After writing last week’s column I got the “writing bug” back. Those of you who are internet wrestling columnists know what I mean – you write one column and you want to go and write another and another. Well, whenever I get the bug I always write in one of my columns, “This will hopefully be the beginning of a string of columns from me.” I’m not going to say that this time. As a matter of fact, I started the third semester of my Masters Program at Rutgers today, so chances are that I’ll be too busy to write a weekly column in the near future – but I still have time to write one now! Oh – I also got a cold virus “bug” that put me out of commission from Friday through yesterday. Stupid bugs…
While Eddie and I were redesigning TBL, we looked at other wrestling sites out there to see some of the current trends in designs. Honestly, I think that TBL has remained the leader in ease of use as well as wealth of content. I challenge you to find a modernized site that is as easy to use and has the bevy of content that TBL has – I haven’t found one yet.
But what I did find was rather disturbing: dozens and dozens of dead links. I eventually surfed to one page (located at this link) to find links from all different sizes of wrestling site. Large sites like 2xZone and numerous small sites hosted off of “cjb” accounts are all linked on this page. If there was ever a page where I would be able to check out other wrestling sites, this would be it!
Didn’t quite turn out that way…
This page turned out to be more like visiting a cemetery than a listing of wrestling sites. Sure the names were there, but they lead to error pages or didn’t load at all (I use FireFox – nonexistant domains don’t load). If this was a book store, then every page of every book that you open would be blank and I would be strongly concerned about whatever is going on. But since this is the internet wrestling scene, I’m more pleased than concerned.
You see, every site that is dead on that page stands for another shot against the internet wrestling community. Believe me folks, I was here at the beginning of this internet wrestling thing (way back in the early 1990’s when the Prodigy Bulletin Boards were the “hot stuff” and no one owned a .com) and I have had the pleasure of watching the big boom of wrestling sites through the late 90’s and early into the new century. But looking at these dead links shows more than just the declining interest in the wrestling industry…it shows how stupidity and greed will almost always lead to ruin in the end.
The demise of internet wrestling is upon us and it is strong. And I, for one, am glad. You see, the stupidity and greed of the webmasters who ran many of these now defunct sites was their ultimate undoing. Many of these sites were run by children between the ages of 10 and 14. Folks, I have no problem with the kiddies getting themselves a little fan site for Bret Hart or Shawn Michaels or The Rock or anyone, but when these kids start thinking that they are the movers of the wrestling industry – well that’s just stupid.
And that’s what happened. I distinctly remember being told once by a kid who ran a garbage website something along the lines of, “u cud nEvEr rite heer so dOnt EvEn ttry!!”
Yeah, and this kid had a great future ahead of him, right?
At some point during the big internet boom these kids (or kiddies as a few of us older generation called them) thought that they could not only run their free “cjb” website, but that they were actually making big power moves. Honestly, this is probably a fault of the education system since humility isn’t taught in our schools, but in any event the mindset of these kiddies led to the second major problem with the internet wrestling scene – greed.
Many of these kiddie websites were bringing in tens of thousands of hits each day – but that wasn’t because of their content, it was because everyone loved wrestling at that point and everyone was internet surfing to find out the latest news on the comings and goings of the WWF and WCW! But as the years went on and the older kiddies went from the age of 14 to 16 and 17 year olds, they began to see dollar signs. This is both partially their fault and partially the internet advertising industry’s fault. Both were looking for a profit and the opportunity was there. The advertising industry failed in this venture because they didn’t look at the clientel of the websites they were hooking up with (a thirteen year old isn’t going to click a banner ad) and the wrestling sites failed because their focus went from being the best wrestling site out there to being the most profitable.
And what did this all lead to? Well, for a time there were mergers and for a time there were sites shutting down for a few days to open under “new management.” But for the most part, you find many of the error pages and dead domains as the example of what happened to these sites. There is also the fact that as the years kept going on, the kiddies got older and started to attend high school and now college. As I can tell you from experience – those are the busiest years of your life! Having the time to run a website, be a greedy schmuck who puts money over content, and grow up and live your life is hard!
In the end I’m glad that many of those sites are no longer operational. Why, you ask? Well, for many of the sites that shut down, I’m glad because the assholes who ran them (kiddies or not – jerks are jerks) had no place “owning and operating” a website. So I guess from a business standpoint, you can say that I’m glad the wrestling website market has leveled itself out. But I’m also glad because the remaining sites are all pretty good!
I keep going back to the redesign of TBL, but as I was going through our server and looking at all of our old files and our vaults of information, archived news reports, and archived columns, I really am glad that now we have more of an opportunity to bring this content to you. Everyone who studies business knows that when the a market loses a vast amount of suppliers, the remaining suppliers have an increase in demand (want an example? How about Vince Jr’s takeover of the indepedent wrestling scene in the early 80’s?). And as one of the remaining sites (that isn’t going to shut down anytime soon), I believe that TBL has a great deal of content that puts us head and shoulders above the rest.
And as for the dead links? Well, honestly there are a few domains that I’m looking to buy (purely in spite of the old dickhead owners) and there are many sites that I’m sad to see go (there were a few good guys out there). But in the end, we’re here and we’re fully operational. But please, take this opportunity to check out our archives of information (accessible through the navigation bar above). If you’re looking for something…we’ve got it!
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