With this week being the most historic in recent wrestling history, due to the launch of the WWE Network, you’d think I’d have no problem coming up with something to write about. You’d be wrong. Everywhere I’ve looked I’ve found things I can’t write about.
I can’t write about the WWE Network because I live in the UK and we don’t get it here yet. I’m working on getting it (thanks to some super smart and helpful people on Twitter) but until I do, I can’t comment on it.
If I did try it would be like reviewing a match or a show I hadn’t watched. Some people actually do that and they always sound like idiots. As you’ll all know, I don’t need any extra help to sound like an idiot.
I can’t write about Elimination Chamber because everyone has done that already and bar the match of the year so far (AJ vs. the other Funkadactyl), it’d just be more whinging about Daniel Bryan not winning the Chamber match. I don’t know about you, but the whinging about Bryan feels more pointless with each passing PPV.
I get the fact that everyone hates anyone in WWE who isn’t named Daniel Bryan. I get that everyone hates anyone who wins a match when Daniel Bryan doesn’t. I get that everyone is going to have their panties firmly wedged up their poop shoots until WWE make Bryan THE MAN. I totally get all that and I understand why people feel that way.
It’s just, at the moment, it doesn’t look like booing Batista, Orton, Cena, Sheamus or anyone not named Daniel Bryan is going to make the slightest bit of difference to WWE and how they handle Bryan’s push (or lack thereof, depending on your point of view).
Yes, it’s a shite state of affairs but it’s what we’ve got to live with. Unless everyone stops watching, stops going to shows and stops buying merch in protest over Bryan’s treatment, nothing will change. THAT is the only way your voice is going to be heard. Does anyone really have the balls to speak up like that? On mass? And effect real change? I highly doubt it.
Yes, a promotion SHOULD listen to their fans but in WWE’s case, with the money they’re making and the global brand they’ve become, they don’t HAVE to listen to their fans. Not yet anyway. They’re doing something with Bryan, but it doesn’t appear to be what anyone wants. Or is it…
Here’s a little glimmer of hope for you all to cling to for the next couple of weeks: Bryan and HHH get added to the WWE World Heavyweight Title match at Wrestlemania…and Bryan beats three quarters of Evolution, in the main event of Wrestlemania, to win the World Title and begin his reign at the top of WWE for years to come.
That thought must leave you with a nice, warm and fuzzy feeling inside. It’s total fantasy, of course. Fantasies aren’t supposed to come true (it’s why they’re called fantasies), so perhaps we all just go back to dreaming about the day Bryan becomes THE MAN, as opposed to constantly expecting that fantasy to come true? No? Ok, chant away people, it’s got to work eventually.
It’s not just Elimination Chamber and the WWE Network I can’t write about this week. There was the huge Monday Night RAW with Hogan, Taker and Brock all coming back to set up their roles at Wrestlemania.
I’d love to write about that but I can’t. Thanks to Sky Plus being less reliable than the WWE Network on launch day, RAW didn’t record this week. I don’t know why. It just isn’t there. So I’ve got to wait until later in the week to get a chance to watch the show.
With so much I can’t write about this week, I’ve had to go back to the old faithful idea machine that is the MFX Podcast for inspiration. Mostly the MFX Podcast is played for laughs. Occasionally, we actually have interesting and in-depth conversations about serious subjects. On the IMPACT show this week we did just that and it’s given me something I can write about this week. Hurray!
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not just a huge fan of professional wrestling, but also MMA. The biggest star in MMA today is female. Her name is Ronda Rousey. If you don’t know anything about Ronda, here’s a quick history of her rise to super stardom:
Dana White, the UFC President, stated for years that there would NEVER be a female division in the UFC. In public his reasoning was that there weren’t enough skilled female fighters to make a competitive division.
In private I’m sure he was worried that UFC fans wouldn’t watch, and more importantly wouldn’t pay for, a female UFC fight. It didn’t help that with Gina Carano giving up getting punched in the face for a living to live the dream in Hollywood, the sport no longer had a female star to build around.
Enter stage left, Ronda Rousey. A former Olympic bronze medallist in Judo (first American female to EVER medal in Judo in the Olympics), with a marketable look (she’s hot) and a legitimate mean streak when it comes to fighting.
What set Ronda apart from other female fighters from the beginning was she understood the power of the promo. In fact, it set her apart from most male fighters too. Ronda saw the blue print that another huge UFC star, Chael Sonnen, followed and decided to follow suit. It’s a simple tactic – talk your way into fights by any means necessary and get paid big bucks.
Less than a year after debuting in the sport Rousey used her amazing charisma and gift for trash talk to force her way into a Title fight against the then Strikeforce Champion, Miesha Tate. The fight was a promoter’s dream – two hot chicks, both of whom could actually fight, with a legitimate and very real dislike for each other, clashing for the world title on TV.
They drew very healthy numbers on TV – an average of 431,000 viewers, an increase of 25% from the previous Strikeforce show. The viewership numbers peaked at over 500,000 for the start of the Rousey vs. Tate fight.
The story of the fight played out to perfection as Ronda did what she had done to all her opponents up until that point, and had promised she would do to Tate, she submitted Miesha via brutal arm bar in the first round and became World Champion.
If anything, Ronda was a throwback to professional wrestling stars of the past. She had a legitimate bad ass persona, a finisher that was over and unbeatable (her arm bar) and a gimmick that people could invest in (finishing all her opponents in round one), plus she could talk people into the building. A star had arrived that would eventually change the face of the UFC.
Watching in the wings was Dana White, who saw the marketability, charisma and undefinable ‘it factor’ that Rousey had and decided she would be the female fighter that would usher in a new era – the era of the female fighter in the UFC. He changed his entire stance on female fighters in the UFC because he knew Rousey was potentially a big money player for his promotion. He was right.
Thanks to a combination of charisma, dominance in her division, UFC’s great marketing, and the departures of Anderson Silva and Georges St Pierre (the two biggest stars in the company), Ronda Rousey now finds herself as the biggest star in the UFC today.
She has already made millions from her first two UFC fights and Dana White stated she will soon become the highest earner in UFC history. Rousey receives extra payments depending on the number of buys the PPV she is appearing on does.
Her first fight on PPV did well above expectations, somewhere in the region of 450,000 buys. The second, a rematch against Tate and headlined by the rematch between Anderson Silva and Chris Weidman drew over 1 million buys. Wrestlemania has never drawn 1 million PPV buys in the US in 30 years.
Away from the UFC, Rousey has become a staple on major US chat shows, as well as on other sporting shows, magazine interviews and is generally considered to be the face of the UFC. A much less punchable face than Randal Keith Orton, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Rousey is now moving into the world of movies. She will appear in the new Entourage film, as well as Fast and Furious 7 and The Expendables 3. She has also been signed to appear in an all-female Delta Force style film, which the studio producing it believes has big franchise potential.
In an incredibly short period of time, Ronda Rousey has transcended her sport and is a mainstream celebrity in the US. So what the hell does Ronda’s success have to do with wrestling?
Well, my question on MFX this week was: could there ever be a Ronda Rousey in WWE or TNA? I didn’t mean someone exactly like her in terms of her attitude, or someone doing a fake MMA fighter gimmick. I meant would there ever be a time when a woman is considered the biggest star in wrestling.
I can already sense a resounding ‘no’ being yelled at computer screens around the world. How could that possibly happen? If there’s one thing that WWE and TNA (admittedly to a lesser extent) have conditioned their fans to accept, it’s that female wrestling is second rate and hardly worth the 3-4 minutes they give to the one token match each week.
Granted, wrestling is ahead of UFC in that they have had female wrestlers for decades and in some cases they have gone on to be big stars, such as Chyna, Trish Stratus or Lita.
Then there’s eye candy who couldn’t really wrestle but still became stars, like Stacy Kiebler, Torrie Wilson, Sunny and Sable.
They’ve all been successful to some degree but none of them have got to a Ronda Rousey level of fame. None of them were game changers or cross over stars who earned their promotion millions of dollars and countless hours of mainstream publicity.
Why is that? Is it because female wrestlers don’t have the talent or charisma that is so marketable in Ronda? I highly doubt that. It is more likely because the wrestling promotions don’t see a place for a top level female wrestling star? That’s got to be part of it. There’s also the question of whether or not wrestling fans would ever accept a female wrestler at the top of their favourite pseudo sport.
I do believe the average wrestling fan, if presented with a female performer who has the equivalent skill, charisma and ‘it factor’ of Ronda Rousey, would accept her as the equal of some of the top male performers in the business. It wouldn’t be easy and it wouldn’t happen overnight.
It would take a long time to re-educate fans to take female wrestling seriously and, of course, there’s the question of having equally marketable and talented opponents for the star to face. This is something UFC are going to have to deal with as Rousey continues to dominate her division.
Will it ever happen in WWE? If the Daniel Bryan situation has shown us anything, it’s that WWE are terrified of change they can’t control and have become risk averse to a ridiculous degree. The chances of them discovering their version of Ronda Rousey and then building a competitive, well promoted woman’s division, is as remote as Batista being able to make it to the bottom of the entrance ramp without coughing up a lung.
It could happen in TNA, simply because TNA need to do anything and everything they can to become a true alternative to WWE. Unlike WWE, they have to take risks and be willing to try anything in an attempt to boost business. At the moment, no idea is a bad idea to try and get TNA to the next level – as long as the idea is original and doesn’t just repeat something from the past that WWE have already done.
I really should draw some sort of conclusion here before I sign off. Will a female wrestler ever reach the level of stardom that Ronda Rousey has? It’s doubtful. It’s just the nature of wrestling, the promotions and the fans. I don’t think it’s even likely, but that’s not to say it isn’t possible. I’d love to be proved wrong.
Honestly, I’d love anyone in wrestling, male or female, to become the kind of star that Ronda Rousey is. The business is built on stars and for a variety of reasons, they’re sorely lacking these days. Maybe Bryan will be that star, or Bray Wyatt, or Roman Reigns, or maybe it’ll be someone just starting out in the business today.
I just hope when they get here, the promotion they work for captures that lightening in a bottle because as we’ve seen with Daniel Bryan, even when a potential star is staring them in the face, wrestling promotions have a habit of ignoring them for someone they’ve already built into a star in the past. They can’t keep going back to that well because nothing survives purely on past performances, just ask Batista about that if you don’t believe me.
Would you look at that – two thousand plus words and hardly any of it was about Elimination Chamber, RAW or the WWE Network. I bet you didn’t think you’d see that this week. I know I didn’t.
If you’ve got something to say about these barely coherent thoughts and opinions I’ve stumbled over this week, let me know. You can leave a comment here, or you can follow me on Twitter @MFXDuckman.
I can’t sign off without a cheap plug for MFX. So, go listen to MFX. It’s great. You can find the show here or over at www.mfxpodcast.com. We don’t claim to have all the answers, but we do make talking about WWE and TNA a shit lot of fun. Come and check us out and join the ever growing MFX Galaxy.
As always, thanks for reading and be sure to continue to support SLTD and all the contributors here who make this such a great site.
Until next time…
Peace
Duckman
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