Mick Foley recently made news with a tweet that seemed hostile toward the very same people who made his career - wrestling fans. In the brief missive, Foley accused NXT's live fans of thinking the show is about them, disrespecting the wrestlers, and ultimately, making the product less fun to watch. Foley's comments may not have been popular, but he's absolutely right. Over the past decade-plus, independent wrestling fans have tried to make themselves part of the show, chanting and yelling ironic, ridiculous, and even offensive things. While main WWE shows haven't been safe from that sort of behavior, it's far more noticeable in NXT, which draws the same fans to the same small arena for TV taping after TV taping. These postmodern wrestling fans may think that they're simply engaging with the product in a vocal way, but it's all to NXT's detriment. At best, the emotional impact of matches and angles is lessened by the self-congratulatory "humor," and at worst, fans with brains start to wonder why they even bother with this stuff.
Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried.
*Best Crowd of the Year, 2013
