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Trust me; Oberhausen, Germany is NOT my comfort zone. When I take even a second to think about where I am right now---I freak the freak out. I don’t like being far away from Amy, my kids, Yogi, or even my office. I’m very comfortable in my surroundings. However, at 54 years-old . . . I still feel the need to grow. I still fell the desire to reach outside of my own wingspan and expand.
We all need to grow as individuals, we all need to at least try and experience what our REAL potential is. If we don’t . . . we could perhaps die without ever knowing the “greatness” which God had in store for us. Greatness that we were too afraid to seek out---thus we failed to experience.
Great things happen when we leave our comfort zone. WHAT IF Jackie Robinson would have been “too afraid” to make the jump to Major League baseball when Dodger owner extended the olive branch? Where would minorities in baseball be right now? What if the Wright brothers would have been “afraid” to fly their own invention? What if Abe Lincoln never freed the slaves because he was “afraid” of the backlash? What if KISS never put on make-up because they were “worried” that they were going to be laughed out of the building?
You have to expand your wings, if not you will just become stagnant and learn nothing new about yourself, your potential . . . or, life. As writers, that’s what Ed Ferrara and I did when we were writing for the WWE. Yes, we knew wrestling, but we also knew that wrestling was getting old, stale and losing its appeal. So together, we decided to expand our minds to a place that had no limitations. Yes, we took a chance, but it was a calculated one because we were both confidence of our ability to succeed.
The Attitude Era changed wrestling forever. It gave new life to a product that was quickly becoming a dinosaur in the late nineties. Then, Ed and I left. The WWE went back to what they know. Ratings have been going down for 15 straight years. Those in positions of power in the WWE, including Vince McMahon himself, are afraid to try to re-event the wheel because they are either afraid of their own lack of confidence and ability, or they just plain don’t know how. They have not hurt, but killed the genre, and they continue to penetrate it with more and more stab wounds every week. I’m here in Germany, not even thinking about the WWE and Raw, but yet I’m bombarded this morning with comments through social media about how bad Raw was----AGAIN.
But to me, here’s where it gets worse. I’m over here working for a great organization, with great people called WXW. Yesterday I spent a good 8 hours consulting with them, and what I kept hearing over and over again was them using the WWE as their “model”. The same show that again, has declined in ratings for FIFTEEN YEARS. It’s sort of like cheating off someone’s paper in high school who has a lower grade point average then you, and, that is sad. But, it’s not the fault of WXW. They want to look at a successful model, and they believe they are, but when you look through the PR, propaganda and BS, you are looking at a company that is a former shell of itself simply because they refuse to grow, sitting on the mindset that if we “sell it” to you---you will “buy it”, no matter how good, or bad it is.
And, yes, while some are still buying it, there aren’t nearly as many customers as there used to be. And, the wrestling business continues to suffer. So, what I guess I’m trying to say is this---if Vince Russo can be in Oberhausen on a Monday night eating Weiner Schnitzel---then Vince McMahon can at least make an attempt at giving us something we haven’t already seen going back to when Pedro Morales was the WWWF World Champion.
