Is it better to burn out, or to simply fade away?
It’s been pretty clear that the last few years have seen my interest in wrestling fade somewhat. Going from having a new review post on the site multiple times a week, to posting maybe once a week whenever Rev Pro and wXw run.
As I put fingertip to keyboard on this, AEW’s second show at Wembley is a little over a month away… and having jumped on tickets for the first All In, I’m more likely to be on my sofa at home than anywhere close to Wembley Way. While that’s maybe an indictment on just how much the perception towards AEW’s changed, it’s also a barometer of how disconnected I’ve become. Skipping out on a monumental show, taking place just half an hour away from me, on a tube journey that I take most days? Clearly, I’m not the same fan I once was…
It’s also a sign of the direction of travel in the last few years, particularly as far as the independent scene. I’m not going to wave a flag and say “it’s dead, Jim,” but a lot of the current product simply doesn’t do it for me.
Then there’s the ongoing debates over the state of wrestling media. As tangentially small a part I have in whatever interpretation you have of the “wrestling media,” it’s consistently aggravating to see just how much media and chatter about wrestling inevitably ends, shrivelled up into a series of set plays that leave you going around in circles, leaving the same kind of enjoyment that you’d get from headbutting a brick wall. It’s not something I’ve any desire to descend to, even if the numbers tell me that the style of how I’ve covered wrestling simply doesn’t work anymore.
Now, that’s not to say that the towel’s being thrown in as far as this site is concerned. I’ll still be around, covering whatever piques my interest, likely in a different format to what I’ve been doing. As for the scene, well, all it takes is one spark to reignite things, but the way things are going right now, I fear that this’ll be the last year where I’ll be there for it – either in writing, podcasting, snapping, or some mixture of them all.