10 Things Everybody Gets Wrong About WWE

This list is written in response to a certain set of Internet fans and their insistence that WWE is the best by virtue of it being the biggest, as if One Direction are a better band than Deafheaven, Titanic is a better film than Blade Runner, McDonald's is a better restaurant than...

You know the type: FDM Dave Meltzer trolls who will tell you that every Japanese wrestler to have ever existed is a bland spot monkey with no grasp of psychology. From peak All Japan's mastery of physical and psychological storytelling, to modern New Japan's unreal advancement of it, to the blood and exploding guts of FMW, to the ultra-realism of RINGS, to the absurd high farce of DDT, they're all the same: spot monkey extractors of Meltzer jism.

They will say the same thing of independent wrestlers, as if WWE's 2019 roster isn't almost entirely comprised of performers who made their name on the scene. Did you know that Florida Championship Wrestling is the greatest wrestling school ever created, because it fed directly into WWE and operated under WWE's rules?

"FC-dub! FC-dub! FC-dub!"

This isn't 'Everybody', clearly, but Jesus H. F*cking Christ are there enough of them, and are they loud and obnoxious enough, to merit an off-the-chest kick-back.

The actual meaning of the word 'draw' is often not considered.

Because WWE is the biggest pro wrestling company on the planet - not that it considers itself a pro wrestling company, but regardless - many fans are adamant that its stars are the biggest and brightest. They must be: they perform in front of the most fans, and so this must be true. It's measurably true.

It's surface thinking; delve beneath, into Seth Rollins' damning quarter hours, and the opposite is almost true.

Booked in any other promotion, with the same presentation and booking - with only those famous initials removed - those talents would not draw. In fact, given the crumbling state of WWE's base, and the drastic amount of viewers haemorrhaged between this year and last, the booking is so foul and the talents so miscast that they are repelling viewers. They are - mostly through no fault of their own because "own" suggests an agency that just isn't there, which is a significant part of the issue - anti-draws. They are not drawing fans to their act, their programmes, their matches, and they have several generations of exposure and global profile behind them.

WWE's top stars are failing to even retain the core base, which by definition shouldn't be going anywhere.