Spoilers, crybabies, false dirt sheets, and rumors. These are four of many things you will find on the Internet when it comes to professional wrestling. You have men aged 13 and up who know nothing about what’s going on in a product or how to run a business, trying to complain about so-and-so doing whatever. You have teenagers and adults across the globe complaining that John Cena is a cancer to the business and ignore the fact that he has kept the WWE at its highest level for the past 12 years. The Internet ruined wrestling, people, and this is just one of the many reasons why.
Back when I first started watching wrestling, it was around 1996, and sure there was an internet out at the time, but not a lot of people scrutinized it like they do today. This of course meaning we didn’t have many things to go out on the internet involving wrestling. Fast forward to 2014, and you can access almost anything involving wrestling, whether it be CM Punk and AJ Lee’s wedding photos, spoilers to an upcoming event or PPV that’s pre-taped, and even backstage rumors on a dirtsheet. Now I take all that info with a grain of salt as I don’t always trust what sites have to say about something such as Ryback getting fired for calling out Daniel Bryan.
Point is, I’ve never been too keen on wrestling sites other than the ones that are official (I see the hypocrisy in writing for one). If I want to know if Ryback got fired, I will go to WWE.com and find out if he did or not. If I want to know what happened on SmackDown or a taped RAW before the holidays or during a UK tour, I will wait until the day it airs.
People don’t have a sense of patience at all, and to me it seems like we are just jumping the gun and ruining a potential chance of surprises.
Another thing that has bothered me with the IWC, a phrase coined the “Internet Wrestling Community” for those that don’t know, is that when a certain wrestler – male or female, loses a match, they are “buried.” Sure, I can feel the need to be upset about a wrestler losing a match often when you know he has the talent and is being held down. But to just go ahead and say they’re buried for the sake of saying it is… well, stupid. The main person who comes to mind about “burying” other stars is John Cena. I touched on this in the beginning of the article, as many will say Cena is a cancer to the wrestling business, or that he is burying talent, and finally that he never “puts anybody over.”
This bothers me for the fact that Cena is a man who has stuck with the business when it was going through a time of need, around 2009 and 2011, the WWE and pro wrestling for that matter was at a low. Cena remained loyal to the WWE and remained the top star in the top company. As far as I remember, the only man – or group in this matter, that he buried was The Nexus. WWE Hall of Famer Edge came out and said that Nexus was set to go over Team WWE at SummerSlam 2010, and Cena made a change and got the call reversed. Without a notable win over its enemy, The Nexus became a failure which also caused many of the stars in the group to amount to nothing in their WWE careers.
And while that happened, Cena has also put over a lot of talent, names that include CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, and whether it was the way the IWC wanted it or not, Cena put over Bray Wyatt as well. Point is, Cena is the best thing in Pro Wrestling right now and the fact that he’s considered a cancer to the wrestling business baffles me.
Finally, I want to touch on the fact that whenever a fan of one company doesn’t like a rival promotion, they say that the other company is trash without even watching. They will say that a company is going to go under without any knowledge of their financial stability, and they will insult the talent on the roster. If you didn’t get the hints, I’m talking about TNA, who I would go out on a limb and say has been the number one wrestling show in 2014’s entirety.
Before I get lambasted, I’m a huge WWE fan and I respect both shows. Lately, TNA has been on fire, and while WWE has been great as well, I just feel that TNA edges them out. Back to the point, though, there have been “rumors” that TNA will end for 12 years, and you’d think that by now they will stop, but they just continue to gather steam by the year. How about instead of worrying about a wrestling company “going under,” you worry about what they’re putting on each show and why they have made it through the wrestling business for over 10 years?
I know this may sound like a complaint in my own way, but I just feel that wrestling fans are not the same as they were before the boom of the Internet. You have too many complainers and whiners that don’t know a thing about what they’re talking about, and also know too many inside knowledge when we should be looking for an element of surprise that keeps us hooked as a wrestling fan.
This is why, in my opinion, the Internet has ruined wrestling for every fan in the world.
