In case you haven’t worked it out yet, all month here at SLTD we’re going to be looking at nothing but Wrestlemania. Every article will have a Wrestlemania theme. There will be celebrations, criticisms, mark out moments (that’ll be from me mostly), and anything else you can think of when it comes to top of the line coverage of the biggest WWE show of the year.
You want in-depth analysis of the top matches on this year’s show? We’ve got that covered. How about predictions, fantasy booking ideas and all that jazz? Yep, we’ve got tons of that coming your way. You want reviews of EVERY WRESTLEMANIA FROM 1 to 29? Oh yeah, we’ve got that too.
In fact, you’re going to have to work pretty damn hard to find a Wrestlemania related subject that won’t be covered here this month. We’re going to look at Wrestlemania from so many different angles; we’re going to hand out trigonometry sets to everyone when they log on to the site.
It doesn’t get any better than SLTD when it comes to Wrestlemania and we promise we’ll…wait a minute…hey you at the back, yeah you, the guy in the CM Punk t-shirt who is shaking his head and crying about how rubbish Wrestlemania will be. Cheer up bitch, it’s WRESTLEMANIA!!
You’ll find I’ll be yelling like a tit about Wrestlemania a lot this month. I can’t help it. I will happily mark out over Wrestlemania until the cows come home.
Fuck all this talk about the card being weak or whatever else people will find to moan about. I put all that aside and enjoy Wrestlemania for what it is – the last remaining link to my childhood that I can still actively enjoy, without fear of social exclusion or criminal charges.
Apparently, a 33 year old man who spends his day playing cops and robbers at the play park is considered ‘creepy’ in this political-correctness-gone-mad world we now live in.
Of course there are always going to be those of you among us who are not going to be swayed. For you, the cause is lost. No matter what WWE do between now and April 6th, you’re going to hate it. Wrestlemania is going to suck for you and nothing will change that.
I can accept that some things aren’t to everyone’s tastes. Still, the cynical bitching about Wrestlemania has got even more stupid than usual. I recently saw people complaining that despite ALL OF WRESTLEMANIA now being built around him, WWE apparently STILL hasn’t done the right thing with Daniel Bryan.
The complaint wasn’t that Bryan will be in a match with HHH at Wrestlemania 30, with the chance to get into the WWE Title match later on the show; thus concluding his story of fighting against the machine, by winning the biggest prize, on the biggest stage of them all. Happy, happy, joy, joy IWC, right? Nope.
Instead, the complaint was that WWE should have done this in the first place and not kept all us massively important smarks waiting and wondering if they would do it. Never mind that WWE are now doing what we want, it’s not good enough because they didn’t do it sooner.
Oh and Punk should be there. Oh and Batista is the worst thing to happen to wrestling since Benoit went bat shit. And Taker should be facing Sting. And Cena is going to beat Wyatt so what’s the point of living? And Hogan shouldn’t be there cause he’s going to ruin it like he ruined TNA. And on and on and on it goes.
I love IWC fans because I’m one of them. We’re some of the most passionate and committed fans of whatever promotion it is we follow. I’m not taking shots at anyone here, but good God all mighty I wish some of you people would just shut the fuck up for a few minutes.
Try turning off the fucking forensic analysis of every single second of WWE TV and just be a fan for a couple of months until Wrestlemania is over.
Ok, that’s rich coming from someone like me, but fucks sake, can’t we at least wait until the show is over before we start tearing it apart?
Granted, it’s not all our fault. The WWE’s hype machine for each Wrestlemania grows bigger and more intense with each passing year. For the best part of three months we’re constantly reminded that this is the biggest show of the year, that this is where careers are made, that nothing else matters apart from Wrestlemania.
By the time the show rolls around, I’m as excited as a kid on Christmas morning. The hype has worked. I’ve fallen for it hook, line and sinker. Come Wrestlemania Sunday I’m ready to watch, what WWE has been promised will be, four hours of life changing wrestling.
It doesn’t change your life. Turns out it isn’t actually the greatest thing to ever happen to us as a species. They just said that to make us buy the show. The sooner you learn Wrestlemania is never going to live up to the hype, the more you’ll enjoy the show.
Of course WWE need to hype the shit out of Wrestlemania because they rely on the show so heavily these days. There’s an old saying that you should never put all your eggs in one basket. WWE have been doing exactly that for years with Wrestlemania.
As the WWE’s PPV business has plummeted since the mid 2000s, Wrestlemania has become the only show that draws a big PPV number for WWE. The company has relied on Wrestlemania drawing 600,000 or more buys in the US to prop up their ever dwindling PPV numbers for the rest of the year.
With the WWE Network launching off the back of Wrestlemania 30, and with that the PPV era of WWE seemingly coming to an end, WWE’s basket contains one very precious egg, and many are predicting the bottom could fall out of it on April 6th.
If the WWE Network crashes during Wrestlemania 30, I’m sure many bottoms will be falling out in and around WWE HQ. There will be more shitting hitting fans than the time I was at a festival and they accidently turned the machine that empties the chemical toilets from ‘suck’ to ‘blow.’ Those poor fuckers in the silent disco didn’t stand a chance – they couldn’t hear all the warnings to get out the way.
With so much importance placed on Wrestlemania – creatively and financially – is it any wonder that it doesn’t always live up to our lofty expectations? You can argue the point that perhaps WWE should focus more on providing great shows all year round, instead of building to one massive blow out. But that’s not what they do anymore. It’s a one show per year deal and if that show is a bust, it’s going to hurt WWE creatively and financially.
The question these days is: does it really matter if Wrestlemania isn’t a creative success? The Wrestlemania name is a huge draw itself. These days it hardly seems to matter about the undercard or even the main events, Wrestlemania will always draw, just on name alone.
That’s not just true of Wrestlemania; what about that other huge annual sporting event that Wrestlemania always compares itself to – the Superbowl?
There aren’t 100 million Seattle Seahawks or Denver Bronco fans in the US. Yet 100 million people watched the Superbowl on TV this year. It doesn’t matter that their favourite team isn’t involved, it’s Superbowl Sunday and every NFL fan watches the Superbowl. It’s a longstanding tradition.
Just the same way as many lapsed wrestling fans will come back every year to watch Wrestlemania. It’s why WWE like to bring back big name stars from the past for the show. They know that fans of those stars, who might not watch the product any more, will be watching Wrestlemania. They also want all the help they can get in drawing as much money from the show as they can.
There’s more than just tradition to Wrestlemania’s continued success, there’s also the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia that are put on whenever Wrestlemania rolls around.
I don’t know about you, but Wrestlemania is something that is indelibly burned into me as a person. I have so many fantastic memories of watching Wrestlemania as a child (with WM3 being the first I ever saw) that even if I don’t care about WWE, as soon as I know Wrestlemania is coming up, all sins are forgiven, all those smart-ass, bitter comments are forgotten and I mark the fuck out.
I know it’s just my brain remembering a time before the soul crushing weight of the world turned me from a wide eyed and positive young kid, into a cynical, bored and unfulfilled man. I will happily forget that for four hours on a Sunday evening in April.
When Wrestlemania is on, I can go back to a time when it didn’t matter how good a worker someone was, or how over they were with a certain section of the fan base. All that mattered was I was watching something I loved and that is a powerful memory. Powerful enough to keep me coming back, year after year.
It’s that memory that lives in other wrestling fans and jumps to the forefront of their mind when the hype for Wrestlemania begins. The word Wrestlemania conjures up so many vivid memories:
Hogan and Mr T launching a new era in wrestling, Hogan slamming Andre, Savage v Steamboat, Warrior beating Hogan, Bret v Owen, HBK v Razor in the ladder match, Austin and Tyson changing the tide of a wrestling war, Taker’s undefeated streak, HBK becoming Mr Wrestlemania, ladder matches, TLC matches, massive crowds, incredible spectacle and theatre. And 40 minute Kid Rock concerts…wait, how the fuck did that get in there?
So many moments, so many memories, so much to live up to.
It’s for all these reasons and more than you won’t hear me complain about Wrestlemania…at least until the show is over. There are so few things left to look forward to in life; I want to keep Wrestlemania as one of them.
I want to enjoy the build up, watch the show and then pass judgement. I hope some of you reading this will do that too. You don’t need to love it, you don’t need even need to like it. But you do need to give it a chance. Or maybe just shut the fuck up and let the rest of us enjoy it?
I’ve seen lots of people complaining that, this year, it doesn’t feel like Wrestlemania season. They say it every year. They’ve been saying it for years. They keep saying it because the show will never be able to live up to the hype, history and hyperbole. They’ve all forgetting one important thing:
It’s WRESTLE-FUCKING-MANIA!
Just let it happen and see where the journey goes. Come on, you can do that. Yes you can, just unplug your smark chip for a couple of weeks and try to remember why you watch this stuff in the first place. It’s for events just like Wrestlemania. If you can’t, you need to get the fuck out and find something new to watch.
If you’ve enjoyed this, and I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t have, remember you can follow me on Twitter @MFXDuckman.
You can enjoy a Duckman audio experience every week on the MFX Podcast. Join me and Sir Ian Trumps as we traverse the week in WWE, TNA and life in general. You can catch our TNA show at the start of the week, with our WWE show dropping later in the week.
MFX is a NSFW, smarks paradise of awesome. We don’t just talk wrestling and unlike some other wrestling podcasts you might have heard, we don’t bore the arse off you. Honest. Check out the MFX page here, or head over to www.mfxpodcast.com and find our most recent shows. You won’t regret it.
As always, thanks for reading.
Until next time…
Peace
Duckman
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