I often scour various Facebook groups and am also an active member of a great deal of them. My Facebook statuses often annoy the "non-wrestling fans" in my life, and also as a former owner of a wrestling website and forum I always come to one common conclusion no matter what site/group/forum I frequent - wrestling fans are the most fickle and also the most bandwagon-hopping of them all. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of friends on these said sites and groups who I can have LENGTHY and great detailing conversations with. People like Rob Trotter, Kristen Whitehead, your very own Richard Boudreau, Andrew Escalante, Chris Dutton, Matt Fletcher, David Diaz, Holden Hiscock and Roy Warren Lucier to name just some. A lot of the fans I talk to on a regular basis are smart fans. Fans who have been following the business for years in double digits and some, like me, since birth. However no matter where I go I can't escape those kind of fans who you want to hurl through a window. The kind of fans that no other sport or entertainment brand has. What I'm about to say might be controversial with some, and might strike a few nerves, but rest assured it's the truth. The kind of fans, who after only a handful of TV appearances already think Brad Maddox is a failure. The kind of fans who are already sick of "The Shield". I even got into a VERY heated debate recently with a man who swore on his life that Dean Ambrose was nothing but a "flash in the pan, just like CM Punk". WHO BREEDS THESE IDIOTS? don't get me wrong, I'm all for people having their opinions and I completely respect that, but it's how they go about expressing those opinions as fact. Could you imagine what would happen in this current era of wrestling if Stone Cold Steve Austin or The Rock were to debut on TV now as The Ringmaster and Rocky Maivia? The current generation of fans would eat him alive, surely. Is a month really enough to judge a new superstar? These days it seems so! This current generation of wrestling fans (mostly no older than 18, shockingly some WAY older) are the most fickle I have ever seen in any sport. They expect someone to debut and immediately win (Sheamus) or challenge for (Ryback) the WWE Championship. A large proportion of fans will gladly and happily take to their keyboards and shout from the rooftops at how much "WWE sucks and I'm going to stop watching" and then proceed to sit there every week on their computers bashing the WWE product saying how they'll never watch it again until a new Attitude Era is born. Indeed those same wrestling fans WILL come running back when the WWE product gets hot again (which it will), and the funny thing is, these very same fans will then proudly take to their keyboards and their computers and proclaim the WWE to be the greatest thing in the world. Some of them haven't even watched the WWE product in years and STILL bitch and complain about it. Now I liken that to politics - if you don't go out and vote for who you want to be President (or Prime Minister if you're on my side of the Atlantic) then you have no right whatsoever to then moan and complain about how they messed up the country so bad. If you don't watch - you have no right. Some wrestling fans are bandwagon-riders. Not all of them, but the ones who are, know who they are. You don't do that with Baseball, Basketball, Football or Soccer though do you? If your favourite team goes through a really rough patch of absolutely sucking the big fat one, you don't just abandon your team and stop supporting them and going to games do you? Of course you don't! They're YOUR team! You stick by them through thick and thin, good times AND bad no matter what anybody else says. That way, when your team finally does win a national championship or a Super Bowl or an FA Cup, you enjoy those good times even more because you remember the days when things were really bad and you think "We deserved this". "Fans" and I use that term loosely, who complain about their wrestling product who don't even watch it anymore are just as bad as those people who have NEVER watched wrestling and like to ram it down our throats about how "fake" it is. Bottom line - Always be faithful no matter how bad it gets...This is coming from someone who has lived every era in wrestling since 1987. Have I loved it? Hell yeah I have! Have there been times when I've wanted to hurl my TV out of the window because of how bad a show or PPV was? You're damn right there has. But I haven't, because I am a true fan. I hope you are too.
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