That Being Said: An Open Letter To The IWC

An open letter to the “internet wrestling community”

I don’t want to get nostalgic, but do you remember when you thought wrestling was at it’s high point?

It might have been In the 80′s, with guys like Hogan & Macho Man in the WWF, or the birth of the Four Horseman in the NWA.

It might have been the 90′s, with the NWO in WCW, WWF’s Attitude era & ECW’s mix of brutality & technicality.

It might have been the 00′s, with new names like Cena coming into the spotlight, the birth of TNA, ROH…

It isn’t right now, is it?

If you think everything is fantastic in professional wrestling right now, you need to really look at what TNA is doing with the Knockouts (both on & off screen), what WWE is doing with “The Divas” & read up on Orton’s bag-shitting escapades.

You also need to look at The Pope & Devon being thrown together as a tag team for no other reason than “hey, we have two black guys”. Mexican America portraying a stereotype because TNA doesn’t really know how to make heels & faces other than by resorting to the lazy stereotype bullshit. It wasn’t long ago that The Jarretts walked down the ramp wearing sombreros & ponchos while grasping a pair of maracas (Karen) & a fake AAA title (Jeff). Beer Money seem to be given semi-racist dialogue on a regular basis, but those guys are faces because they portray blue collar guys (more booking based on weak stereotypes).

“WWE doesn’t have racist storylines though, that problem is just Russo & Bischoff’s predjudism leaking into TNA’s writing”

So Sheamus was getting ready for a feud with Mark Henry & they started calling him “The Great White”. As much as this is going to break your little heart, he’s not a fucking shark. ”The Great White Hope”? I could understand that. “The Great White Dope”? Maybe if he was acting like a buffoon. The Great White what then? His gimmick is that he’s white? He’s been pale since the day he walked into Titan Towers, so it’s not like they needed to point it out to us. The Great White (guy) vs Mark Henry, the heel. Is it that much of a stretch of the imagination to think that maybe, just maybe, WWE want us to think if Mark Henry as “The Evil Black Guy”?

Alberto Del Rio is a heel due being portrayed as a greedy Mexican on a regular basis & it is WWE’s booking by stereotype that’s led to him being cheered every time he as much as touches Cena (well, that & Cena’s over-saturation).

Once we block all that stuff out & concentrate on the matches themselves, how often do you enjoy them? Leave a comment & tell me the last match you watched & thought “wow, that was amazing”.

What we seem to be doing is putting up with things, then going online to defend what we’ve just watched against other people defending what they watched. You’ve seen ”Hey, Kelly Kelly is really coming along, i’m glad she’s not stuck in TNA  with those blow up dolls” followed by “You know what, Velvet Sky deserves this push & at least she can learn from actual wrestlers while in TNA” & then “Fuck you, WWE is way better than TNA, at least their wrestlers aren’t on food stamps…”

WWE, TNA, ROH, JCW, NWA Hollywood, Chikara, DGUSA… It doesn’t matter what product you’re watching, all that matters is that what you’re watching is good.

If I like TNA & you like WWE, do you think that means I can’t appreciate something like Taker vs HHH from this year’s ‘Mania? Do you think you can’t possibly like AJ Styles or Samoa Joe because you’re part of the “WWE UNIVERSE”? You can be a fan of one promotion & still be into things that another is doing, hell, you can even be a fan of multiple promotions.

You can also call shit when you see it, and lately, we’ve all seen a lot.

We’re expected to pay monthly (sometimes twice a month) for PPVs from each promotion & spend 3 hours of our life that we’ll never get back watching them, on top of the 4+ hours of weekly programming we need to watch in order to keep up with the storylines. Are we buying the PPVs because the card looks amazing? From here it looks like we’re doing it out of loyalty to the promotion, regardless of how good/bad it sounds on paper. We all seem to have forgotten that the promotions work for us, we pay them. Bischoff can talk about 10%’s & the “IWC”, but him, Dixie, Vince & his shareholders…  they all have to answer to the revenue stream.

It’s not me vs you, you vs another reader, WWE vs TNA, ROH or any other promotion.

It’s WWE, TNA, ROH, ETC. vs OUR MONEY & OUR TIME.

– Martin F. Shaw (the 14th of France)

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Excellent stuff. This really is the bottom line, ladies and gentlemen. It’s okay to call something terrible when it is.

Take, for example, some of the worst main-event-level matches we’ve seen in the last decade. Goldberg / Lesnar. Triple H / Kozlov. Triple H / Steiner. Great Khali / Kane. Guess what? Every single one of those matches were better than Mark Henry against Shaemus or Randy Orton. Every single one. And those matches were horrible. All of them. The guy has been bottom-mid-card for 15 years, and it’s not like he’s doing anything all of a sudden that’s better than before. But he gets a pass because this is AS good as Mark Henry gets?!?! Well, that Kozlov match was as good as Kozlov gets – where’s HIS pass?

They’re never going to put on better stuff if people don’t stop watching or keep defending it. I made this point a few months ago – do you think Vince would have given us the Attitude era if his ratings hadn’t been in the toilet and his company in danger? You bet your sweet lawn jockey he wouldn’t have.

And yet, people rip on the “Vote Of Confidence”, but not in Mark Henry’s main-event run. Hey, that Vote Of Confidence was pretty painful stuff, you’ll get no argument from me. If I have a choice of watching even a half-decent match against that Vote Of Confidence, I’ll take the match every single time. But weighing the Vote Of Confidence against watching Mark Henry fall on top of his victims and axe-handle people to death? Pack up the wagon and call the next of kin, because I’m watching the Vote.

Or, don’t watch either, or at the very least, watch it and call it like it is. Because both are terrible. We all know it. Think about showing the Mark Henry title match to someone who used to be into wrestling and isn’t anymore. What do you think they’d say? Legit question.

“I want change, and I’ll stand and fight for it even if I’m alone.”
– CM Punk via Twitter last night

I’ll be in my trailer.

Blair