While it’s exciting that pro-wrestling fans have made their voices heard with the #GiveDivasAChance movement, since this trend caught on the WWE has done little more than pay lip service to the fact that there’s an obvious problem with the way women are represented in the company. The “WWE Divas” on the main roster still get less than five minutes on a three hour prime-time television show - a television show that, by the company’s own admission, is difficult to program for due to a massive time-slot.
Read MoreNXT is loosely defined as the WWE’s farm-league, a home-grown developmental territory of sorts broadcasting out of Full Sail University in Florida. Every Wednesday at 8pm, pre-taped, one-hour episodes play on the WWE Network, and every two months the promotion has a live, two-hour special.
Read MoreRoman Reigns has won the 2015 Royal Rumble. As a result, the relationship between the WWE and the WWE's fans is as strained and contentious as ever.
I'm a fan of Roman's. I've always liked him and always thought he could be exactly what the WWE wanted him to be so long as they booked him properly and emphasized his strengths. This is a common perspective among many long-time pro-wrestling fans. It's truly a shame to watch his career, and the future of the company, be negatively affected as a result of bad booking and not consistently creating a character that could convincingly face Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania.
Read MoreI’ve always liked Roman Reigns.
I’m a twenty-eight-year-old married man.
My favorite wrestlers are performers like CM Punk, Sami Zayn, The Rock, Steve Austin, Bret Hart, Mick Foley, AJ Lee, Lita, Sasha Banks, Bayley, Charlotte, and Roddy Piper.
I’m fairly certain I could be labeled a “smark”, and, like many who write about pro-wrestling on the internet, I have my fair share of criticisms for the WWE.
Read MoreLately, SmackDown has existed as background noise in my house.
This has less to do with the quality of the show and more to do with the fact that Raw’s three-hours saturates the viewer. By the time SmackDown comes around to HuluPlus on Saturday, I’ve already seen a minimum of four hours of WWE “content” (usually more as a result of perusing the WWE Network and YouTube). There is no other television-narrative I devote that much time to. Every other show I watch is either twenty minutes a week or forty minutes a week. Like most, I occasionally binge-watch a show, but such shows are always focused on the same characters or the same, consistent narratives. The WWE has yet to catch on to the viewing patterns of today’s generation, and the fact that more and more audiences are responding to psychologically driven, serial narratives with relatable characters in interesting situations.
Read MoreSinger/songwriter Sia recently released a spiritual successor to her massively popular music video for "Chandelier".
This video, for her single "Elastic Heart", features the same dancer from "Chandelier", Maddie Zeigler, performing alongside Shia Labeouf inside a steel cage.
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