Stevie Richards is not buying Triple H’s whole “just have fun” message to WWE fans, because as far as he’s concerned, WWE can’t charge serious money and then tell people not to take the product seriously.
Triple H recently spoke with Stephen A. Smith and said fans sometimes lose perspective when it comes to WWE. His point was that wrestling is supposed to be entertainment and a place where people can shut out the world for a few hours.
“The other aspect of that is I think that people lose perspective of sometimes is, we’re just fun, man. We’re fun and sometimes people take it too seriously, sometimes people get too caught up in it, but it’s there to entertain, man. There’s a lot of stuff going on in the world. If you just want to turn off for a couple of hours and tune into something cool that you can just lose yourself in and have a good time, WWE is the place to do it. If you’ve never seen it live, I’m telling you, come to a live event, come to one of our PLEs, come to a TV. There’s nothing like it in entertainment.”
That sounded harmless enough on the surface, but Stevie Richards heard something else entirely. While speaking on The Stevie Richards Show, Richards pushed back on the idea that fans should ease up just because WWE is supposed to be fun.
His argument was pretty simple: WWE is not free. Fans are paying for tickets, subscriptions, PLEs, merch, travel, and everything else that comes with following the product. So if people are spending big money, Stevie believes they have every right to judge what they’re getting in return.
“Scrutiny is what they don’t want. Which you have to have. But also, it’s like don’t take things too seriously, but the people who spend the most money are the people who take it most seriously or, as you say, invested most in the product. But the people who are the most invested in the product are also going to have one, their opinions on what they would like to see and two, they are going to want to find out more information. Like, why does he not realize he cannot have it both ways?”
That was really the heart of Stevie’s issue. He felt WWE wants fans to be emotionally invested enough to buy everything, watch everything, and show up live, but not invested enough to criticize the product when something doesn’t work. Richards then brought it back to the money side of things, saying fans who drop huge cash on WWE shows should not be treated like the problem if they walk away disappointed.
“Well, they’re also going to want a better product for the money that they’re paying, much like you said in the video. They’re going to say, ‘I’m paying a thousand dollars per ticket for this and it was a subpar show.’ Now, are you a hater if you’re a person who pays that money and you go there and you’re not satisfied? Are they going to tell you, ‘You’re the problem,’ right? Blatantly. What is going on? Corporate America, not just WWE, saying, ‘We hate the customers,’ or whatever.”
Stevie also took issue with WWE acting like fan criticism is some kind of outside problem instead of something the company should actually listen to. He pointed to past comments from Triple H and Nick Khan, claiming WWE has mocked random criticism before while also acting like fans are the ones ruining their own experience.
“Can I also say this? Triple H and Nick Khan did it one of their town hall meetings not too long ago. And then they were just reading out random criticism of WWE from over there. Some of them were 10 years old, unsighted, by the way. So, we don’t even know where these came from if they didn’t just make it up themselves… Why are you trying to gaslight us into half the time saying we don’t ever pivot, we don’t bend to the will of the fans, when they clearly react constantly to what they think fans want? But then they say that the fans are ruining it for themselves and ruining it for the company and it’s all the fans’ fault and not the company’s fault because they’re going out and trying to scrutinize what they see on TV or try and learn more or weirdly try and guess what’s going to come up next.”
Then Stevie compared it to football, where debate and speculation are baked into the whole experience. His point was that WWE itself runs post-shows that speculate about storylines, so blaming fans for doing the same thing makes no sense to him.
“Yeah, because in football especially… isn’t the talking heads trying to have you speculate… WWE has their own post shows where they speculate where things are going forward… We have a whole lot of gaslighting going on. We have a whole lot of finger pointing at the fans.”
At the end of the day, Stevie Richards’ message was pretty clear. WWE can sell fans on passion, loyalty, live events, merch, and must-see moments, but it can’t turn around and act shocked when those same fans have strong opinions about what they paid to watch. Triple H may see WWE as an escape, but Stevie thinks that escape still comes with a price tag. And once fans pay that price, they get to say whether the ride was worth it.
Do you agree with Stevie Richards that WWE fans have every right to criticize the product, or do you think Triple H was right that people take wrestling too seriously? Let us know in the comments below.
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