Over the last few months, the idea that wrestling media ruined pro-wrestling shows up every week and more people believe this is true, when in reality it’s really not.
Social Media gets a lot of criticisms and just like wrestling media, it gets blamed for ruining pro-wrestling and again, this is not true. The internet has been around for more than people think it has.
Social media is infested with terrible takes, this is not something exclusive to pro-wrestling in social media and it’s not something new, if you ask people that were around and used the old wrestling discussion forums, they will tell you that there terrible takes back then as much as there are today.
Wrestling criticism didn’t start when Facebook, Reddit and Twitter were created, it was already a thing. Social media allows everyone to be heard and its more accesible than ever. The old pro-wrestling forums were a smaller group of fans compared to today and that’s how the IWC was created.
Social Media and the growing access to the internet it also killed the idea of the IWC (Internet Wrestling Community). Most wrestling fans have access to the internet and not a limited number like it was back in the day.
The growth of the internet and social media has allowed the spread of fake news to multiply and wrestling media is not shy of it. There’s a lot of sites that only purpose or gimmick is to publish fake stories for clicks without doing the proper journalistic work, but this is not something exclusive to pro-wrestling and every other form of entertainment. It’s up to you to filter those who produce fake news from those who do the actual work and have a track record.
Despite what some people (including wrestlers), wrestling media are not the enemies or want wrestlers and promotions to fail. We all want it to suceded from a fan level and on a business level. Like Bryan Alvarez said on one of his epic rants, we all would have golden boats if there was a wrestling boom period once more.
There’s a lot of misconceptions about wrestling media in particular that need to end and be addressed. Should wrestling media do better? YES. The way wrestling media handled Speaking Out was disappointing and we all should’ve done better. There were also a lot of things that prevented some people to go further into it like vert few people make a living and have the resources in wrestling media to approach such a sensitive subject as Speaking Out.
