BY MICHAEL GOODPASTER
(FOUR) THE UGLY SHIRTS
I’m a life-long fan. By that I don’t mean that I started watching in Junior High or that I started in 2000 and then went back and watched tapes. My earliest memory of life has wrestling on in the background. I love wrestling… but holy shit are wrestling shirts ugly. There aren’t really ANY “cool wrestling shirts”. There just isn’t. The nWo, Hulkamania, Austin 3:16, the DX, and all of those “iconic shirts”… suck. They don’t suck in terms of “wrestling shirts”, but they suck in the grand scale of shirts. It’s just we’re grading them all on a huge curve. For every 3:16, there are a few hundred shitty Rey Misterio shirts. I know these shirts are aimed towards kids, but why does wrestling insist on making their fans look ridiculous. I guess it could be worse… They’re not Affliction shirts.
(THREE) SEEMS ALWAYS SLIGHTLY OUT OF TOUCH WITH POP CULTURE
It’s all right there in front of them, but for some reason WWE and TNA are always a day late and a million dollars short. For a perfect example look at the Jersey Shore trend. Both TNA and WWE were like 2 years late on this. If they had gotten on board with it BEFORE they all started fading from the spotlight they’d have gotten more recognition out of it. Instead, it’s forced.
(TWO) BAD INDIE PROMO
If you’re friends with anyone in the wrestling business or even in a local band then you know how important promo is them. With technology and programs being so accessible no one should be putting out sub-par promo. If someone puts out an online poster for a show and it looks like it was made with WORD in 1998 then YOU SHOULD NOT GO. Don’t reward bad promo. Don’t get me wrong. There are bands and wrestling feds that put out really nice looking promo and you can tell they take their shit seriously…. Or at least are putting in the EFFORT. It’s the folks who want us to spend our time and money on crap that get me. Good or bad wrestling or music, why should WE care to give it a shot unless THEY take themselves seriously. The first impression a lot of us get of a band or a wrestling company is the promo and presentation they put out there. Bad looking pictures, bad cropping, tiny unreadable fonts, themes that make no sense, and lay out that just looks thrown together is a horrible first impression.
(ONE) ALWAYS BLAMING THE WRITER
Sometimes it IS the writer, but not all the times. Vince Russo didn’t make TNA’s matches boring, the wrestlers did. Jim Cornette doesn’t make ROH matches better, but he sure as hell makes it boring elsewhere. This is one of those things that always annoyed me. When a wrestler is fired or let go from a company they automatically blame “the writers” for not coming up with ideas to make them the biggest superstar of all time. The term “the cream rises to the top” comes to mind here. Sometimes a wrestler just sucks. They think they’re awesome and they might be at certain things, but all in all they just can’t get over. Why would a writer invest time into someone who doesn’t want to invest time in themselves? Would you want to give your best efforts to someone who was just going to screw it up? And who REALLY knows what the writer provides the higher ups at a WWE or TNA? It’s been said that the writers shoot for the stars and try to sneak in new things, but it’s shot down by upper management… but yeah, it’s “those damn writers”. It’s just any easy cop out for fans who want to bitch.
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