The WWE must think we’re really dumb. We hear words like ‘grandest’ and ‘greatest’ automatically tagged onto the front of a Wrestlemania card like fake breasts on a whore and we’re expected to bounce smiling and dripping to the feet of the WWE like we did the other twenty times? I’d love to be able to say that we’re smarter than that but we’re not are we? It’s almost Wrestlemania time once again and apart from a few decently crafted feuds the show is littered with poor booking, bad planning and ideas that could conceivably have been written by a four-year-old crack addict in the middle of a pen shortage. Wrestlemania is meant to be something different, something better, “showcase of the immortals” I seem to remember and yet we’ve got the best female worker against a Playboy covergirl and an overweight wrestler against a morbidly obese sumo has-been. It’s only really the title matches on the respective shows that have been afforded any real previous consideration. I’m not asking for much. It’s not even as if I can be indignant about the money (we in the UK only have to pay about $30 compared to the $50 for you yanks) but it’s just not good enough. We’ve all made mistakes, I once watched an Adam Sandler film, but the mistakes made with previous Wrestlemania’s were different.
In many ways, the first Wrestlemania had it right. Even though it didn’t deliver in terms of match quality and the star-studded main event was more of a mess than they could have dreaded, it gave the fans what they wanted. People entered the arena at the start of the night with a certain expectancy, an idea of what was going to be presented and it was laid out in front of them; simply, obviously, carefully. There’s no shame in identifying what an audience wants and giving it to them. Wrestlemania 2 and 3 passed by much the same only adding the ideas of coming from three different locations and being bigger than the other two respectively. The first sign of trouble started with Wrestlemania 4. All of a sudden the WWF was faced with a problem. They had to make the show seem more than its predecessors with a diluted tournament idea, the weakest main event in its history (Dibiase/Savage) and a crowd that was so obsessed with The Hulkster that they wouldn’t have noticed an under-card match if it was twice the fun for half the price, let alone a ‘Hogan-less’ final match. So they panicked and decided that, seeing as better wasn’t possible, more was better. Now the WWF could have been excused for packing the card at Wrestlemania 4 because superstars wrestled more than once in the tournament but the next three kept up the high match count (about fourteen bouts in three hours) by having only one match of importance on each show and thirteen glorified tv matches no better or longer than the encounters we now see on Raw or Smackdown. This trend continued up until Wrestlemania 8 where a more workable nine matches were presented and the show levelled out again.
The next occasion the franchise fell foul of its own brilliance was Wrestlemania 10 but this time it wasn’t quantity that was the problem, it was perception. Looking back at Wrestlemania 10 now the things that standout for me are the ladder match between HBK and Razor Ramon and Bret Hart’s first WWF match against his brother Owen. But at the time you’d have thought that it was an episode of Leno or Letterman and not a wrestling show judging by the amount of celebrities on hand and the importance with which they were advertised. Now mainstream celebrities had been drafted in to boost the appeal going back as far as Liberace and Muhammad Ali at Wrestlemania 1 but somehow this was different; less complimentary, more desperate. Jump forward a year to Wrestlemania 11 and the celebrities had not only taken over the bulk of the promotional activity but had also invaded the card with NFL football player Lawrence Taylor bumping HBK/Diesel from both the big build up and the main event slot. Wrestlemania had become such a slut that it was too easy to screw and it needed to regain its honour. At Wrestlemania 12 the emphasis was put on the wrestling (which is why the crowd were so quiet throughout) but someone forgot to book ‘wrestlers’ and it was left up to Bret/HBK to save the day in their sixty-minute Iron Man match. Alas, even they couldn’t be bothered and they strolled through what many laughingly now call Wrestlemania’s finest match but the show had once again hit a mark and did what it was supposed to do, just not very well. Creating the next problem.
Whilst continuity and consistency were sellable wrestling commodities back in the Hogan era, the social climate of the late nineties and into the millennium meant that if you were standing still, you were going backwards. Wrestlemania had survived a few small blunders, most notably the inclusion of all four McMahon family members during the main event of Wrestlemania 16, but the format had become stale and with eleven other supercards on during the year it was difficult to separate Wrestlemania from the rest of the bunch. It was saved by two new ideas, one simple and one which would polarise the disdain of the WWE fanbase but rescue Wrestlemania in a way never before imagined. Firstly, in 2001, Wrestlemania was extended from three hours to four hours and the extra minutes had that tangibly naughty excitement that you only normally get from uncoded free porn. The second major change was at Wrestlemania 19 when the brand extension first played its part in determining the card and the WWE were making inter-promotional matches from what is fundamentally one roster of talent. Granted, the criteria required to qualify a contest as a ‘dream’ match was lowered almost to the point of insult in order to make them seem more important than they were but there was a genuine sense of excitement when the two brands came together and this feeling should pervade today.
As I said earlier, I’m finding it hard to figure out what’s been going through the minds of WWE creative in the run up to their biggest test and their biggest opportunity of the year. Why is Christy there and not Molly or Victoria? Why is Akebono there in a sumo match? Why throw your best mid-card talent together in a one pay-off gimmick match? Why make HBK/Angle a grudge match? Why book Orton/Undertaker so late and as two faces? Why also leave it late with Guerrero/Mysterio? And Hassan? And the Cruiserweights? Where’s Regal/Tajiri? Where’s Haas? Where’s The Dudley’s? Why bother having a Royal Rumble PPV if you’re only going to have it prepare three (well, two and a half) feuds for the Wrestlemania card? It’s been screwed up before but this is the first time I can find no justifiable reason and that’s what worries me. Wrestlemania should not suffer from neglect or a lack of preparation but, this year, it is. Just like the mistakes I documented in this column, the WWE has to learn how to correct this issue and fast. If they had any real balls, they’d own up to their errors and put them right for Wrestlemania 21 but that won’t happen.
We take a lot of crap for this business. I’ve been laughed at when I’ve asked some friends or family to record events for me when I couldn’t, even though they had nothing better to record. I’ve had people take great pleasure in ‘informing’ me that it’s fake. I’ve heard a ticket checker at a live event say the word ‘loser’ every time he admits another fan. I’ve stood in a badly organised queue for fifty minutes, where I’ve been a good foot taller than anyone else near me, just to buy an over-priced tee-shirt. Even now, I’ve got friends who were dying to read my Internet columns until they found out what they were about. I think we’ve earned the respect of the WWE and they should pay us back by affording the matches at Wrestlemania the proper due care and attention.
Of course, they might get lucky and Wrestlemania comes off really well. The bad bits are short and easily forgotten and the memorable moments stamped in bold colours across our imaginations. But I will hold WWE in contempt until they prove to me that they give a shit about us, and this night that means so much to us.
Lee
