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moofasa

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I really dislike the cheer the faces and boo the heels mentality. If you pay your good money who should react to the wrestlers how you want as long as you're not being horribly offensive considering that there are youngsters in the audience. People like bad guys in films if the bad guys are interesting/entertaining characters. Culture and entertainment have changed. Look at television shows and films. Lines are blurred and fans just want to be entertained. The WWE need to think a bit more out the box if they want the audience to react a certain way to a wrestler as the crowds are not as easy to manipulate as they once were.

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Agree with the above and what supremo said about the you deserve it type chants.

 

For me the problem is a lot of the heels these days either don't wrestle like heels or certainly in WWE hold onto their Indy baggage like a badge of honour which in my opinion keeps the Cheers coming. I always wonder how many of today's fans were going to or at leastvwatchingvthe Indies when these guys were out there now.This has led to things like cheering Neville's and ziggles heel turn.

 

Alongside that I think some of the guys were liked by fans yet not used well and now they have a new character they are happy to cheer them getting a little more attention (perhaps subconsciously)

 

The writers / wrestlers need to step up work put how to get people to hate them through words, actions, move set. The one thing I worry about is I don't think many of today's crop have the urge to do it or the distance some would need to go might be a bit far for a big corporate company

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People like bad guys in films if the bad guys are interesting/entertaining characters. Culture and entertainment have changed. Look at television shows and films. Lines are blurred and fans just want to be entertained. The WWE need to think a bit more out the box if they want the audience to react a certain way to a wrestler as the crowds are not as easy to manipulate as they once were.

I'm very much of the view that if someone's being a good heel you should boo them, but this is an interesting point. Lines are much more blurred in TV and film these days, when you look at things like Breaking Bad, Game Of Thrones, Vikings, Sherlock etc etc. Same with films like Rogue One or Civil War or a third recent example. Shades of grey all over the shop. The problem being, the premise of pro wrestling is so ingrained in 'cheer the good guy, boo the bad guy' it hasn't found a way to catch up to other popular culture yet. Maybe it needs to, but I don't know how - because at the moment, take out the face heel dynamics and you're watching an improvised dance routine and just applauding the performances. Which is kind of what's happening, but you don't get investment (emotional or otherwise) with that.

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The problem with comparing WWE to shows like Breaking Bad, GOT etc. is those shows weren't aimed at kids in any way, unlike WWE

 

You've got half your audience who watch nxt, cwc etc. remember what they perceive to be the glory days, watch indies and half your audience who just want to watch Raw, Slam City, get the magazine and get the game every Christmas

 

Neither of those are wrong particularly except they both want to go and watch Raw (for example) live, now you go to the scriptwriters of Game of Thrones or something similar and tell them to make the overall tone of the show and half the characters more accessible to a younger audience while retaining the fans who love the sex and violence and its fair to say they'd struggle

 

This isn't a knock on the PG era in the slightest, just saying how no other form of entertainment has such a diverse fan base whose needs and wants really don't go together

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Yeah, that's a fair point. You can't reconcile the adult audience without losing the kids, and you can't get rid of the adults who stick with it no matter what. It worked for Hulkamania and Attitude because the kids of the first era became the teens of the second. Now they're adults and they won't go away so another generation of fans can be built! Maybe instead of a brand split WWE needs to have an adults brand and a kids brand and keep them totally separate somehow!

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Some good points in fairness, and there's nothing wrong with digging the bad guys BUT I still think it's well different when it comes to your favourites.

 

You'd have to be a complete moron if you think clapping and cheering a heel makes them feel better than giving them heat would. This guy's your absolute fav yet this is how you show your love? Really? F'n cheers mate!

 

If you reeeeeeeally love them (which is totally fine) then give them shit!! They'll appreciate that a hell of a lot more than you cheering in their face like some twat whilst they try to mean mug you in character. So in short it's ok to love em, just channel your love in hate.

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For me I'm happy to boo the heel and cheer the face as long as I'm given a consistent and compelling reason to do so.

However if you look at Rusev, for example, in at least 2 arguably 3 of his major fueds he should, by any reasonable standard be the sympathetic character, outside of jingoism.

I'd hate Americans if they all objectified and slut shamed my wife!

I feel like I had more reason to cheer Rusev than I did Reigns, Cena or Ziggler.

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I re-watched Cena vs Rollins from SummerSlam 2015 last night.

 

During that match, the heel Rollins did:

- 2 suicide dives through the ropes

- a somersault suicide dive over the top rope

- a top rope frog splash

- a standing shooting star press

- a top rope phoenix splash

 

He was cheered as loud as any babyface on the show.

Obviously it was partly due to the fact New York hates Cena, but how can anyone see spectacular moves like that and boo the guy doing them?!

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Dopper's right on the button there. I never rated Rollins when he was Tyler Black, and whilst he had improved in WWE, he still came across as a bit of a spot-monkey, who was more concerned about popping the crowd than being his character.

 

I remember a great example of a proper heel turn in FWA, when Jonny Storm turned on Jody Fleisch. In his heel character, he turned all of his flashy moves into headlocks.

 

Irish whip. Dropkick? Nope, headlock.

Run up to throw opponent off turnbuckle. Moonsault armdrag? Nope, headlock.

Seated opponent. Run off ropes and dropkick? Nope, headlock.

On the top turnbuckle. Moonsault? Nope, run down and headlock.

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Surely that headlock thing will just become funny to the point of getting over if he does it that much? Gotta be careful with shit like that.

 

I was travelling back from Manchester on Saturday night and idly scrolling through Twitter to kill time and my feed was full of stuff about the crowd at Rev Pro. I seemed to get all sides of the argument - Rev Pro fans saying that lot should fuck off back to Progress, Progress fans saying they're used to a much better atmosphere and that lot were cunts and the fans from that section themselves half revelling in the attention and half pointing out that they were the only ones making any noise at all.

 

It's been something I've been thinking about for a while, because I hang out with a lot of guys who will cheer heels over faces. One of my mates is a university lecturer and his Facebook statuses are often the sort of opinions that would be considered akin to Dem Wans on here but my point is these aren't shitty smart mark fans trying to get themselves over, they're intelligent guys who are really into wrestling and their reactions are generally very natural.

 

I think the wrestlers themselves muddy the waters a bit themselves. Pete Dunne, the consummate heel, bit a fan at a show I was at recently and later the same night was on Twitter thanking everyone for saying nice things about the show and saying how happy he was that people had a good time. Obviously a wrestler's twitter is their own personal thing but wrestling is a weird industry where who you are in the ring doesn't have such a disconnect with who you are publicly on the internet.

 

Which makes it pretty tough when you've got to promote a show and try to sell merch.

 

It was mentioned earlier about shades of grey and I think no matter how much the WWE try to book black and white (and I honestly don't think they do actually try that hard), the fans and the wrestlers themselves will force shades of grey anyway. Kevin Owens still wants to sell t-shirts and (as above) Seth Rollins still wants to pop the crowd when they're working heel. Some of the crowd will always like them, maybe because they came from the indies or maybe because they like them anyway - Owens is genuinely entertaining, even if he is supposed to be a bad guy. He doesn't do a lot to make me want to boo him but he does a lot of things that make me chuckle.

 

At shows, I generally will do my best to 'play my part' and boo and cheer the right guys but I'll be the first to admit that isn't always the most natural of reactions and there will definitely be times when heels will do something to get heat that I'll find hilarious and it's hard to remember to boo someone when your natural reaction is to laugh and applaud.

 

I do generally find that fans at BritWres shows are better than at WWE shows though. That London O2 show last year put me off of going to WWE shows for a good while.

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I re-watched Cena vs Rollins from SummerSlam 2015 last night.

 

During that match, the heel Rollins did:

- 2 suicide dives through the ropes

- a somersault suicide dive over the top rope

- a top rope frog splash

- a standing shooting star press

- a top rope phoenix splash

 

He was cheered as loud as any babyface on the show.

Obviously it was partly due to the fact New York hates Cena, but how can anyone see spectacular moves like that and boo the guy doing them?!

 

Rollins is the worst culprit ever for this. Completely dropped his character once the bell had rung throughout that entire heel run. I'm surprised the wiser heads in the back let him get away with it. He isn't smooth/smart enough to make it work as a heel act like AJ or HBK, where you get the impression that they're arrogantly showing how good they are.

 

The only time it worked was during the incredible triple threat with Cena and Lesnar at the Rumble, when his high flying came across as an out-of-his-depth youngster desperately throwing the kitchen sink at two larger, more experienced opponents. He was insufferable the whole year either side of that.

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Surely that headlock thing will just become funny to the point of getting over if he does it that much? Gotta be careful with shit like that.

 

There was indeed a danger of that, but he did well in slowing down the matches with the headlocks to the point where it stopped being funny and became irritating, especially against high-flyer blue-eyes who could pop the crowd with spectacular stuff (main one who comes to mind is X-Dream, who wasn't all that overall, but could do stuff that that FWA crowd loved).

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I try to keep to boo heels and cheer faces. However some faces I just don't like. If I'm not that interested in them I'll play along but have seen some I just wish would fuck off. Sometimes with imports it can be difficult. Seeing LIJ was something I was looking forward to do much I cheered them. It was great seeing them and I loved it and emotions took control.

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I still feel like an audience's biggest responsibility is to respond honestly. Wrestling's a weird, organic, interactive thing. It's supposed to be. Like a stand-up trialling new material, your cheers and boos let the company know what adjustments they need to make to get the reaction they want. If you just do exactly as you're "supposed" to do - performing as if you're part of the show rather than an audience watching it - I think your only reward long-term is going to be a worse product. WWE's in a tough spot, of course, because its trying to be everything to all people and there's always going to be that tension of trying to find the right balance, but the principle still applies. As long as you're not obnoxious about it, I don't see why any fan should have to filter their reaction.

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