"Those that think that the fans don't know what the fans really want, generally continue to downtrend. It's simple marketing 101. Listen to the paying customers and allow them to guide you to what some refer to the Promised Land or, better said, the land of profitability." - Jim Ross.
Zack Ryder, Damien Sandow, Jack Swagger, and most of all, Daniel Bryan. These are men who began receiving good to great crowd reactions organically, despite lousy booking and character development. But management simply didnt care. They had their own stars in mind to push like Batista and Roman Reigns. How well has that turned out? At one point, besides Bryan, Curtis Axel was given more of an honest chance than all of the others combined, and NO ONE was asking for that except HHH. How would Sandows career have looked had he been given victories over Hunter and paired with Paul Heyman? Back to Bryan, you can point to his involvement in the WrestleMania XXX main event as WWE listening, but it was only due to a variety of circumstances that it worked out that way. He was slated to fight Sheamus at Mania, while CM Punk was getting Hunter, and Batista vs. Randy Orton would take the main event. Then, Punk quit, and Batista met one of the most hostile crowd reactions seen in some time. Vince caved and let Bryan in. He was forced to, as he clearly didnt want WrestleMania ending in a chorus of boos. On the other side of things, even negative crowd reactions are ignored. The Big Shows Please retire! chant is NOT a joke. Most fans yelling that are legitimately burnt out on watching him. Hes been in nearly 800 televised matches since 1999 when he debuted in WWE (not even counting his WCW tenure). There is just nothing more the character can do! Yet his push remains. We are told time and time again that Vince McMahon listens to his fans. Well his hearing sucks, and so does HHHs and Stephanies, because they rarely give fans what they are the most vocal about.
As Rust Cohle from True Detective said "Life's barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful what you're good at."
Sadly, I can't solve a murder like Rust...or change a tire, or even tie a tie. But I do know all the lyrics to Hulk Hogan's "Real American" theme song and can easily name every Natural Born Thriller from the dying days of WCW. I was once ranked 21st in the United States in Tetris...on the Playstation 3 version...for about a week.
Follow along @AndrewSoucek and check out my podcast at wrestlingwithfriends.com
