Category: Wrestling Musings

Earlier today, I came across this headline on the Inside The Ropes website, which you can check out here:

So you’re reading that headline and you figure, “Oh man. Heartbreaking end of an era? What could that possibly be? No more Hall Of Fame? No more commercials. Going back to smaller arenas? Cutting back on pyro? No chance in hell they’re bringing back the ring carts?” Clearly something terrible must have happened if we’re going to label this as “heartbreaking.” The kind of buzz word that baits people into clicking your articles.

Inside The Rope has a tendency to do this quite a bit, using very vague terms to avoid telling you what the article is all about. “42-Year-Old WWE Star Pooped Their Pants. Blames Tony Khan” or “Former WWE Champion Pissed On Wrong Side Of River” or “38-Year-Old AEW Veteran Gives Dave Meltzer A REDACTED” and so on and so forth. I mean, it’s incredible the lengths these people will go to avoid telling you what the article is about in their headlie.

And so what was this heartbreaking update on a Wrestlemania tradition that spurned curiosity?

Continue reading “Inside The Ropes Can Kiss My Clickbait”

Apparently, Wrestlemania VEGAS: The Revenge isn’t doing so hot in ticket sales as of late and WWE is struggling to figure out why. There have been suggestions that the booking might not be as hot and ol’ McSon-In-Law might be feeling some heat. Others have (more accurately, I feel) pointed towards the high ticket prices that have priced out most common folks who would consider taking a trip to VEGAS to witness the 42nd edition of the long running Showcase Of The Immortals. However, there might be one other factor that people may or may not be overlooking here.

Anyone remember the first All In event from Wembley that AEW put out back in 2023? Kind of a big deal, recording setting attendance for a non-WWE show. Lots of hype and hooplah over it… and so they announce that they’re holding the show at Wembley again next year. The numbers, naturally, aren’t quite as record breaking. Some could argue the card wasn’t as strong – I wholeheartedly disagree on that count – but I think it’s more to do with the fact that you already attended the first show last year, which was a big deal. Second year in a row? Been there, done that. The shine simply isn’t there anymore.

Let’s go back a bit further and this might be stretching things a bit here, but Wrestlemania IV and V were hosted back to back at the old Atlantic City Convention Hall (a.k.a. Trump Plaza) and while attendance hadn’t seen a drastic drop, there was still a bit of a drop. Again, one could argue the product wasn’t as hot as the year before – to which I call bullshit considering IV played host to that horrendous WWF title tournament and V… wasn’t that much better, to be honest – but it could also be a matter of “been there, done that.” The first time felt like something of a big deal, the second time is the sequel that’s nowhere near as good.

So while you can blame it on prices being high for the common folk – and that is a BIG factor to consider in these trying economic times – I would also argue that maybe – just maybe – holding Wrestlemania in the same venue as last year’s Mania is going to result in diminishing returns. We’ve already seen this show once. Why would we want to see it again?

I realize that I’m posting these thoughts a day after I posted my Bite commentary on my present day disenchantment with modern wrestling and chances are there’s more to this picture that I’m missing… but it’s just a fact of life that if you keep doing the same thing over and over again, it starts to feel the same and you’re going to lose people who will invariably want to see something different.

Who knows? Maybe they might find the solution to their ticket selling woes and pull another rabbit out of the DX cannon. Maybe they don’t sell as much tickets. Part of me is curious to see how this pans out, but I would suggest that if I want Wrestlemania to continue breaking records in a positive sense, they should consider hosting the event at different venues… and preferably in venues that the general populace don’t have an adverse reaction to.