First off, during the worst of times, people want to see the biggest events if only out of morbid curiosity. The feeling prior to last year's 'Mania was that it was going to be awful, and it seemed like it generated a lot of interest in people curious to see if it would turn out to be the stinker it seemed destined to be. And that was plenty interest, wasn't it? We don't need WrestleMania (or the road to it) to be a creative success for people to find reasons to watch, we just need it to be compelling viewing. Watching pro wrestling now, a great many folk, isn't about finding how this or that performer will do, it's about finding out how the creative team will do. If a marquee angle is lame (see: Roman Cena,) then people will want to see if it will finally be made right. Conversely, a great angle will garner interest based on both potential in-ring value and curiosity as to whether it will actually end the way it should. We're not watching the battle onscreen unfold so much as the battle behind the scenes. That is the really compelling thing about professional wrestling these days, at least in a company such as WWE.
CKUT radio host, underground lyricist, Michael Myers scholar and all-around world-class opiner. Signature move: Irony Bomb. Blood type: chai. Never seen in the same place and time as Logic Johnson, former featured columnist for Bleacher Report.
Hopelessly unfamiliar with Yellow Submarine.
