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That's a name I haven't heard in a long long time. Meltzer has been around at least 25 years.
Anyway, speaking of people to listen to - I quickly found that Vince Russo is suffering from some sort of personality disorder - I'm not sure which one, but it's clear. Some days he's in love with some element, and then like 4 days later he'll be on a hate rant. A few days ago he was saying he didn't watch the product and considered it for kids, but loved the business of the wrestling industry. Then later, he was saying he absolutely hated the wrestling business, that the only reason he still has anything to do with it was for the paycheque, that he hated the fans, and he hated people who got into the stories and assumed that they all believe it's real.
This smells like Borderline Personality Disorder to me - probably the main symptom is that someone sees everything in black and white loving adoration or hate, and will switch back and forth (often) on the most trivial triggers. It's more highly diagnosed in women than men, but I think its because of the perception of masculinity where BPD symptoms seem synonymous with various cultures of masculinity, while with women such symptoms are immediately viewed as hysteria or something wrong. So, Vince Russo videos, it's hard to figure out which Russo you're gonna get.
I do agree that wrestling has Marks today, but they don't believe what happens on the show is real, they believe that the action all happens in the writers room, that there's a lot of battles going on. IMO - being that I've been involved in creative businesses for nearly two decades now - they likely have plans and backup plans for when people get injured. WWE has a huge amount of director/producer type staff, and a creative hierarchy that would make all this fairly easy. Since at least the CM Punk era about 10-15 years ago (and probably spanning back to Matt Hardy-Edge) they've been working the audience by making it look like corporate interference is messing with the storylines audiences want - and to keep the fire going, someones they don't give the audience what they want and other times they do.
Evil Russo (on the darker side of the borderline) is correct on one thing, the WWE does manufacture what the audience wants. But what he gets wrong is where the he believes the audience thinks the conflict is happening. Russo thinks the audience believes what happens in the ring is real. But the audience is ~97% smart to that (the other 3% are young kids), he believes the "We want Cody" chants are because the audience believes the matches were real and that Cody earned it in competition. Russo's wrong on that. The audience knows the story is scripted, a good chunk of them see the conflict as being corporate Rock (or other people up there) pushing his agenda, and changing the story they set into motion just a few days earlier. That's the conflict the audience was reacting to.
Think of the story inside the story.
On the highest level, WWE is writing the story of the fictional writers room and corporate maneuverings.
On the next level, they are writing the story that occurs in the ring.
Almost everyone (aside from the kids) knows that what happens in the ring is scripted. It's hard to get real heat outside of a Smark audience, but having these stories is still very important.
The heat is all generated on the level of the fictional writers room and corporate maneuverings, because most people do believe that's real. It's also very easy to make that look real... especially after the AEW stuff where it actually was real :D
Anyway, to illustrate how WWE works there audience these days:
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
