Thought of the Day: Why No Little Towns?
This occurred to me while watching NXT today.How often do you hear wrestlers being billed from a mid sized to small town? The VAST majority of them are from large cities, even though there are far more small towns out there instead of big ones. Think of some of the biggest names ever in wrestling and where they’re billed from:
Hogan – Venice Beach (part of Los Angeles)
The Rock – Miami
Flair – Charlotte
Sting – Venice Beach
Luger – Chicago
Michaels – San Antonio
Hart – Calgary
What big names aren’t from big cities? Austin, Cena, HHH….anybody else? Midcarders are the same way.
Is there a reason for this that I’m not getting? Are people not going to care about someone because they’re from a smaller town?
Generally I would think WWE wants the fans to know where these people are billed from. I wish all the stars are billed from big cities or general locations.
Cena is billed from West Newberry Massachusetts. Did you know where West Newberry is prior to 2002? Hell, do you even know now? Thankfully Massachusetts is a small state, making the difference not a huge deal.
Here’s a great example of why it matters.
If the Ring Announcer says: “From Merrick, New York. Weighing In at 215 pounds, Zack Ryder!” What do you know? Nothing, since New York is a big and diverse state, as Upstate is vastly different then Long Island/Manhattan. Instead they say “From Long Island, New York…” Now you know where he’s from.
Conversely, Lance Storm is from “Calgary (dramatic pause) Alberta Canada” because America is stupid and wouldn’t realize that Alberta is part of Canada (and because they would have no idea where he was from if they used a small town).
I’m guessing that it’s for the “hometown pop’s” sake. I mean despite various times WWE works Boston, it doesn’t exactly strike out as Cena territory the way Chicago is for Punk or Charlotte is for Flair.
I always thought that did because they only really want to carter to “mainstream” cities.
They don’t want to be associated with small wrassling towns. It always seemed stupid to me. Like anyone would like you less. If you were from Beacon New York, as opposed to New York City, New York.