The title of this article is ode to an old professor I had who once said this to a student (not me, thank god) who could not comprehend the goal of the semester’s final assignment. Aptly for my write-up, it was not in response to the first misunderstanding. Rather, it was in response to the 100th. This was a willfully ignorant student, who thought feigning concern was enough to earn sympathy.

Much like the WWE, they didn’t deserve that sympathy… not one bit

In a recent network chat with Chris Jericho, John Cena voiced a frustrations he apparently shares with many of the "boys in the back" regarding this new generation of overly vocal fans who can’t be pleased. Apparently there is confusion over what these darn kids want. These fans are always asking for something new and then when you give it to them it is never enough. Mark Henry has voiced the same concern, as has HHH. This is, of course, about Mr. Roman Reigns and the failure of fans to uniformly accept him.

The confusion over the mixed reactions to Reigns is mind-blowing, shit-in-your-shoes bonkers. The audience’s reluctance to accept Reigns outright isn’t that confusing really, but the WWE’s response to it is. It betrays a profound misunderstanding about wrestling fans that I – for one – have a hard to believing is actually a misunderstanding at all. These are smart people, wrestling minds that have built and maintained an empire. They are also people who apparently are confused about the difference between appearances and content, like they believe the most important difference between Batman and Superman is their color scheme.

Let me back up just a second. To be clear, I don’t have a problem with Roman Reigns. He isn’t my favorite wrestler of all time or anything, but I like him. His matches with Bryan and Brock were really good and he did his part in both. If anything, the WWE’s willingness to let him wander back into a feud with the Big Show is throw-up-your-hands frustrating.

To me, Roman Reigns is every bit the wrestler the Rock was really early in his career, not quite as charismatic but just as good in the ring and a little more shear presence. He truly is a ball of potential and he could very well sit atop WWE Mountain without burying the world in an avalanche of mediocrity. Reigns is only a symbol in this whole thing, and we all know it. The same goes for the symbolic anti-Roman, Daniel Bryan. While I love Bryan, he is also just a symbol in this case, representing the type of wrestler and the type of change some fans pine for.

This is not the first time the WWE strapped a rocket to a ripped good-looking dude only to find the unimpressed masses yawning and checking their watches. Lex Lugar, for example, was supposed to be the next Hulk Hogan. When they turned him face they flew him onto an aircraft carrier on the back of a giant bald eagle and had him slam General Maozilla into a vat of apple pie while Lee Greenwood sang "Proud To Be An American" on Ronald Regan’s shoulders. Then they stuffed Lugar on the Lex Express, a bus made exclusively of American flags, freedom, and the blood of communists. It was a special kind of obnoxious, the kind of overkill that made the Reigns’ push seem nuanced and layered.

Fans didn’t buy it. You could almost hear eyes rolling. They wanted Bret Hart, a kind-of-boring Canadian who had a strange and inexplicable charisma … ohh, who was also lights out in the ring. The parallels to the contemporary product are clear. Reigns came in as a wrecking machine, a badass, a monster face who never loses one-on-one. However, when the time came for him to step onto his path to the title, fans wanted something else. They wanted a kind of boring Aberdonian with a strange and inexplicable charisma… ohhh who is also lights out in the ring.

This redundancy isn’t surprising. Why should it be? There have been successes. Hogan is the obvious example. Cena is a sort of half example (he really did squander a bit before typifying every middle class American white kid in baggy pants pursuing authenticity and identity). The Ultimate Warrior was, in a way, another example.

But, for each example there is a bigger star that grew up on our TV screens, failed and struggled their way to the top, and when they got there we celebrated their journey.

The Attitude Era – ya know, that mythical bygone era where everything was amazing and nothing sucked (not true) – was headed by talent that fans cared about and had investment in. HBK, Hart, Austin, Rock, Mankind, HHH all failed and overcame. They were all distinctly NOT the man before they were.

Austin was never supposed to be a star before scratching and crawling his way to iconic status. Fans rejected the Rock until he battled them and their degenerate heroes to win over their admiration. This is what fans want. Even if it is a WWE creation, a plan, fans need to at least think they choose who shines the brightest.

That is because wrestling has never been a one-way conversation. Fans didn’t choose the outcomes but fans have always let the world know who they were interested in and who they weren’t. This remains the case today. Unfortunately, the center of the WWE world for the last 10 years is kind of removed from his own failures.

Cena, for all his early failures, has become superman, removing all the stakes from wrestling. He wins… that’s it. He is an all American boy and he wins, Hogan 2.0. As a fellow fanposter recently pointed out (in the most entertaining way possible, found here), the problem isn’t Cena’s wrestling, it is that the same story gets told over and over. I would go a step further that the problem with Reigns was he threatening to keep telling that same story, just while wearing darker colors.

So when fans say they want something new, they aren’t asking for a shift from one superhero costume to another. They aren’t just asking for someone with darker skin who does a different set of moves, but more or less tells the same story. They are asking for a different paradigm all together.

They want the origin story, a reason to care. They want compelling wrestling where the end may be decided in the back, but it isn’t obvious from the beginning. We all know what wrestling is, but we are also still geeky kids in the 90s with an "I WANT TO BELIEVE" poster in our rooms. The WWE makes it hard to pretend sometimes. Because of their insistence on taking the stakes out of wrestling, I don’t feel one bit sorry for the WWE, for HHH, Vince, Cena, Mark Henry, or anyone else who stands dumbfounded in the face of discontent fans.

I for one can’t tell if the WWE doesn’t really get this or if they are trying to play dumb. Are they pulling a manipulative boy/girlfriend move here? Are they trying to make us believe we have somehow created unreasonable expectations so when they willfully continue their same ol’ narcissistic behavior we feel at fault? Smart people who act dumb is one heaven’s most insufferable little mistakes. The push of Reigns is far less insulting than the feigned blindness to why fans didn’t uncritically accept it.

The point is this. It isn’t just the cast of characters you have; it is how you use them.

I suppose a roster of 40 Cena’s wouldn’t be all that great, but neither would 40 Daniel Bryans. That isn’t what they are working with. They are working with maybe the most talented and diverse roster in wrestling history. I think fans want more serious wrestling matches, but more importantly fans want more compelling wrestling theater, more reasons to invest emotionally in these wrestlers. While fans might have more convenient access to media that allow them to air these grievances in shorter, louder, and more crass forms, they aren’t new grievances.

The WWE’s unwillingness to recognize this is insulting and enraging, at least when they say it out loud, even more so because fans aren’t looking for a reason to turn off the product. Wrestling fans just know the WWE can do better. They gave us an unlimited library of wrestling footage proving as much. Reigns can be a super hero and so can just about anyone else on the roster, but more than cool costume is needed.

If the WWE can’t understand that, it isn’t our problem.