Wrestling Fans and Rookies

Do wrestling fans today expect too much out of rookies? Do we demand instant improvement in their skills and dismiss them out of hand without giving them enough time to grow and develop? Some, including myself, would say yes. In this day and age, where we can have instant anything, if a newcomer isn't progressing as quickly as we would like, there is a tendency to write them off without a second glance. Along similar lines, if a rookie has a lot of "buzz" around them, and they fail to live up to our expectations, we are likely to ignore them even if they do start to come into their own. Wrestling fans can be brutally harsh, and yes I am including myself in this statement. I can be as harsh as the next person, but I try to give those starting out in the sport a fair chance to reach their potential. (Obviously, this doesn't apply to those who have been wrestling for, say, over seven years and are still at the same level they have been for awhile now.)

Mia Yim (Credit to Bliz Photography)

Mia Yim had a lot of backlash in her rookie years, due to some people in the business hyping her. I can remember several times on message boards fans saying they didn't "get her" and thought she was being talked up too much. Yet, some of those same people are now some of her biggest supporters. Mia traveled across America and to Japan, she took full advantage of the opportunities she was given, and as a result she has grown into a tremendous athlete with still a lot of potential to improve even more. Veda Scott is in the same boat - her first match was against trainer Daizee Haze on May 15th, 2011. She was another who had a lot of hype around her, which led to many fans dismissing her out of hand. Since that first match, she has gone on to wrestle in SHIMMER, SHINE, WSU, ACW; when Angelus Layne had a knee injury, she was invited to debut in Canada at Femmes Fatales IX in 2012. Also in 2012 she had a short stint in Japan where she gained invaluable experience; and in AIW she rounded out the year by winning the tag team championships alongside her legal client Gregory Iron. All this, and Veda is still learning, still technically a rookie. Her hard work and dedication to wrestling has won over fans and promoters alike. Yet, there are still people out there who refuse to give her a second chance.

I can understand that not every wrestler will appeal to every fan. We all have our likes and dislikes, it's part of being a fan. However, it is a bit unfair to simply ignore someone who is just starting out and not give them a proper chance. Similarly, it is also unfair to brutally bury someone in public for having a bad match, especially when bad matches can happen to rookies and veterans alike. One specific case about a week ago caught my eye, when Absolute Intense Wrestling asked a question on Twitter: "What was the WORST match in AIW history?" A few fans answered with a match from Girls Night Out 7, Trash Cassidy versus Thunderkitty. Some went on to have a dig at Trash, specifically.

From Girls Night Out 7. Credit: Myself

I spoke up to defend both women and the match itself. I had been at GNO 7 and witnessed the match for myself. Here is what I wrote:

Thunderkitty took on Trash Cassidy in TK's debut match. This was only Trash's second appearance for AIW, and given that I was unfamiliar with both, I went into this one completely blind. Thunderkitty's gimmick is that she is an "old time" wrestler and she is playing it to the hilt. The one piece outfit, her language, her personal ring announcer, coming out to no music - it all works brilliantly and makes her stand out. Trash...I'm still not too clear on her gimmick, other than she wears a lot of different colouring clothing to go along with her multi-coloured hair. Although she did throw out a great line: "I didn't know I was wrestling Mildred Burke!" The match was decent, but Trash got a "please don't come back" chant afterwards. Ouch.

I've seen bad matches before, and although no one (including the participants) would mistake it for a five star match, it wasn't absolute rubbish in my opinon. There was a fun spot where they criss-crossed in the ropes, and the aforementioned line that Trash yelled had me laughing. I've seen far, far worse that's made it onto television after all. Of course, I didn't know anything about TK or TC going into the event, but after the fact I learned that Thunderkitty has been wrestling since 2008 (from the sparse information I found online) and recently moved out east, presumably to have more opportunities to wrestle. Meanwhile I couldn't find much of anything about Trash - however, I had recently begun to chat with her via Twitter. After meeting her at a Destination 1 Wrestling show, we became friends (I am telling this in the interests of full disclosure).

Not long after AIW posed the aforementioned question, I asked her how long she had been wrestling. Trash responded, "About a year and a half if you account for time out with injuries and just not wrestling too much. Two years if you do include managing." When I asked her about the aforementioned match, she said that she had been sick with a high fever that day and still made it to the show to wrestle.

At this point, I was shaking my head. Here was a woman that, by all rights, should have been in bed and only had a year and a half experience, being pilloried thanks to not just this match, but a previous one against Mary Dobson at AIW. These two matches were, conceivably, her highest profile to date. Dobson is also a rookie, so you're not likely to have the best match between two rookies. However, Thunderkitty had more experience, so technically she should have led the match. Again, though, when you're sick it throws your body off, so I could see how things would have been off again that night.

A few days later, after the conversation, I and another tweeter received a message from Thunderkitty. She asked if we had seen her other work. To which, I replied that yes I had (at Insanity Pro Wrestling and SPARKLE). Thunderkitty then tweeted to us, "I got put against a lazy, clumsy opponent..I didn't exactly get a fair shake...but it happens." This took me by surprise. It was rather harsh to me. I said that from what I understood, Trash was seriously under the weather that night so it was just an off night. TK replied, "I don't recall her being under the weather. I DO recall her not being in ring shape though."

Wow. My further responses to her, stating that Trash hadn't been wrestling for very long and some wrestlers don't mix in the ring went unreplied to by her. She also tweeted the Ringbelles twitter, Thomas Holzerman's twitter and the AIW account that "someday, somewhere, I'm going to give people my exact thoughts on this match." Now, I fully admit that being friends with Trash makes me biased. However, even if I was not friends with her, I would never expect someone with as little time as she has in the ring to be good. Especially since she had been injured recently (or, I assumed as much since she mentioned being injured). Plus, being sick takes you off your game and that goes for athletes and non-athletes.

Personally, I felt it was unprofessional of Thunderkitty to publicly tear down someone with considerably less experience than herself. Even more-so after I went searching for information on her and found this blog that she wrote back in 2010 about how women in wrestling needed to get along since there were so few opportunities for them. http://www.santinobros.net/newsdesk_info.php?newsdesk_id=869 To her credit, Trash hasn't addressed any of the comments publicly, choosing discretion as the better part of valor in this case. The fact that TK said this publicly is a side point, but it's another example of private matters in wrestling being discussed publicly for fans to see. It's an unpleasant trend to say the least.

Back on point though, it's really saddening to see how quickly wrestling fans are to condemn inexperienced wrestlers. Above, I mentioned how people who dismissed Mia and Veda are now fans - this isn't a bad thing. It's great that they allowed themselves to be won over by their growth and improvement. At the same time, however, how are people going to improve if they aren't allowed opportunities to work with veterans and gain experience? I fear that due to the backlash she has suffered, Trash may not be offered the chance to work with other promotions and learn from their workers. Her, and others like her, are the next generation of potential stars. Wrestling fans often complain about the tendency of promotions to rely on past stars instead of cultivating new ones. How can new flowers grow and bloom without being watered and carefully nurtured?

There is also the fact that not everyone is a natural athlete. Some have to work hard to develop their skills. If you're thinking that these people should just give up, I have one name that should make you think twice. The Queen of Wrestling, Sara Del Rey, has said many times in interviews that wrestling did not come naturally to her. She had to work and work hard at it. Given that she became one of the world's best, should she have just given up since she didn't take to wrestling naturally?

Prime example of giving a newcomer the chance to amaze you.

If we fans don't start being less harsh and unforgiving, then we shouldn't be surprised when we don't see new faces coming in. Once the veterans retire, then that's it. Game over. Is that what we want? Of course not. We love wrestling and don't want to see it die out. Therefore, we must be more lenient when it comes to the newcomers. After all, speaking personally, if I had dimissed Leva Bates after her match against Malia Hosaka at SHIMMER, I wouldn't have had the privilege to see her grow as a wrestler and as a performer. You never know who will become truly great, therefore it's worth giving rookies the chances necessary to grow and fulfill their potential. I may have used Trash Cassidy as the main example for this blog, but that goes for any man or woman who takes the awesome and terrifying decision to step into the ring and dedicate their bodies as well as their lives to professional wrestling. Those people that make this decision and take it seriously deserve a certain amount of respect as it is.

It's akin to a garden. Plant the seeds, water them, nourish them, and see what grows. The results may surprise you. 

Portia Perez, Wrestling Fans and Respect

Disclaimer: I don't know Portia Perez. Never had a conversation with her or a brief chat. I only see what she tweets, what she says in her interviews, and her work in the ring. This is not an attempt to psycho-analyze her - it's merely thoughts on her as a fan, and thoughts on what other fans think of her. 

The So-Called Face of Evil - Portia Perez. (Credit Minas Panagiotakis)

Portia Perez. Throw that name into a discussion with other knowledgeable wrestling fans and chances are you will get a reaction somewhat like this: "She's great in the ring but really not sociable." Sometimes the reaction is more harsh. Chances are you've heard and seen what people say about her. Portia herself has as well. I heard from a friend that someone had approached her at the SHIMMER after party and said something (I don't know what) to her, she replied, and said person called her anti-social due to her reply. Perhaps that's what sparked the tweet she sent on November 3rd:

"When did the job title 'Professional Wrestler' become a synonym for 'Professional Nice person'? Oh, that's right: Never."

The same day, she also tweeted a picture of a bag of M&Ms along with a message:

"This is my reward for wrestling with dislocated ribs. This, and inevitable hatemail for not smiling enough."

As you can tell, Portia is very aware of the reputation she has. The question is, is it deserved? Or is a better question that are wrestling fans (female wrestling fans in particular) too demanding?

Fans of SHIMMER Women Wrestling have a reputation as being "creepy." On a few message boards I've frequented, I've heard others talk about people on the SHIMMER forum that talk about female wrestlers as if said women belong to said fans. Others claim they would never set foot into the Eagles Club due to the fans and their behavior. To be fair, the only fan I know that has been actually banned from attending SHIMMER is one male that frequently went into the women's restroom. There's a fan who is known to take pictures of the wrestlers when, supposedly, they're executing a suplex into a bridge. There's also a man who comes only to promote his cheesecake business it seems (he claims to have sold cheesecakes to John Cena and J-Wow from the Jersey Shore - absolutely thrilling, I'm sure).

Darin Childs, owner of Texas-based Anarchy Championship Wrestling, has been vocal on his formspring as well, saying that the term is well known in locker rooms around the U.S. He also claims that several of the SHIMMER roster itself is uncomfortable with the after parties. How much of this is true and how much of it is due to the fall out between the two companies, we will never know. However, taking a step back and looking at things objectively, I can see how overall fans of female wrestling have gotten that reputation. It's not just restricted to SHIMMER fans.

Wrestling fans in general can be very hard to please. Be it how a match goes, the winner of a match, the path a story line takes, what have you, you will never find fans wholly satisfied  To a degree, this is justifiable - after all, take WWE. We know it's the top choice of a lot of wrestlers, male and female, but once they get there, they aren't used to their full potential. That seems to be changing (look at CM Punk and Bryan Danielson), but for the women it remains to be seen if the recent signings of Britani Knight, Tenille and Buggy Nova will result in an overhaul of the women's division. The point is, we know the talent is capable of much more than they get to show on television. As consumers, we shouldn't be satisfied with the mediocrity on television. We should make our dissatisfaction plain until things change. And if they don't, we hit them where it hurts - ratings and profits.

However, on the Independent scene, it feels different. Because more often than not the men and women are more willing to engage with fans on social media and in person, we form attachments. We feel we come to know these people, and at some point the line becomes blurred. We start to feel as if we have bonds with these men and women and sometimes we feel like we are on the "inside" of the wrestling business. We're not just fans anymore - we're friends.

Yes, I am including myself in this, because I've formed attachments of my own. I have been very privileged to get to know some of the women on a personal level. That's not bragging either - I don't believe I pursued personal friendships with these ladies, but for reasons I'm not certain of, they have let me in to a degree. Make no mistake, however, I don't abuse these connections. And I struggle from time to time with the line between fan and friend. Overall though I remain a fan first and a friend second. I admire so many of these women because they are strong, determined individuals - they are people I look up to. They are on a separate level from me. I never forget this.

As such, I am on the level with all the other fans. I don't expect preferential treatment. So when, to use an example, if I tweet a wrestler and get no response, I don't take it personally. These folks are swamped on social media to varying degrees and it simply isn't in the realm of possibility for them to answer everyone. However, I have seen fans that take it so personally that if they receive no response, they turn on said wrestler. There is one in particular that has seen fit to abuse several women that he was formerly a fan of when they don't reply to his tweets. That's an extreme case to be sure, but it does happen to varying degrees.

Since I have only been to the SHIMMER after parties (and one Femmes Fatales party), I can only remark on what I see there. Depending on the location that they have been at, the fans and wrestlers have been either lumped together in a relatively small place, or they have been separated voluntarily in a larger place until everyone has eaten at least. Most fans do conduct themselves in a respectful manner, at least I have not witnessed anything out of the way. There were a few shenanigans that happened (some video taped) during the after party in April 2010 - that may be where some of the reputation that the SHIMMER fan base has comes from.

Since then, however, nothing of the sort has happened. But invariably when you have drunk people, you have out of the way behavior. You have demands for pictures and autographs. You have fans wanting detailed discussion of the matches that the women have just went through. You have fans who want to spend the night talking with their favorites while the women want to relax and chat with friends they only see once or twice a year. You have fans that demand wrestlers sit with and spend time only with them. When it's over, you have people who complain about how unsocial such and such was, how they will never be a fan of said wrestlers again, and so forth.

Which brings me back to Portia. From my own experiences, I have either seen her briefly appear at the after party or not at all (which isn't to say she wasn't ever there, just that I did not see her at times). The longest I saw her at a party was this previous October set of shows. Her and Nicole Matthews walked in the door to Paisans and were immediately flooded with fans. She hadn't even gotten one step away from the door. Seriously. To her credit, her and Nicole talked with fans, took pictures and were very social. But I can't blame her for leaving not too long afterwards.

There is another person who took a sharp dislike to the Ninja after she allegedly shunned some international fans and was rude to him. I don't give him much credit, however, because this person also thinks that some of the SHIMMER roster sleeps with the owner for their pushes. I have heard other stories, of how she was rude or dismissive of fans and what have you. Let me propose a thought though: perhaps Portia Perez truly is not a people person. Her Twitter profile describes herself as a "misanthropic people-person." Misanthropy means to have a general hatred, distrust or disdain of the human nature. If you've seen her tweets, this pretty well hits the nail on the head, although social media isn't the best way to get to know a person obviously.

Maybe she has had bad enough experiences with fans that she keeps her wrestling persona up at all times. Perhaps she wears it like a shield, preventing anyone from getting too close. Maybe at the times that said fans have approached her, she was having a bad day, had gotten some depressing news, or just did not feel like putting on a smile. Maybe she hates crowds (goodness knows a lot of people do, including myself) and feels suffocated around groups of people.

Or maybe, just maybe, for a woman who has been wrestling since she was sixteen years old (for nine years), worn out, working through injuries, traveled all over the world...maybe she's a bit tired and a bit jaded. A bit tired of fans calling her a 'bitch', 'arrogant', 'anti-social' - all because she doesn't bend over backwards to please people. At the end of the day, people go into wrestling (Independent wrestling, at least) because they have a love for the business. Their passion for it drives them. You have to love it to be willing to go through what these people do to their bodies for low and sometimes non-existent pay. To work through injuries. The catch-22 is that the wrestling business has to have fans willing to pay money for it to stay in business. Which means that, to a degree, wrestlers have to be accommodating to fans.

That doesn't mean that we get to stake a claim on these men and women, however. They belong only to themselves - not to us. We cannot and should not think that we have exclusive claims on their time and attention. We must also remember that these athletes are also performers. They are actors and actresses. The personas we see aren't who they really are. Or maybe they are, but it's their own personality turned up to an outrageous degree. We must also remember what they go through.

For the SHIMMER women, some of them fly halfway across the world, suffer through customs and boarder controls, rely on others to get to their hotel where they can decamp and spend time with friends before going into a weekend where they may wrestle up to 4 times in two days before fans who have come to expect near perfection from every woman on the roster. In-between volume tapings, they have to cram into a tiny space with their fellow workers, put on a smile and sell as much merchandise as possible to fans who often times want to stop and chat, which causes congestion. Then after each days' shows, they go to wherever the after party is (with varying degrees of enthusiasm) to stay for varied lengths of time and are almost bombarded with fans who want to chat, criticize, get a picture or an autograph and sometimes don't let them even have a few minutes to eat and chat with friends they don't see at any other time in the year (although, in fairness, this past set of shows in October the fans were good about letting the wrestlers eat before approaching them). Then come Monday, it's off to either back to their regular jobs in their own countries, or off to another booking (which also may be in yet another country). Over the weekend, various injuries may or may not occur, which they either choose to wrestle through or must sit out a taping, causing fans to speculate.

Portia Perez wrestled on Volumes 49-52 over the weekend of October 27th-28th. Only one was a singles match but it was against one of the hardest hitting Joshi, Ayako Hamada. Her first match was a defense of the SHIMMER Tag Titles with Nicole against two more hard hitters, LuFisto and Kana. The following Saturday, she wrestled two matches for Femmes Fatales, the first against Courtney Rush (who defeated Perez with a spear - consider the fact she was working with dislocated ribs, yet still took the spear), the second against Pink Flash Kira, which was abbreviated when she walked out. Now knowing about the ribs, the walk out was justified. At the Femmes Fatales after party, she was there for awhile, mostly sticking close to other wrestlers who, to me, it felt like were sheltering her. Portia looked tired, and my heart went out to her. This is what sparked this post, contrasting how she felt and remembering all the nonsense I had seen directed towards her. It infuriates me.

To me, no other wrestler takes as much shit as she does. And it isn't right. She is one of the best wrestlers, male or female, in the world right now. She works for several different promotions, and has wrestled in Europe and in Japan. She's done every style of match known to the business. Her peers hold her in high regard. She is one of the all time best heels (in my opinion), up there with Jake 'The Snake' Roberts, Raven, Ric Flair and Bobby Heenan.

Yet, despite always giving her all in the ring, Portia continues to receive insults for not giving of herself outside of the ring. Honestly? I can't blame her if she is/was rude to fans. Because she is as human as all of us. She has her bad days. She has nagging injuries (from a tweet she sent not too long ago, it gave the impression that she is in constant pain). Sometimes, you just don't feel like putting on a song and dance, no matter if those same fans are the ones who help keep the promotions you work for going.

To those out there who are guilty of this: stop. Put yourself in her shoes. Think twice before saying or typing something that she may hear or see. Remember she bleeds like the rest of us. Portia Perez is a woman who loves wrestling, loves what she does, but doesn't necessarily like the side effects that come with it. For as much as she has given to us, we can afford to give her the respect a top notch athlete such as herself deserves. After all, how many of us, were we in her shoes, elect to wrestle two weekends in a row with an injury?

That doesn't just apply to Portia, it applies to every man and woman who steps into the ring. Whatever you may think of them outside the ring, whatever bad experiences you may have had, they deserve at least respect if not support for being willing to put their bodies through stuff that the majority of us never will. For traveling great distances, for training hard, for paying their dues, for following their passion and allowing us to witness their athleticism...

I say, thank you. To Portia Perez, and every man and woman who has put themselves through hell following their hearts - thank you. I appreciate and am grateful for all you do for us. For me.