Our Love For Wrestling Unite Us In Spite Of Our Own Biases

If the past few weeks in the world we call sports entertainment/professional wrestling has taught us anything is this: there is absolutely no such thing as being “unbiased” in wrestling. In any given situation, every fan, even those who do so professionally as wrestling journalists or media personalities (like us), will have an opinion based on our own personal preferences and biases. Sometimes those biases are shared by a large majority, in which case they tend to become “fact”, but sometimes those biases can be split up equally into multiple options of opinions to select from, and sometimes the vocal minority bias gets shouted out loudest.

The Ric Flair and Sasha Banks/Naomi stories the past few weeks have really shown this. Either people are excited to see Flair back one last time or they don’t want to see him keel over in the ring as the last nail in the coffin of the legacy he seems really keen on trying to destroy. Right there I showed my own bias. And people either think Sasha and Naomi should just go along with the creative, or that they genuinely had the right to want to actually put respect on the tag team titles and make them matter like the fans want them to. Again, there’s my own bias.

Last weekend, there was a meetup with The Boss Aaron Rift, Greg Cherry, and most of the NoDQ Ohio Crew in Cleveland which was an absolute blast (we missed you Noah)!! All of us come from many different backgrounds, but what still unites us is our love of wrestling. Despite Greg and I being fans of two very different football teams (and him flipping off First Energy Stadium, which I did smack him for), we still both love Shane McMahon and Sasha Banks. Our love of wrestling unites us. Despite Virtue and I disagreeing about when Roman Reigns should drop either title or when he should defend them, we both agree that Roman is the top guy in the top company that we enjoy watching. Our love of wrestling unites us. While, apart from wrestling, I am a big Star Wars and Harry Potter fan, Aaron absolutely is not. Yet, he runs this website you are currently reading this article I am writing on and we both were taking pictures like crazy on Saturday. Our love of wrestling unites us.

Wrestling is not unbiased. But at the same time, that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s a bad thing. Each wrestling fan likes what they like, and that’s okay. Each wrestling fan will take one side or another in a particular discussion, debate, like or dislike of a match or character, and that’s okay. That’s the beauty of having so many options is because it allows you to like what you like and it allows you to not like what you don’t like. Some may like technical grappling over spot-fests. And that’s okay. Some may like lucha libre style over submission specialists. And that’s okay. Some may like big stipulation matches over a straight up one on one. And that’s okay. As wrestling fans, we need to remember that not everyone is going to agree with us, not everyone is going to like what we like, but that doesn’t mean we need to be complete a-holes to people for their particular enjoyment of wrestling, and vice versa.

Let me make this personal here with my own biases, for which I am fully aware I will be grilled in the comments:

I personally prefer WWE to AEW in terms of storytelling in matches
I preferred the black and gold NXT to the current NXT 2.0 because back and gold NXT was my favorite wrestling on the planet because it combined perfectly, for me, both the WWE and AEW styles.
I don’t think any titles need to be merged, keep the brands separate.
If you as a main top champion are not defending or cannot defend your title, you shouldn’t have it.
I don’t care for Austin Theory and think Fin Balor needs treated far better and don’t want him to jump to AEW
I can’t do a straight up technical grapple fest like Brock vs. Angle, I need a combination of wrestling styles in a match.
I have a lot of different WrestleMania Top 10 Matches than some would have
Not every WWE release should go right to AEW
I don’t really care one way or the other if MJF comes to WWE. If he does, I would love to see him vs. Miz, but if he doesn’t, oh well, that’s fine too.
AND SO MANY OTHERS

The one thing that brings us all together, despite our different biases in wrestling, is that we all love wrestling. We may disagree with Uncle Dave Meltzer on his ratings and think his “news” and podcast is full of crap. You may follow Fightful Select and love their podcast and all of their content. You may love watching Aaron or the rest of the crew on YouTube, but can’t stand Virtue. We all are biased and we all like what we like but what should unite us all at the end of the day is that we all love wrestling, we love this business, and we all want it to get better and grow for the generations that come after us. And that’s what’s what matters at the end of the day in this crazy world of sports entertainment and pro-wrestling is that, even though our ideas for “how” may be different, our love for wrestling is still the same.