All In

I feel kind of spoiled by the last week or so in wrestling, because I thought Triplemania was one of the most enjoyable events I'd seen in a good many years, only for it to be topped just a few days later by All In, which was simply spectacular. I thought Penta vs Kenny in particular was an incredible display of top notch pro wrestling, no weapons or blood, just great grappling, big bone crunching moves and great salesmanship. Going in, I was a little worried it was an odd pairing that might make for a slightly wack match, but those two put on a really riveting show.

It was good. No blow away matches, but still a fun spectacle show. Reminds me of the “good” Wrestlemanias where all the hype and glitz help disguise an average show.

Same, really.

I feel like people *wanted* it to succeed and to be good, which impacts impressions. That's fine, obviously. 

A lot of this, to me, just feels like the same old "we want a WWE alternative, I don't like sports entertainment" stuff while ignoring that this show was a whole lot of sports entertainment. It was less workrate-oriented than I expected, which is actually kind of cool. "Good matches" are a dime a dozen right now, but telling actual stories seems rare. They did that, though mostly through their web series. That means if you were a fan of the web series (I am not) that it'll be more fun to watch and follow along. 

Admittedly, I wasn't the audience for this show. They did know their audience very, very well, though. 

My main critique of the whole thing, with Starrcast included (I understand they had help organizing it and weren't solely in charge of it, mind you), was that these guys know their audience so well that they weren't afraid to nickel-and-dime them to death. I mean, who knew that many people were willing to shell out money for a podcast convention. Hell, they even knew their audience well enough to know that people would literally pay them to be guests at this thing. That really blew my mind. But people did it, those spots sold out, while the bigger podcasts got invited for free or mildly compensated. Shit, even the tickets to attend the convention were expensive with "tiers" of assurance for reserved seating, as well as additional costs not included like photos with wrestlers, autographs, etc. 

It sounded like an EA game full of microtransactions, but people were super into it. 

I'm anything but a WWE-apologist here. I mean, I don't even watch WWE anymore outside of occasionally re-subbing to the network to watch a PPV here and there, but I feel like there's a reason why WWE can't tell coherent storylines anymore and it is more than just "Vince is old" or whatever. My argument is that the vocal live audience crowds literally don't let them tell stories anymore. 

How many years has WWE been trying to crown Roman Reigns as their champion now? They keep having to push it off because they're afraid of fan reaction. While it's easy to say "well, maybe if you were telling stories that the fans wanted to see" and call it a day, that's not the point of storytelling. Sometimes you gotta tell stories that upset people to tell a broader story. Now, for sure, Vince has a track record of doing dumb, awful stuff, but WWE also employs a host of writers, most of which aren't morons and probably have a basic grasp on storytelling. 

WWE probably wants to tell some dumb stories and make some dumb decisions, but the truth is we'll never know if they're doing something good or bad because they spend so much time second-guessing, rewriting and completely overhauling their ideas just to hope that it's enough to keep live audiences from booing everything out of the building. Imagine if they just made Roman the champion back when they originally wanted to, then saw it wasn't working and could have gone in a different direction. Instead they spent yeeeaaaars trying to get to this point where they are now, where he's the champion who beat Brock. 

There's a point where fans knowing it all can potentially ruin the thing that they're trying to vocally disagree with and somehow make better through complaining. 

Cody and the Bucks had literally zero resistance. They also ran a show where virtually all of their storylines had a positive conclusion, or at least ones that fans wanted/were okay with. While that's fine, there's a huge difference in sustained storytelling and having one show where you sent everyone home happy and didn't subvert expectations at all.