The Albert Chants Need to Die

We get it, you know who he used to be
Photo Credit: WWE.com

Attention, WWE crowds. We get it. You recognized Best Boy Tensai as previously being Albert in his prior run with the company. At first, I thought it was actually kind of cool. The meme is that WWE thinks its fans have a collective memory shorter than that of what a goldfish is reputed to have. He'd been gone for about six years. THAT'S ALMOST TEN YEARS. The way they recap shit on shows makes me think they don't think the fans can remember ten minutes ago. Way to prove the corporate idiots wrong!

But hey, you guys have been doing it for the entire time he's been back. I hate to break it to you, but it's gotten old. Far be it from you guys to come up with lame chants, but I do suppose it is your right. I mean, I hate "This is wrestling!" but at least it's a way to let the guys in the ring know you appreciate them and let the company know that that's what you want to see. It's done obnoxiously in my opinion, but hey, I probably do a lot of things that people find obnoxious.

But what does the Albert chant accomplish? Is he an effective villain? Then why not boo him? Do you just not want to see the character anymore? Then don't chant anything. The only two options I can think of are that people REALLY would rather see the character with the moniker referring to a dick piercing or that the fans are just being smart-asses and trying to get someone, anyone to notice them and more than likely tell themselves "Hey, those guys on TV? I wanna be like them! THEY'RE SO CLEVER!"

The thing about cleverness is that it's often not found by repeating something done a million times over. When something's done once, it's clever. When it's done a million times, well, it's pounded into the ground. Maybe wrestling fans are more like promoters and bookers than I thought. That actually would make a heap of sense.

My point is not to say that fans should show up, sit down and only cheer or boo. Funky chants are a part of the game, and in no other form of sport or entertainment does the crowd have the interactive role than it does in wrestling. So, with that being said, since we are part of the show, our interactions are fair game for criticism.

So, just as we blast the WWE writers for living in the past too much, can we really blame them when some fans seemingly can't get out of the same ruts as well? It's actually a vicious cycle sometimes. The "fans" can't get into new guys because WWE keeps giving them rehashes, but WWE keeps giving them rehashes because the fans don't like any of the new guys they put out. So that leaves us with a subset of this subset of fans who end up chanting "Albert! Albert!" at shows.

And it's annoying.

To be agents of change and a true part of the show, maybe it's time that we just silently assented to the fact that yeah, this guy used to be that guy and either go with it by reacting to him or reject it by sitting on our hands. Chanting just to chant that we know that we used to see this guy just feels like a waste of everyone's tim