The Slam Sessions: Welcome to the Mayhem
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What’s up Wrestling fans? For those of you who may not know me, my name is Albert Albanese. I’ve been a wrestling fan all my life. At 37 years old, I’ve seen arguably the best years of pro wrestling live as they unfolded. From Savage vs Steamboat at Wrestlemania 3, to the era of Hulkamania, the rise and fall of WCW and ECW, the Attitude Era, Ruthless Aggression, Ring of Honor, and TNA/IMPACT on the AEW, I’ve watched it all. And like many fans, I’ve been rather opinionated about everything I’ve seen. From seeing Hogan and the Warrior take the top WWE spots from the “Macho Man” Randy Savage (any guesses to who my favorite wrestler is yet?), to Hogan refusing to put over Bret Hart at Summerslam, to the Montreal Screwjob, Super Cena, and the fan-made war between WWE and AEW, I’ve had my own feelings on all the above. And to be fair, if I was writing this in 2004, this article would look and sound totally different. Because I was like a lot of you, a wrestling die-hard who felt that he knew more than everyone in charge of WWE and (at the time) TNA wrestling.
You see, I was a Smark, or Smart Mark (but not quite Sterling), and I honestly believed that if I was put in charge of either promotion, it would succeed with flying colors. I didn’t need to touch Ring of Honor, it was already my favorite promotion at that time. As a matter of fact, my friend Andre’ (a brilliant writer for CBR, so check him out!) and I attended so many Ring of Honor shows at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York during this time period that we barely needed to see their weekly shows to know what was going on. It even led us to attend a Dragon Gate, USA show, giving us our first looks at such talents as PAC, Jon Moxley, and the late great Brodie Lee. I was all in on work rate matches, enamored by the high-flying, technical and hard-hitting style that these talents brought over from Mexico and Japan. I knew that WWE should be incorporating more of this in their shows and give the hardcore fan base what they want. I held steadfast in these beliefs, talking the ears off of anyone who would listen about how bad the WWE product was, how John Cena was shoved down our throats, how WWE purposefully pushed all the guy and girls the internet seemed to hate at the time.
However, one day, that all changed. I’ll never forget it. I was already getting tired of being miserable about wrestling. I thought that after over 20 years of watching, it was time to hang it up and just devote my life to the important things, Fantasy Football and figuring out how to take a Disney vacation every year. I was in a Facebook group with a bunch of guys I had met through a mutual acquaintance. They were a good bunch of guys, but some of them were even more upset with the world of pro wrestling than me. Nothing made them happy. WWE, Ring of Honor, NJPW, TNA. If it was on TV, it wasn’t good enough. And I started off agreeing with them. Until they started complaining about things that they wanted to happen actually start happening.
At this point in time, I was in college (I graduated college at 30, obtaining a bachelor’s Degree in English, and then began and graduated from the Connecticut School of Broadcasting 6 months later. If I can do it, anyone can) and I started learning more about business. I learned that the consumers were only part of the business strategy, as Publicly Traded companies also had to take into account their stockholders and Board of Directors. I started to slowly begin to understand why WWE would be consistently pushing a guy like John Cena as the face of their company. This leads me to comment on a particular member of the group’s post about John Cena. Amongst a slew of other things, this person (who shall remain nameless, but will be known immediately by the other members of that group reading this) wrote that he didn’t care about money, merchandise sales, or how many Make A Wish kids Cena helped, John Cena should NEVER be in the WWE title picture EVER AGAIN. Now, I was as tired of Cena as a lot of us were at this time. I almost walked out of Madison Square Garden when Cena was the surprise 30th entrant in the Royal Rumble, ruining my entire night (The Rumble is my favorite match ever. As of now, I’ve watched every Rumble match from 1988-2010 for the past 2 weeks while working from home at my 9 to 5. I disliked Cena more than I hated Hogan and Warrior in the ’80s (Yes, I was THAT kid). But even still, I begrudgingly understood why Cena was where he was on the card. When I tried to explain this to this person, he flipped out, writing paragraph after paragraph about how the WWE was killing their business by alienating their biggest fan base.
It was at that point that I realized, “Oh my God. Is this how I sound? Do I come across as this heartless and delusional when talking about pro wrestling?” I realized that I was complaining about a TV show. One I could choose to no longer watch if it made me this upset. Or, I could watch it for what it was. A television show. I stopped thinking I knew more than everyone. I stopped caring about who won or lost or got a push or got released or wasn’t on TV. I just watched like a fan. Like I did as a kid, sitting cross-legged in front of the TV with wrestling on the TV and my figure federation in front of me. Only now, I put my figures on my wall to display them, and my phone was in my hand. And something amazing happened. I started to enjoy wrestling for the first time in forever (Shout out to Frozen, that movie rules, and my God-Daughter loves it).
I stayed on Facebook for years after, debating things from a more sensible side. After I
completed broadcasting school, I started my own YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/@TheSlamSessions, after consulting with my friend Dave Lee of the Dave Knows
Wrestling YouTube channel (If you haven’t yet, check him out. I might be a little biased, but it’s the best wrestling channel out there). My goal with my channel was to be as positive about the products we see on television and help fans see that we can sometimes be a little crazy with our demands as fans. And that’s what I hope to do here. Instead of talking negatively about any of the products, that I can help at least (after all, constructive criticism and opinions are okay), I’ll be highlighting things that I did enjoy about both WWE and AEW. But if I focus on anything negative, it’ll be the fan’s perception of what
they are seeing. There’s constructive criticism, but then there’s severely overreacting to breaking news
or things that aren’t confirmed. Twitter can be an amazing tool to help fans peel back the curtain to find out insider information, and interact with their favorite wrestling personalities. But it’s also become a toxic, disgusting, negative place where people talk the loudest about things they dislike and bring out the worst in each other. I’d like us to get to a point where we can cultivate a good corner of the internet and focus on the positives of what we are watching. And go back to just having fun!
Welcome to the Slam Sessions. I’m Albert Albanese.
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