If I Could Be Serious For A Moment 02.17.09: Oh No You're Not

Posted by Chris Lansdell on 02.17.2009

So you think you're a wrestling fan? You might be surprised what that should mean.

Greetings, humanity! Thank you for joining me for If I Could Be Serious For A Moment, your weekly dose of intelligent wrestling discourse. Having spent a week looking at 8 weeks of comments, I'm raring to go with this week's topic. There will be another commentfest after the next 8 weeks, but for the meantime…

BANNER!

Fanning the Flames

Are you a wrestling fan? Chances are that if you're reading this, you will answer "yes". It's also a fairly safe bet that you'd be wrong. True wrestling fans are few and far between these days, even among the writers on this site, and that's a sad situation. "Oh shut up Lansdell!" comes the cry. "How can you say I'm not a fan? I've watched every Lance Storm match in every promotion!" "I'm a wrestling fan, I've been watching WWE religiously since Austin was The Ringmaster!" "Of course I'm a fan, I watch puro all the time! No real fan watches that WWE crap." Allow me to point out the delicious tautology in these exclamations.

Everywhere you go, I'll follow you down

So, you love Lance Storm. You're such a huge fan that you even bought 3 RoH DVDs and sought out rare tapes of Stampede and Cornette's old fed to see him in action. You have his site on your RSS feed and you bought Jericho's book just because Lance Storm was mentioned in it. The screensaver on your phone is a picture of you and him at an RoH show in Toronto (no joke, that's actually my screensaver…), and you have 4 different autographed 8x10s of him on your wall. You won't watch much these days since he's retired. A little spooky maybe, dedicated certainly, but it doesn't make you a wrestling fan. It makes you a Lance Storm fan.

While in high school I started watching basketball. I was instantly drawn to Charles Barkley, more for his attitude and personality than his play. I became a Phoenix Suns fan, but when he got traded I started cheering for the Rockets. Same situation: I wasn't a Suns fan, a Rockets fan or even a basketball fan in particular; I was a Barkley fan. Still am, but now I am also a Raptors fan. I couldn't (and very rarely can now) watch extended periods of games not involving the person/team I liked, with the exception of the playoffs.

It is possible to be a fan of one wrestler and a fan of wrestling, but many people today are fans of certain wrestlers and will not watch anything he's not on. Listen to the screaming Cena fans and ask yourself how many of them would still show up if Cena wasn't there.

A real company fan

So, you've been watching WWE since Austin was The Ringmaster. Excellent. Over 10 years of fandom, countless hours of TV and over a hundred pay per views. One shudders to calculate how much that's cost you. That makes you a wrestling fan right? Wrong. It barely qualifies as a WWF/E fan.

Loving one promotion is not loving wrestling, no more than loving college basketball is the same as loving all basketball. This particular phenomenon is often exacerbated by a deep-seated need to bash all wrestling that isn't of your chosen promotion. Don't believe me? Read some of the comments on this site. WWE news items or TV reports are invaded by TNA fans and WWE haters, and vice versa. RoH fans act all superior to both and consequently get shat on by both.

Compare this with a friend of mine who considers himself a massive hockey fan. Such a massive fan, in fact, that he will watch Montreal Canadiens games in French, despite not speaking a word of the language. The thing is, he won't watch any other teams. If Montreal isn't playing, then hockey might as well not be happening.

There is a school of thought that says this person doesn't even count as a WWF/E fan. There's no question that this person has seen some of the best storylines and North American wrestling in the past 10 years, but what about everything that came before? Would a real WWF/E fan not try and get hold of older stuff, to learn the history? How can anyone consider themselves a WWF/E fan without having seen the Hogan years, which arguably made the company? Or the New Generation years, which came closer to killing it than anything else? It's a strong argument, especially with the changes in professional wrestling in that time frame. Even TNA and RoH, despite being around for only 6 years, have changed significantly. TNA has switched emphasis to established stars, while RoH has gone to a more entertainment-based style.

People who are fans of promotions and who will not search out older shows often shy away from watching these events because they already know how things will turn out. Why should I watch a Brian Danielson title match when I know he doesn't lose? This also points to not being a wrestling fan. The result of a match is only part of the quality of that match. Certainly a bad finish or result can hurt a match, but it can't completely negate everything that went before.

Wrestling in its Puro form

So, you watch puro? WWE and TNA are garbage so you can't watch them; real wrestling doesn't need storylines or backstage segments or interviews. That makes you a wrestling fan, surely.

Actually, it's the wrestling equivalent of racism. If Hitler were a smark, he would have written Mein Catch Strong Style. That might be a bit strong, but the general idea is there. The belief that Japanese wrestling is superior purely because it's Japanese wrestling is snobbery in its highest form, especially if this belief comes at the exclusion of other wrestling. Now I love me some good King's Road or strong style action, but I also enjoy watching Australian indies for crying out loud. It also doesn't mean that I think anything else is garbage. Dismissing any type of wrestling out of hand is a sure sign that you're not a wrestling fan, you're a fan of Japanese wrestling, or lucha, or sports entertainment.

I'm sure we've all come across people (*cough* Meltzer *cough*) who think that no match can reach five stars unless it has Japanese people involved in it. There are also people who will overrate a match based on the same condition. Not only does this call your fandom into question, it also does a disservice to other wrestlers who give their all to entertain you, but happen to have been born elsewhere. That's without even discussing the fact that all wrestling promotions have their share of crap, something often overlooked by the rabid fans of puro and lucha. For every Kobashi five-star classic there's a tag match where the average age of the participants is 45. For every junior heavyweight spotfest there's a woman in dominatrix gear being impregnated by Muta's mist and giving birth to Akebono. You get the idea: there's shit everywhere. Watching the shit on the off chance that something special happens, not matter where it comes from, makes you a fan.

Fulfil your fan-tasy

Now that we know what a fan isn't, how about we look at what a fan is? To be considered a true wrestling fan, we've seen that it's not enough to watch one promotion faithfully, or follow one wrestler, or one type of wrestling. It's like drinking Pinot Noir and saying you like wine. Unless you've tried it all, you can't say you like it all or even dislike it all. There's a good one to throw at your friends/parents/significant others the next time they tell you they hate wrestling.

To me the key to being a true wrestling fan is in variety. A true wrestling fan will watch wrestling whenever and wherever possible, not necessarily to the exclusion of all else but to the extent that their wrestling viewing is not solely based on one person, promotion or country. That's not to say you have to like everything you see, but at least see it before you determine you don't like it. Try watching some puro, some joshi, some indies. Give TNA a try, you might like it. YouTube is your friend, check out some old matches or lesser-known wrestlers and pick out where they went wrong. Try it all, my friends. Not all wrestling is created equal. There will be stuff you don't like, but at least you can say you tried. The worst that can happen is that you will see bad wrestling, which will make you appreciate good wrestling all the more.

By expanding your horizons, you will increase your knowledge base. Not every wrestling fan needs to be a walking trivia database, but I don't know how anyone can call themselves a fan and not know that Pat Patterson was the first Intercontinental champion, or that Ultimo Dragon is one of the greatest cruiserweights to ever step between the ropes. If you are a fan of something, you should naturally want to know more about it, more than is immediately available. It's not hard to find wrestling DVDs, or even to read wrestling websites. Putting in that little extra effort makes the difference between being a wrestling fan and being a casual viewer, or a WWE/TNA fan.

Wrestling these days is so much more than just the shows. A wrestling fan supports the companies by buying merchandise, ordering the odd PPV, visiting their web sites and recommending them to people that would like them. If you've watched lucha and are not fond of it, but you know people who love Rey Misterio, suggest they check out CMLL or AAA. It's not hard. Smaller companies rely on word of mouth to succeed, and the success of Indy feds directly contributes to the success of bigger ones by making the upcoming talent more experienced.

One other thing that is absolutely required: dedication. Is the idea of missing Raw as abhorrent? Have you continued watching shows after they jumped the shark, just in case they turn it around? Do you plan around wrestling events? Is anything more important than WrestleMania Sunday? Are you adding HDNet as soon as RoH hits it? Do you watch Galavision (or whatever the Mexican channel is) JUST for lucha? These are all signs of fandom. Sure you might not go that far, but you can't be a true wrestling fan if wrestling is only something you watch every now and then.

What about me? What about Lansdell?

So am I a wrestling fan? I'm here on my high horse, telling you that you're probably not a wrestling fan, but can I say any different for me? Well, not really. I do not watch lucha, cannot stand it and likely never will. I have very, VERY limited knowledge of anyone involved in it, and this is despite speaking Spanish. It just looks so fake and even more staged than anything WWE or TNA put out. I'll watch almost anything else but I draw the line there.

I also don't buy much merchandise. Part of that is because shipping costs to Canada are high, but it's mostly because I'm stingy. I do buy DVDs, but I have so many still in the cellophane that I've even stopped doing that recently. I literally have dozens of DVDs waiting to be reviewed. (Note to The Boss: Later this week. Promise.) Up until recently, I would not miss Raw, Impact, Smackdown or any other wrestling I could find. Now I will quite happily watch basketball or any number of other things instead.

So no, I guess I'm not a true wrestling fan. I have wide-ranging tastes, but there's just some stuff I'll never care about, and I'm OK with that. At least I've tried it and I know what I like. There is so much more to wrestling than what's available on free TV and until you've explored it, you don't know wrestling.

A word on The K-Money Phenomenon

Every week, Jeremy Thomas runs the Wrestler of the Week feature, where 411 writers vote for their top 5 performers of the week. The votes are tabulated and a weekly winner is announced. These votes are also tracked and each year around WrestleMania we announce the wrestler of the year. This column generates some vicious feedback, partly because it's subjective and that sort of thing always does, but partly because some writers prefer to vote for happenings that might otherwise be missed. It got to the point that Ari Berenstein polled all the writers to get their voting criteria, and posted a companion column to show how we voted. It helped, but there was still a very vocal minority who lambasted any first-place vote for anyone outside TNA and WWE. The most vocal (and fastest to comment, normally) of these was and is K-Money. According to this perfect example of a non-fan, nothing that happens in an Indy can possibly be as important as something that happens on national TV, because 800 people see it as opposed to 18,000. He is normally both reviled and adored by various other commenters on the column. His favourite targets are Berman, Byers and Bauer, the Three Bs if you will, because of all the writers they pay the most attention to foreign and independent goings-on.

Mr Money has a point. HHH winning a world title is generally more impactful on the wrestling world than Mike Quackenbush winning the NWA Junior Heavyweight belt, or even Bryan Danielson beating Nigel McGuinness. As much as many of us love ROH, CHIKARA, NOAH or what have you, they don't have the global reach and significance of WWE and possibly not even TNA. Why then should we give more weight to their accomplishments?

The answer lies in the companion column. Some of us feel that the non-kayfabe significance of a win to a person's career is more important than the number of people who saw it. When HHH wins his 13th title, is it really significant to his career any more? Is it more significant than say, Tyler Black winning his FIRST title? This ties in to the question of what makes a fan: being able to put things in perspective. Sure the size of the audience is relevant, and if Nigel and HHH both defend their title then HHH should probably win out, but things are rarely that even. The problem with K-Money is that he refuses to acknowledge that any other wrestling exists. Anything below TNA might as well be in a high school gym in front of 30 people. This is EXACTLY what I'm talking about in this column

Despite the varied voting habits of the writers, we normally get the end result right. When CM Punk one the title on Raw, he was a unanimous choice. The Wrestler of the Year winners have all been nearly impossible to argue with, and if Jericho wins this year (it's looking pretty damn certain), it'll be another correct result.

Moment over.

So, Edge beat the hell out of Kofi and took his place in the Raw Elimination Chamber. Good thing that policy doesn't exist everywhere, or Arnie might beat up the next Republican nominee and run for President.

You put your Mickey Rourke in, you take your Mickey Rourke out, you shake up WrestleMania and you jerk your fans about. I can guarantee you that not ONE person who fantasy-booked a WrestleMania card after the Rumble is still batting 1.000 with their predictions. For what it's worth, I reckon we'll still get Rourke wrestling.

The fan altercation in Victoria between Jericho and a woman is a work. He's going to cut a promo on Steve Austin saying that Austin should watch the tape to learn how it SHOULD be done.

I don't do dream matches, I don't fantasy book, but I would LOVE to see Beer Money vs Miz and Morrison. While I'm on the topic, why doesn't WWE give their teams names any more?

Tyson Kidd? Will his partner be Billy the Tomko? Nice debut though.

Christian's remixed theme = NUMEROUS PURCHASES~! On the same topic, I will probably buy the new WWE music CD just for Randy Orton's theme.

Don't look now, but it's been a long time since anyone was suspended for Wellness…

Remember that news story about Vince demanding that DH Smith be brought up to the main roster ASAP? Boy he sure looks good on…ummm…what show is he on again?

Matt Morgan…Hernandez…Abyss…Brutus Magnus…Kong…TNA is stacked with big men who can really wrestle. WWE? Not so much.

Reading Elijah Burke's interview this weekend, I realised just how much great talent the WWE have thrown away. This guy could have been BIG.

Michael Weyer consistently puts out a great column every week. Check it out.

*SPOILER ALERT! READ NO FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NOT READ ABOUT THURSDAY'S IMPACT!*

If anyone has a clue what TNA are doing with their roster, would they be so kind as to let me know? You keep BG James, who's done nothing in months, but release Petey Williams and Eric Young who have both done everything that was asked of them and shone while doing it?

That's it for me folks. Join me next week when I look at starting a promotion with the unsigned talent available right now, and the mistakes to avoid. Until then Stay Cool, Rock Hard.

Lansdellicious – Out.