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| yeesh |
I've also lost patience for WWE employees being smug about WCW.
— Jason Mann (@wrestlespective) August 5, 2012
Apparently, AYS? was about the "Fingerpoke of Doom" this week. Granted, it was an embarrassing moment for WCW and wrestling, and it deserves to be poked fun at. However, the overarching thing is that WWE is the one doing the poking, and they've been poking at WCW's corpse ever since they bought the company in 2001.
It's time to stop.
The Monday Night Wars were an exciting time in wrestling history when they were happening, but they've been over for eleven years now. Sure, it was great to be able to buy the company that had its lead play-by-play announcer spoil shit they were doing on the reg, but it's not like they made fun of Tony Schiavone for things Eric Bischoff made him do... oh wait, they did. It's also not like they had Bischoff on the roster and humiliated him publicly. Oh way, they did that too. In fact, the WCW schadenfreude has been almost as much a constant over the last 11 years as John Cena being Superman, Triple H raising ire of Internet fans and Jerry Lawler generally embarrassing himself behind the microphone.
Why is it that even now, WWE insists on asserting its victory? The people who knew about the wars are sick of hearing about WWE winning (even guys like myself who watched WWE primarily during that time) and people who don't know don't care. It's gotten to the point where it's clouded their judgment towards their product releases. The Rise and Fall of WCW, from most reviews I've read, is one of the finest pieces of revisionist history ever produced. It's clearly marketed to people who liked WCW and wanted to relive some of the moments of it. As a fan, would you read a review of the set and think to yourself, "Hours upon hours of people telling me how bad my favorite wrestling company ever sucked? BUYING THE SHIT OUT OF THIS!" If the answer is yes, you're either unstable or a sadomasochist.
Besides, why is WWE happy that they vanquished their competition, or that their competition was inept enough to do the things that they're poking fun at them for? Wrestling hasn't reached the relative cultural zenith that it has since then, at least in traditional metrics. While I'd argue that wrestling itself is in a better place now because of the Internet and social media bringing fans together that might not have been out and proud as fans before, people are always going to point to the days of ZOMG RATINGZ AND BUYRATEZ!!!1 as the good ol' days. The sad thing is, a lot of those people still work for WWE right now.
It wasn't just having the magic bullet of stars like The Rock and Steve Austin. There was another company pushing them every week, and they pushing them the same. Shouldn't they want a company on the same level as them in order to stoke the fires even more? Granted, that's not going to be the be-all, end-all for what ails the company or what they think ails the business right now. Impact Wrestling proved that when they flopped on Monday nights. They weren't in the right spot to compete though, and I think we all knew that. If they moved now, maybe they might do better, but the truth is they're closer to the size and scope of what we call an "independent" promotion than they are to WWE, Panda backing notwithstanding.
Honestly, there's no real cache in burying WCW anymore. If Vince McMahon's ego can't be sated by winning a Pyrrhic war and owning all the rights and tapes associated with the company, then he truly is a sad, sad man. WCW belongs in the same, rose-colored memorial urn that other promotions like the AWA and WCCW reside in at Titan Towers. To continue to fight the war only turns fans off and keeps this idea that things aren't as good now as they were back then, and creatively, nothing could be further from the truth.
