Can British Wrestling be Big Again? (Wrestling in General)

Member Name: Dean1314

Product:	Wrestling in General
Date:	22/04/02 (176 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Traditional Wrestling, Entertainment, Develope British Talent

Disadvantages: Trying tog et people to care and take it serious, Stereotypes that wrestling carries

Can British wrestling be big once more? If only I knew. There are many factors that should be taken into consideration.

When British wrestling stopped being shown on British TV people started watching the WWF. But don't be fooled the WWF doesn't attract anywhere near 10 million British viewers, so where did the fans of British wrestling go? They simply turned off. Like almost everything people stopped caring, wrestling had passed its sell by date. As entertainment wrestling was unique but with the advent of more TV channels and the imports of programming from abroad, wrestling simply wasn't fashionable anymore. People wanted to watch the latest trashy Austrailian soap opera, they wanted scandle, murder and all the other crap that trash TV throws at us. People became more demanding, their attention spans grew shorter, wrestling wanted them to follow weekly story lines, but they wanted constant change. Wrestling wanted them to think for themselves, but they wanted to be told what to think. They became lazy. Wrestling needs you to care and they stopped caring, they became carried away on a tide that was the latest passing fad. I also remember seeing the front row there was always old women sitting on it, perhaps their generation was propping up the viewing figures, maybe when that generation died off wrestling declined.

Before British wrestling could rise from the ashes they would really have to study the demographic make-up of the viewership. What someone of my age(24) wants to see wouldn't appeal to someone younger and perhaps the older generation wants something different. Finding the balance would be very difficult, it would be a challenge but not the only one.

Another challenge is simply getting national coverage. Now like never before you have many things competing for a persons leisure time. You have more channels than ever, you have the internet, videos, dvds, computer games, more cinemas, bowling etc. People general
ly have more disposable income and they are willing to spend that on activities. So how do you get people to watch just an hour of British wrestling on tv? It would have to satisfy the needs and expectations of all the viewership, it would also need to be on at a respectable hour and I'd say on a terrestrail tv channel. ITV would be best. But another problem would be the WWF. Existing wrestling fans, with particular reference to the the younger generation, have been conditioned to the WWF style of wrestling. British wrestling is so different from this. So once again how do you get the British fans to care again about the distinctive British wrestling style and tradition?

I have no doubt that British wrestling can make a comeback, but I doubt it could attract 10 million people again. I also think that the style would need to change. Sadly people would want something like the WWF, which may be a disaster cause the older generation may not be interested. We have great wrestling schools and no shortage of talent so I wouldn't envisage that being a problem. However, if we were to become successful it may turn out that we would become something like a feeder league for American wrestling, with all our top talent being snapped up and then ultimatly mis-used. National coverage would create big names, but popularity also carries dangers.

I live in Scotland and here more than anywhere else in the UK we are starved of British wrestling, I can only hope that SCW becomes as successful as its owner hopes it will, the first show was outstanding in my opinion. But leave no doubt if just one British promotion can gain success and national coverage then the whole British scene will benifit.

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