McGuire’s Mondays: Paul “Triple H” Levesque swings and misses on pro wrestling media

By Colin McGuire, ProWrestling.net Staffer

Pro wrestling is its own ecosystem. Some days, you could say it’s its own toxic ecosystem. Other days, perhaps the word “beautiful” could be inserted. The range of other terms that may be used is wide, but whatever it chooses to be on whatever day, pro wrestling plays by its own rules. The medium wades in its own pool, a specific world tailor-made for specific people. In so many ways, it’s undefinable. To the outside layman, it could be anything from silly to profound.

And yet it continues to grow. The launch of AEW five years ago marked an imperative chapter in its evolution. The resurgence in popularity of Japanese wrestling stateside didn’t hurt things. Then, as has been countlessly analyzed throughout the last handful of years especially, WWE is back in the driver’s seat when it comes to the idiom’s presence in popular culture. The Rock says “Pro wrestling is cool again,” so it must be true, right?

It’s that last cog in the wheel that took centerstage over the weekend – and not for the best reasons. WWE held its latest Premium Live Event, Backlash. It commenced in France, made a boatload of money and somehow pulled off making a big deal out of five mostly predictable matchups. The show was fine, but that’s not what we’re going to talk about here. Instead, we’re going to fast-forward to after the show when Top Dog Paul Levesque took the podium for the now-annual post-PLE press conference.

Here was a question posed to him:

“Fightful and PWInsider reported that Drew Gulak was released by WWE. I just wanted to clarify in this situation if that was true and does it have anything to do with Ronda Rousey’s accusations about sexual …”

Before the reporter could finish in earnest, Levesque began his answer:

“First of all, if you’re going to cite news sources, pick good ones. That’s where I would start. Credible, really, maybe.”

That quip lasted about eight seconds and it came before he evaded the Rousey question. Unfortunately – and WWE has made it a habit to never quite know how to publicly address sexual harassment claims anymore – the focus of the interaction in its aftermath wasn’t placed on the harassment accusations. Instead, the corner of the pro wrestling ecosystem that is the Internet Wrestling Community (or dirt sheets or Pro Wrestling Media or whatever else anyone wants to call it) took great umbrage with the dismissiveness in Levesque’s voice.

Fightful and PWInsider are two of the leading breaking-news outlets in the pro wrestling space and some personalities from both outlets got real loud, real quick about how insulting the WWE COO’s comments felt. They argued the merits of their reporting from a historical standpoint – and rightfully so. In Pro Wrestling Land, they mean something. One could argue that places like the Wrestling Observer and Pro Wrestling Torch popularized the pro wrestling reporting construct years ago; Fightful and Insider have carried that banner in the modern day when clicks have replaced newsletter subscriptions. Their work isn’t irrelevant.

And yet here Levesque was, not only saying it was irrelevant, but also objectively … well … bad. It doesn’t matter what walk of life you’re talking about; if someone insults your work, you’re going be offended. Or, well, any worker worth a damn who does work for a living would be offended. But you get it. Levesque’s comment wasn’t nice, kind of ignorant, needlessly arrogant and somewhat hard to justify. I mean, why take a shot like this? Did he think it was some type of next level jab at AEW, which is decidedly more lauded by some of those who work for those pro wrestling media outlets?

Probably not (though I’m sure there are conspiracies out there!). Still, Triple H looked small in taking such a gratuitous shot. It also brought light to a fact that isn’t talked about enough because what’s talked about most – and ad nauseam –  is how pro wrestling media can do better. That fact?

Pro wrestling media is important to the success of pro wrestling, et al.

Speaking selfishly, I left pro wrestling in my rearview mirror in the early 2000s as I went off to college and tried to figure out how to engage in life. The NWO had come and gone, WCW was going out of business and the whole circus felt tired. I figured I had grown out of it, relegating the stuff to childhood memories and little else. It wasn’t that I was bored with the product; I just fell out of love with it.

But then, something odd started to percolate between 10 and 15 years ago. I hadn’t watched an episode of Raw in years and there was a writer on Rolling Stone’s website – Kenny Herzog – who would recap it each week. Working second shift at a newspaper, being up late at night and in need of something light to read, I started digesting his reports each week. He wrote in ways I never knew possible when it came to the pro wrestling space. This wasn’t dry, move-by-move stuff. He sprinkled in some attitude and occasional rumor/inside baseball context. My brow raised.

Those late nights led me to reading this very website religiously. Reading this very website religiously led to me tuning into some programming here and there. Tuning into some programming here and there led to me emailing about contributing to this very website. Contributing to this very website led to me opening a Twitter account I dedicated to only pro wrestling writers and personalities (which ultimately led to me running away from Twitter for good, but that’s beside the point). Those social media habits led to me consuming more pro wrestling media. Consuming more pro wrestling media only made my desire for pro wrestling information that much more insatiable.

It’s all to say that without pro wrestling media, the entire medium would still be in my rearview mirror as remnants of memories that have long faded away like failed high school girlfriends and a once (OK, never) promising basketball career. Finding places online where smart, informed writers took to the Internet to dissect matches and toggle back and forth between front-of-house commentary and backstage innuendos became my gateway drug back into the pro wrestling business. I began viewing matches with critical eyes in ways I had never done previously. Rumblings about what may or may not be happening off television fascinated me. I couldn’t get enough.

And to think: It all came at a time when the WWE product wasn’t really that great. The latter years of the Vince McMahon area, from a purely creative standpoint, were not kind to the casual wrestling fan. To keep up with it, you either had to put on a certain shade of blinders that kept your eyes away from the overtly uninteresting booking decisions, or … or, well, consume the juicier reports that rumbled beneath the surface online. Without pro wrestling media, I most likely would have never picked up the pro wrestling product ever again.

Does that matter to Paul Levesque? Of course not. And, to be fair, does that even matter in a larger context to the pro wrestling ecosystem? Nope – the criticism that the online wrestling community is merely nothing but a bubble that the mainstream fan could care less about is a criticism that I believe in wholeheartedly. But is there a role for pro wrestling media in the larger scale of the pro wrestling space that has grown from a tasty appetizer into a full-blown option for a solid entree?

I think so. In some ways, the reporting is now as important to the fan experience as anything else, just like it has been in mainstream sports. ESPN has had their Adam Schefters, Jeff Passans and Adrian Wojnarowskis for decades now, turning the business of sports information into big business in its own right. Pro wrestling is now no different and the growth of the Information Age is now embedded in the way some fans internalize the product. I can’t say it’s a huge piece of the pie, but it’s probably a larger bite than Levesque gave it credit for when he took to the podium on Saturday.

That’s why what he said was disheartening. What did he mean when he referenced the “good ones” when it comes to media outlets? ESPN? Sports Illustrated? Forbes? Head over to ESPN.com and click on the pro wrestling tab. As of my last check, the top two most recent stories that you’ll see are first a Backlash prediction piece, and second a 27-day-old article on WrestleMania 41 predictions. That’s two pro wrestling articles in a month. Most pro wrestling websites, Dot Net included, do that in less than an hour on a daily basis. Don’t tell me there isn’t a section of the pro wrestling audience that wants more – demands more – coverage on the product than what the “good ones” offer.

So, while I can admit that pro wrestling niche media might not be setting the world on fire with website clicks, social media engagement, and lucrative business models, I think it’s also worth noting that the role it plays within the ecosystem of the genre is imperative. It might not always be pretty, and it might sometimes tear people apart more than it brings them together, but it also serves a valuable purpose and it’s no doubt the product of people who work hard to provide information and entertainment to those of us out here who enjoy diving into this stuff on a daily basis.

And for a guy who has been known to go by the name “The Game,” Paul Levesque ought to know by now that playing it in the pro wrestling media world will never be limited to only competitors of his choosing. Small. Large. Good. Bad. The game is the game.