how did audience reaction get to the point it's at today?

[Yakashi]

While I don't think WWE should always give in to the hard-core fans, I do think their stubbornness is their downfall a lot of the time. They should roll with it far more and give people what they want. If people want to boo Roman Reigns then make him dastardly. What have you to lose? We're way past the point where he's ever going to be John Cena. Plus, if he turns because the crowd turned on him, that's great motivation for a heel and eventual babyface.

Why is Seth Rollins coming back as a heel after injury when people want to cheer him? Why are you turning AJ Styles when he's over and people love him. Why not turn Ambrose who is aloof and a great talker.

You get away with it more with a heel who is cheered but if it's vice versa and you're past the point where you can tweak the character then you've got to just go with it. This is the reality era, right? They used to be great at that. They aren't now.

I still believe Reigns could be the superstar babyface they need. Turning him heel and having a good one to two year run of being a shit kicking machine, followed by a slow building face turn like what they did with big Dave would work. I really think it would. With these type of fans, you just need to make them think that THEY turned him babyface. All they want is to get themselves over, so let them think that it was their decision to accept and anoint Roman after his heel run.

[King Pitcos]

Ultimately, it's on the company for not giving a shit for so many years. They've left themselves forced to rely on Monday Night Wars names and whatever cred people have got from indies/NXT. The wanky fans should be in the minority at a TV taping or PPV, but the normals have been bored away. The wrestlers like Styles, Owens and Rollins wrestle the way they do because that was what got them talked about on the Internet in the first place, and there doesn't seem to be much benefit in changing it. WWE just doesn't have any better ideas.

 

There's no pleasing us whatever they do. The rise of the Internet fucked us all up in terms of enjoying wrestling. It fetishised both the attitude era and ROH as the epitome of what wrestling should be, making us long for the glory days where they let the wrestlers wrestle and it was about the wrestling not the gimmicks, and there were matches instead of 20 minute promos and there were beer baths and girls with big tits with handprints on them and great gimmicks and swearing and blood and great promos and Japanese submissions ending 60 minute cruiserweight main events and choppy choppy pee pee. It created a big fuck-off contradiction that makes the perfect wrestling product an impossible dream. We can't be pleased now, outside of the odd moment where the right one gets pushed or someone does a good botch. Bizarrely, "entertainment" became a dirty word to wrestling fans -- and when we're actively offended at the notion of being entertained, there's no possible victory.

 

The fans just can't enjoy something. They're like the young bucks in a three minute match. They just have to get all their shit in.

 

That was the same line that popped into my head during the NXT show the other night, when they started doing the "FIGHT FOREVER" chant during the first match (after "THIS IS AWESOME" before the first lockup). Reeked of getting their shit in. It's just a sorry state of affairs that those things are so inorganic now, they're just an obligation when you're at an NXT show.

 

The "you deserve it" chant is the worst, and that's made it to the main shows, sadly. It only ever means "you have enough Internet points for this push you are now getting."

[Yakashi]

I hate real life chants at wrestling shows. Real names, old gimmick names etc. But you deserve it is the fucking worst. Kevin Owens, the mid card heel, being handed the belt by Triple H after Finn got injured "deserved it"?

 

Or did Kevin Steen, married father of 2, "deserve it" because he used to have good matches in front of tiny crowds and didn't get hired, until they were desperate for bodies to fill the roster, because he was too fat?

 

It's just so stupid. They want so desperately to be part of the show, that they've started to think they're one of those guys. Kevin is just like us!! We saw him wrestle Generico once in front of 120 people so now he deserves to be world champion on the big stage. Not the character. The real guy!!

 

If it was a one off with a real guy that meant something, it would be fine. Like when Mick Foley first won it. That would have been great. But now it's every time an Indy guy wins a belt. Or even worse, when the fucking women had the cell match. It just doesn't mean anything.

[drkopen]

Did the fans on Smackdown chant 'you've still got it to Taker'?

 

All he did was walk to the ring and cut a boring promo.

[Guest]

I was in walkabout in Glasgow Sunday night for a few drinks after icw, and the state of the shite the "fans" in there was chanting was cringy as fuck. One it's a tv, and two they were trying to be smart to get a rise from the tv. I ended up heading away early as just couldn't be bothered with it. Don't get this obsession with hating on something to try and be cool. If you hate it, don't bloody with it. But don't spoil it for those who do want to watch

[Arn Anderson's Darb]

I reckon the Zack Ryder story was a tipping off point looking back. A guy who was being given nothing to do went and got over on YouTube to the point where the company had to acknowledge it... and then put him firmly in his place and point out how much of a nobody he really is (correct). It's felt like a battle between the writers and a certain section of the crowd as to who decides who the stars are since then.

[air_raid]

 

One of the reasons is that all the heels do cool moves. They dont give you much of a reason to boo them.

This is it, isn't it? People just want to cheer for the guys they think are "DA BEST" whether their role in the story is good guy or bad guy, but the wrestlers don't help themselves. One of the worst offenders of this was Seth Rollins when he was champion and supposed to be the heel. Go back and watch the Cena match from last year's SummerSlam - he wrestles like a fucking hero in terms of what he pulls of, and his Tanahashi tribute went to the point that not only was he knocking out the Sling Blade and High Fly Flow, even his soddding tights made him look like he was cosplaying Tana. He wanted to be the babyface. He dressed and wrestled like the biggest babyface in New Japan's last decade. He was virtually indestructible too, kicking out of multiple Attitude Adjustments. He's supposed to be the heel. Heels getting to kick out of finishers is another factor - back in the day you occasionally let a Bret or Shawn kick out of the heel's finish because they were meant to be your hero fighting the odds, but at some point it became the norm for the face's finishers to be devalued too.

 

Ultimately, it is down to fans being dickheads, for the most part. That heel you're cheering mad for, because he's "DA BEST"? He thinks you're a fuckwit. Buy his shirt if you want, but fucking boo him. That's his role in the show. That's what he wants.

[Mr.E]

For me its a combination of fans becoming "smarter", [even though the general masses are still unaware of other products probably] and with that,  being told "this is the guy now", and us having to eat it.

 

As an Example: I like Roman Reigns, but I don't like the way in which, when Vince cottoned on to him being "popular", he said: "RIGHT, this is the guy now, make him win the rumble etc etc", when if it was a more gradual build up, maybe with a mid card title win first, so it seems more natural, I think more people might be on board. This combined with they don't appear to be build more than one person up, in the same manner at least, so when you say "well who else could be the champion" and the options are slim to none, other the aforementioned 'Chosen One' . 

 

Barring the above, people now cheer for good wrestlers, so it doesn't matter if they are face/heel, if they like something that person does, whether that's "DA MOVEZ" or not, people like them and that's it.

[digforvictory]

It's so frustrating that they won't turn Reigns. He's got the most heat of anyone on the roster week in and week out, turn him and then we've got a serious big time main event heel that won't be getting cheers.

 

Meltzer has spoken about this phenomena for want of a better word and he puts it down to the casual audience being ran off. So you're left with the hardcore nerdy fans who cheer for whoever they like and aren't as easily swayed by the booking.

[Supremo]

I don't like the sense of entitlement that feuls the Roman Reigns booing, and its mind-blowingly ironic that people rag on him for being a bad wrestler when he's had so many great matches these past few years, but at least that's a reaction they could one day tap into. If they ever script him to stop talking in the middle of a boo-filled babyface promo and tell everyone to fuck off, I'm going to spunk my dick off.

 

The shitty chants are just the worst though. There's nothing you can do to turn them into a positive. They just ruin every big moment by reminding you that by being a fan of this stuff you're essentially an equal to these dickheads, determining what is and isn't wrestling in this awful, smarky circle wank.

[Snitsky's back acne]

Apparently there was an audible (at least in the arena) 'Chris Benoit' chant at NXT on Saturday when the multiple German suplex spot was used in the tag title match.

 

 

[NorthSeaTiger]

Another thing is the "Universe"....calling the audience this, and with the amount of pandering to them done on screen and online, has created this culture of fans feeling they are a big part of how things happen. Instead of being spectators to a physical theatre, a lot of these fans now feel they are influencing the script with how they themselves act. It's entitled bullshit.

 

And getting to the topic of heels not working like a heel,this could stem from the fact that a massive proportion of today's wrestlers are marks themselves, so are desperate to do everything they can, , just because they can, to get a reaction. Heels don't wanna work heelish as that might stop fans from buying merch and influence their income, but we then end up with a bunch of guys, as mentioned, kicking out of massive move after massive move. No one is made to look too vulnerable,which means we now have dozens of guys all at the same level with very little discernible difference between mid and upper card level stars.....

[The Gaffer]

Since all the reasons have been eloquently stated already I've got to thinking of events. People view the Daniel Bryan saga as the real watershed of fans finding their voice and it probably is but for me it goes back to CM Punk's pipe bomb promo which was a huge moment for bringing that kind of disgruntled fan theology inside the bubble and allowing it to be on air. It really did change the business, I think. Before that it was just pantomine booing of John Cena that went nowhere becasue he was still constantly, brilliantly in the main events. Punk's thing ripped a hole in the fabric and all the wankers levelled up and hall monitored the stalls in the building overnight with increasingly overzealous opinions and demands on angles.

 

The whole thing also happened a short few months after The Rock came back and reminded everyone of how good wrestling was. That was 5 years ago and there's plenty of lapsed fans I know who can still only name those two events from the past 5 years of wrestling. Rock coming back is the biggest thing that's happened in a decade and the next thing that tops that is going to change the business just because that's how big a thing it will have to be. 'Taker's streak kind of got there but it was a clickbate story in comparison with how fast it fizzled out.

 

Even though the product looks and feels much the same as it did back then I can't shake the sense that up until 2011 you could still do loads you can't do now without a big stupid whinge. Everyone was still up for a great time in 2008.

[drkopen]

Would I be wrong is saying the heels not working as heels seems to be quite a male thing.

 

Charlotte, Carmella and Alexa Bliss really work as classic heels.

[Supremo]

And getting to the topic of heels not working like a heel,this could stem from the fact that a massive proportion of today's wrestlers are marks themselves, so are desperate to do everything they can, , just because they can, to get a reaction...

I definitely think there's something to that. If you think of the current WWE roster, how many of them do you think were Observer subscribers and tape traders when they were younger? I reckon it's the highest percentage in the history of the company. Kevin Owens, Ambrose, Rollins, Cesaro, Zayn, they reek of being smart fans as kids, and the list goes on and on. The whole show is filled with grown-up smart fans, which means they're all coming from that same workrate~! love the business~! stance that the shitty fans are. Everyone wants to have the best match, to the point that very few people are willing to be a proper heel and cut out all the flippy shit.

 

Kevin Nash must be turning in his grave.