Only two questions this time. Must be a slow week, but that’s OK, because I can catch up easier. And since blockquotes apparently don’t work on Insidepulse, I can try new and fun formatting of the letters today.
First up, not a question, but a correction from Chris Jericho’s editor, Jason Pinter, in response to my calling his book ghost-written.
Hey Scott – Not sure if you remember me, but I used to work at Warner Books and was Chris Jericho’s editor. I believe we emailed a couple of times.
I wanted to correct your statement that Chris used a ghostwriter. That’s not true. Every word of the book was written by Chris, he used what’s called a ‘collaborator’ whose job was to help with organization and structure, not prose. I worked hand-in-hand with them both, and can say with authority that it was very important to Chris that his book not an ‘as told to’ autobio, especially since Chris has a degree in journalism.
It’s a pretty big and important distinction and one that should be clarified for your readers.
I hope all is well, and I look forward to reading your new book.
Sincerely,
Jason Pinter
Thanks to Jason for clarifying that one. I had likely blocked it out of my mind because I was so heart-broken at being rejected by Jericho at the time, but now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
First actual question! At least I think there’s a question in it. And it feels purple to me for some reason.
Do you really think this million dollar contest is really going to bring back old fans? I personally doubt it, and I dont really want WWE fans to come back just for greed. They will leave as soon as the contest is over, and then it will be back to low numbers.
I recently did a blog on the WWE Fan Nation about the reason why the fans left after the 1990’s. There are an awful lot of reasons, but I focused on one in particular, the change of the name of the company from The World Wrestling Federation to World Wrestling Entertainment. Changing the name was not their choice, but they sort of tried to save face by acting like it was with the Get the F out campaign. I think that was horrible mistake, I mean they pretty much were saying it’s time to get rid of the history of the company. To the fans, to the people who have been watching since the 80s and before that, its not just the history of the company, its a history of our lives. We all remember where we were when Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero embraced in the ring, even though it’s really painful now. Sure all of the deaths have ruined alot of the memories, but not always. What ruined our memories was the fact that the WWE.com website said something like "Watch this video of Wrestlemania VII where Hulk Hogan won the WWE title against Sgt. Slaughter." That really pissed me off, and its been a hard time for me to accept WWE. For years I would only refer to it as the WWF, in hopes that somehow the Wildlife fund would change their greedy minds.
I think WWE really need to mount a legal battle to get the name back, but I also have a question. Why does WWE programming from the past always have World Wrestling Federation unedited, but is almost always referred to as WW-, or sometimes disgustingly as WWE. This is a bigger problem to me then the lack of theme songs, I have all the ones that I need. If they can use the words World Wrestling Federation, why don’t they use that now? They could refer to the company initials as WWE, but keep the powerful name World Wrestling Federation. I think the changing name was the number one reason that the WWF’s bubble bust at around same time it did the same for the first generation of dot com businesses. Though I think it was poetic that Hulk Hogan was the last offical World Wrestling Federation Champion love him or hate him, I don’t think anybody can deny that he deserved it.
I always wanted to know why the trial was in England, and what you think is the reason the fans left the company
In fact the ratings are in and they lost viewers for this week’s show, if I’m not mistaken, so scratch another stupid desperation plan. I’m kind of amused by Vince getting Rickrolled (a reader actually sent me that link and asked "Was this deliberate and is Brian Gewirtz that big of a dork in the first place?" and my answer was "No, but yes") but it would be just like the WWE to get zinged by an internet meme that’s already considered passe by the online culture.
Anyway, the main crux of the letter here is that one of the main reasons for the departure of much of their fanbase from the 90s is the change from WWF to WWE, and I have to vehemently disagree. Considering how little most wrestling fans care about history and how quickly the transition from WWF to WWE occurred with a minimum of fan protest, I’d say the change was more of a hilarious capper to their downfall from the glory years, rather than the direct cause of anything in itself. There’s really a more simple explanation for the loss of fanbase: They were marketing to fickle college students, who then grew up and found something else to watch instead. Wrestling traditionally has a seven-year turnover rate and as long as you can weather the storm in the lean years, fans will probably get on a nostalgia kick and come back. Or, you can do like they’re trying now and market to children with guys like John Cena and the Hardy Boyz, thus hooking them young enough to form good memories of our so-called sport in their minds and making them bitter and cynical fans later on, like myself. Given that they already whined about spending millions on rebranding from WWF to WWE as it is, spending more millions to buy the name back would be pretty idiotic and irresponsible to the shareholders to boot.
But just to come back to the original point again, it’s silly to say that fans left the company, because they’re making more money now than they ever have, even at the peak of the company in 2000. Ratings suck and domestic interest is down, sure, but they can spend the next two years as a purely international touring company and still make enough money to buy and sell the rest of the wrestling world 100 times over, even if they never aired another episode of RAW again. So to clarify, the problem is not gaining old viewers back, it’s figuring out how to squeeze a new international audience for the same amount of money that the old audience was giving up. Vince is panicking about the ratings for reasons entirely separate from lost fanbases — he’s worried about lost ad revenues, which is a far bigger problem. North American sponsors can’t easily shill to, say German fans, which is why winning back the apathetic American audience seems so much important than it really is.
Finally, the WWF trial took place in England because that’s where the original contract between the WWF and the Fund was breached. By the WWF I might add. A contract that Vince himself offered to the Fund, and without which there probably would have been no legal basis for the Fund to sue in the first place, ironically enough. Basically Vince gave them a legal document saying that he could legally use the WWF initials in the US only so long as he never altered the logo or toured internationally as "The WWF" (because the Fund was considered more well known by that name abroad, but it was decided that US audiences knew the wrestling promotion better by that name, I suppose). Starting in 1998, Vince proceeded to violate both portions of the agreement quite blatantly, and thus got sued over it. And lost, badly. I mean, really, even by Jerry McDevitt’s low standards they really got boned by the Fund but good.
And now, a list. Yay. Feels gold to me.
Since you seem to love lists so much..
What incident(or incidents if you prefer) in wrestling do you think have
been blown out of all proportion? Where people make out is was a majorly
significant event, when it wasn’t? Some of mine would be…
1)Pillman’s Got a Gun: RAW never really got "Attitude" until a year later,
and this actually made USA come down on "risque" stuff.
2)DX "invades" WCW in a tank: Sure, it was a cool visual, but so what?
3)Chris Jericho "unifies" the WWF/E and WCW/World Titles: Nobody cared
about the Big Gold Belt at this point, and they were split/brand extended
again anyway
4)Daniel Puder "shoots" on Kurt Angle: People STILL talk about this crap.
Why? Some idiot tried to get himself over by "shooting" on Angle, and
where’s Puder today?
5)The Fingerpoke of Doom: WCW’s REAl stupidity came later that year, and
made the Fingerpoke look like Shakespeare by comparison…
The Puder one I actually do get, because it was pretty symbolic of the growing dominance of MMA and how clueless the WWE was (and still is) about what they were facing with it. That Puder didn’t amount to anything is beside the point.
I actually don’t think anyone was making that big of a deal out of the Jericho thing at the time, either. The "WCW" belt was considered a lame duck title anyway long before he unified them.
Definitely agree about DX’s invasion of WCW. Sean Waltman joining the group was a much bigger moment.
I think for me the ones that bug the most are the cool bump visuals that are endlessly replayed for weeks and then forgotten the next month. I mean, yeah, Jeff Hardy coming off a cage onto a guy is great for a bit, or Big Show chokeslamming Undertaker through a ring or taking a superplex and breaking the ring is neat in the short-term, but a few people still talk about those moments like they were somehow defining moments for the promotion, when really Foley’s dive off the cell already set the bar higher than anyone could follow. A minor gripe, sure, but it’s my column. Interesting idea for discussion, though.
And we’re out…
