Credit: WWE.com
There have always been smart fans in a sense. Way back before wrestlers were using insider terms in promos. Everyone with sense knew wrestling was "fake". I miss when I didn't know Vince McMahon was the owner. We can't put the kayfabe toothpaste back in the tube. Fact is, smart fans think and say the dumbest things and have an entitlement about them. We get emotional about the wrong things in the wrong way.
The event that changed the way I thought about wrestling was when CM Punk lost to The Rock because they needed him to drop the belt to Cena in Twice in a Lifetime. Back then I wrote on another site and I set off literal porn filters because I used 53 variants of fuck and motherfucker to describe my disgust that CM Punk, my favorite wrestler at the time, lost to a part timer who wouldn't be there. Funny to think back on that. In my anger I wrote about how I would have had CM Punk's long title reign against Undertaker's streak and that would have been the biggest match you could have done. I was not wrong about that then. They ended the streak a year later at the hands of a different part timer.
There was a time where wrestling fans got emotional about match finishes and it was never heat on the promotion or the booking. We hit the ring. We threw shit. We attempted to stab heels. We waited for heels in the parking lot. Now, we complain about the promoter and the booking. We vow to stop watching and cancel the network trends on Twitter. This is not an idle threat. WWE's ratings are going to hell. WWE is encouraging people to buy PPV again and trying to sell the right to broadcast the shows they've given away free and for $10 for years. Not happening. I think in some ways WWE has stupidly acknowledged and catered to the smart fans. These hoes ain't loyal.
As the ratings fall to comical TNA and AEW levels... And yes I went there. As much as people tell me AEW is so good they can barely get less than a million people to watch. Anyway. The "NXT is better than WWE" fan is a loud minority. Less people watch that than AEW every week. I am smart but not that smart. I knew for YEARS WWE considering what the smart fans want or like is not good business. They encouraged us to be like the night after Mania Raw crowd. We hijacked shows and defecated on matches we smart fans don't want to see. We cheer and chant for people to get a push and then turn on those people. Smart fans are about as consistent as Vince not tearing up the show and rewriting it as it airs.
People often say they would change one historical event if they could. The cynical wrestling fan in me would have healed Daniel Bryan so fans could completely turn on him as they would have had the injury not robbed us of the opportunity. By the the we got around to the SummerSlam where Brock was going to murder whoever the champion was, we would have already tired of what we just begged for. Wrestling fans aren't unlike dudes trying to get pussy. We literally work so hard and beg for it just to lose interest after she acquiesces. Not me though. I don't like trying. Not too proud to beg, but definitely too proud to work hard. Anyway. Smart fans are dumb.
As much as I can't say Vince hasn't made dumb and shortsighted decisions, more often than not, Vince has given us things we'd like. There have been so many things hotshotted with no build. As much as Vince seems to have no patience, we have even less. We want every wrestler to be main eventing from day one and for everyone to win clean but don't bury everyone to get the one person we wanted to be hotshotted over before we then say they're being overpushed. And you know, Seth Rollins has LITERALLY held two belts at once three times in about 5 years.
We hate every babyface and love every heel. Daniel Bryan first got over huge as an annoying chickenshit heel. Rollins too. Again. This is partially Vince's fault because he made Roman say sufferin succotash on tv and so and so forth. It is also our fault in that we prefer edgier and darker characters like The Fiend. That dude is a heel and we love him like he is the biggest face. We would shit on Ricky Steamboat today. He was the whitest meat babyface. Nothing really interesting about him. Just a family man who did mean arm drags and chops. Roman don't have a chance with smart fans.
Wrestling will die if the only people it appeals to are the people who read every spoiler then get mad at surprises or that it happened just like we read. We need more fans who don't know everything and just react to the story in real time. We don't need riots and stabbings but we need fans who love the wrestlers for real. Not this fake love smart fans do now.