Welcome to “New Rules”.
New Rule #1: Rather than having security remove “Goldberg” signs from fans at every event, maybe consider developing a wrestler in a way that doesn’t make millions of fans think “Goldberg”. Failing that, if you want to discourage fans from comparing that wrestler to Goldberg, don’t have that wrestler compare himself to Goldberg in your company’s magazine.
New Rule #2: Someone needs to ask Wade Barrett why he decided to put his name on the ass of his tights in big block letters. Is it like putting a ball on your car antenna to find it easier? Does he lose his ass in the parking lot?
New Rule #3: Ring Of Honor needs to quit with the spam email just because I’ve purchased a few DVD’s from them. Don’t get me wrong, the recent string of Ring Of Honor “Best Of” DVD’s are fantastic, especially for the price – and I know that the DVD’s are about all they have going for them these days. But if I’m ordering DVD’s with ROH content from 2003-2007, they should be able to tell just from what I bought that I’m probably not going to order an ROH iPPV in 2012 with Rhyno in the main event.
New Rule #4: If most of WWE’s current fans were old enough (or mentally fit enough) to vote, they would vote for Linda McMahon. For President. Of the world.
Lots of political scrutiny came Linda’s way during her last senate run. And it’s why, during that run, Vince McMahon went to WWE fans and asked them all to take to YouTube and “Stand Up For WWE”.
If you don’t remember or never looked, that request by Vince led to an AMAZING number of mutans posting videos defending their beloved WWE show. This proved to be quite the step backwards, since it allowed the rest of the world to get a glimpse of the TYPE of people who are willing to “Stand Up For WWE”. Back in the day, when Swayze and myself were writing for a much smaller site, we watched a whole bunch of these for an article Swayze was doing. The videos are, and I promise no exaggeration is needed here, at LEAST three hundred thousand times more entertaining than WWE itself.
Seriously. If you want to take a look at the type of people who are willing to take to YouTube and defend Linda McMahon or WWE, just go there and search “Stand Up For WWE”. Sad as the results are, I dare you to tell me you’re not entertained as hell by these people. It’s like a Maury Povich Troubled Teen Boot Camp episode fucked a Jerry Springer Teen Fat Camp episode and the premature offspring exploded all over your monitor.
Possibly my favorite one of these was made by a very enthusiastic teenage girl. This video is below.
( I may suck at embedding YouTube videos, so just in case that didn’t work, the video can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7sI-hQ9S3I )
This girl’s name is Jamie Calloway. She’s in her early teens. Isn’t she cute? Fairly normal looking, braces, pictures of her favorite WWE Superstars on the wall behind her. When you start this video, you think it’s just going to be some nice kid standing up for a show that they’re into. In fact, she begins by talking about how she wants to marry The Undertaker. It’s cute. What could be wrong with this video, right?
Well… if you don’t want to watch the video… here are the highlights.
25 seconds in, she says she’s NOT “standing up” for WWE’s “current product” in this video. She says she doesn’t like the PG show… but that she does like wrestling, so she’ll still watch it. She says she’ll watch it no matter how bad it gets. 54 seconds in, she says she does NOT want Linda McMahon to win her senate bid. But NOT because of the reasons YOU don’t want her to NOT win the election. Got it? Great. SHE doesn’t want Linda to win so WWE can go back to TV-14. At the 1:30 mark, she says she IS going to “stand up” for WWE in this video. Less than 2 minutes in and she’s done a 180.
At 1:40, she says WE are going to watch HER watch a video of a talk show host criticizing Linda McMahon. This is followed by about a minute of watching her making scrunchy faces and sarcastic remarks at the guy in the video. Then, my personal highlight happens – I busted out laughing when I saw this part, and I promise you that watching the video is worth it for this alone – at 2:35, Linda’s critic points out that Linda has the finances to run an effective campaign. The girl responds to this by firmly stating to the guy on the other side of the screen:
“YEAH, AND YOU DON’T, FAGGOT.”
Amazing.
The girl then goes on to say that the guy “doesn’t know shit” (her words) about the show because he doesn’t watch the show personally. THEN she says that he’s talking about things that happened “in the past”, and therefore it doesn’t matter. She then says that Linda WAS in the company when a lot of the more risque stuff on the show went down… but that she’s NOT a part of the show ANYMORE. So the fact that she was there when it happened is of no consequence… because she’s not there now.
This cute girl in her early teens then spends the rest of the video cussing like a sailor at the talk show host (at 5:35 she exclaims at him “it’s fucking FAKE!”) and attributing a bunch of arguments to him that he never made. She then says that she liked watching all the Risky Attitude Era stuff even though there’s no WAY she could have been more than 5 years old when it happened. And she finishes by supporting Linda for senate.
Which is the opposite intent she had when she went to make the video.
Now, this is just a kid, so I’m not ragging on her. She doesn’t know any better. She’s a kid and a fan who just likes WWE. (Or is she? She goes back and forth so it’s hard to tell. Let’s say she is.) Good for her. Regardless, this girl perfectly represents the WWE’s current fanbase, both young and old. Completely inconsistent, off-topic, bizarre justifications, attributing false arguments to others, defending the show despite not liking it, and short-term memory loss.
And even though she doesn’t even LIKE the WWE product… she would vote Linda in.
For no reason.
Insane as it is, it’s tough not to be impressed with the blind loyalty that WWE inspires in a lot of their fans.
New Rule #5: Regardless of how you feel about her bid, the fact that Linda McMahon was even able to get as far as she did against her opponent, with the kind of dirt she has under her fingernails, is impressive.
Now, I understand that WWE in itself is an extremely successful organization and they do quite a bit of very commendable charity work. But being a member of the senate has absolutely nothing to do with wrestling or charity, and everything that WWE has done outside of wrestling and charity has been an abysmal failure.
A bodybuilding fed, a restaurant, a football league, a movie division, and now, a TV network and a social media platform. Every attempt to branch out from their core competency has been a miserable failure.
Hell, in a lot of cases, do you know what business actually did a lot better than most of WWE’s ventures?
TNA.
Now, I haven’t commented too much on TNA this year because quite honestly, they’ve given no one any reason to give a shit, or, especially during the last few months, think they’re ever going to evolve into a competitive product. And no, Martin Shaw, since you’re going to ask, I’m not comparing TNA to WWE – what I’m saying is that TNA has done something that almost all of WWE’s ventures can’t – simply stay in business. That’s right. Most of WWE’s businesses have performed more poorly than TNA.
Don’t get me wrong – TNA is light years behind the WWE and I doubt they’ll ever get anywhere near them. And I’m happy to give credit where credit is due – despite all kinds of business failures, WWE is profitable – and has continued to be profitable, as I said a few weeks ago, despite numerous failed ventures, decreasing viewership, and a recession.
So while I’m not trying to take anything away from Linda or the WWE’s success, I am saying that the ability to make profit doesn’t reflect an individual’s character. And if the individual – Linda the senate candidate in this case – wants to stand on WWE management successes, then fine – but she also needs to stand behind her WWE management failures, doesn’t she?
And those failures I’m talking about are not just failing at everything that isn’t wrestling. The business failures mentioned above pale in comparison to the fact that WWE is an organization that, while successful, has been embroiled in scandal for most of it’s history. And the management failure is that they can never get away from them and never do anything but sweep them under the rug. Steroids and the COUNTLESS performers dying at a young age are just the tip of the iceberg. Chris Benoit is the obvious example of something they immediately swept under the rug and erased from history almost immediately. Another is Steve Austin, possibly the most popular superstar in their history, beating the shit out of several of his wives. And let’s not forget, the way WWE portrays women sets women in general back about 30 years.
And the kids – WWE was almost brought down by the “ring boys” scandal in the 1980’s where WWE had no choice but to pay off the plaintiffs and fire Pat Patterson. Management then made the decision to hire Patterson back and employ him for almost two decades following – because being in the environment that allowed him to do the crime in the first place was exactly the help he needed. And over the years, how have they evolved? Well, about 10 years later, Jerry Lawler’s “episodes” with kids took place. How did management react? Jerry Lawler dismissed… and then hired back. And, like Patterson, he’s been employed with Linda McMahon’s company for almost 2 decades following.
And then there’s the man that Linda chose to marry, Vince McMahon. Rather than listing all of the dirt that there is on this man here, I’ll let you go and look it up yourself. Many things you’ll find him talking about himself, like how he bragged about how he cheats on his wife in Playboy.
Now, I understand that most politicians are dirty and I understand that there are a TON of people in the senate with WAY more dirt. But that dirt can’t possibly be anywhere near as public or as easy to find as it is with Linda. Can it? CAN IT?!?!
All things considered, she got slaughtered – but not by anywhere near as much as I would have thought. You must admit… given all of the above, the fact that she’s even been able to get anywhere near her opponent is impressive in itself.
But for now, thankfully, most WWE fans and people like “YEAH AND YOU DON’T FAGGOT” girl aren’t old enough to vote.
That’s it for this week. As usual, any and all comments and thoughts are always appreciated, or you can feel free to e-mail me at bdouglas@4sternstaging.com. If you have any questions you’d like me to answer, ask away and I’ll throw it into an “Interinactivity”. And feel free to follow me on Twitter @BlairADouglas if you’re into such things.
This has been “New Rules”. Thanks for reading and have a great weekend.
I’ll be in my trailer.
