What types of wrestling fans exist?

[Tim Cooke]

The entire Disco interview had some interesting topics of conversation, especially regarding booking. Didn't agree with a lot of it but still interesting to hear.

 

For the Kobashi vs joe ROH match, 1500 people is still very small, a niche of a niche.

[(BP)]

I think there's a distinction between what people on the internet identify as a smart fan, and everyone else who are, "smartened up." The audience was at one time made up of people who either considered wrestling a genuine sport, or only understood it to be "fake" in some vague way. Since then, McMahon introduced the "sports entertainment" umbrella, kayfabe eroded completely, the pro wrestling exposed show aired, and Tough Enough literally showed rookies learning to take bumps. Everyone in the crowd might not even know it's called a bump, but they know what it is and the basic mechanics of it. I think the change in fan perspective has really hurt WWE crowd reactions, since everyone's there to take in a show rather than watch a competition. There's a dearth of rabid grannies trying to get over the guard rail at HHH. The only real heat they generate anymore is from smart fan moral outrage, but they're getting really good at harnessing it and feeding it into the show.

[jdw]

 

I doubt a high % of ROH fans really know about 6/3/94. It never came up at any PWG show I went to, and I doubt the PWG and ROH fan base are all that different.

 

So why did Joe/Kobshi draw such a big ROH crowd and become one of their biggest DVD sellers? Why was the crowd going ape shit over Kobashi being there before the match had even started? And that was only people who could get to New York. There was a definite crossover between people who liked ROH and people who knew about puroresu. I would estimate (based on ROH message boards and the UK shows I was at) that at least 90% of ROH fans had heard of Kobashi, and maybe 40% had seen a match of his if not more.

 

 

So did the Kobashi vs Joe dvd sell more than the original Ric Flair WWE dvd? More than a Shawn Michaels dvd?

 

Sure, a lot of people who went to the Kobashi-Joe match new about Kobashi. How long had ROH been pimping it?

[anarchistxx]

So did the Kobashi vs Joe dvd sell more than the original Ric Flair WWE dvd? More than a Shawn Michaels dvd?

 

Well no, but that isn't relevant at all in this discussion. All The Boys Love Mandy Lane sold fuck all next to The Da Vinci Code in 2006; that doesn't mean it wasn't well known and popular amongst the cult horror movie internet community.

 

The Shawn and Flair DVDs weren't exclusively selling to smart fans, which is what we are talking about here. My only point was that Kenta Kobashi was well known amongst the ROH audience and fairly well known in the internet wrestling community as a whole before being an 'internet fan' became normality.

 

 

 

Sure, a lot of people who went to the Kobashi-Joe match new about Kobashi. How long had ROH been pimping it?

 

Only a couple of months to recall. Kobashi came over because a big enough audience already wanted to pay to watch him, not because ROH had spent ages promoting him to their crowd. Samoa Joe had often been put forward as a dream opponent and they thought they could sell a lot of DVDs.

[Kronos]

I know it's perhaps not the smartest thing to suggest, but based on the comments I see on Youtube there have to be at least some people who are not smarky.

[jdw]

 

So did the Kobashi vs Joe dvd sell more than the original Ric Flair WWE dvd? More than a Shawn Michaels dvd?

 

Well no, but that isn't relevant at all in this discussion. All The Boys Love Mandy Lane sold fuck all next to The Da Vinci Code in 2006; that doesn't mean it wasn't well known and popular amongst the cult horror movie internet community.

 

The Shawn and Flair DVDs weren't exclusively selling to smart fans, which is what we are talking about here. My only point was that Kenta Kobashi was well known amongst the ROH audience and fairly well known in the internet wrestling community as a whole before being an 'internet fan' became normality.

 

 

It's relevant because the original claim by you was that "most smart fans" in 2004 thought Kobashi was amazing. The reality is that most smart fans in 2004 didn't give a shit about Kobashi: most smart fans were WWE fans, TNA fans, or former WCW/WWF/ECW fans from prior years. Kobashi meant dick to most of them.

 

 

Sure, a lot of people who went to the Kobashi-Joe match new about Kobashi. How long had ROH been pimping it?

 

Only a couple of months to recall. Kobashi came over because a big enough audience already wanted to pay to watch him, not because ROH had spent ages promoting him to their crowd. Samoa Joe had often been put forward as a dream opponent and they thought they could sell a lot of DVDs.

 

 

 

 

Okay... so he was pushed to ROH fans rather than some random guy booked against Joe that ROH fans suddenly thought:

 

"OMG!!!! It's Kobashi!!! They never said anything about this... how awesome this is!!!"

[anarchistxx]

 

 

It's relevant because the original claim by you was that "most smart fans" in 2004 thought Kobashi was amazing.

 

I said that it was an unimpeachable opinion amongst smart fans in 2004 that Kobashi was amazing. Later I said that a good proportion of smart fans would have known about Kobashi, even if they hadn't necessarily watched a match of his.

 

 

 

The reality is that most smart fans in 2004 didn't give a shit about Kobashi: most smart fans were WWE fans, TNA fans, or former WCW/WWF/ECW fans from prior years. Kobashi meant dick to most of them.

 

Again, depends how far you want to take the term 'smart fan'. Most fans who were 'smart' to the extent that they kept track of backstage news, posted on message boards and bought a lot of footage would have known about Kobashi. People who glanced the Wrestlezone site and posted on the Lords of Pain forums, maybe not.

 

 

Okay... so he was pushed to ROH fans rather than some random guy booked against Joe that ROH fans suddenly thought:

 

"OMG!!!! It's Kobashi!!! They never said anything about this... how awesome this is!!!"

 

Not sure what you are getting at here. I was using the reaction to Kobashi as proof he was someone well known in the ROH fan community. They weren't excited because ROH were making him out to be a big deal, they were excited because they already thought of him as a big deal, and most of them probably thought they'd never get to see him wrestle in person.

[jdw]

I think people who read WrestleZone and Lords of Paste did so for the "news". They were interested in more information than they simply got off watching their TV and talking among their offline pro wrestling friends. Same reason people read SKeith: they were looking for more info than they saw on the tube. Backstage stuff, if someone got hurt, what happened to Wrestle X who was off tv, etc.

 

Kobashi is an extremely small niche within that.

 

He meant a great deal to *us*. But we're not the average smart fan. We're a small niche within a niche within a niche.

[Cross Face Chicken Wing]

Ok I might have to change my stance. Watching RAW before bed last night, the wife asked what Triple-H was doing at Wrestlemania. I told her about wrestling Daniel Bryan w/ the winner going on to wrestle in the title match.

 

She says, "Well, isn't it obvious that Triple-H is going to win since he's the main guy who writes the show?"

 

So apparently even my wife is aware of Triple-H's douchery and behind-the-scenes role. Perhaps there truly are more smart fans than I think.

[Ryan Faulconer]

It was a bit of a culture shock when the sleaze thread attracted an entirely different type of smart fan to the DVDVR board. Then it happened again when ROH changed owners and lost their message board for awhile. That particular period in time frustrated me so much...at the time. That might cross over from "smart wrestling fan" to "annoying internet personalities" and the "internet personality" is something I wouldn't even begin to explore. People with multiple names having flame wars with themselves (it happened at the ROH board for sure). I think the DVDVR WWE threads are some kind of performance art for some people. These days DVDVR forums have more in common with RSPW than it does the original board.

 

When I discovered the DVDVR forum in 1999/2000 it was very low traffic with a few topics popping up over the course of a week. PWO or WKO are really more like the old DVDVR board. There was a group of maybe less than a hundred people who posted there and they never had the conflicts or people trying to get over an internet persona with a group of strangers that they will never meet. When new wrestlers/matches/promotions were discovered people usually restrained themselves from throwing around obnoxious buzzwords to immediately dismiss it. This is going to make me sound like an old dude but it really felt like there was a polite respect for each new wrestling or movie or music topics that were posted.

[KrisZ]

This is usually where Kris chimes in about the people he knows, and since it's Kris, I believe him but in general, I don't see it in my life. I'm not sure if it's a class thing or what. Almost everyone I deal with is middle class or higher and even then not many are super lower middle class. Everyone I know who followed in college were tuned into things and that was back in 99-00 or so. All the people I know from high school still into it have podcasts

 

I can't believe it's been a week and I haven't seen this yet. Yes I know plenty of wrestling fans that I work with and the ones outside of work that watch PPV's with me that don't go online for wrestling news. Only 2 or 3 of these guys watch other shows besides RAW...the rest just watch RAW & PPV's because Monday is like tradition for wrestling. These guys mainly have families, 2nd jobs, or just don't care that much about spending time thinking about it.

 

I had one guy tell me that he doesn't understand why I read about wrestling online so much and said that his wife doesn't go online reading about Days of our Lives so why should I read about wrestling so much.