How can wrestling appeal to educated people with money?

[JerryvonKramer]

Hmmmm ... get them to join Pro Wrestling Only?

[JerryvonKramer]

On a more serious note, although my instincts are to say that wrestling is a "blue collar" thing and shouldn't be gentrified, if you go and watch St. Louis stuff from the 1970s THAT crowd seems to contain more intelligentsia than your average wrestling crowd. They LOOK* like a congregation of people at a college attending a poetry reading. That might have been a St. Louis thing, or it might have been something to do with the way Sam Muchnick presented wrestling. Low on gimmicks, high on legitimacy and presenting it like a real sport.

 

* Need to note that this is an observation largely based on what people were wearing and how they behaved vs. other crowds from the same time frame. 70s St. Louis has a very different feel from most other towns of that era. However, if you go further back, the 60s Wrestling at the Chase was a suit and tie affair with local dignitaries seated at tables having dinner. The more "formal" feel of the crowd could be a hang over from that. Whatever you say though, there's a world of difference between that and the sorts of crowds you see in Watts country, Mid-Atlantic, or even at MSG.

[rovert]

Does modern CHIKARA do this?

[JerryvonKramer]

The other thing to mention about Wrestling at the Chase in St. Louis is that it took place in the elegant Khorassan Ballroom. Even though admission was free, fans had to get them through the TV station and there was a long waiting list. Only 900 people could be seated. So that made it an exclusivity thing.

 

Not saying at wrestling was at the pinnacle of St. Louis high society or anything, but that it was presented in a way that might push the buttons of the bourgeoise.

[gingears]

I think the strategy WWE is using, or at least attempting, is pretty sound: hook 'em when they're young. It could be all the young Cena fans are future captains of industry. Of course, given that the program they're being raised on is reinforcing the idea that only bad guys wear suits to work, maybe not. I think the show is way too geared around the idea that a mean boss is lording over everyone, holding down the heroes, for people enjoying successful careers to really relate to, so eliminating the whole "evil corporation" element would probably be a step in the right direction.

 

In reality, these guys are all millionaires or at least close to it, and the curtain has been pulled back enough for everybody to know that. There's really no reason for such an emphasis on class warfare in the storylines. "Or you're fired" shouldn't be factored into the character motivations so much.

[Loss]

I brought this up precisely because what WWE is doing right now isn't working. They just got a TV rights renewal where they were undervalued based on the ratings they deliver, and one of the reasons is that most wrestling fans are not college educated and are low-to-middle income. I wasn't at all talking about wrestling I would personally like, and I didn't mean to turn this into an "improve the product" thread. We've seen great product before and it doesn't draw more sophisticated viewers. Some of the answers lie there, but after all this time, I still think the biggest issue is that no wrestling promotion has ever found a way to fully resolve the real/fake thing. Pretending they are real in every aspect makes for a far better presentation in my opinion, but it also turns people off who feel like they are being insulted. That's why I think WWE needs to embrace that they're fake even more than they already do. Anything less than that feeds the perception that the people who watch are stupid and don't know better, thus why would anyone advertise to such fucking idiots?

[funkdoc]

glad to see there are plenty of others chiming in! nobody cares about "workrate" or "real sport" stuff unless they're already in the bubble, let's be real here

 

you need wackiness, particularly with this generation. taking yourself too seriously makes you more of a joke than having a sense of humor about yourself does anymore, though you can't get TOO over the top (which chikara probably is if you watch it regularly).

 

wanna know what the fastest-growing sport in the US is with educated people my age & younger, at least in terms of percentages? women's roller derby! that had very much the same roots as pro wrestling, and it's kinda unique in how it evolved. decades ago it was a worked TV sport with gimmicks and angles, and in the early 2000s there was an ~ironic hipster~ nostalgia revival. it just happened to catch on really well, and it became a real sport. here's what i think really runs counter to the arguments some have made ITT: even as derby has attracted increasingly talented athletes who are more likely to celebrate wins with protein shakes than beer, the stockings and fishnets and gimmick names (Kill Basa, anyone?) are still the defining aspect of the sport. that hasn't made it seem any less "real" to people like us, it just gives much-needed character to an audience that realizes sports are fundamentally silly anyway.

 

another aspect of derby that has some relevance here is its strong connection to feminism, to the point that i've heard it described as "the first truly feminist sport". discussions of racial/gender/queer issues have become a huge part of many nerd subcultures in recent years as minority voices have made themselves more visible, and the results of this have gradually shown up in the mainstream. many of the most famous indie video games of recent years deal with stuff like this - look up Gone Home, which got a ton of love in major outlets' end-of-the-year awards, or Dys4ia, which earned its creator an article in the new york times. it's also happening in comics...marvel recently got a whole bunch of press for the new miss marvel, who is a teen muslim girl, and one of DC's most respected writers is an outspoken feminist who doesn't shy away from these themes in her work. i could also talk about the atheist movement and plenty of other examples, but you get the idea!

 

i think angles touching on these issues could be huge for drawing in women and other minority & educated audiences, but wrestling doesn't have anywhere close to the right people or the right mentality to pull it off currently. to go back to that miss marvel comic, it's written by a muslim woman, when even a generation ago it more likely would have been a white guy in that spot. then you look at wrestling's track record with people of color in creative...ranjan chhibber, anyone?

 

tl;dr there are a ton of ways for pro wrestling to tap into the preferences and issues of the current generation, but that would require radical changes that will never happen as long as mcmahons are involved

[soup23]

It may be a cop-out but I agree that right now time is still an issue. I have seen that many people my age or younger are more wiling to accept wrestling as a form of entertainment even if it isn't something that they don't watch. However, I still think individuals 30+ still have the perception that this was something that was presented as real but also claimed to be real and there is examples of the extremes they went to protect the business. Jon Hamm is not Don Draper. However, when he does interviews, he is still a cool motherfucker. Ditto for Emilia Clarke when discussing Khalessi. These paradigms need to be shifted in wrestling. John Cena portrays himself as a goofy, fun kid loving babyface. In real life interviews, he continues this motif. In Total Divas, he is an obsessive, demanding, alcoholic, perverted man which is worse. His true life character in that show is "worse" than the on screen persona. Humanizing wrestlers and wrestling as a whole as a form of entertainment would go a long way to it being presented on equal footing as television shows and other forms of entertainment.

 

From an on air product role, I do think more episodic, tighter writing, and deeper, nuanced character work are key. Looking again at the promo Flair lays out when he returns in 1997, it is tough for me to see a persona in WWE today that could do that layered a promo and performance. Perhaps Paul Heyman. The Wyatt clan looks cool but I'm still not sure what they are trying to accomplish in the promotion. This is one of the perils of not having another major promotion but having a set timeline for certain storylines/characters would be beneficial in the long run and hook viewers into a specific story arc where you know an endgame is coming.

[Loss]

Some great thoughts here. I like where this thread is going. Funkdoc, I'm not saying this to criticize WWE since we don't know who's on their writing team, but I will say I wouldn't be surprised if there's not a single woman, LGBT person or person of color on the writing team. If the company culture was one where the writers could speak up and there were more minorities in positions of power, segments like the one with Los Matadores that got so panned a few weeks ago wouldn't hit the air. That segment was absolutely not deliberately racist. It was just clueless. A lot of this doesn't really make Vince a bad person on its own, but he's a wealthy old white man who lives in a bubble and is surrounded by yes men. His creative vision draws on his life experience and world view, just as anyone's would.

 

Wrestling needs a Shonda Rhimes.

[Matt D]

I think a good corollary discussion to this is just how wrestling WILL Change, now that we have some idea about both the network and the tv rights. How is WWE going to react to this week? Etc? What do we think will really happen?

[Loss]

I suspect no changes at all to their product and instead more sucking up to stockholders and promotion of their charity work.

[KrisZ]

The thing is I believe wrestling will have a stigma to certain people in the media forever. When WWE was at it's peak 15 years ago they were getting killed by the mass media but it didn't matter because they were doing big business.

 

People like Jim Rome & Colin Cowherd who just bury wrestling fans whenever they get a chance including people that are their friends it's a lost cause.

[dawho5]

I think a lot of the problem is the carny roots of pro wrestling. It's gonna be really hard to get it over with more educated folks when a lot of the carny aspects are still very strong in the presentation of pro wrestling. I'm not saying it can't be done, just you'd need to have a promoter who wanted to appeal to a different audience and understood that the very core of what they presented had to be changed in order to do that. I do think the way the matches are worked has something to do with it, but that's only a piece of the puzzle.

[PeteF3]

Some great thoughts here. I like where this thread is going. Funkdoc, I'm not saying this to criticize WWE since we don't know who's on their writing team, but I will say I wouldn't be surprised if there's not a single woman, LGBT person or person of color on the writing team.

 

Not that it really changes your point but there is David Kapoor.

[Bierschwale]

I think that the answer is, somehow, to both make it more like a sport AND to embrace as much as possible that it's fake. For example, revive KotR as a much bigger tournament, basically using the full roster and even NXTers. Have it end at Mania. Have a bracket competition. Wink wink, nudge nudge.

 

Make the most explicit gimmicks like Halloween costumes, letting the performers' actual personalities shine through. Isn't that almost the entire reason behind Foley's success? He was Mick Foley. But he was also Cactus Jack, and Dude Love, and Mankind, and whatever the hell he felt like being. You knew that there was a real guy from an upper middle class suburb in Long Island there, but it didn't matter. Asking everyone to be Foley is impossible, of course, but you don't need to be as good as him on the mic to make it work. Over-the-top CHIKARA-style comedy matches aren't the most beloved thing here, but I think that the view count on YouTube for "The Most Illegal Move in the History of Wrestling" speaks for itself. Do stuff that's just pure sugar rush fun. Don't go into the "Boy fuckin' howdy, does Vince Russo love puns or what?" zone, but just let the most farcical elements go wild. Something like the Henry-Sandow mini-feud at the end of December about Sandow trying to cancel Christmas is a good example of a milder version of that. USA promoted the hell out of it, an effectively meaningless match between two guys on the lower mid-card. The match itself should have gone even deeper into this idea, with explicit Seuss-style references and the like.

 

There's a clip of a Shield interview on YT in which Ambrose and Reigns argue over whether or not Rowan's mask is a camel or a llama, with Rollins just standing there incredulously. I don't think that there's many people who'd see something like that and suddenly think that the most traditionally "badass" group that the company's had since the Road Warriors first debuted aren't just as enjoyable as they were before seeing it.

 

It's really hard to verbalize this dichotomy that doesn't devolve into Vince's famous stupid "ACTION-ADVENTURE SHOW!" quote, but he missed how to do it.

 

I have no idea what I'm talking about here.

[goodhelmet]

Surprisingly, unless I missed it, nobody brought up the word violence. Because it is fake, wrestling comes across as violence for the sake of violence. "Hey look at that guy break his back or crack his ribs for something fake. How stupid". UFC and the NFL are much more violent but they are legitimate competitions so the violence gets a pass. The bloodlust seems like a low-brow form of entertainment even when shows like Game of Thrones are much more violent if you want to use a TV show example and not a sports example. I don't think college-educated upper middle class families are going to be encouraging their kids to go to wrestling TV shows so they can see scripted violence where wrestling's real problem lies... choosing your audience. Currently, the show is promoted as fun for the entire family. If a change is to take place, that has to change. You need to decide who you want to attract and stick with it. If you are a kid-friendly product then stop trying to appeal to adults and focus on your brand with toys and video games and cartoon shows. This means toning down the vioolence and creepy characters and going full on super heroes mode with a focus on dangerous athleticism and stunts and over-the-top characters. This may appeal to a certain brand of adult who collects action figures, watches cartoons and reads comics but the focus is still to get kids to buy the product. If you want to appeal to adults only then kill the Mattel deal, make the subject matter more mature, kill the stupid comedy and get real writers. Make sure it is understood that kids would not be welcome at the show or that only a bad parent would take the kids to the show. The Attitude Era was really weird because parents who were accustomed to taking their kids to wrestling shows stopped because of the content shown week after week. Hos, Val Venis, Austin's fingers, swearing, Sable's tits. All low-brow and all tailor-made for a Jerry Springer audience. They embraced their low-brow status. At this point in time, to change the status quo perception, they have to stick with one audience age group and reject their past.

[flyonthewall2983]

Story-line wise I don't think wrestling could ever be as multi-faceted and interesting as a lot of the really good cable shows. Part of why is timing. Some of the really good shows in the post-Sopranos era have taken their entire arc to build to what we would call the blow-off. Angles generally don't have those kinds of arcs, and if they do they're on shaky ground because any number of things could happen. This other angle could take away all your steam because it has gotten more fan attention, there could be any number of personal or business disputes behind the scenes that puts it all in risk, and to be incredibly timely because of the Daniel Bryan situation, injuries.

 

This isn't in direct relation to the question, but the fans of those shows in general cross a lot of different lines, including income.

[El-P]

The Attitude Era was really weird because parents who were accustomed to taking their kids to wrestling shows stopped because of the content shown week after week. Hos, Val Venis, Austin's fingers, swearing, Sable's tits. All low-brow and all tailor-made for a Jerry Springer audience. They embraced their low-brow status.

 

Very true (and I agree with pretty much your entire post). And remember, in the infamous Vince promo preceeding the birth of the Attitude era, he talked about having "more reality based storylines" with more "adult issues" and "shades of grey". Yes, the Attitude era was supposedly the WWF growing up from a children product to something more mature. Yeah, suck it ! Well, I guess they grew up to teenage years, but never went beyond, and regressed into kids soon after.

 

Adult pro-wrestling I guess exists (or has existed) in Japan with the salarymen audience like it's been said at least until the 80's/90's (no idea what the audience is today), because it was presented as more real, as a sport basically. I totally disagree that they have to go into even more fakeness, until you want your kiddie show with super-heroes and such. But they would have to really make it truly a family entertainment show like you said (which means cut down on violence even more and go the entire way, so it means scrapping everything sexual, too violent and whatever sense of realism. I believe that's what Jacques Rougeau is promoting in Quebec actually). Just rambling here...

[Matt D]

I suspect no changes at all to their product and instead more sucking up to stockholders and promotion of their charity work.

 

There almost has to be a Hostile Takeover story in the next month, no?

[Cross Face Chicken Wing]

No college educated, upper class folks are going to start watching wrestling if they weren't fans as kids or in college. Keep building up the younger fan base and hope they stick w/ wrestling after they get money, or come back to the product after they get money and something -- a hot angle, breakout star, whatever -- draws them back in.

[goodhelmet]

CFCW, I agree... IF it is presented as it currently is. It would need a complete makeover, a complete shift of paradigms by the people involved with the willingness to leave the kids behind in order to be entertainment for a different socio-economic status.

[Johnny Sorrow]

I just think that wrestling is something that needs to grab you as a kid or teen. That's a big reason why Attitude era and NWO WCW were so big. A generation that got hooked as kids got to come back to a "grown up" version.

[Matt D]

I think they're frankly better off continuing to try to tap into growing foreign markets, maybe?

[tholzerman]

1. Cut the misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and general bigotry. It shows.

2. Continuity and logic are important.

3. Highlight the "higher brow" celebrities who like the show.

 

I could probably rattle off a bunch of other reasons, but yeah, perception means a lot.

[goodhelmet]

I just think that wrestling is something that needs to grab you as a kid or teen. That's a big reason why Attitude era and NWO WCW were so big. A generation that got hooked as kids got to come back to a "grown up" version.

 

This doesn't address the question that Loss posed... how do they attract a better demo to increase ad revenue?