Ric Flair/AJ Styles

[Kane Knight]

Originally Posted by Loose Cannon I respect Lance Storm and all, but I think the times have just passed him by. Wrestling is not the same as it was 10-20 years ago. The days of mastering your craft are over. The days of living the gimmick are over. You got to accept it. Wrestling is as mainstream as ever right now. These newer fans just don't care about the little things that made wrestlers great in our eyes so long ago. Wrestling is just another show on TV these days. And with most shows these days, logic takes a backside. Ive finally accepted that. Five years ago, I would of probably picked apart TNA piece by piece and shit all over that show. But today, I just watch it just like anything else. There's stuff that's going to suck and there's stuff that's going to be good. My days of analyzing every single segment and posting about what would make more sense are over. Wreslting will continue to go on

TNA practically books to smarks, though. While you could make that argument about WWE very much so, TNA's spent a lot of time pushing one type of fan as their core audience, the kind who would most care about traditions and gimmicks and shit, and they're doing the opposite.

I'm not saying TNA sucks for not fellating a bunch of anal geeks, but when you court a demographic, expect that demographic to get a little pissy when you start acting in a fashion that kind of flies in the face of that. and TNA's best hope is probably not trying to be WWE lite anyway.

Also, the "Nature Boy" monicker only really matters to the people who are like you were five years ago. It's not going to help get him over with people who are fans because wrestling is mainstream. Flair isn't, either. This seems like the sort of thing that would be tailor made for the smarks, so I can't blame Storm or anyone else for looking at it from a smark perspective.

I doubt many casuals could name a second "Nature Boy." I'd hazard that to the majority of those casuals think that Ric Flair is the Nature Boy in more or less the same way Triple H is the Game, Michaels is the Heart Break Kid, and Undertaker is the Phenom. The whole point to the Flair angle seems to be use of legacy, a legacy that casuals aren't going to care about.

That being said, I haven't given a shit about Flair in years now, and just want him to go away. They could put a big tank in the ring, put Flair on a motorcycle, and have him very literally jump the shark in TNA, and I still wouldn't care. But the people complaining are making a very legit set of points because they're the only ones who are likely to give a fuck about this kind of thing.