the fans off is not beyond the bounds of possibility; but
I suspect the truth is he’s so far removed from popular opinion he is
legitimately surprised about the backlash.
WWE FC – the
divided reactions of fans to the #CancelWWENetwork episode reminded me of the
situations recently at both Arsenal and West Ham: where fans were (literally)
fighting among themselves over whether their respective managers should be
sacked or not. In many ways WWE does resemble a football club, in that although
in theory in theory it’s a ‘brand’ or a ‘product’, it inspires the kind of
loyalty that you don’t display towards say, Persil. Indeed, like many football
fans, many WWE loyalists pride themselves on supporting the product
particularly when it’s bad – a variation on the “you’ve gotta get behind the
lads” rubbish you hear from fans even when there team’s performances clearly
don’t warrant such backing. You can take the football parallel further – just
as pissed off fans of a big team will protest by going to watch a smaller team
– Manchester United fans going to watch FC United of Manchester for example –
so annoyed WWE fans can go off and watch NJPW, ROH, or even TNA if they get
really desperate (zing!).
Too Big to Fail? – it
shows the measure of dominance that WWE has that despite woefully
underperforming creatively for many years now, the company itself is fairly
stable in terms of its financial viability. The general feeling is that even if
Stephanie was booked to hold the WWE title for a year at some point, the
company will still be around for Wrestlemania 40. Then again, ten years is a
long time in wrestling. The WWE could never go pop like WCW….could it?
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