What’s wrong with the crowd having fun? They know it’s all fake, but they still come. It’s all part of the dance. Any performer will tell you that any reaction is better than no response at all. Bring earmuffs if you don’t like the smark attacks.
If anybody’s into comics, CM Punk is co-writing the Drax miniseries for Marvel, who was portrayed by fellow former WWEster Dave Batista in the movies. I picked up the first issue, and it’s got a suitable amount of violence, gore and snarkiness.
There is an alleged ISIS threat against Survivor Series in Atlanta tomorrow, and several other events around the world, as stated by someone claiming to represent the hacker group Anonymous.
Because it’s not a legitimate reaction, they aren’t judging the wrestlers, they aren’t voicing disappointment, they’re making noise to make noise.
You can’t tell me that literally turning your back during a match that stars the person YOU ARE CHANTING FOR is “part of good fun” and has anything to do with the match? Or how about the group of people who, whenever Corbin comes out, turns the flashlight on their phones and shines it on a guy who mimics Corbin’s entrance and immediately goes and makes fun of him. It’s stupid and immature. Yeah, you can insert the “lol it’s just wrestling who cares”, but what other audience participation events would this fly in? Football? A Concert? Heyll nah. These aren’t fans, they’re just assholes who see a cheap and easy way to be on “tv” and they go home at night praying that someone notices them because they’re secretly hoping to be the next Izzy or whatever the hell
The thing is, WWE encourages this kind of behavior from the audience with the way they talk about “the Universe” and promote it when the crowd goes off-script. The night after WrestleMania 29 the Raw audience crapped on the show - WWE gave them a Slammy and reworked Fandango’s whole entrance to make “Fandangoing” into a thing. The 2013 Slammies in Seattle, the crowd refused to stop cheering for Daniel Bryan, and WWE responded by ultimately reworking their WrestleMania plans to put the title on him. The NXT crowd cheers for an indie jobber, WWE responds by making their chant into her actual ring name and flying her out to Brooklyn to work an angle at Takeover. An obsessed fan shows up at every single show dressed exactly like their favorite wrestler - WWE lets them get in the ring and pose with the subject of their obsession, and then works them into the main event match of a live special. And so on.
Right and everything you mentioned was The Universe ™ responding to the product itself, which lead to the crowd getting what they wanted, the NXT kids don’t respond to the action in the ring or what’s happening in the story, it’s like they have a script and are reading it. “Ok it’s a JJ/Gables match, we need to start by doing the Kurt Angle chant, then we move to including JJ into it, then we take the New Day chant and make it about Bayley because she hasn’t been on…”
There’s a difference between booing Reigns after the Rumble win because we wanted Bryan to win it, or cheering hard for DB when he was in the middle of the ring that one time, and literally interrupting the show with Boos because Eva Marie is trying to talk and physically not letting her talk, or chanting for people who aren’t wrestling, or chanting full goddamn sentences.
Being loud and cheering and chanting are fine when you’re responding to the match itself, or with the people in it, but the limit happens when you’re making it about yourself…and no one can deny making it about THEM and not what they want the PRODUCT to be
[QUOTE=John Cena]
I’ve been a cornerstone of WWE programming since 2002. That’s a long time, it’s more than 10 years. So much so that a portion of our audience has direct complacency with me. ‘Man, Cena holds everybody down. He doesn’t give the new guys a chance.’
From a company perspective, as you know I hold it very near and dear to my heart, the dance floor is open, boys. I’m gone, let’s see who steps up. And I like that. As much as I want to try to distance myself or as much as someone who views me would try to distance myself from WWE, I’m never going to go.
Personally, and this gives me a better perspective on Dwayne Johnson’s path, you get to a certain point and you cannot attract any more fans. Essentially, my productivity from a company standpoint … I’ve done as much as I can — 15 world championships and a myriad of other accomplishments. I don’t know what left I can do, but I still want to be able to put people in the building.
[/QUOTE]
Thus spoke the man in an interview this weekend. Sounds like he personally feels he’s coming to the end of his run as the cornerstone of the program and he’s ready to start working a lighter schedule when he comes back. Whether Vince is capable of accepting the idea of Cena not being on every single show is, of course, another question entirely.
[QUOTE=Parody Vince McMahon]
“We gotta pop the ratings! Bring in Stone Cold Steve Austin! We’ll have Cody Rhodes and the Ascension interrupt him. He’ll totally emasculate them! It’ll be great! The crowds will love it!”
[/QUOTE]
Brendon Burns, who I’ve mentioned before in this thread, mentioned in one of his standup routines the fact that Vince only sleeps about 4 hours a night. And that, as a consequence of that, he’s the kind of person who gets ideas at 3 in the morning. If you’ve ever been awake at 3 in the morning, you know that the ideas you get at that hour are seldom good ones, but the difference between Vince and the rest of us is that he has the power to put those ideas into practice and there is absolutely no one with the clout and/or guts to tell him no.
And that’s how you end up with Korean midgets trying to eat dogs on live TV.
Wikipedia’s awfully fast to update not only the winner of the match, but the time and the tournament bracket. (I canceled the Network some time back because I’ve got crappy home internet).
“You have been fined one credit for a violation of the Verbal Morality Statute.”
