ROH fans; now that I have peed in your eye, let me offer to help you clean that up!
Having had time to consider that ROH takedown piece I was itching to write for months but had the good sense to put off until I had one of my bi-monthly losses of reason and composure and just did it, I kind of regret it. Mostly because I imagine I am being yelled at by ROHbots on some corner of the internet and they scare me, but also because I feel like I did not clarify my position well enough. Also, I’m sorry if saying that Vin had daddy issues with WWE insulted him. I really regret that one. Sorry dude.
Mostly, I just regret pulling a Grant Morrison and coming out guns a blazing with my big ideas and not actually clarifying any of them. Of course, a lot of the stuff I mean to say, or wish I had, was said in the column that irrepressable law scamp Andy Wheeler wrote in response to mine.
I think he made some good points springboarding off mine, although to be fair, I’m so jazzed someone at IP is acknowledging my existence that I’m probably overrating his work like an ROH fan would overrate a Brisco Bros./Bryan Danielson/Nigel McGuinness fatal four way where all they do is trade wrist locks for an hour before the Briscoes decide to no sell.
Ahem. I kid, ROH fans, and god do I hope some of you guys have a sense of humor, especially since I gave Aaron my AIM name. And I don’t want to alienate Wheeler either, in case he’s the only guy in the trenches with me when the ROHbot revolution comes and they want me against a wall. I also want to make damn sure everyone knows where I’m coming from on this. You know, now that you might be forgetting all the flame baiting I did in between making fun of myself and everything.
I have no problem with people being really in to ROH. I have no problem admitting it’s better on the level its fan base judges it on. I don’t doubt this stuff is really a panacea if you’re fed up with WWE’s product today and TNA attempting to be WWE from 10 years ago with the occasional bone thrown to work rate freaks with ROH’s roster from 5 years ago. I think it’s great you guys have that socially acceptable place to mark out, partially because I am too self conscious to mark out even when I go to WWE house shows are sports bars showing PPVs and everyone else is. Hell, even my dad got in to watching Eugene attack La Resitance’s anuses with the French Flag and ride Tajiri around like a horse, and he was just at the show to humor me on my birthday.
I think a big part of my agitation at the ROH hype is my general aversion to hype. Unless I’m the one hyping something.
See, it’s funny; hype’s an exclusionary thing. On the inside, it’s a joyous celebration. You’re just sharing your passion with likeminded folks and trying to get other people in on the action. I’ve been there, and I was so annoying with it was medicated out of me. But now that I’m on the other side, I gotta say; it can be pretty tedious to the uninitiated if you always talk about how great your favorite thing is, and belittle stuff they’re in to, even if you aren’t trying to.
I think this whole to do of is just a small aspect of a bigger debate in pop culture/entertainment/art that’s been around for as long as corporations of varying sizes have been offering different products in the same genres and formats; indie vs. mainstream. Do you want to be on the cutting edge or the big time? Do you want passion or production values? Do you want to suffer for your art or have it delivered to you on a conveyor belt and stuffed down your gullet, statiscially likely fat lazy American? And I gotta say, I usually choose the latter, ‘cuz I’m a fat lazy American and WWE shows, superhero comics, and Hollywood Blockbusters entertain me as much or more than their indie equivalents.
In a lot of ways, I really do think my problems with ROH are more me than them, and I am not slamming the door shut on ever being a fan of the ECW of the 21st century (thank you for making that point, Wheeler). I mean, you guys nurtured all of the new talent I enjoy in WWE and TNA, and things like the Road of Homicide storyline, Briscoes vs. Machine Guns, and the likes of Styles, Punk, London, and Joe unbound sound awesome. I just don’t want to expend any effort to watch them.
So, we’re cool, right? We understand each other, people I’ve never met and will probably ignore if you write mean things about me? Nigel’s not going to come to my house, break my jaw in retaliation to this and give himself another concussion in the process, is he? No one wants that, I think.
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Brad,
I thank you for clarifying your stance and the root of your opinions. As a fan of ROH and Puroresu I have become less tolerant of the WWE and TNA but have no problem with it entertaining the masses. Everyone has different tastes and I am fine with that. The problem is people have a deep seated need to share what they enjoy, as a kind of mechanism to ensure that what they enjoy IS good. This is often combined with emotion and ego and as such often gets hyped out of proportion.
Hey Brad – nice job clarifying some of the points you made back in the old article. ROH is a tougher sell now than a few years ago, and its not that the in-ring product isn’t great or that the wrestlers in the company suddenly suck (they don’t), but you really hit the nail on the head with one statement about pop-culture and society:
“I think a big part of my agitation at the ROH hype is my general aversion to hype. Unless I’m the one hyping something.”
Sure, you go on to elaborate fully, but to the people who love ROH and might come here, it seemed like a mess of hatred when you weren’t “giving ROH a chance” according to them.
I used to be the same way about ROH as many of the so-called “ROHbots” are: I was blindly supportive and would talk the company to high Heaven when given the chance.
Then I saw them move to bigger and better venues in the NYC area. Then they were in the Hammerstein and my then soon-to-be wife and I were sitting among Cena and TNA marks wondering what happened to the promotion that we were driving around like 300 idiots to see every few weeks? How did all these morons show up and change the show?
Frankly, ROH is like indie music or Coldplay or comic books or old school Pumas or track jackets: once something you embraced is no longer catering solely to you and now has to cater to a new, bigger fan base, you feel a little dirty.
ROH reached its tipping point just before the Road of Homicide, when they expanded to that global alliance of talent sharing with NOAH and Dragon Gate. They didn’t need me anymore.
They didn’t need me standing at work in a shitty record store talking to anyone with a wrestling DVD in their hand about this product and handing them a Post-It Note with the company’s URL.
They don’t need me loaning my DVDs to people to watch and take to shows.
They didn’t need me…and that sucked.
(Basically, the same thing happened for me with Coldplay back in 2001 and that one stung 10,000 times worse. ROH not needing me is just a result of me growing up enough to see what’s happened.)
Wrestling isn’t my sole source of entertainment anymore. I don’t buy ECWA Super 8 tapes from bootleggers and watch them for hours in my room. I don’t need to talk at length about how amazing Dynamite Kid-Tiger Mask were back at a time when I was only 3 or 4 and can only recall it from watching a tape of the collection from that same bootlegger.
Some times, things just aren’t for you anymore. I wish I could have introduced you to ROH in 2004, when I was nuts and crazy for it; or 2005 when I couldn’t get enough and would travel all over the eastern seaboard (had my finances allowed).
As it stands, ROH doesn’t need me. They need Glazer and Andy Mac and 411 and everyone else who talks about the sport critically and sees how and why things work and don’t merely see “fun”.
I went to ROH for the fun. I linked them in music columns for years and really, when it all came down to it, part of their success is the result of all the word of mouth marketing they got from we “early adopters”.
I don’t know if ROH was a fad to me, but like the hipsters in girl jeans that were depressed when Pete Wentz talked about them in CosmoGirl and suddenly kids in Peoria were rocking them too, I was just an early part of the phenomenon.
I will always love watching ROH; mostly on DVD now because I feel so out of touch with the shows and the product and, especially, these new fans. I don’t want those newer fans to stop coming to shows or to stop buying the DVDs and merch, they need to be there. I want success for ROH, but I know that deep down, I can’t go back to the person and place I was at in 2005 when Widro and I first got to see an ROH show in person. We’d followed the promotion online and through tape traders, so we knew what to expect…or so we thought.
Those were different times; we were different people and ROH was different.
I am sorry you weren’t with us then. It was a fun time, but the best fun was sharing it with others.
And still no love for the NWA. Bastards! Bastards, all of you! :P