The tribalism of wrestling fans and how it’s hurting the business

So let me introduce myself. I’ve been a wrestling fans for 35 years. My dad introduced me to wrestling at a young age and what got me hook was a brother love segment with his guest Hulk Hogan. Just to over the top personality and the spectacle of it all got me hook to wrestling and I couldn’t get enough. Then was able to watch some AWA just before they closed and it wasn’t as over the top as WWE but still I thought it was good. Then a few years later, I got to watch WCW and I felt like it was a decent copy of WWF so It help feed my love of wrestling.

I keep watching both show through the lean years and then the Monday night wars happened and the tribalism of the wrestling fans started. You had to pick between WWF or WCW. You couldn’t just love both companies. For me, I loved WCW a little bit more then WWF but still liked both product. So the Monday night wars ended with WWE Winning over WCW but the tribalism didn’t. In fact once TNA started being viewed as competition for WWE, fans wanted the company To go out of business.

The reason I’m writing all of this is simple. I feel like tribalism today is at a all time high in pro wrestling. Now more then ever, if you have the courage to point out a company’s shortcomings, you will get attack by fans that wants to defend their favorite company at all cost. This happened back then as well but not to the degree it happens now.

Just look at what happens when somebody criticize AEW. You get fans going off on you saying that if you can’t focus on the positive, just don’t comment at all and then they start virtual fight with people over why you shouldn’t comment about aew if you don’t like the product. The worst part is when they jump to the conclusion that you want the company to close just because you pointed out some of the problems in the company. That’s not just AEW fans but also WWE fans to a smaller degree.

That’s a problem because if we as wrestling fans can’t have a healthy discussion on social media and on the internet about pro wrestling, why are we pro wrestling fans to begin with. Every wrestling company as problems and deserves to be criticize and that criticism should be welcome by fans because without criticism, the industry can’t grow and will eventually die and then what are we gonna have to argue about. So maybe instead of going on the defensive everytime somebody points out some of the problems that should be fix in the company and attack them personally, maybe just discuss it openly with that person. In the end, where all passionate about pro wrestling and should be able to have intelligent discussion about wrestling instead of attacking each other just because we don’t like somebody’s opinion about a certain product.