Why can’t we just enjoy professional wrestling?

Lately, I’ve been reading fans’ posts on social media and some columns by wrestling writers that are negative about WWE or AEW, and it got me asking myself: why do we, as fans, always focus on the negative or try to tear down the product we don’t like? To me, that’s not what being a fan is all about.

I’ve been a fan of pro wrestling for 35 years now. Back when I started watching, I wasn’t like this—mostly because social media and the internet didn’t exist. We fans would just enjoy whatever product we liked. If you were a fan of WWE and that’s all you enjoyed, you didn’t go around telling your friends not to watch AWA, NWA, or any other promotion. You just talked about wrestling and enjoyed the ride. Sometimes one of your wrestling buddies would bring up something they liked from another promotion, and you’d check it out too.

Back during the Monday Night Wars, it was mostly the same. You enjoyed the product for what it was. Sure, there was a rivalry between WCW and WWE behind the scenes, but for us fans, we just enjoyed all of it—it was entertainment.

Then WCW and ECW folded. While TNA and others tried to challenge WWE, for a while WWE had a headlock on the industry. That pissed off some fans. With the rise of social media and wrestling websites, fans suddenly had a platform to be negative and create division. It made wrestling less fun because fans became more focused on tearing each other down and creating clickbait content, rather than just enjoying wrestling for what it is: entertainment.

If you like WWE and don’t enjoy other promotions, stop trashing them—just enjoy WWE. The same goes for AEW fans. Nobody wins by constantly bashing companies they don’t like.

In the end, who really cares what happens backstage, or whether creative borrows ideas or signs stars from a rival company? Let’s be honest—Tony Khan and Triple H couldn’t care less what the IWC thinks about their booking. They’re going to run their shows the way they want, regardless of our opinions. The sooner we stop the negativity and just go back to enjoying wrestling, the better our fandom will be.