Change, It Isn’t Easy

By | February 22, 2021

Friends, I’m struggling. I know what we need to do as a sport, but to say what needs saying only upsets many of those that I consider friends.

But I love wrestling for all the same reasons as you do, or you wouldn’t be reading these words.

However, I’ve come to the conclusion that the welfare of the sport is far more important than those who end up in the crosshairs of my writings.

So, here we go.

Over the last month I’ve gone back to my previous blogs, and analyzed each suggestive change I made for the sport. From those, I have selected what I consider to be wrestling’s top priorities.

Granted, wrestling isn’t ever going to go the way of collegiate boxing, or more recently, collegiate gymnastics. But I believe we’re closer to the beginning than the end of just how bad it can be.

Let’s assume for a moment that we can’t navigate our way through the damage that COVID-19 is causing; or the name, image and likeness challenge that’s going to come to pass whether the NCAA wants it to or not?

Who’s to say where the sport will end up at the end of this decade?

But for the last fifty years, our problems continue to fall into the same four categories. They are naivety, image, finances, and greed.

Naivety . . . to think that “my program won’t be dropped,” is a huge mistake that both coaches and alumni make. Sure some of the big boys won’t be impacted by what’s currently going on, but when program numbers drop below that of the number of wrestlers who qualify at each weight class to compete at the NCAA championships, what then?

No one can dispute the fact that wrestling is going the wrong way. Yes, D-III is doing well, actually it’s program numbers are up, thanks to the work of Mike Moyer and the NWCA.

But, here’s the however. The success that we’re seeing in D-III is a business model that’s working for wrestling whereas it’s just the opposite at the D-I and D-II levels.

Presidents at D-III schools, who are fighting to keep their enrollment numbers steady, are actually adding sports. They see a team of 30 wrestlers, who are not receiving athletic scholarship aid, with tuitions, room and board, running roughly 30K a year on average, it’s a means of adding 900k a year to the institutions bottom line.

Then with an athletic budget for wrestling of say 200K at the D-III level, the institution ends up with a wrestling program, and the school ends up with 700k to the good.

That’s a win-win for everyone.

But, unfortunately, that model doesn’t work in the top two divisions when athletic scholarships are added, plus the additional operational costs of competing at those evaluated levels.

If you were wondering what budgets look like for the big boys, several of the Top 20 teams annually spent in excess of one million dollars.

But, at the Division I level, where everyone looks when they want to evaluate the health of the sport; program numbers are down by 50% from where they were in the 1980’s.

That sounds like a problem to me. So why haven’t the coaches come together to fight this? If your investments have gone from one million dollars in the 1980’s to five-hundred thousand today, you bet you’d have done something about it 20 years ago. So, why not in wrestling? But the coaches, who are the sports decision makers, are still acting as if none of this a problem?

Let me wrap this up and put a bow on it. Everything that happens in our sport, good or bad, is the doing of the coaches. They are the ones who decide the direction that wrestling goes. Maybe they don’t actually raise their hand and vote on issues, but they raise their voices prior to the vote, and if they don’t like something . . . it doesn’t happen.

In the 80’s and 90’s, anytime a program was discontinued, it was typically blamed on Title IX. For the next twenty years, the blame was placed on cutbacks and a lack revenue production. More recently, it’s COVID-19.

But to think that’s totally true, is a misconception. Sure, equality between the sexes is important. And a shortfall of income doesn’t help anyone. But as long as those institutions haven’t dropped all of their non-revenue sports, then believing any of those issues I just mentioned was the reason; is naivety. We have to pull back the curtain to understand actually what’s taking place.

When an Athletic Director has a meeting with a wrestling coach, they have to realize there’s a difference between what’s being said, and what’s being interpreted.

That’s a huge, and ongoing problem in wrestling; because there’s a language barrier that exists between coaches and administrators. Wrestling coaches come from the country of Grapplely and speak wrestling, whereas athletic administrators come from the Isle of Management and communicate in political speech.

This is why coaches are always surprised when their program is dropped, and then fail at their attempts to have it reinstated. They never understood what their administrators were saying before it happened, or what to do about it after it happened.

The biggest takeaway from this should be; administrators will defend to the death every decision they make. They have to; for two reasons.

Because changing one’s mind has a way of appearing to be politically weak. Weak in the sense that they weren’t smart enough to come up with a reason for their decision in the first place that would withstand scrutiny.

And, should they ever change their mind about something as important as reinstating a program; it almost guarantees that every decision they make in the future, about anything, will be challenged by the offended group, or individual. Leadership can never appear to be indecisive.

To avoid the need to reverse a decision, Athletic Directors will always select whatever reason they can come up with that is the most logical and difficult for the offended to reverse. Typically, that means finances.

Never in a thousand years would they ever demonstrate a bias toward one sport over another, or exhibit a deep seated prejudice, even when one or both might be the case.

As a result, they say, “it’s financial.” That always plays well. It’s less offensive, and impossible to fight. Especially in the short term as the mental state of the offended moves from denial, to anger, to mobilization, to fatigue, to 9 months later; awe, the hell with it.

Wrestling coaches need to ask Mike Moyer about what he’s found out regarding this over the last several decades. He speaks Isle of Management and has the bumps and bruises to prove it. Actually, he’s the greatest resource we have in the sport now.

Talk about timing, here’s an email I just received from the folks at Stanford (https://mailchi.mp/77f2a2a786d9/keep-stanford-wrestling-ksw-update-7480093?e=5133e8d1da). They’re working harder than any program I’ve seen in the past to get their wrestling program reinstated. But, it appears, they too fell into the same trap of believing their administrators. They told them it was financial; only to find out that it wasn’t.

Please take the time to read their release, it demonstrates exactly what I’ve been saying here.

Image . . . ours stinks. Yes, I’ve heard all the great things that the sport does for its athletes, and their development. And they all happen to be true. But, no one outside of wrestling has heard about any of them; and that’s everyone in the sport’s fault.

The point is; what does the general public think when they hear the word wrestling being mentioned?

I’m afraid the answer isn’t flattering.

Do your own test, see for yourself? Create a list of 25 non-revenue sports and hand it to any person on the street.

Then ask them which one would they say has the worse academic average of the bunch? What athletes would be most likely to be arrested for fighting? What athlete from what sport, wouldn’t you want your daughter to date? Which sport do you think is least likely to be supportive of the other programs on campus? Which athletes think that they’re superior to the other athletes on campus? Which sport has the most toxic parents at their children’s competitions? Which sport allows the fans to crowd around the competition area so a majority of the spectators in the stands can’t see what’s taking place? Which sport has the highest numbers of the most dreadful looking, and most communicable diseases? Which sport is most likely to abuse performance enhancing drugs.

To be realistic, other sports would certainly be mentioned at some point, but I’d be willing to bet that wrestling’s box would be checked far more often than any other sport.

The point is, the opinions of those who aren’t currently fans, is terribly important, because perception matters. It’s why every major corporation in the world has a marketing and public relations team.

Finances . . . we bring in zero, and demand eight zeros in return, preferably with a 1 in front the other eight. Where in the world of reality, or on what planet, does any of that make sense?

Finances do matter, but unfortunately, those who are making the decisions in our sport, aren’t concerned about income creation. For they come from programs that have very generous donors and equally successful football programs.

Greed . . . it isn’t too terribly difficult for most of us to come up with changes to the sport that would improve our national image, and substantially increase our financial positioning in athletics.

But why would any member of the nation’s coaching’s elite want to change something that might jeopardize their positioning in the sports hierarchy? Especially, when they’re already benefiting from the status quo?

Recently, Bob Bowlsby, one of the most powerful and respected names in all of college sports said, you can always tell a wrestling coach . . . but not much.

When I heard him say that, I chuckled. But when I realized that phrase came out of the Isle of Management dictionary, I stopped laughing.

* * *

Title Sponsors, Strategic Alliances and Giving Back

Why doesn’t wrestling have title sponsors? Cliff Keen and Defense Soap doesn’t count. I’m talking about the big boys; Coca-Cola, Chevrolet, VISA, etc?

The answer is; to make that happen, the sport has to come together because individually, there simply aren’t enough big boy numbers in wrestling for the big boy corporations to be interested.

Our sport needs the size of fan that these companies bring to the table. We need the help to blow away the grey clouds that has been hovering over our sport for decades.

Having relationships with powerful corporations is a game changer. It moves societies’ perception of whomever they partner with from irrelevant to relevant.

The perplexing part of all this is it isn’t hard to do. There are companies out there that specialize in marrying sports and sponsors. This is why wrestling must pull together and form one overarching organization, made from all our different factions, that can, and will, speak for the sport as a whole.

Maybe call it the American Wrestling Coalition, or whatever tickles your fancy.

But, currently, who represents all of us, USAWrestling? The NWCA? The NCWA? The National Wrestling Hall of Fame? WIN Magazine, Brute?

The answer is no one. Each of those organizations, and companies, report to themselves, as they should.

That’s probably one of the Top 5 challenges wrestling has; we don’t have an overarching organization that can speak for the entire sport.

Wall Street sized companies aren’t interested in meeting with the heads of subset groups. Each of our organizations are too small for anyone of the big boys to be bothered with, but as a unified sport, wrestling becomes marketable.

A few years back we lost a great opportunity when Dave Pottruck, a very passionate retired wrestler/graduate of the University of Pennsylvania was CEO of Charles Schwab. Imagine if someone would have sat down and asked Dave to consider sponsoring wrestling and what such an alignment would have done for the sport? Envision a television commercial with a video of a wrestler helping a vanquished opponent back to his feet and having his hand raised in victory to the sound bite: “When wrestling with your investments remember Charles Schwab is here make sure you come out on top.”

Name one athletic administrator in America who would dare drop wrestling when the sport has AT&T, the Wounded Warrior Project, or Saint Jude Children’s Hospital as a national sponsor?

Either the wrestling community can’t see the amazing possibilities that sponsorships provide or they do but would rather be independently obstinate than work together as a team. Pick one, I’m afraid I don’t see an option C.

Regarding strategic alliances and the responsibility of giving back, wrestling must begin to develop a history of giving back to others just as we expect to be given. We need to be seen as more than just a sport; we need to be problem solvers, not problem creators. We have to think beyond ourselves and share with others our good fortune of having health, happiness, strong mental capacities and an immense internal drive.

No matter the age of our athletes, where they’re from or the team they represent, the sport needs to come together and decide the way we’re going to make a difference for society. We need to be known as “America’s Give Back Sport.”

Serving food at homeless shelters would work; reading books to hospitalized children would also play well. And do as much good for our athletes as it does for those who receive their time. Aligning ourselves with the ASPCA is another feel good, and do good opportunity.

Coaches might consider helping the local Red Cross with their annual blood mobile drive; or creating relationships with organizations like United Way or UNICEF.

Think of the cumulative benefits wrestling would receive when the sport combined its efforts for social good, not to mention how those who are served benefit.

This is so important because 84% of Americans have a more positive image of a company or group when it supports those who are less fortunate. Nearly 90% of those surveyed said it was important that organizations come together for the purpose of solving pressing social issues and regarding the business side of things, 79% of Americans indicate they would likely switch from one product brand to another one if it was associated with a cause they believed in.

For wrestling in general, the Wounded Warrior Project seems to be a natural fit given the number of military personnel that are or were wrestlers and of course the great service the group does for those who give up a part of their tomorrow’s so we can have all of our todays. And ironically, the Wounded Warrior Project’s logo is one soldier carrying another over his shoulder in a double leg.

The American Red Cross would also work and regardless of the one or ones we choose, developing a reciprocal relationship with these sorts of companies would strengthen the public’s image of wrestling. When we work together, wrestlers and companies, each group exceeds the sum of its parts.

Can you name any major corporation who doesn’t look for this type of global synergy? The Walt Disney Company partners with the United Way because it’s good business and helpful to society. Microsoft supports the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Procter and Gamble’s has been affiliated with UNICEF for decades and the list is endless.

Then, to help prop up our sport, when it comes time for a non-revenue sport to be cut, what Athletic Director is going to pick wrestling and risk having the President of one of these national charities calling the University’s President to find out what the hell is going on?

But none of that will happen because coaches don’t have the time for any of that; they are too fixated on the greed of increasing expenditures and spending more time in the wrestling room.

If that wasn’t true, there wouldn’t be RTC’s, and there wouldn’t be year around events.

It’s time to lose the name; Amateur Wrestling

It’s not the word wrestling that bothers me, it’s the use of the word amateur that according to Thesaurus means substandard, clumsy, crude, inept, unprofessional.

I would imagine that all of us would agree, that’s not the type of adjectives an advertising agency would select to work with if they had a choice.

When people ask what sport we participated in; it’s a simple answer, wrestling.

It’s a small but yet powerful change because there’s nothing amateur about what we do on the mats just as there’s nothing professional about what the WWE does other than the way they handle marketing, promotions, customer service and deposits.

21 thoughts on “Change, It Isn’t Easy

  1. Derek Bekeny

    I do not see the details of the Stanford email mentioned above.
    Can someone help me, please?

    Reply
  2. Stephen Schalles

    Rick, when I saw we should go south by southwest, you always want to to argue that we should be going 3 points different. We’re going the same direction, which is typically opposite of the rest of the country. Go pick on them my friend. I need allies.

    Reply
    1. Rick S.

      Let me try to be an ally. How do my views differ from the powers that be?

      The restaurant analogy is more appropriate than one can imagine.

      Pretend we are a steak house. Our customers want to sit down to enjoy some delicious steaks.

      Our customers enter our restaurant. They order their steaks medium or rare or medium rare or the way they like.

      Our chef needs to prepare the steaks. Our chef trims any fat and puts our secret rub on the steaks. At the same time our chef has the grill going. During this time, our customers have to wait, patiently, bored, waiting for those steaks.

      Our chef puts the steaks on the grill, grilling the steaks for how many ever minutes it takes to get the steaks done. During this time, our customers are still waiting, bored, anticipating those steaks.

      Finally, the steaks are done, ready to be served, and are brought to the table. Our customers say out steaks are delicious and they can’t wait to return for more steaks.

      How is this like wrestling? It is more like wrestling than you can imagine.

      Putting the rub on steaks is like having the wrestlers warm up before a match. People wouldn’t call it spectacular or exciting.

      Putting the steaks on the grill is like one of the wrestlers getting a take down. To some, this might seem exciting, but to me it’s just a necessary step for me getting my steak to eat.

      The grilling time is like one wrestler breaking down and riding and trying to turn the other wrestler. Grilling takes time. I don’t want raw meat. I have to be patient. Grilling is not meant to be spectacular. Grilling is only exciting when something goes wrong and the kitchen gets on fire. This is what the powers that be don’t understand. The fans are not satisfied with the grilling even if the grilling is most important to the chef.

      Finishing the steaks, plating the steaks, bringing the steaks to the table is what my customers want. They feel anticipation at the thought of biting into those steaks. In wrestling, this is the pin. This is the climax of the match. Everything else should lead to this climax.

      What do I think is wrong with wrestling? The wrestling community thinks of itself as the chef. What is important and exciting to the chef is the preparation and grilling of the steaks. What is important to me is the steak being finished and delivered to my table.

      When the chefs cheer take down after take down or near fall after near fall, they are cheering the preparation and grilling. I am waiting for the steaks to be delivered to my table.

      The chefs give points for how well the steak is prepared and how well the steak is grilled. The chefs will call a chef great based on earning points. One never has to deliver the steak to the customer’s table to get the great chef aware. I judge the steaks by what I taste. I don’t give points for the preparation or grilling time.

      If the steaks aren’t finished and delivered to the table for me to bite into, I’m not returning to this restaurant. If every wrestling match ended by pin, one wouldn’t need a scoring system that awards points.

      Don’t be afraid of the preparation and grilling time as long as you deliver the steaks to the table. If the customers bite into the steaks and feel they are in heaven, you will have happy customers who can’t wait to return.

      Reply
    1. Stephen Schalles

      That would be like calling a corvette an SUV or Judo, Mixed Martial Arts. And if we did go with Olympic Wrestling, that might very well push the collegiate and scholastic wrestling community to change what we do to freestyle. That might please some people, but for what it’s worth, of the two, I think folkstyle is the more exciting, and I for one, wouldn’t want foreign administrators dictating the rules of wrestling that we’d have to follow.

      Reply
  3. Aaron

    I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but when you tie scholastic institutions responsible for maintaining multi-million dollar physical plant facilities (stadiums, arenas) to the survival of a sport, it doesn’t bode well for sports without a true, stand-alone, revenue-producing professional league. Because we tie education to sports in the US – bad for sports and bad for education in my opinion – I think that wrestling is headed for club sport status at the D-I level. You can throw all the champions former wrestlers you want at this problem, but if you don’t have the equivalent of a Super Bowl you’re just not going to draw those top-level dollars and your sport is going to suffer back-shelf treatment and scrape for dollars until “college sports” changes. If it’s done right, we’re better as a club sport if you ask me, either that or we need to embrace the UFC as our professional option. Interesting post, though – keep up the good work.

    Reply
    1. Rick S.

      Question please: are most teams, in other countries, club teams?

      Outside of the United States, are there any college teams?

      Are there any government-sponsored teams in any countries?

      Reply
      1. Stephen Schalles

        Rick . . . there are a very small number of collegiate wrestling programs in Canada but that’s it. Every other country wrestle using a club system. As to finances, I can’t answer that definitively, but I would imagine that the big boys; Iran, Russia and their satellites counterparts have some level of government involvement.

        Reply
    2. Stephen Schalles

      Aaron . . . thank you for responding. Appreciated. I think you’re more right than what our top coaches in the country believe who are calling the shots. We’re not set up for a professional league. The fans that could have been ours are either watching boxing, MMA or WWE. But we could become revenue neutral if wanted to work at it. That would keep us in the stable of sports at both the collegiate and scholastic levels. But again, that is way down on the priority list of coaches.

      Reply
  4. Rick S.

    Hi Wade,

    None of my suggestions will be acceptable to the powers that be. Let me make suggestions anyway.

    The decision makers love to argue a wrestler needs to make progress. They try to put it into the rules, a wrestler needs to make progress.

    They argue, when a wrestler doesn’t make progress, it’s a stalemate.

    Let me suggest, if making progress is so important to them, they should consider it just as bad to voluntarily giving up the progress that was made. Toward this, I suggest the following:

    1) if the defensive wrestler struggles and gets an escape, the defensive wrestler gets one point.

    2) if the offensive wrestler deliberately cuts the defensive wrestler lose, the defensive wrestler gets three points, one point for the escape and two points erasing the take down the offensive wrestler is voluntarily giving up.

    3) if the defensive wrestler is turned for a near-fall situation, and fights off his back out of the near-fall situation, the defensive wrestler scores one point.

    4) if the defensive wrestler is turned for a near-fall situation, and the offensive wrestler ceases his attack and lets the defensive wrestler out of the near-fall situation, the defensive wrestler scores one point for getting out of the near-fall situation and the same number of points the offensive wrestler earned for the near-fall situation erasing the points the offensive wrestler voluntarily gave up.

    Why do the above? It encourages progress. It punishes those who voluntarily give up progress that was made.

    Reply
  5. Dave Foster

    I wrestled in high school and in college (intramurals at a good wrestling school). I am proud and grateful for the experience.

    When I go to YouTube to check out great wrestling matches, I invariably gravitate to clips of great pins, and that means I see a lot of Wade in action. (He was, after all, the greatest liner of all time.)

    When I go to wrestling match, the ones I enjoy have pins, points, reverses, takedowns galore. The 1-0 overtime match is a bore.

    Years age, Wade advocated for changes in scoring, both at the team level and in the individual match level, with an eye to promoting risk-taking—and thus more exciting individual matches.

    To me, these were the best suggestions I’ve ever seen or heard on how to increase the popularity of wrestling.

    Reply
    1. Stephen Schalles

      Dave . . . you are very kind. It all comes down to having a will to change. Coaches don’t, and they are the ones who decide. The sport is like someone who is hooked on drugs. You can try and help, stand at their side to pick them up every time they falter, but until they hit rock bottom, and are lying flat, whimpering, will your assistance be of help. I don’t expect anything will change, they’re too stubborn, a trait that the sport imparts, and in many instances is a huge positive for that which life throws at all of us. Or, they are unable to see what could be.

      Reply
  6. Rick S.

    Wade, can you delete my previous comments. I want to start fresh with this comment. Thanks.

    Let me try to fix my comments regarding the wrestling product and add to my comments.

    From my previous comments:
    1) your restaurant keeps changing the menu. First, your restaurant is meat and potatoes, then a spicy meat, and then vegan. You have to decide what you are and what you should be and stick with it.

    2) People argue your product needs spectacular moves and ways to score points. This reminds me of gymnastics with it’s gymnastic program. There are spectacular, entertaining moves, but gymnastics has no goal other than to score points (or not lose points). Gymnasts aren’t trying to cross a finish line. Gymnasts aren’t trying to scale the peak of a mountain. Gymnasts are just trying to have more points than their opponents. Wrestling has a finish line. Wrestling has a mountain peak. It’s called a pin.

    Adding a new comment:
    3) You like to say, “It’s as natural for boys to wrestle as it is for birds to fly,” but your style of wrestling is not natural. You’ve forgotten why boys wrestle. You’ve forgotten how and when boy’s wrestling ends.

    Why boys wrestle and how and when boy’s wrestling ends is not meant to be spectacular. Boys have a specific goal in mind when they wrestle.

    That goal is a primitive urge to establish dominance. Boys are establishing pecking order. They are establishing who can take who. They are establishing who can make who give. They will do it in various ways.

    If it’s “permitted”, a boy will employ a submission or choke hold. If it’s not “permitted”, a boy will try to pin the other boy down. In all cases, it is to render the other boy helpless, unable and/or unwilling to fight back. It’s not supposed to be pretty.

    It’s not supposed to be spectacular. It was this primitive animal behavior that attracts the attention of the other kids on the school playground, when school playgrounds were grassy fields, causing the other kids to gather round and watch and cheer.

    I am not saying spectacular moves don’t have a place if spectacular moves further the situation of one boy getting a choke or a submission or a pin. Spectacular moves are only a tool, only the means, by which the end goal is achieved.

    You wonder why your wrestling has trouble getting fans who are not parents, but the UFC has fans who are not parents. I suggest it’s because the UFC is more faithful to the “fighting” instinct of boys on the school playground establishing dominance. I suggest UFC fighters may use spectacular moves, but most fans don’t notice or care.

    Spectacular moves, for the sole purpose of doing spectacular moves, in most sports, and in nature, is not only not welcome, but is a waste of time and energy. In other sports and in nature, you do the minimal amount of time and energy to be successful. This is not what I hear wrestling advocates say.

    Wrestling advocates seem to argue the goal is scoring points. The match ends when the point score becomes a certain state, you call a technical fall, or when time for the match runs out. The point state for a technical fall is arbitrary. For scholastic wrestling in the United States it might be fifteen points. For the Olympic styles of wrestling, it might be ten points. You have forgotten why boys wrestle on the school playground when school playgrounds were grassy areas, and why the other kids would gather around to watch.

    In summary,
    1) you keep changing your menu,
    2) you think you can smear spectacular moves on your food to make your shoe leather palatable,
    3) and you forgot the basics for why we ate the food in the first place.

    Reply
    1. Stephen Schalles

      Rick . . . can you keep your posts a little shorter. Maybe that is something I should do as well with my blogs? :>)

      Reply
    2. Stephen Schalles

      Rick . . . I haven’t forgotten, my menu is the same. Serve quality food, in an appealing atmosphere, providing a memorable experience . . . so they want to return.

      Reply
      1. Rick S.

        I will try to keep my posts shorter, but it’s hard.

        Sadly, I believe your food is evolutionary and not revolutionary.

        People in the wrestling community seem to argue if only wrestling matches had more spectacular moves, wrestling would be more exciting, and we would have fans who are not just parents.

        When two boys paired off to wrestle on the school playground and all the kids gathered around, the wrestling was not spectacular. When the UFC has fans who are not just parents, one would not call the UFC style spectacular. When fans who are not just parents went to watch a professional boxing match, it was not to watch spectacular moves. The fans were out for blood.

        It’s aggression and brutality within a set of rules designed to ensure the combatants are not injured or killed. The rules may, or may not, forbid moves and holds that cause acute pain or unconsciousness.

        If I want to watch a sport with spectacular moves, I will watch gymnastics. Gymnastics is an exercise program made up of spectacular moves. I do not watch gymnastics.

        I believe the Olympic wrestling styles were given a reprieve and allowed to be in the 2020 (now 2021) and 2024 Olympics. Do we believe the Olympic wrestling styles will still be in the Olympics in 2028?

        Reply
        1. Stephen Schalles

          Rick, when I saw we should go south by southwest, you always want to to argue that we should be going 3 points different. We’re going the same direction, which is typically opposite of the rest of the country. Go pick on them my friend. I need allies.

          Reply
          1. Rick S.

            I want to be an ally, but I am unimportant.

            Through my ignorance, I can only suggest the improbable and the impossible with the hope I can suggest some idea out of left field that you can build on.

            You are kind to me in that you don’t call my comments, idiotic, which, usually, they are.

            Every ignorant fan wants something slightly different. I hope I represent one group of ignorant fans.

  7. Rick S.

    Well said, Wade.

    However, you missed one category when you said, “But for the last fifty years, our problems continue to fall into the same four categories. They are naivety, image, finances, and greed.”

    You forgot to include the category, product.

    Every year you change your product. It’s like having a restaurant that can’t find itself. One year your product does good, old-fashioned, meat and potatoes. The next year, you add spices the meat and potatoes crowd doesn’t like, but the spicy meat lovers like. The next year, you go vegan upsetting all the meat lovers.

    You need to do marketing. You need to find out what product your fans “might” like. Otherwise, the definition of fan as far as the wrestling community is concerned will be synonymous with parents.

    At this moment, if I do watch wrestling on YouTube, which is rare, I hope to find matches with lots of pins. That’s just me.

    Other people say they want spectacular moves. When I hear people say that, I think of a hit and run style of wrestling. I think of a repetitive style of wrestling where a wrestler repeats the same action, be it take downs or near falls, over and over. It turns me off. I want to call it combat gymnastics.

    Gymnasts do spectacular moves too. Like the current style of wrestling, gymnasts don’t get anywhere. Gymnasts are there to score points. But gymnasts get to the finish line faster or climb a mountain reaching a peak.

    Your spectacular style of wrestling doesn’t get anywhere either. Fortunately, there are still wrestling teams who believe pinning is important. Getting pins is getting somewhere. Getting pins is like scaling the mountain or crossing the finish line.

    Reply
    1. Rick S.

      I have a typo in the above comment.

      I typed, “Gymnasts do spectacular moves too. Like the current style of wrestling, gymnasts don’t get anywhere. Gymnasts are there to score points. But gymnasts get to the finish line faster or climb a mountain reaching a peak.”

      I meant to type, “Gymnasts do spectacular moves too. Like the current style of wrestling, gymnasts don’t get anywhere. Gymnasts are there to score points. But gymnasts get to the finish line faster or climb a mountain reaching a peak.Gymnasts do spectacular moves too. Like the current style of wrestling, gymnasts don’t get anywhere. Gymnasts are there to score points. But gymnasts DON’T get to the finish line faster or climb a mountain reaching a peak.”

      Reply
      1. Rick S.

        Fooey. Wade. Can you edit my comment for me.

        I can’t find a way to edit my comment to correct my comment, and every time I try, I only make matters worse.

        You know what I’m trying to say.

        Reply

Leave a Reply to Stephen Schalles Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.