Hello and welcome once again to The Trademark Rants. While I go ahead and listen to some MXPX, I’m going to let the winner of last week’s Reader Response Question explain to you what the heck TNA was thinking with the Daniels/Primetime/Hardy/Young match building up to TNA’s Hard Justice PPV…
How you doing Mike. Haven’t written to you in a while, but wanted to see if I can shed a little light on the “match with no sense” that TNA put on. Don’t know if this will make any sense, but I will give it a try. First off Jeff Hardy. He was put into this match to show that he is not up to par to hang with the X-Division and also to further his feud with Raven (with only an hour to work with, TNA is in a bind to fit as much as they can into each show). He has not accomplishing anything in the heavyweight realm, and with him not being able to do anything in the X, he can say he is going to try his hand at the tag team division, opening the door for a Hardy reunion. Second, Eric Young. He was put into this match because they feel the need to Team Canada represented each week and Williams has been jobbed out a lot on Impact lately, so they had to go with another member of Team Canada. Third, Prime Time and Daniels. I believe the match at the previous PPV was to be a draw with Shocker and Sabin. It ended wrong, so they decided to go with the result and try capitalize on the Shocker’s somewhat popularity while they could, thus the title match with Daniels. They had no plans for Shocker to win the match with Daniels. This leads me back to Primetime. He is still a top contender for the
title, and he was to pin Daniels in the match on Impact, but theybotched the ending. They went with the draw because, honestly, Daniels dominated the match. If they went with the judges decision, he would have had to award the match to Daniels, thus weakening Primetime’s status as a top contender. So, I believe the match had a purpose, it just wasn’t achieved. I know this may all seem like a reach, but I did my best. God bless.
And there you go. Now that I’m done with MXPX and have moved on to some Ace Troubleshooter tunes, I guess I can resume this column and talk about something important.
Now, for the long-time readers, what do I keep telling you, time and time again, is the single, most important key to putting together and maintaining a quality wrestling show? You should know this answer by now… Go ahead, say it. “Listening to the Live Crowds”. Anytime a wrestling organization hits a creative high, what is it that they’re doing? Capitalizing on what the live crowds are reacting to, of course. The same is true for WWE. Eddie Guerrero’s WWE Title Reign and The Rock’s “Hollywood” Heel Turn are likely the two best things WWE has done in the past four and a half years, and both of those events came about because the WWE actually listened to their live audiences and gave the fans what they wanted. But now, the WWE has something that could very well trump both Eddie and “Hollywood Rocky” – the real life scandal of Edge and Lita – and as of last Monday, WWE has made it clear that they plan to exploit this scandal to its utmost ends…
As we have been hearing for months, Edge and Lita have been having an affair, which ended Lita’s relationship with Matt Hardy, destroyed Edge’s second marriage, and may or may not have been the catalyst for Matt Hardy’s WWE Release. Just recently, WWE decided to finally pair up Edge and Lita in the ring. Apparently, WWE had JUST figured out that this was a good story opportunity… either that, or they just realized that they were never going to completely silence the legions of fans who continue to chant “You Screwed Matt” at Edge and Lita, or calling Lita a “slut” in droves at live shows. Either way, WWE has finally hit a Creative Gold Mine, and they have done so by doing something that ought to be common sense to just about anyone even remotely involved in the Entertainment Business – listening to their audience.
So, the dumb question here is this – Why doesn’t WWE do this more often? Seriously, WWE has had so many opportunities to react to their audience reactions, instead of trying to steer them. Batista wasn’t chosen by the audience, after all. He was chosen by Triple H. The fans simply embraced him when H actually decided to put him over. And given, Batista may be a bad example of my point, because he’s actually turning out to be rather popular, but Batista is a rare case. After all, WWE did the same exact thing with Randy Orton just months prior, but he never caught fire. WWE basically had to abandon ship, having Orton drop the World Title two weeks after he beat Chris Benoit for it. Now, while I personally would have stuck it out for a little longer and thus, give Orton more to work with in order to actually get over, I can understand why WWE did what they did. At the same time, WWE tends to expect INSTANT reactions to everything they try to steer. That never happens. The only time a talent gets instantly over is when the audience embraces it, and the audience was not even close to prepared to embrace Randy Orton as a babyface, because no work was done to prepare for his turn. Batista had a better build-up, but far less personality, and really, should have bombed worse than Orton did. The fact Batista is over at all has to be seen as a miracle, at least to me, considering that I could never, in my wildest dreams, expect a former lackey of the biggest heel in the company to get over with the build-up they gave to Batista. But then again, the Hand of God is apparently on Batista, because that’s the only way I could even begin to exppain why he’s as popular as he is right now…
And what about all the other talents WWE tries to steer us towards? What about Brock Lesnar, who only really got over after WWE shoved him down our throats for two and a half years. No, really, Brock didn’t get over, really over, until just before he left WWE. He was continuously pushed for almost two years before they finally let up. Despite all of his in-ring success, he never really did get past the office’s push to be truly embraced by the audience, and by the time he was, the WWE fanbase was so sick of him that they literally booed him out of MSG in his final match with the company! Fans didn’t embrace Lesnar, they spit him out!
You can not, and I repeat , CAN NOT, force a talent on the fanbase and expect him or her to get the reaction you want them to have. Fans are going to react however they want to react. They’re going to boo a guy no matter how nice he is (The Rock), cheer for a guy no matter how evil he is (Steve Austin), and make a guy who can’t cut a promo to save his life, yet can work a match like no one else they’ve ever seen, into a drawing force for a company whose fanbase is among the most rabid and loyal in the history of wrestling (Rob Van Dam). ECW understood that. Vince Russo understood that. And you know what? I actually want to believe that there are some people in the WWE, people with the last name of “McMahon” even, who KNOW this is how talent really gets over in this business, and yet, they can get lulled into believing that they can control their audience because the rampant ego-mania associated with being the top dog in the wrestling world overwhelms their braincells, allowing them to forget how this process works. Either that, or it’s the unqualified belief in nepotism and allowing a certain wrestler who may also be a certain Creative Head’s husband to have too much say creatively. Either way, WWE should look back a few years and remember what allowed them to become the premier name in Sports Entertainment…
We all know the story of how Stone Cold Steve Austin got over in the WWE. We all know the story of how The Rock became The Rock. There are people reading this right now that can quote the entire history of ECW, verbatim, even. I really don’t have to explain to you why listening to your audience works, because you have so many examples available to you that are more or less common knowledge. And really, that’s what’s so baffling about this whole thing. If the fact that success in the wrestling world is based mostly on listening to your audience is common knowledge, so much so that even the most ignorant wrestling fan knows this to be a fact, then how come the biggest company in the wrestling world, World Wrestling Entertainment, doesn’t seem to work with that logic? Instead of pushing talent we’re reacting to, we get steered towards people we don’t care about, forced into booing a heel that is really just some old guy in a white hat and a stupid limo!
The old adage of “if you say something long enough, people will eventually believe you” should NOT be the motto of a Creative Team, in wrestling or in any other form of entertainment. Do you really think Marvel Comics would have put Wolverine in some 6 titles a month if the fans didn’t want to read about his adventures? Do you think Magneto would keep dying and coming back to life if the fans didn’t respect him as a villain? Do you think the Fantastic Four would have lasted over 500 issues and be made into a movie that’s going to be coming out later this summer (starring Jessica Alba and , despite the fact that Mr. Fantastic is likely the lamest superhero EVER, if they didn’t listen to what their fans wanted to see? Of course not! How can anyone possibly believe that you’re going to have a successful creative venture if you’re not willing to listen to your audience? And that, folks, is what I don’t understand…
That’s all for this week, folks. If you have any comments, questions, or anything else you’d like to share, feel free to write me at TheMaverickMJ@yahoo.com. Thanks for reading, and feel free to come back again for another installment of The Trademark Rants!
