WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque doesn’t seem to be a big fan of pro wrestling fans — at least not ones like us who like to discuss pro wrestling shows and the business itself online. Over the years, he’s vented about his fictional friend “Mark” on a few occasions over the years, and blamed fans for ruining storylines for themselves by overthinking them. Last year, he also shared this in an interview:
Levesque softened his delivery a bit while chatting with WWE’s new best friend,
ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, ahead of this weekend’s Night of Champions premium live event on the network and its streaming subscription platform. The Game first explained that WWE’s “goal” is to “be a little bit of something for everybody”. He then continued:
“The other aspect of that is I think that people lose perspective of sometimes is, we’re just fun, man. We’re fun and sometimes people take it too seriously, sometimes people get too caught up in it, but it’s there to entertain, man.
“There’s a lot of stuff going on in the world. If you just want to turn off for a couple of hours and tune into something cool that you can just lose yourself in and have a good time, WWE is the place to do it. If you’ve never seen it live, I’m telling you, come to a live event, come to one of our PLEs, come to a TV.
“There’s nothing like it in entertainment.”
It’s not a bad pitch. Pro wrestling is fictional world, and we usually visit those for a diversion from the real world. Which is without even saying… look, I get it. It sucks when people are criticizing your work, sometimes unfairly or without context, and you can’t respond as openly as you’d like. I can also empathize as someone who works with wrestling fans on all sides of my job, all day every day. We can be annoying! Heck, I get tired of my own wrestling thoughts sometimes.
And yes, the internet is not the real world — as we’re constantly reminded.
We’re a bellwether, though. I can’t think of a sustained period this century where online fans were dissatisfied and live crowds were thrilled with the product.
So when your customers are grumbling it’s often because they’re not having fun. A few years ago you had them pronouncing your work “CINEMA”, many of them unironically! If you can’t give offer a good time now, that’s not on us.
