“It’s not about what I want. Ever. It’s all about what the audience wants. I’m a pretty good listener.”

NICK:
People complain because they don’t listen to their fans right now. In fact, most who say that actually use all of your examples as times in which WWE listened to their fans and garnered tons of critical and monetary success. So in that regard, I’m not sure what your intended point is.

And the best characters do break the mold, but it doesn’t allow them to break the face/heel barrier. It allows them to do stuff that would normally be what, for example, a bad guy does, and get cheered for it. The Rock got over as a heel, for example, for being a cocky prick who undermined everyone around him, including his own faction’s leader. He turned heel again very shortly after what was mostly a face turn and joined the Corporation, and eventually, the crowd started cheering him again. What did WWE do? They stayed the course and kept having him do the stuff that made the crowd cheer him, but they had him wrestle bad guys instead of good guys.

They did the opposite of that with Cena. He was a rapping heel. It got over so big that they used it to turn him face and didn’t change the character very much. Then, as he was really getting huge, they started stripping away everything that drew people to the character, which is what led to the crowds booing him out of the building. It just so happened that this formula worked, so they just pushed forward. It doesn’t mean that it was objectively entertaining — it just means they kept making lots of money.

And if they REALLY listened to the fans, they would have continued pushing Zack Ryder. He was selling plenty of merchandise and the crowds were on fire for the guy. Instead, he became a joke, they slowed the merch production and used him as a pawn in a John Cena storyline.

They wouldn’t have had Cesaro, whose big swing was helping get over as a huge babyface, become a heel Heyman guy. They would have run with it. But they didn’t. They tried to keep him as a bad guy, and the crowd kept cheering, and he eventually got taken off TV. The list goes on. The reality is that WWE chooses their guy and goes with him. Cena was a lucky one because he was on the verge of becoming a footnote in history before the rap thing came along. But once he got over, they decided that he was going to be the money train. There are lots of guys who have gotten crowd support and then had it suppressed.

Rusev ring a bell? Dude gets massively over, so they have him lose to Randy Orton in 10 seconds at SummerSlam, and he gets no revenge. The crowd wants to cheer him, but he continues to get positioned as a bad guy, thus watering it down. What reason is there to not turn him face and have him run the midcard division? AJ is busy on top where he belongs, so why isn’t Rusev the babyface US Champion kicking everyone’s asses? The list goes on, so don’t give me the “WWE listens to its audience” line. They don’t. Dolph Ziggler at the end of 2014 is another great example. He was mega over after winning that Survivor Series match, but in the end, the whole narrative was based around John Cena, and Ziggler was, again, like Ryder, a pawn in the game.

Seth Rollins is a great example this year. After that amazing gauntlet match before Elimination Chamber, why not alter the course and go with him instead of Roman? If it fails, it fails. You try something else. Instead, he gets the IC Title and is eventually used as a pawn in the Roman Reigns story.

And that’s fine. They don’t have to listen to the audience. Their business isn’t hurting, so it doesn’t really matter to their bottom line. But it’s an out-and-out untrue statement to say that WWE listens.

In relationship to merchandise, I specifically said that the people who aren’t cheering for Reigns (the adult males/internet fans) are the ones buying other guys’ merch. I said nothing about kids because that would be ridiculous.

The argument here isn’t whether or not WWE is running a successful business. The argument is about what they’re doing with their characters. You can’t use the success of a couple of recent guys as a model for everyone. There are a token few guys who are actually over. Everyone else is middling, at best. Why? Because they don’t listen to their fans. The EMOTIONAL REACTION you’re talking about is working for Roman Reigns and it worked for John Cena because WWE was happy with it. The emotional reactions that the majority of the rest of the roster get doesn’t make a damn bit of difference, because they will push whatever narrative they want, people be damned.

Also, this discussion has nothing to do with anything outside of WWE, so let’s not try to bring that into the equation. It makes no sense.

Chairshot CLASH! Verdict Count
Week 1, Rematch Clause: AGREE (1)
Week 2, Shades of Gray: DISAGREE (1)

That’s going to bring us to the end of our second CLASH! Greg and I weren’t going to agree on this topic, and we never will. Both of us have some valid points and we can understand the angle the other is coming from, but in the end, our subjective views on the matter remain unchanged. What do you think? Does WWE listen to their audience? Are faces and heels actually extinct (for the most part) or are they just writing incomplete stories with incomplete characters?

Let us know in the comments and come back soon for another contentious edition of the Chairshot CLASH!

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