Did WrestleMania 32 Prove WWE Is Out Of Touch With The Fans?
Speaking of bad jokes, when will WWE get the message that Roman Reigns is not and never will be the guy they want him to be. They have killed him with bad writing and paint-by-numbers 1980s style booking. What WWE fail to understand is that the majority of their audience are wrestling fans who are forced to watch WWE because it is the most accessible, and in truth, the only game in town.
Indie shows are all well and good, but fans like to watch their wrestling on the biggest stage, with huge crowds and extravagant production. They watch WWE because it is on, but they dont love WWE (or sports entertainment), they love pro wrestling. If WWE would only throw them a bone, they would love WWE too. Instead, Vince and his cloying yes-men do everything in their power to belittle those fans at every opportunity, gleefully rubbing their faces in the fact that they are specifically and wilfully not giving them what they want.
In this enlightened era, the modern fan knows more than ever before about how wrestling works behind the scenes, and they dont like it. They want one thing, the out-of-touch WWE want something else and force it down viewers throats, and fans inevitably reject it. It happened with Batista in 2014. It happened with John Cena for a decade. As soon as fans learned that Roman Reigns was McMahons hand-picked company flag-bearer for the next decade, they turned on him too. To many, Reigns is the face of the corporate wrestling structure that they loathe.
Its akin to when an underground rock band gets signed to a major label: a lot of supporters who were fans from the grungy days where they played to audiences of twenty people turn on them. They liked them because nobody else did, they knew something that others didnt and took a degree of hipster-like smugness in that. Reigns is the same. He is seen as the establishment, the wrestling equivalent of Limp Bizkit getting commissioned to do the Mission Impossible theme all those years ago. He will never, ever be accepted by the hardcore fans - that ship has sailed - but Vince is stubborn and wont change course. That was proven with the WrestleMania 32 main event result. Roman won, everybody hated it, fans went home unhappy.
There are only so many times that can be the case before the audience gives up and decides to invest their time in something that will actually give them a degree of joy and satisfaction. And yet, that was the case all night long at WrestleMania. In none of the bouts did the most popular wrestler competing, the fan favourite of the night, win out in the end. Sami Zayn lost. A.J. Styles lost. New Day lost. Dean Ambrose lost. Sasha Banks lost. Shane McMahon lost. Triple H lost. Where NXT TakeOver: Dallas was the ultimate fan-friendly show, booked to send the audience home happy, WrestleMania 32 was the complete opposite. It was the show that Vince McMahon wanted.
Was it the worst WrestleMania of all time? Not at all. It was not even close to the Marianna Trench-depths of badness set by WrestleMania IX, XI and XXVII, but it certainly wasnt good. Years from now, history will remember WrestleMania 32 as the night a stubborn Vince McMahon stood atop his figurative podium, and in all of his dogmatic glory gleefully told wrestling fans across the world to go and f*ck themselves.