WWE: How to support wrestlers and resist against the company while watching

WWE is wrong to choose profit margins over people, but there are ways to keep supporting the talent and watching the content while resisting against WWE.

It’s a difficult time to be a wrestling fan and WWE hasn’t exactly been helping the situation as of late. Yesterday, I was one of many who spent the day feeling hurt every time another name rang out of a talent that WWE had unceremoniously released.

Despite that, I still wanted to watch NXT. I even still want to watch SmackDown. As someone who has loved and watched wrestling for 20 years, I wanted to turn to the WWE Network to see classic content and enjoy some of my favorite matches to distract from the chaos going on in the world.

I had all of these urges, despite knowing there were major problems with the way WWE chose to conduct themselves yesterday. Let me be abundantly clear: WWE is a thousand percent in the wrong for the way they did business yesterday.

Others have pointed out that this is an unprecedented global pandemic with widespread economic impacts, which is true. However, WWE was not in the kind of economic trouble that merited these actions.

WWE pays less than 10% of their annual revenue to talent contracts, which is an egregious figure that wouldn’t be accepted in any sport with a union fighting for and protecting their athletes. On top of that, the vast majority of their revenue comes from massive television deals, and not things currently impacted like live event tickets or merchandise sales.

No, that’s not what this was about. WWE has been hoarding talent for years now, signing every prospect in sight that would take a contract with the goal of keeping them away from any possible competition despite WWE’s reluctance to actually utilize the talent.

We’ve seen no shortage of wrestlers try and get out of their WWE contracts solely to exercise some creative freedom and keep doing what they love, wrestling, which WWE is often happy to keep them from doing.

Yesterday, WWE chose to choose profit margins over people and released superstars, producers, and other employees without a second thought, despite many of them having given years of their lives to WWE. Look no further than Mike Chioda, who has been one of WWE’s most trusted referees since joining the company in 1989.

Even with 31 years of service to WWE, it wasn’t enough for the company to prioritize Chioda over their profit margins. They easily could have afforded to keep him on payroll, and all of the talent they’ve released, but instead have voluntarily cut ties and now all of these men and women have to figure out how they’ll feed their families, pay their bills, and survive during a global pandemic.

This isn’t the same as a local restaurant laying off their entire staff because they’re not allowed to keep operating. This is a massive corporation that literally bragged in releases that they have $0.5 billion in reserves, and that saw their stock actively rise because they prioritized profit over people.

WWE did a bad thing. I’m not at all trying to dispute that, but that doesn’t mean fans are bad for wanting to keep watching or keep supporting the talent that are still with the company.

We even saw this with an outpouring of social media support for Drake Maverick, who is still competing in the tournament to crown an interim NXT Cruiserweight Champion despite being released yesterday from his WWE contract.

That kind of support lays the foundation for what we can do as fans at a time like this. There are actions you can take to support the talent without punishing yourself.

We’re in the midst of a global pandemic having unheard of detrimental effects on the global economy and the mental health of everyone worldwide, so it’s not surprising that many of us want to turn to the comforting distractions of entertainment.

There are ways to continue using this content to entertain you while cutting into the benefit WWE gets from it. If you decide to watch a show live, chances are you might be on social media. You’ll usually find me on Twitter sending out gifs and giving my thoughts on the shows, and I know many fans do the same.

One way to push back against WWE while doing this is by changing the way we tweet. I, like many, have used WWE’s show hashtags to increase engagement in the past. Dropping “#WWENXT” or “#SmackDown” or “#WWERaw” at the end of a tweet always seems to help my Twitter, but it also helps give WWE the impression that fans are just as engaged as ever.

Instead, focus your tweets on the talent themselves. Leave out the company-based hashtags, but help get people trending. This Friday, don’t get “#SmackDown” trending worldwide, get “Daniel Bryan” or “Bray Wyatt” or “The New Day” trending worldwide.

If you’re in the fortunate position to have some disposable income at a time like this, don’t support talent by buying their WWE merchandise. The wrestlers themselves get a tiny fraction of the profit from these purchases.

Instead, look for any merchandise they’re selling themselves on sites like Pro Wrestling Tees. Keep an eye on their social media for a potential Patreon or other service they might be using to create supplemental content that fans can enjoy while giving a small financial boost to the talent themselves.

If you’re in a position to do so, you can also change the methods and timing with which you watch WWE content. Choosing not to watch live can affect their ratings, which is a clear message to the company about how fans are responding to what they’re doing.

You can also use alternative methods of watching WWE. I won’t be linking to or mentioning anything specific, but there are ways to watch WWE content that those of us who have spent any time without a cable subscription certainly know about. If you’d rather use one of those alternative methods, ask a friend and I’m sure they’d help point you in the right direction.

Finally, and this is perhaps the most important thing of all, do not by any means shame or attack the fans that are still watching or the wrestlers that are still competing. Doing so doesn’t help anyone at all.

I would love to see the wrestlers band together and unionize at a time like this, but I understand why that’s an incredibly difficult decision to make, especially at a time when so many are desperate for any kind of stable income.

The men and women still competing are doing their best in an unimaginably difficult situation to keep providing for themselves and their families.

As for fans, as I mentioned before we’re all struggling too. Many fans are facing hardships in their lives in all sorts of ways right now, whether it be financially or emotionally, some even physically, and there’s nothing wrong with them wanting a distraction.

Support the wrestlers and fight back against what WWE has done, but don’t do so at the detriment of your own mental health or by attacking others. We’re all doing our best in this chaotic world right now, and that’s all you can expect from yourself or others.