INSANE Wrestling Fan Backlashes You Didn't See Coming
Cody Rhodes was the face of the TNT - but he went to USA for a reason...
Are professional wrestling fans ingrates with goldfish-level attention spans?
A lot of people within wrestling and some fans themselves believe this to be the case. You might have read a sentiment along the lines of "Nobody hates wrestling more than wrestling fans" before and, frankly, it's b*llocks. Mainstream North American wrestling has, for much of a millennial fan's lifespan, been plagued with deranged, nonsensical and or antagonistic creative. Fans should be allowed to engage with the medium critically even if they haven't spent a single day working within the industry. Wrestling should be held to a high standard.
The medium's modern track record of effectively paying off long-term stories is shocking, and the medium itself is inherently flawed. It never stops. It invites fatigue. It invites cynicism. By never taking a single week off ever, with a structure that has only very recently loosened to enable jumps between two major promotions, it invites boredom and protest.
Then again, if in two years' time, Cody Rhodes receives jeers, people begin to think that Bryan Danielson is overrated, and WWE fans launch a campaign for Vince McMahon to replace Triple H as booker - based on the following - it wouldn't exactly scan as a shock...
10. Knives Out For MJF
Two weeks after MJF defeated Samoa Joe in an excellent main event at Grand Slam - which, thanks to the World champion's tireless efforts doing local publicity, eventually drew a respectable crowd - the knives came out.
MJF cut his worst promo ever, fairly bog-standard call-and-response material laced with cringe insults, and that, gauging by the social media backlash, was enough to act as a referendum on his World title reign. It was enough to erase four years of a seminal run.
MJF - who had engaged in an excellent, traditional World title-level promo duel with Joe less than a month before the backlash - is apparently doing too much bad, cringe-worthy content that belongs more to WWE than AEW. MJF, apparently, is single-handedly responsible for AEW's soft domestic business. The pre-taped skits are mostly terrible, yes, but Better Than You BayBay outdrew everything CM Punk did on Collision outside of the premiere, which - as evidenced by Dynamite's debut and the launch of SmackDown on FOX - is an aberration of a number driven by novelty and curiosity. Better Than You BayBay - far better in the live context admittedly - is an act that just about fits on the melodramatic and irreverently funny wavelength that has formed the core of AEW since day one.
That stated, it's not easy to parse, this MJF business, which might be a bit much and broad and silly.
It's not unlike a good version of Hulk Hogan's 1994-96 WCW run: over and unpopular at the same, with the creeping notion that it doesn't quite belong in its context and doesn't do a great deal for the identity of the promotion.
Still: a bit of perspective is needed, bloody hell.