Paid Members LaGoosh Posted May 28 Paid Members Share Posted May 28 21 hours ago, Browser Brady said: Serious question, does anybody think the violent stunts have a detrimental effect on attracting casual fans ? Probably the complete opposite. Casual fans love mad and wacky shite and have less time for serious graps, are bored shitless by technical masterpieces and laugh at most the stuff we think is great. As they should. Wrestling should be fun and it was a ridiculous, over the top fun stunt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Nick James Posted May 28 Paid Members Share Posted May 28 (edited) 8 minutes ago, LaGoosh said: Probably the complete opposite. Casual fans love mad and wacky shite and have less time for serious graps, are bored shitless by technical masterpieces and laugh at most the stuff we think is great. As they should. Wrestling should be fun and it was a ridiculous, over the top fun stunt. This is it, isn't it? It's just fun. When you think back to the Attitude Era, you don't think of the technical masterclasses, you think about Crash Holly being chased through a kids playground, Al Snow and Hardcore Holly fighting in the snow and mad shit like Mankind being launched off the cell. Whilst we may have a penchant for pearly clutching over dangerous spots like REAL GLASS, it gets people's attention and as mentioned, it's just a good time. I'm not a fan of death match stuff, but wild, wacky backstage brawls are my cup of tea. Perry being set on fire looked safe as houses as well, there's definitely been dumber spots than that, especially as The Bucks had the fire extinguishers in hand and I'm 100% certain there will have also been other people behind the curtain with extinguishers at the ready too. Edited May 28 by Nick James Autocorrect, sorry Bacon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Factotum Posted May 28 Share Posted May 28 People love mad shit. I love mad shit. That Main Event was great. Watched it in segments yesterday and enjoyed most of it. A few matches could have been cut, but most delivered. AEW PPVs are always entertaining and give something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Lorne Malvo Posted May 28 Paid Members Share Posted May 28 (edited) I was laughing my head off for the majority of that main event. Glorious fun. Thought it was an excellent PPV for the most part. Will Ospreay is incredible. What an opener. Gotta feel sorry for Big Bill. First he's in a stuttering tag-team with 'this is my job-face' Ricky Starks and now he's lumbered with the Wetherspoons Dementor (thanks Supremo) and Scrappy Doo. Surely they can do more with him? I'm a big fan of Adam Cole debuting/returning then immediately being blown away by a much bigger return. Danielson first, now MJF. Great return promo, hopefully it leads to a slow-burn of MJF learning to trust people again. There's a couple of natches that probably didn't need to be on this PPV (Trent/Orange and FTW would've been fine on Dyno) and there were points the PPV was bordering on overlong and exhausting but overall it was a cracking time. Bonus points for it taking place on a Bank Holiday weekend too, so once it finished I still had time to go to the cinema! Edited May 28 by Lorne Malvo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Supremo Posted May 28 Author Paid Members Share Posted May 28 I don’t know what to tell you if you don’t think this is absolutely brilliant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
organizedkaos Posted May 28 Share Posted May 28 (edited) Yeah I think i've mentioned before there's a certain corner (a cornette-orner?) of the internet that constantly pushes a narrative that the "casual fan" basically wants to see 70s style defined heels and faces and slow paced matches. An idea that the casual fans want consistency in style, simplicity in both style and story, lots of selling and logical matches and are turned off by anything that might point at the idea that wrestling is fake. This idea gets repeated enough it's often treated as gospel by those who aren't old men yelling at clouds I'm sure there are some situations this might be true, families looking for something to take their kids to, the pantomime crowd. On the other hand, my experience has been casual fans are absolutely up for ridiculous shit. Flips and athleticism absolutely draw their attention. They know wrestling is fake and are used to general television/film/comic book/novel/every other instance of storytelling where sometimes unrealisitc things might happen. Wrestling cannot be popular in the same way UFC is popular. The whole "fake" thing gets in the way. To go even further, often when exposed to the wonderful diverse range of insanity that can live in professional wrestling the casuals i've met express the thought that it's much more entertaining than they realised. Because they, the much sought after casual fan, thought that outside of the attitude era wrestling was mostly that memphis/world of sport/old school style and they didn't want to watch that  Edited May 28 by organizedkaos Nina Simone - Feeling Good (Nico's feeling good edit) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted May 28 Paid Members Share Posted May 28 The biggest stumbling block for first-time viewers is always "but isn't it all fake?". The best way to get around that isn't to waste your time trying to convince them that it isn't fake, it's putting on a show that's good enough or funny enough to wild enough to bypass that criticism all together. You're more likely to win someone over with "fucking hell, this is mental" than with a "great" wrestling match, because it takes time and investment as a viewer before you really understand what a "good match" looks like. Occasionally you'll see the "what match do I show a first-timer to get them into wrestling?" conversation on Twitter, and I find it insane how many people pitch stuff like the Undertaker/Triple H Wrestlemania matches which, even if you didn't think they were an interminable melodramatic slog, are only "good" because of years of investment in those characters, their history, and their place in wrestling. It's exactly the wrong thing to show to a first-time viewer, because it's all the bad acting and huffing and puffing grunting and groaning that they all think wrestling is anyway. When someone like Cornette - or, more generally, his fans - insist that certain people would turn off "casual fans" or be an embarrassment to somebody watching wrestling for the first time, they're almost always getting it completely wrong. A good mate of mine is an amateur MMA fighter, who has always struggled to get into wrestling because he can't get past how phony the grappling and submission techniques are, or how daft the psychology is around striking, but the one wrestler he loves is Orange Cassidy because he completely bypasses all of that. Another friend watched wrestling for the first time during the pandemic, because she was living with her boyfriend and he was a fan - her favourites were Orange Cassidy, Jungle Boy and Marko Stunt. A casual fan who hadn't watched regularly in over a decade texted me to tell me how amazing he thought the Young Bucks were when he checked out AEW for the first time. Consistently, it's the people that we're constantly told are the problem that are actually appealing to the non-fans I know. Whereas what's actually embarrassing to someone watching wrestling for the first time is two people throwing shit punches that don't connect, or two overly-muscled men going nose-to-nose and breathing heavily in each other's faces, or any of the other bits of melodrama and daftness that we're told is good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted May 28 Paid Members Share Posted May 28 Exactly. The first wrestling I ever remember seeing was actually a trailer at the start of the Deadly Games VHS for 3 Faces of Foley where it showed clips of all his mad bumps. I was blown away and instantly hooked. If it was a bunch of clips from Bret Hart's Greatest Matches I probably wouldn't have given two shits. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Lion_of_the_Midlands Posted May 28 Paid Members Share Posted May 28 1 hour ago, Supremo said: I don’t know what to tell you if you don’t think this is absolutely brilliant. How about you tell that person that it's OK to like different things. I thought it was a cool spot, but on the whole that kind of match isn't for me anymore. I didn't hate it, I just don't love it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidB6937 Posted May 28 Share Posted May 28 There's a reason so many companies go for the 'wow' factor or celebrity appearances or whatever else. It's not to please us. It's to get eyes on the product, get new people interested and hooked, and THEN hope they'll stick around and enjoy the other stuff. I was at a family BBQ a couple of weeks back and my brother in law's wife was talking about how she'd been made to watch WrestleMania because her husband found out The Rock was there and because he really liked him when he was younger he gave it a go again. She obviously said it was all shit and fake and whatever.. and then talked about it for about 20 minutes, remembering all the different names and the gimmicks and various things about the show. She clearly enjoyed it far more than she was willing to admit. It's always interesting to hear about the shows from a casual perspective. But yeah, can't blame any company doing something that will get more eyes on their product or something that may be a bit outside the box. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Hannibal Scorch Posted May 28 Paid Members Share Posted May 28 2 minutes ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said: How about you tell that person that it's OK to like different things. I thought it was a cool spot, but on the whole that kind of match isn't for me anymore. I didn't hate it, I just don't love it. So you agree it was a cool spot? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Lion_of_the_Midlands Posted May 28 Paid Members Share Posted May 28 (edited) 6 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said: So you agree it was a cool spot? Yep. Visually tremendous. Though I would say it probably would have looked even better if the camera hadn't shown the people crouched at the side of the stage with the fire extinguishers before Darby set him on fire. Edited May 28 by Lion_of_the_Midlands Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Supremo Posted May 28 Author Paid Members Share Posted May 28 On this subject, I always thought this was funny. Orange Cassidy - supposed embarrassment and causal fan turn off - making up about ninety percent of AEW’s most watched YouTube videos. Anyway; Juice Robinson, Gangrel, MJF returning and instantly fucking off the Undisputed Kingdom, immediately moving on from them, Swerve and Christian being fucking brilliant, Mercedes finally delivering, THE FINAL COUNTDOWN and Jack Perry on fire?  Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members JLM Posted May 28 Paid Members Share Posted May 28 4 minutes ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said: How about you tell that person that it's OK to like different things. I thought it was a cool spot, but on the whole that kind of match isn't for me anymore. I didn't hate it, I just don't love it. That’s implied by the comment though, like “I think this sort of sheer madness is brilliant, if you hate it there’s not much I can really say that’s going to change your mind. To me it’s self evidently brilliant, we obviously have very different outlooks on the sort of insanity we are willing to embrace from this whacky form of entertainment”.  Similarly I don’t expect people to put “in my opinion” every time they opine on this forum, or that they’re saying I’m wrong about mine when they do so using very forceful language. Just take it as read that people are expressing themselves and sometimes going a bit over the top with it for fun or to make their posts more interesting to read etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Butternut Squash Posted May 28 Share Posted May 28 (edited) On 5/27/2024 at 12:35 PM, Browser Brady said: Serious question, does anybody think the violent stunts have a detrimental effect on attracting casual fans ? I don't know who or what a casual fan even is in 2024 and think it's become a tedious talking point distracting from legitimate issues with the product. The violent stunts are detrimental in the sense that they're a symptom of the excessive attitude that has hurt AEW more as the years go on. More wrestlers! More hours of TV! More title belts! More heel turns and swerves on swerves! More gimmick matches! Half arsed Rampage feuds ending in violent blood baths that diminish the impact whenever it happens higher up the card. Top stars settling for the many trinkets instead of interacting with other top stars and challenging for the world title. It's really hard for anyone or anything to stand out in that environment. Five years of watering everything down until it's ice cold. Edited May 28 by Mr Butternut Squash Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.